To the Corinthians, in their anxiety for the relief of Potidæa, the decision of this congress was not less important than that which the Spartans had just taken separately: and they sent round envoys to each of the allies, entreating them to authorize war without reserve. Through such instigations, acting upon the general impulse then prevalent, the congress came together in a temper decidedly warlike: most of the speakers were full of invective against Athens, and impatient for action, while the Corinthians, waiting as before to speak the last, wound up the discussion by a speech well calculated to insure a hearty vote. Their former speech had been directed to shame, exasperate, and alarm the Lacedæmonians: this point had now been carried, and they had to enforce, upon the allies generally, the dishonor as well as the impolicy of receding from a willing leader. The cause was one in which all were interested, the inland states not less than the maritime, for both would find themselves ultimately victims of the encroaching despot city: whatever efforts were necessary for the war, ought cheerfully to be made, since it was only through war that they could arrive at a secure and honorable peace. There were good hopes that this might soon be attained, and that the war would not last long,—so decided was the superiority of the confederacy, in numbers, in military skill, and in the equal heart and obedience of all its members.[154] The naval superiority of Athens depended chiefly upon hired seamen,—and the confederacy, by borrowing from the treasuries of Delphi and Olympia, would soon be able to overbid her, take into pay her best mariners, and equal her equipment at sea: they would excite revolt among her allies, and establish a permanent fortified post for the ruin of Attica. To make up a common fund for this purpose, was indispensably necessary; for Athens was far more than a match for each of them single-handed, and nothing less than hearty union could save them all from successive enslavement,—the very supposition of which was intolerable to Peloponnesian freemen, whose fathers had liberated Greece from the Persian. Let them not shrink from endurance and sacrifice in such a cause,—it was their hereditary pride to purchase success by laborious effort. The Delphian god had promised them his coöperation; and the whole of Greece would sympathize in the cause, either from fear of the despotism of Athens, or from hopes of profit. They would not be the first to break the truce, for the Athenians had already broken it, as the declaration of the Delphian god distinctly implied. Let them lose no time in sending aid to the Potidæans, a Dorian population now besieged by Ionians, as well as to those other Greeks whom Athens had enslaved. Every day the necessity for effort was becoming stronger, and the longer it was delayed, the more painful it would be when it came. “Be ye persuaded then, (concluded the orator),