[682] Diodor. xiv, 110. He affirms that these cities strongly objected to this concession, five years afterwards, when the peace of Antalkidas was actually concluded; but that they were forced to give up their scruples and accept the peace including the concession, because they had not force to resist Persia and Sparta acting in hearty alliance.
Hence we may infer with certainty, that they also objected to it during the earlier discussions, when it was first broached by Antalkidas; and that their objections to it were in part the cause why the discussions reported in the text broke off without result.
It is true that Athens, during her desperate struggles in the last years of the Peloponnesian war, had consented to this concession, and even to greater, without doing herself any good (Thucyd. viii, 56). But she was not now placed in circumstances so imperious as to force her to be equally yielding.
Plato, in the Menexenus (c. 17, p. 245), asserts that all the allies of Athens—Bœotians, Corinthians, Argeians, etc., were willing to surrender the Asiatic Greeks at the requisition of Artaxerxes; but that the Athenians alone resolutely stood out, and were in consequence left without any allies. The latter part of this assertion, as to the isolation of Athens from her allies, is certainly not true; nor do I believe that the allies took essentially different views from Athens on the point. The Menexenus, eloquent and complimentary to Athens, must be followed cautiously as to matters of fact. Plato goes the length of denying that the Athenians subscribed the convention of Antalkidas. Aristeides (Panathen. p. 172) says that they were forced to subscribe it, because all their allies abandoned them.
[683] Xen. Hellen. iv, 8, 15.
[684] See a striking passage in the Or. xii, (Panathen.) of Isokrates, s. 110.
[685] Xen. Hellen. iv, 8, 16; Diodor. xiv, 85.
[686] Lysias, Or. xix, (De Bon. Aristoph.) s. 41, 42, 44; Cornelius Nepos, Conon, c. 5; Isokrates, Or. iv, (Panegyr.) s. 180.
[687] Diodor. xiv. 99.
[688] Xen. Hellen. iv, 8, 22. Ἦν δὲ οὗτος ἁνὴρ (Diphridas) εὔχαρίς τε οὐχ ἧττον τοῦ Θίμβρωνος, μᾶλλόν τε συντεταγμένος, καὶ ἐγχειρητικώτερος, στρατηγός. οὐδὲ γὰρ ἐκράτουν αὐτοῦ αἱ τοῦ σώματος ἡδοναὶ, ἀλλ᾽ ἀεὶ, πρὸς ᾧ εἴη ἔργῳ, τοῦτο ἔπραττεν.