Fig. 2.--The Cnidian Aphrodite. Plate 61.] The Long Walls were to be pulled down in order that Athens might be separated from her harbours and become in fact an inland city like Sparta herself. Down they came to the music of flutes, and Athens consented to become the “ally” (euphemism for “humble servant”) of Sparta. The moral of it all for imperial cities would seem to be: (1) the precarious nature of sea-power unless backed very strongly by purse-power; (2) the danger of having unwilling allies or dependents; and (3) the impossibility of conducting war by means of public debate in a democratic assembly. On two occasions near the end of the war and the century the Athenians had tried experiments in constitutional revolution. For, indeed, during the closing stages of the war even the citizens of Athens could see, what was painfully obvious to the rest of the world, that she was not well governed for the purposes of external politics. Popular institutions exist for the sake of popular liberties. There are better ways of maintaining order, if that is your prime object, and much better ways of securing “efficiency.” Democracy may “reign”; it cannot “govern”--not, at any rate, without the help of a trained bureaucracy. Above all, in the conduct of a war a meeting of citizens in the market-place is the clumsiest deliberative body that can be conceived. We have seen how ignorant they were when they embarked on the Sicilian expedition without knowing anything more than interested parties chose to tell them of the resources of their allies and the disposition of the other Sicilian Greeks. Besides ignorance, they had shown hasty passion in condemning the whole male population of Mitylene to death; they had been ferociously unjust in sentencing their admirals to death for not stopping to pick up the shipwrecked survivors after the victory of Arginusæ. They had made childish blunders in strategy, as when they chose three hostile generals to conduct the Sicilian expedition, and in statecraft when they refused peace and drove their cleverest citizen, Alcibiades, over to the side of the enemy. But the most effective argument of the oligarchic party was based on finance. With the cessation of the tribute from the allies it became simply impossible to maintain the host of state functionaries which democracy developed and demanded. Further, democracy was, as we have seen, identified with anti-Spartan policy; Sparta would make no terms with democracy. And, lastly, when the brilliant Alcibiades had been banished by the democracy, he professed to have the Persian satrap, the universal paymaster, in his pocket, and he demanded a revolution as the price of his return. Such were the arguments insinuated by the oligarchs. This party was working incessantly in clubs and secret societies about whose methods of organisation we are woefully ignorant. In 411--that is, two years after the failure of the Sicilian expedition--these intriguers had