Meanwhile, the Mitylenæan envoys, after a troublesome voyage, reached Sparta a little before the Olympic festival, about the middle of June. The Spartans directed them to come to Olympia at the festival, where all the members of the Peloponnesian confederacy would naturally be present,—and there to set forth their requests, after the festival was concluded, in presence of all.[377] Thucydidês has given us, at some length, his version of the speech wherein this was done,—a speech not a little remarkable. Pronounced as it was by men who had just revolted from Athens, having the strongest interest to raise indignation against her as well as sympathy for themselves,—and before an audience exclusively composed of the enemies of Athens, all willing to hear, and none present to refute, the bitterest calumnies against her, we should have expected a confident sense of righteous and well-grounded though perilous effort on the part of the Mitylenæans, and a plausible collection of wrongs and oppressions alleged against the common enemy. Instead of which, the speech is apologetic and embarrassed: the speaker not only does not allege any extortion or severe dealing from Athens towards the Mitylenæans, but even admits the fact that they had been treated by her with marked honor;[378] and that, too, during a long period of peace, during which she stood less in awe of her allies generally, and would have had much more facility in realizing any harsh purposes towards them, than she could possibly enjoy now that the war had broken out, when their discontents would be likely to find powerful protectors.[379] According to his own showing, the Mitylenæans, while they had been perfectly well treated by Athens during the past, had now acquired, by the mere fact of war, increased security for continuance of the like treatment during the future. It is upon this ground of security for the future, nevertheless, that he rests the justification of the revolt, not pretending to have any subject of positive complaint. The Mitylenæans, he contends, could have no prospective security against Athens: for she had successively and systematically brought into slavery all her allies, except Lesbos and Chios, though all had originally been upon an equal footing: and there was every reason for fearing that she would take the first convenient opportunity of reducing the two last remaining to the same level,—the rather as their position was now one of privilege and exception, offensive to her imperial pride and exaggerated ascendency. It had hitherto suited the policy of Athens to leave these two exceptions, as a proof that the other allies had justly incurred their fate, since otherwise Lesbos and Chios, having equal votes, would not have joined forces in reducing them:[380] but this policy was now no longer necessary, and the Mitylenæans, feeling themselves free only in name, were imperatively called upon by regard for their own