The sweet draught is asserted to consist—not, as Plutarch supposes, in the first taste of the actual Lacedæmonian empire after the war, but—in the seductive promises of freedom held out by them to the allies _during the war_. Plutarch’s charge of ἔοικε ληρεῖν has thus no foundation. I have written δελεάσαντας instead of δελεάσοντας which stands in Didot’s Fragment, because it struck me that this correction was required to construe the passage. [332] Isokrates, Or. iv, (Panegr.) s. 145; Or. viii, (de Pace) s. 122; Diodor. xiv, 10-44; xv, 23. Compare Herodot. v, 92; Thucyd. i, 18; Isokrates, Or. iv, (Panegyr.) s. 144. The empire of Sparta thus constituted at the end of 405 B.C., maintained itself in full grandeur for somewhat above ten years, until the naval battle of Knidus,[333] in 394 B.C. That defeat destroyed her fleet and maritime ascendency, yet left her in undiminished power on land, which she still maintained until her defeat by the Thebans[334] at Leuktra in 371 B.C. Throughout all this time, it was her established system to keep up Spartan harmosts and garrisons in the dependent cities on the continent as well as in the islands. Even the Chians, who had been her most active allies during the last eight years of the war, were compelled to submit to this hardship; besides having all their fleet taken away from them.[335] But the native dekarchies, though at first established by Lysander universally throughout the maritime dependencies, did not last as a system so long as the harmosts. Composed as they were to a great degree of the personal nominees and confederates of Lysander, they suffered in part by the reactionary jealousy which in time made itself felt against his overweening ascendency. After continuing for some time, they lost the countenance of the Spartan ephors, who proclaimed permission to the cities (we do not precisely know when) to resume their preëxisting governments.[336] Some of the dekarchies thus became dissolved, or modified in various ways, but several probably still continued to subsist, if they had force enough to maintain themselves; for it does not appear that the ephors ever systematically put them down, as Lysander had systematically set them up. [333] Isokrates, Panathen. s. 61. Σπαρτιᾶται μὲν γὰρ ἔτη δέκα μόλις ἐπεστάτησαν αὐτῶν, ἡμεῖς δὲ πέντε καὶ ἑξήκοντα συνεχῶς κατέσχομεν τὴν ἀρχήν. I do not hold myself bound to make out the exactness of the chronology of Isokrates. But here we may remark that his “hardly ten years” is a term, though less than the truth by some months, if we may take the battle of Ægospotami as the beginning, is very near the truth if we take the surrender of Athens as the beginning, down to the battle of Knidus. [334] Pausanias, viii, 52, 2; ix, 6, 1. [335] Diodor. xiv, 84; Isokrates, Orat. viii, (de Pace) s. 121. [336] Xen. Hellen. iii, 4, 2.