complaints respecting the hardships of their new lot, and against Sparta as having betrayed them; complaints, which would call forth genuine sympathy in the Athenians, Thebans, and all others who had submitted reluctantly to the peace of Antalkidas. There was thus a large body of sentiment prepared to respond to the declamations of Lysias. And many a Grecian patriot, who would be ashamed to lay hands on the Syracusan tents or envoys, would yet yield a mournful assent to the orator’s remark, that the free Grecian world was on fire[164] at both sides; that Asiatics, Italians, and Sicilians, had already passed into the hands of Artaxerxes and Dionysius; and that, if these two formidable enemies should coalesce, the liberties even of central Greece would be in great danger. [162] See Pseudo-Andokides cont. Alkibiad. s. 30; and Vol. VII. of this History, Ch. lv, p. 53. [163] Dionys. Hal. Judic. de Lysiâ, p. 519; Diodor. xiv, 109. ὥστε τινας τολμῆσαι διαρπάζειν τὰς σκηνάς. Dionysius does not specify the date of this oration of Lysias; but Diodorus places it at Olympiad 98—B.C. 388—the year before the peace of Antalkidas. On this point I venture to depart from him, and assign it to Olympiad 99, or 384 B.C., three years after the peace; the rather as his Olympic chronology appears not clear, as may be seen by comparing xv, 7 with xiv, 109. 1. The year 388 B.C. was a year of war, in which Sparta with her allies on one side,—and Thebes, Athens, Corinth, and Argos on the other,—were carrying on strenuous hostilities. The war would hinder the four last-mentioned states from sending any public legation to sacrifice at the Olympic festival. Lysias, as an Athenian metic, could hardly have gone there at all; but he certainly could not have gone there to make a public and bold oratorical demonstration. 2. The language of Lysias implies that the speech was delivered after the cession of the Asiatic Greeks to Persia,—ὁρῶν πολλὰ μὲν αὐτῆς (Ἑλλάδος) ὄντα ὑπὸ τῷ Βαρβάρῳ, etc. This is quite pertinent after the peace of Antalkidas; but not at all admissible before that peace. The same may be said about the phrase,—οὐ γὰρ ἀλλοτρίας δεῖ τὰς τῶν ἀπολωλότων συμφορὰς νομίζειν, ἀλλ’ οἰκείας; which must be referred to the recent subjection of the Asiatic Greeks by Persia, and of the Italian and Sicilian Greeks by Dionysius. 3. In 388 B.C.—when Athens and so large a portion of the greater cities of Greece were at war with Sparta, and therefore contesting her headship,—Lysias would hardly have publicly talked of the Spartans as ἡγεμόνες τῶν Ἑλλήνων, οὐκ ἀδίκως, καὶ διὰ τὴν ἔμφυτον ἀρετὴν καὶ διὰ τὴν πρὸς τὸν πόλεμον ἐπιστήμην. This remark is made also by Sievers (Geschich. Griech. bis zur Schlacht von Mantinea, p. 138). Nor would he have declaimed so ardently against the Persian king, at a time when Athens was still not despairing of Persian aid against Sparta.