SPEECH OF ALKIBIADES AT SPARTA. 237 ?istiatid despots ; and as all opposition to a reigning dynast v takes the name of The People, so from that time forward we continued to act as leaders of the people. 1 Moreover, our estab- lished constitution was a democracy, so that I had no choice but to obey, though I did my best to maintain a moderate line of political conduct in the midst of the reigning license. It was not my family, but others, who in former times as well as now, led the people into the worst courses, those same men who sent me into exile. I always acted as leader, not of a party, but of the entire city ; thinking it right to uphold that constitution in which Athens had enjoyed her grandeur and freedom, and which I found already existing. 2 For as to democracy, all we Athenians of common sense well knew its real character. Personally, I have better reason than any one else to rail against it, if one could pay anything new about such confessed folly ; but I did not think it safe to change the government, while you were standing by as enemies. " So much as to myself personally : I shall now talk to you about the business of the meeting, and tell you something more than you yet know. Our purpose in sailing from Athens, was, first to conquer the Sicilian Greeks ; next, the Italian Greeks ; afterwards, to make an attempt on the Carthaginian empire and on Carthage herself. If all or most of this succeeded, we were then to attack Peloponnesus. We intended to bring to this en- terprise the entire power of the Sicilian and Italian Greeks, besides large numbers of Iberian and other warlike barbaric mer- 1 Thucyd. vi, 89. ToZf yap rvpavvoif aei TTOTE didQopoi ecr/iev, iruv 6e rd /jLEVOv roi dvvatjTEvovTi drjuo^ uvoftatjTdi ' KOL UTT' iicsivov ^v[nrapi- Kpoaraaia li/ilv rov ?r/l^i9ot'f. It is to be recollected that the Lacedaemonians had been always opposed to rvpavvoi, or despots, and had been particularly opposed to the Peisistra tid rvpavvoi, whom they in fact put down. In tracing his democratical tendencies, therefore, to this source, Alkibiades took the best means of ex cusing them before a Lacedaemonian audience.
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