172 HISTORY OF GREECE. maintained, as a bulwark to herself against Sparta. Yet the rela- tions of Athens with Thebes, after the congress as before it, were still those of friendship, nominal rather than sincere. It was only with Sparta, and her allies, that Thebes was at war, without a single ally attached to her. On the whole, Kallistratus and hia colleagues had managed the interests of Athens in this congress with great prudence and success. They had disengaged her from the alliance with Thebes, which had been dictated seven years before by common fear and dislike of Sparta, but which had no longer any adequate motive to countervail the cost of continuing the war ; at the same time, the disengagement had been accomplished with- out bad faith. The gains of Athens, during the last seven years of war, had been considerable. She had acquired a great naval power, and a body of maritime confederates ; while her enemies the Spartans had lost their naval power in the like proportion. Athens was now the ascendent leader of maritime and insular Greece, while Sparta still continued to be the leading power on land, but only on land ; and a tacit partnership was now es- tablished between the two, each recognizing the other in their respective halves of the Hellenic hegemony. 1 Moreover, Athens had the prudence to draw her stake, and quit the game, when at the maximum of her acquisitions, without taking the risk of future contingencies. On both sides, the system of compulsory and indefeasable con- federacies was renounced ; a renunciation which had already been once sworn to, sixteen years before, at the peace of Antalkidas, but treacherously perverted by Sparta in the execution. Under this new engagement, the allies of Sparta or Athens ceased to con- stitute an organized permanent body, voting by its majority, pass- ing resolutions permanently binding upon dissentients, arming the chief state with more or less power of enforcement against all, and forbidding voluntary secessions of individual members. They became a mere uncemented aggregate of individuals, each acting for himself ; taking counsel together as long as they chose, and co- operating so far as all were in harmony ; but no one being bound by any decision of the others, nor recognizing any right in the others to compel him even to performance of what he had specially 1 Diodor. xv, 38-B2.
