For more than thirty years preceding,—from times earlier than the commencement of the Peloponnesian war,—the Spartans had professed to interfere only for the purpose of liberating Greece, and of putting down the usurped ascendency of Athens. All the allies of Sparta had been invited into strenuous action,—all those of Athens had been urged to revolt,—under the soul-stirring cry of “Freedom to Greece.” The earliest incitements addressed by the Corinthians to Sparta in 432 B.C., immediately after the Korkyræan dispute, called upon her to stand forward in fulfilment of her recognized function as “Liberator of Greece,” and denounced her as guilty of connivance with Athens if she held back.[322] Athens was branded as the “despot city;” which had already absorbed the independence of many Greeks, and menaced that of all the rest. The last formal requisition borne by the Lacedæmonian envoys to Athens in the winter immediately preceding the war, ran thus,—“If you desire the continuance of peace with Sparta, restore to the Greeks their autonomy.”[323] When Archidamus, king of Sparta, approached at the head of his army to besiege Platæa, the Platæans laid claim to autonomy as having been solemnly guaranteed to them by King Pausanias after the great victory near their town. Upon which Archidamus replied,—“Your demand is just; we are prepared to confirm _your_ autonomy,—but we call upon you to aid us in securing the like for those other Greeks who have been enslaved by Athens. This is the sole purpose of our great present effort.”[324] And the banner of general enfranchisement, which the Lacedæmonians thus held up at the outset of the war, enlisted in their cause encouraging sympathy and good wishes throughout Greece.[325] [322] Thucyd. i, 69. οὐ γὰρ ὁ δουλωσάμενος, ἀλλ᾽ ὁ δυνάμενος μὲν παῦσαι, περιορῶν δὲ, ἀληθέστερον αὐτὸ δρᾷ, εἴπερ καὶ τὴν ἀξίωσιν τῆς ἀρετῆς ὡς ἐλευθερῶν τὴν Ἑλλάδα φέρεται. To the like purpose the second speech of the Corinthian envoys at Sparta, c. 122-124—μὴ μέλλετε Ποτιδαιάταις τε ποιεῖσθαι τιμωρίαν. ... καὶ τῶν ἄλλων μετελθεῖν τὴν ἐλευθερίαν, etc. [323] Thucyd. i, 139. Compare Isokrates, Or. iv, Panegyr. c. 34, s. 140; Or. v, (Philipp.) s. 121; Or. xiv, (Plataic.) s. 43. [324] Thucyd. ii, 72. Παρασκευὴ δὲ τόσηδε καὶ πόλεμος γεγένηται αὐτῶν ἕνεκα καὶ τῶν ἄλλων ἐλευθερώσεως. Read also the speech of the Theban orator, in reply to the Platæan, after the capture of the town by the Lacedæmonians (iii, 63). [325] Thucyd. ii, 8. ἡ δὲ εὔνοια παρὰ πολὺ ἐποίει τῶν ἀνθρώπων μᾶλλον ἐς τοὺς Λακεδαιμονίους, ἄλλως τε καὶ προειπόντων ὅτι τὴν Ἑλλάδα ἐλευθεροῦσιν. See also iii, 13, 14—the speech of the envoys from the revolted Mitylênê, to the Lacedæmonians.