As a matter of fact and practice, it is true that stronger states, in Greece and in the contemporary world, did habitually tend, as they have tended throughout the course of history down to the present day, to enlarge their power at the expense of the weaker. Every territory in Greece, except Attica and Arcadia, had been seized by conquerors who dispossessed or enslaved the prior inhabitants. We find Brasidas reminding his soldiers of the good sword of their forefathers, which had established dominion over men far more numerous than themselves, as matter of pride and glory:[167] and when we come to the times of Philip and Alexander of Macedon, we shall see the lust of conquest reaching a pitch never witnessed among free Greeks. Of right thus founded on simple superiority of force, there were abundant examples to be quoted, as parallels to the Athenian conquest of Mêlos: but that which is unparalleled is the mode adopted by the Athenian envoy of justifying it, or rather of setting aside all justification, looking at the actual state of civilization in Greece. A barbarous invader casts his sword into the scale in lieu of argument: a civilized conqueror is bound by received international morality to furnish some justification,—a good plea, if he can,—a false plea, or sham plea, if he has no better. But the Athenian envoy neither copies the contemptuous silence of the barbarian nor the smooth lying of the civilized invader. Though coming from the most cultivated city in Greece, where the vices prevalent were those of refinement and not of barbarism, he disdains the conventional arts of civilized diplomacy more than would have been done by an envoy even of Argos or Korkyra. He even disdains to mention, what might have been said with perfect truth as a matter of fact, whatever may be thought of its sufficiency as a justification, that the Melians had enjoyed for the last fifty years the security of the Ægean waters at the cost of Athens and her allies, without any payment of their own. [167] Compare also what Brasidas says in his speech to the Akanthians, v, 86 ~ἴσχυος δικαιώσει~, ἣν ἡ τύχη ἔδωκεν, etc.