To understand the material change thus wrought in it, we have only to contrast the speeches of king Archidamus and of the Corinthians, made in 432 B.C. at the beginning of the Peloponnesian war, with the state of facts at the end of the war,—during the eleven years between the victory of Ægospotami and the defeat of Knidus (405-394 B.C.). At the former of the two epochs, Sparta had no tributary subjects, nor any funds in her treasury, while her citizens were very reluctant to pay imposts.[405] About 334 B.C., thirty-seven years after her defeat at Leuktra and her loss of Messenia, Aristotle remarks the like fact, which had then again become true;[406] but during the continuance of her empire between 405 and 394 B.C., she possessed a large public revenue, derived from the tribute of the dependent cities. In 432 B.C., Sparta is not merely cautious but backward; especially averse to any action at a distance from home.[407] In 404 B.C., after the close of the war, she becomes aggressive, intermeddling, and ready for dealing with enemies, or making acquisitions remote as well as near.[408] In 432 B.C., her unsocial and exclusive manners, against the rest of Greece, with her constant expulsion of other Greeks from her own city, stand prominent among her attributes;[409] while at the end of the war, her foreign relations had acquired such great development as to become the principal matter of attention for her leading citizens as well as for her magistrates; so that the influx of strangers into Sparta, and the efflux of Spartans into other parts of Greece became constant and inevitable. Hence the strictness of the Lykurgean discipline gave way on many points, and the principal Spartans especially struggled by various shifts to evade its obligations. It was to these leading men that the great prizes fell, enabling them to enrich themselves at the expense either of foreign subjects or of the public treasury, and tending more and more to aggravate that inequality of wealth among the Spartans which Aristotle so emphatically notices in his time;[410] since the smaller citizens had no similar opportunities opened to them, nor any industry of their own, to guard their properties against gradual subdivision and absorption, and to keep them in a permanent state of ability to furnish that contribution to the mess-table, for themselves and their sons, which formed the groundwork of Spartan political franchise. Moreover, the spectacle of such newly-opened lucrative prizes,—accessible only to that particular section of influential Spartan families who gradually became known apart from the rest under the title of the Equals or Peers,—embittered the discontent of the energetic citizens beneath that privileged position, in such a manner as to menace the tranquillity of the state,—as will presently be seen. That sameness of life, habits, attainments, aptitudes, enjoyments, fatigues, and restraints, which the Lykurgean regulations had so long enforced,