ay be
credited) yielded to so plausible a suggestion, and in the mean while
the crafty Athenian despatched a secret messenger to Athens, urging
the government to detain the Spartan ambassadors with as little
semblance of design as possible, and by no means to allow their
departure until the safe return of their own mission to Sparta. For
it was by no means improbable that, without such hostages, even the
ephors, however powerful and however influenced, might not be enabled,
when the Spartans generally were made acquainted with the deceit
practised upon them, to prevent the arrest of the Athenian delegates.
[121]

At length the walls, continued night and day with incredible zeal and
toil, were sufficiently completed; and disguise, no longer possible,
was no longer useful. Themistocles demanded the audience he had
hitherto deferred, and boldly avowed that Athens was now so far
fortified as to protect its citizens. "In future," he added,
haughtily, "when Sparta or our other confederates send ambassadors to
Athens, let them address us as a people well versed in our own
interests and the interests of our common Greece. When we deserted
Athens for our ships, we required and obtained no Lacedaemonian
succours to support our native valour; in all subsequent measures, to
whom have we shown ourselves inferior, whether in the council or the
field? At present we have judged it expedient to fortify our city,
rendering it thus more secure for ourselves and our allies. Nor would
it be possible, with a strength inferior to that of any rival power,
adequately to preserve and equally to adjust the balance of the
liberties of Greece." [122]

Contending for this equality, he argued that either all the cities in
the Lacedaemonian league should be dismantled of their fortresses, or
that it should be conceded, that in erecting fortresses for herself
Athens had rightly acted.

VII. The profound and passionless policy of Sparta forbade all
outward signs of unavailing and unreasonable resentment. The
Spartans, therefore, replied with seeming courtesy, that "in their
embassy they had not sought to dictate, but to advise--that their
object was the common good;" and they accompanied their excuses with
professions of friendship for Athens, and panegyrics on the Athenian
valour in the recent war. But the anger they forbore to show only
rankled the more bitterly within. [123]

The ambassadors of either state returned home; and thus the