The speech of Archidamus was not only in itself full of plain reason and good sense, but delivered altogether from the point of view of a Spartan; appealing greatly to Spartan conservative feeling and even prejudice. But in spite of all this, and in spite of the personal esteem entertained for the speaker, the tide of feeling in the opposite direction was at that moment irresistible. Stheneläidas—one of the five ephors, to whom it fell to put the question for voting—closed the debate; and his few words mark at once the character of the man, the temper of the assembly, and the simplicity of speech, though without the wisdom of judgment, for which Archidamus had taken credit to his countrymen. “I don’t understand (he said) these long speeches of the Athenians. They have praised themselves abundantly, but they have never rebutted what is laid to their charge,—that they are guilty of wrong against our allies and against Peloponnesus. Now, if in former days they were good men against the Persians, and are now evil-doers against us, they deserve double punishment, as having become evil-doers instead of good.[150] But _we_ are the same now as we were then: we know better than to sit still while our allies are suffering wrong: we shall not adjourn our aid while they cannot adjourn their sufferings.[151] Others have in abundance wealth, ships, and horses,—but _we_ have good allies, whom we are not to abandon to the mercy of the Athenians: nor are we to trust our redress to arbitration and to words, when our wrongs are not confined to words. We must help them speedily and with all our strength. Nor let any one tell us that we can with honor deliberate when we are actually suffering wrong,—it is rather for those who intend to do the wrong, to deliberate well beforehand. Resolve upon war then, Lacedæmonians, in a manner worthy of Sparta: suffer not the Athenians to become greater than they are: let us not betray our allies to ruin, but march, with the aid of the gods, against the wrong-doers.” [150] Compare a similar sentiment in the speech of the Thebans against the Platæans (Thucyd. iii, 67). [151] Thucyd. i, 86. ἡμεῖς δὲ ὁμοῖοι καὶ τότε καὶ νῦν ἐσμὲν, καὶ τοὺς ξυμμάχους, ἢν σωφρονῶμεν, οὐ περιοψόμεθα ἀδικουμένους, οὐδὲ μελλήσομεν τιμωρεῖν· οἱ δὲ οὐκέτι μέλλουσι κακῶς πάσχειν. There is here a play upon the word μέλλειν, which it is not easy to preserve in a translation.