The expression, “taking measures to hinder the Lacedæmonians from again exercising empire,”—marks this treatise as probably composed some time between their naval defeat at Knidus, and their land-defeat at Leuktra. The former put an end to their maritime empire,—the latter excluded them from all possibility of recovering it; but during the interval between the two, such recovery was by no means impossible. This criticism (written at some period between 394-371 B.C.) from the strenuous eulogist of Sparta is highly instructive. We know from other evidences how badly the Spartan empire worked for the subject cities; we here learn how badly it worked for the character of the Spartans themselves, and for those internal institutions which even an enemy of Sparta, who detested her foreign policy, still felt constrained to admire.[414] All the vices, here insisted upon by Xenophon, arise from various incidents connected with her empire. The moderate, home-keeping, old-fashioned, backward disposition,—of which the Corinthians complain,[415] but for which king Archidamus takes credit, at the beginning of the Peloponnesian war,—is found exchanged, at the close of the war, for a spirit of aggression and conquest, for ambition public as well as private, and for emancipation of the great men from the subduing[416] equality of the discipline enacted by Lykurgus. [414] The Athenian envoy at Melos says,—Λακεδαιμόνιοι γὰρ πρὸς μὲν σφᾶς αὐτοὺς καὶ τὰ ἐπιχώρια νόμιμα, πλεῖστα ἀρετῇ χρῶνται· πρὸς δὲ τοὺς ἀλλους—ἐπιφανέστατα ὧν ἴσμεν τὰ μὲν ἡδέα καλὰ νομίζουσι, τὰ δὲ ξυμφέροντα δίκαια (Thucyd. v. 105). A judgment almost exactly the same, is pronounced by Polybius (vi, 48). [415] Thucyd. i, 69, 70, 71, 84. ἀρχαιότροπα ὑμῶν τὰ ἐπιτηδεύματα—ἄοκνοι πρὸς ὑμᾶς μελλητὰς καὶ ἀποδημηταὶ πρὸς ἐνδημοτάτους: also viii, 24. [416] Σπάρτην δαμασίμβροτον (Simonides ap. Plutarch. Agesilaum, c. 1).