The conduct of Sparta justifies the allegation made by the Athenians in 416 B.C., ‘that in her political transactions she measured honour by inclination and justice by expediency’ (Thuc. 5, 105). The most scathing verdict upon it is delivered by Xenophon himself, who pauses in his narrative to point the moral, that the fall and degradation of Sparta began from this turning-point: ‘It would be possible to mention many other instances, from Greek and foreign history, proving that the Gods do not fail to notice the authors of impious and wicked deeds; at present I shall only mention the case before us. The Lacedaemonians, who had sworn that they would leave the cities independent, and then seized the Acropolis of Thebes, were punished entirely by those whom they had wronged, having previously been beaten by no man then living. The Theban citizens who had introduced them into the citadel, and who wished the city to be subject to the Lacedaemonians that they themselves might enjoy absolute power, lost their supremacy, which seven exiles were enough to overthrow.’ These remarks are in the spirit of the Greek Tragedians, who love to bring into strong light an act or situation of pride and insolence as the turning-point from prosperity to ruin. Thucydides, as is pointed out by Grote in the masterly pages which end his fifty-sixth chapter, has brought the cynical injustice of the Athenians towards Melos into glaring prominence in order to prepare his readers for the disastrous sequel. The problem of the true nature of the ‘Divine Sign’ of Socrates is one of great interest and some mystery. The Latin word ‘Genius’, the attendant spirit who makes each of us what he is, in fact, his self, is familiar to us from Horace: _The Genius, guardian of each child of earth, Born when we’re born and dying when we die._ (_Epist._ 2, 2, 187.)