ascendency of Athens,
but exercised a more tyrannical usurpation than Athens ever meditated. The
language of Brasidas, who promised every thing, was in striking contrast
to the conduct of Lysander, who put his foot on the neck of Greece.

(M603) The rule of the Thirty at Athens came to an end by the noble
efforts of Thrasybulus and the Athenian democracy, and the old
constitution was restored because the Spartan king was disgusted with the
usurpations and arrogance of Lysander, and forbore to interfere. Had
Sparta been wise, with this vast accession of power gained by the
victories of Lysander, she would have ruled moderately, and reorganized
the Grecian world on sound principles, and restored a Panhellenic
stability and harmony. She might not have restored, as Brasidas had
promised, a universal autonomy, or the complete independence of all the
cities, but would have bound together all the States under her presidency,
by a just and moderate rule. But Sparta had not this wisdom. She was
narrow, hard, and extortionate. She loved her own, as selfish people
generally do, but nothing outside her territory with any true magnanimity.
And she thus provoked her allies into rebellion, so that her chance was
lost, and her dominion short-lived. Athens would have been more
enlightened, but she never had the power, as Sparta had, of organizing a
general Panhellenic combination. The nearest approach which Athens ever
made was the confederacy of Delos, which did not work well, from the
jealousy of the cities. But Sparta soon made herself more unpopular than
Athens ever was, and her dream of empire was short.

(M604) The first great movement of Sparta, after the establishment of
oligarchy in all the cities which yielded to her, was a renewal of the war
with Persia. The Asiatic Greek cities had been surrendered to Persia
according to treaty, as the price for the assistance which Persia rendered
to Sparta in the war with Athens. But the Persian rule, under the satraps,
especially of Tissaphernes, who had been rewarded by Artaxerxes with more
power than before, became oppressive and intolerable. Nothing but
aggravated slavery impended over them. They therefore sent to Sparta for
aid to throw off the Persian yoke. The ephors, with nothing more to gain
from Persia, and inspired with contempt for the Persian armies--contempt
created by the expedition of the Ten Thousand--readily listened to the
overtures, and sent a considerable force into As