Pan-hellenic combination, passed away also,—never to return. [345] Such is the justification offered by the Athenian envoy at Sparta, immediately before the Peloponnesian war (Thucyd. i, 75, 76). And it is borne out in the main by the narrative of Thucydides himself (i, 99). Having thus brought all the maritime Greeks under her empire, with a tribute of more than one thousand talents imposed upon them,—and continuing to be chief of her landed alliance in Central Greece, which now included Athens as a simple unit,—Sparta was the all-pervading imperial power in Greece.[346] Her new empire was organized by the victorious Lysander; but with so much arrogance, and so much personal ambition to govern all Greece by means of nominees of his own, decemvirs and harmosts,—that he raised numerous rivals and enemies, as well at Sparta itself as elsewhere. The jealousy entertained by king Pausanias, the offended feelings of Thebes and Corinth, and the manner in which these new phenomena brought about (in spite of the opposition of Lysander) the admission of Athens as a revived democracy into the Lacedæmonian confederacy,—has been already related. [346] Xen. Hellen. iii, 1, 3. πάσης τὴς Ἑλλάδος προστάται, etc. In the early months of 403 B.C., Lysander was partly at home, partly in Attica, exerting himself to sustain the falling oligarchy of Athens against the increasing force of Thrasybulus and the Athenian exiles in Peiræus. In this purpose he was directly thwarted by the opposing views of king Pausanias, and three out of the five ephors.[347] But though the ephors thus checked Lysander in regard to Athens, they softened the humiliation by sending him abroad to a fresh command on the Asiatic coast and the Hellespont; a step which had the farther advantage of putting asunder two such marked rivals as he and Pausanias had now become. That which Lysander had tried in vain to do at Athens, he was doubtless better able to do in Asia, where he had neither Pausanias nor the ephors along with him. He could lend effective aid to the dekarchies and harmosts in the Asiatic cities, against any internal opposition with which they might be threatened. Bitter were the complaints which reached Sparta, both against him and against his ruling partisans. At length the ephors were prevailed upon to disavow the dekarchies; and to proclaim that they would not hinder the cities from resuming their former governments at pleasure.[348] [347] Xen. Hellen. ii, 4, 28-30. [348] Xen. Hellen. iii, 4, 2.