their surrendering to the Athenians, showed no disposition to send them
any assistance, Alcibiades now came forward and inflamed and stirred the
Lacedaemonians by speaking as follows:

"I am forced first to speak to you of the prejudice with which I am
regarded, in order that suspicion may not make you disinclined to listen
to me upon public matters. The connection, with you as your proxeni,
which the ancestors of our family by reason of some discontent
renounced, I personally tried to renew by my good offices towards you,
in particular upon the occasion of the disaster at Pylos. But although I
maintained this friendly attitude, you yet chose to negotiate the peace
with the Athenians through my enemies, and thus to strengthen them and
to discredit me. You had therefore no right to complain if I turned to
the Mantineans and Argives, and seized other occasions of thwarting and
injuring you; and the time has now come when those among you, who in
the bitterness of the moment may have been then unfairly angry with me,
should look at the matter in its true light, and take a different view.
Those again who judged me unfavourably, because I leaned rather to the
side of the commons, must not think that their dislike is any better
founded. We have always been hostile to tyrants, and all who oppose
arbitrary power are called commons; hence we continued to act as leaders
of the multitude; besides which, as democracy was the government of
the city, it was necessary in most things to conform to established
conditions. However, we endeavoured to be more moderate than the
licentious temper of the times; and while there were others, formerly
as now, who tried to lead the multitude astray--the same who banished
me--our party was that of the whole people, our creed being to do our
part in preserving the form of government under which the city enjoyed
the utmost greatness and freedom, and which we had found existing. As
for democracy, the men of sense among us knew what it was, and I perhaps
as well as any, as I have the more cause to complain of it; but there is
nothing new to be said of a patent absurdity; meanwhile we did not think
it safe to alter it under the pressure of your hostility.

"So much then for the prejudices with which I am regarded: I now can
call your attention to the questions you must consider, and upon which
superior knowledge perhaps permits me to speak. We sailed to Sicily
first to conquer, if possible, the Siceliot