Of this important assembly, on which so much of the future fate of Greece turned, Thucydidês has preserved an account unusually copious. First, the speech delivered by the Corinthian envoys. Next, that of some Athenian envoys, who happening to be at the same time in Sparta on some other matters, and being present in the assembly so as to have heard the speeches both of the Corinthians and of the other complainants, obtained permission from the magistrates to address the assembly in their turn. Thirdly, the address of the Spartan king Archidamus, on the course of policy proper to be adopted by Sparta. Lastly, the brief, but eminently characteristic, address of the ephor Stheneläidas, on putting the question for decision. These speeches, the composition of Thucydidês himself, contain substantially the sentiments of the parties to whom they are ascribed: neither of them is distinctly a reply to that which has preceded, but each presents the situation of affairs from a different point of view. The Corinthians knew well that the audience whom they were about to address had been favorably prepared for them,—for the Lacedæmonian authorities had already given an actual promise to them and to the Potidæans at the moment before Potidæa revolted, that they would invade Attica. So great was the revolution in sentiment of the Spartans, since they had declined lending aid to the much more powerful island of Lesbos, when it proposed to revolt,—a revolution occasioned by the altered interests and sentiments of Corinth. Nor were the Corinthians ignorant that their positive grounds of complaint against Athens, in respect of wrong or violation of the existing truce, were both few and feeble. Neither in the dispute about Potidæa nor about Korkyra, had Athens infringed the truce or wronged the Peloponnesian alliance. In both, she had come into collision with Corinth, singly and apart from the confederacy: she had a right, both according to the truce and according to the received maxims of international law, to lend defensive aid to the Korkyræans at their own request,—she had a right also, according to the principles laid down by the Corinthians themselves on occasion of the revolt of Samos, to restrain the Potidæans from revolting. She had committed nothing which could fairly be called an aggression: indeed the aggression, both in the case of Potidæa and in that of Korkyra, was decidedly on the side of the Corinthians: and the Peloponnesian confederacy could only be so far implicated as it was understood to be bound to espouse the separate quarrels, right or wrong, of Corinth. All this was well known to the Corinthian envoys; and accordingly we find that, in their speech at Sparta, they touch but lightly, and in vague terms, on positive or recent wrongs. Even that which they do say completely justifies the proceedings of Athens about the affair of Korkyra, since they confess without hesitation the design of seizing the large Korkyræan navy for the use of the