But never on any occasion did that excuse find less real place than in regard to the mission of Antalkidas. Sparta was at that time so powerful, even after the loss of her maritime empire, that the allies at the Isthmus of Corinth, jealous of each other and held together only by common terror, could hardly stand on the defensive against her, and would probably have been disunited by reasonable offers on her part; nor would she have needed even to recall Agesilaus from Asia. Nevertheless, the mission was probably dictated in great measure by a groundless panic, arising from the sight of the revived Long Walls and refortified Piræus, and springing at once to the fancy, that a new Athenian empire, such as had existed forty years before, was about to start into life; a fancy little likely to be realized, since the very peculiar circumstances which had created the first Athenian empire were now totally reversed. Debarred from maritime empire herself, the first object with Sparta was, to shut out Athens from the like; the next, to put down all partial federations or political combinations, and to enforce universal autonomy, or the maximum of political isolation; in order that there might nowhere exist a power capable of resisting herself, the strongest of all individual states. As a means to this end, which was no less in the interest of Persia than in hers, she outbid all prior subserviences to the Great King, betrayed to him not only one entire division of her Hellenic kinsmen, but also the general honor of the Hellenic name in the most flagrant manner,—and volunteered to _medise_ in order that the Persians might repay her by _laconising_.[18] To ensure fully the obedience of all the satraps, who had more than once manifested dissentient views of their own, Antalkidas procured and brought down a formal order signed and sealed at Susa; and Sparta undertook, without shame or scruple, to enforce the same order,—“the convention sent down by the king,”—upon all her countrymen; thus converting them into the subjects, and herself into a sort of viceroy or satrap, of Artaxerxes. Such an act of treason to the Pan-hellenic cause was far more flagrant and destructive than that alleged confederacy with the Persian king, for which the Theban Ismenias was afterwards put to death, and that, too, by the Spartans themselves.[19] Unhappily it formed a precedent for the future, and was closely copied afterwards by Thebes;[20] foreboding but too clearly the short career which Grecian political independence had to run. [18] Isok. Or. iv, (Panegyr.) s. 145. Καὶ τῷ βαρβάρῳ τῷ τῆς Ἀσίας κρατοῦντι συμπράττουσι (the Lacedæmonians) ὅπως ὡς μεγίστην ἀρχὴν ἕξουσιν. [19] Xen. Hellen. v, 2, 35. [20] Xen. Hellen. vii, 1, 33-39.