The feelings with which the memory of the tyrants was regarded in the latter part of the fifth century B.C. when Herodotus wrote his history are shown by a speech which he puts in the mouth of a Corinthian named Sosicles. The Spartans at some time between 510 B.C. and 490 B.C. conceived a project of reinstating at Athens the tyrant Hippias whom they had helped to dethrone, and requested their allies to send ambassadors to discuss the matter. The envoys of all the states disliked the proposal: it was Sosicles who expressed the feelings of all. "Surely" he said "the heaven shall be set below the earth, and the earth raised above the heaven, and men shall have their habitation in the sea and the fishes live on dry land, if ye, O Lacedæmonians, are preparing to destroy equal governments and to bring the cities of Greece under the rule of tyrannies, which of all things in the world are the wickedest and bloodiest. If indeed ye think it good for cities to be ruled by tyrants, ye should first set a tyrant over yourselves, and then seek to do the like for your neighbours: for if ye had experienced, as we have, what a tyrant is, ye would bring before us sounder opinions on the subject than those that ye have now declared[143]." He enforced his opinions by telling a large part of the story of Cypselus and Periander: and the effect of his words was such that the envoys at the congress declared their agreement with them and the Spartans had to abandon all thought of the restoration of the Athenian tyranny. [143] Herodotus V. 92. There can be no doubt that in the age of the tyrants the Greek communities were city states, or communities in which a walled city is of supreme importance and the rural districts are of comparatively little moment. In the case of Athens, the story of Pisistratus affords conclusive evidence: for in it we can observe three times over that, so long as his influence or authority extended only to the rural districts, he was but an aspirant to sovereignty: but, as soon as he was master of the city, he was established as tyrant. And in the other Greek communities tyrannies were upheld by body guards of foreign mercenaries: and this could hardly have taken place if there had not been in each community a single fortified city of such importance that a body guard by occupying it could dominate the whole country.