[95]
We have a most convincing proof of this. For imperialism worked the ruin not only of Athens but of the city of the Lacedaemonians also, so that those who are in the habit of praising the virtues of Sparta1 cannot argue that we managed our affairs badly because of our democratic government whereas if the Lacedaemonians had taken over the empire the results would have been happy both for the rest of the Hellenes and for themselves. For this power revealed its nature much more quickly in their case.2 Indeed it brought it to pass that a polity which over a period of seven hundred years3 had never, so far as we know, been disturbed by perils or calamities was shaken and all but destroyed in a short space of time.
1 Cf. Isoc. 12.200.
2 The Spartan supremacy lasted from 404 to 371; the Athenian from 478 to 405 B.C.
3 From the reign of Eurysthenes and Procles, about 1072, to the battle of Leuctra, 371 B.C. For the stability of the Spartan constitution see Isoc. 12.257.
Isocrates. Isocrates with an English Translation in three volumes, by George Norlin, Ph.D., LL.D. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1980.
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