been here present, might have made no mean reply to this portion of their reasoning;—he would have urged that, had Athens felt any dispositions towards such a scheme, she would have taken advantage of the fourteen years’ truce to execute it; and he would have shown that the degradation of the allies by Athens, and the change in her position from president to despot had been far less intentional and systematic than the Mitylenæan orator affirmed. [383] Thucyd. i, 144. Καὶ ὅταν κἀκεῖνοι (the Lacedæmonians) ταῖς αὐτῶν ἀποδῶσι πόλεσι, μὴ ~σφίσι τοῖς Λακεδαιμονίοις ἐπιτηδείως αὐτονομεῖσθαι, ἀλλ᾽ αὐτοῖς ἑκάστοις, ὡς βούλονται~. About the hostages detained by Sparta for the fidelity of her allies, see Thucyd. v, 54, 61. To the Peloponnesian auditors, however, the speech of the latter proved completely satisfactory; the Lesbians were declared members of the Peloponnesian alliance, and a second attack upon Attica was decreed. The Lacedæmonians, foremost in the movement, summoned contingents from their various allies, and were early in arriving with their own at the isthmus: they there began to prepare carriages or trucks for dragging across the isthmus the triremes which had fought against Phormio, from the harbor of Lechæum into the Saronic gulf, in order to employ them against Athens. But the remaining allies did not answer to the summons, remaining at home occupied with their harvest; and the Lacedæmonians, sufficiently disappointed with this languor and disobedience, were still farther confounded by the unexpected presence of one hundred Athenian triremes off the coast of the isthmus. The Athenians, though their own presence at the Olympic festival was forbidden by the war, had doubtless learned more or less thoroughly the proceedings which had taken place there respecting Mitylênê. Perceiving the general belief entertained of their depressed and helpless condition, they determined to contradict this by a great and instant effort, and accordingly manned forthwith one hundred triremes, requiring the personal service of all men, citizens as well as metics; and excepting only the two richest classes of the Solonian census, _i. e._ the pentakosiomedimni, and the hippeis, or horsemen. With this prodigious fleet they made a demonstration along the isthmus in view of the Lacedæmonians, and landed in various parts of the Peloponnesian coast to inflict damage. At the same time, thirty other Athenian triremes, despatched sometime previously to Akarnania, under Asôpius, son of Phormio, landed at different openings in Laconia, for the same purpose; and this news reached the Lacedæmonians at the isthmus while the other great Athenian fleet was parading before their eyes.[384] Amazed at so unexpected a demonstration of strength, they began to feel how much the Mitylenæans had misled them respecting the exhaustion of Athens, and how incompetent they were, especially without the presence of