[321] This seems to have been the impression not merely of the enemies of Sparta, but even of the Spartan authorities themselves. Compare two remarkable passages of Thucydides, i, 77, and i, 95. Ἄμικτα γὰρ (says the Athenian envoy at Sparta) τά τε καθ᾽ ὑμᾶς αὐτοὺς νόμιμα τοῖς ἄλλοις ἔχετε, καὶ προσέτι εἷς ἕκαστος ἐξιὼν οὔτε τούτοις χρῆται, οὐθ᾽ οἷς ἡ ἄλλη Ἑλλὰς νομίζει. After the recall of the regent Pausanias and of Dorkis from the Hellespont (in 477 B.C.), the Lacedæmonians refuse to send out any successor, φοβούμενοι μὴ σφίσιν οἱ ἐξιόντες χείρους γίγνωνται, ὅπερ καὶ ἐν τῷ Παυσανίᾳ ἐνεῖδον, etc. (i, 95.) Compare Plutarch, Apophtheg. Laconic. p. 220 F. Taking all these causes of evil together,—the dekarchies, the harmosts, and the overwhelming dictatorship of Lysander,—and construing other parts of the Grecian world by the analogy of Athens under the Thirty,—we shall be warranted in affirming that the first years of the Spartan Empire, which followed upon the victory of Ægospotami, were years of all-pervading tyranny and multifarious intestine calamity, such as Greece had never before endured. The hardships of war, severe in many ways, were now at an end, but they were replaced by a state of suffering not the less difficult to bear because it was called peace. And what made the suffering yet more intolerable was, that it was a bitter disappointment, and a flagrant violation of promises proclaimed, repeatedly and explicitly, by the Lacedæmonians themselves.