That degradation stood evidently marked in the form, origin, and transmission, of the convention, even apart from its substance. It was a fiat issued from the court of Susa; as such it was ostentatiously proclaimed and “sent down” from thence to Greece. Its authority was derived from the king’s seal, and its sanction from his concluding threat, that he would make war against all recusants. It was brought down by the satrap Tiribazus (along with Antalkidas), read by him aloud, and heard with submission by the assembled Grecian envoys, after he had called their special attention to the regal seal.[6] Such was the convention which Sparta, the ancient president of the Grecian world had been the first to solicit at the hands of the Persian king, and which she now not only set the example of sanctioning by her own spontaneous obedience, but even avouched as guarantee and champion against all opponents; preparing to enforce it at the point of the sword against any recusant state, whether party to it or not. Such was the convention which was now inscribed on stone, and placed as a permanent record in the temples of the Grecian cities;[7] nay, even in the common sanctuaries,—the Olympic, Pythian, and others,—the great _foci_ and rallying points of Pan-hellenic sentiment. Though called by the name of a convention, it was on the very face of it a peremptory mandate proceeding from the ancient enemy of Greece, an acceptance of which was nothing less than an act of obedience. While to him it was a glorious trophy, to all Pan-hellenic patriots it was the deepest disgrace and insult.[8] Effacing altogether the idea of an independent Hellenic world, bound together and regulated by the self-acting forces and common sympathies of its own members,—even the words of the convention proclaimed it as an act of intrusive foreign power, and erected the barbarian king into a dictatorial settler of Grecian differences; a guardian[9] who cared for the peace of Greece more than the Greeks themselves. And thus, looking to the form alone, it was tantamount to that symbol of submission—the cession of earth and water—which had been demanded a century before by the ancestor of Artaxerxes from the ancestors of the Spartans and Athenians; a demand, which both Sparta and Athens then not only repudiated, but resented so cruelly, as to put to death the heralds by whom it was brought,—stigmatizing the Æginetans and others as traitors to Hellas for complying with it.[10] Yet nothing more would have been implied in such cession than what stood embodied in the inscription on that “colonna infame,” which placed the peace of Antalkidas side by side with the Pan-hellenic glories and ornaments at Olympia.[11] [6] Xen. Hellen. v, 1, 30, 31. Ὥστ’ ἐπεὶ παρήγγειλεν ὁ Τιρίβαζος παρεῖναι ~τοὺς βουλομένους ὑπακοῦσαι~, ἣν βασιλεὺς εἰρήνην καταπέμποι, ταχέως πάντες παρεγένοντο. Ἐπεὶ δὲ ξυνῆλθον, ~ἐπιδείξας ὁ Τιρίβαζος τὰ βασιλέως σημεῖα~, ἀνεγίνωσκε τὰ γεγραμμένα, εἶχε δὲ ὧδε·