an even sharper sacrifice for it. He appealed at Olympia for a
crusade of all the free Greek cities against Dionysius of Syracuse, and
begged Sparta herself to lead it. The Spartans are 'of right the leaders
of Hellas by their natural nobleness and their skill in war. They alone
live still in a city unsacked, unwalled, unconquered, uncorrupted by
faction, and have followed always the same modes of life. They have been
the saviours of Hellas in the past, and one may hope that their freedom
will be everlasting.'[81:1] A great and generous change in one who had
'learned by suffering' in the Peloponnesian War. Others no doubt merely
gave their submission to the stronger powers that were now rising. There
were openings for counsellors, for mercenary soldiers, for court savants
and philosophers and poets, and, of course, for agents in every free
city who were prepared for one motive or another not to kick against the
pricks. And there were always also those who had neither learned nor
forgotten, the unrepentant idealists; too passionate or too heroic or,
as some will say, too blind, to abandon their life-long devotion to
'Athens' or to 'Freedom' because the world considered such ideals out of
date. They could look the ruined Athenians in the face, after the lost
battle, and say with Demosthenes, '+Ouk estin, ouk estin hopos
hemartete+. It cannot be that you did wrong, it cannot be!'[82:1]

But in practical politics the currents of thought are inevitably
limited. It is in philosophy and speculation that we find the richest
and most varied reaction to the Great Failure. It takes different shapes
in those writers, like Plato and Xenophon, who were educated in the
fifth century and had once believed in the Great City, and those whose
whole thinking life belonged to the time of disillusion.

Plato was disgusted with democracy and with Athens, but he retained his
faith in the city, if only the city could be set on the right road.
There can be little doubt that he attributes to the bad government of
the Demos many evils which were really due to extraneous causes or to
the mere fallibility of human nature. Still his analysis of democracy is
one of the most brilliant things in the history of political theory. It
is so acute, so humorous, so affectionate; and at many different ages of
the world has seemed like a portrait of the actual contemporary society.
Like a modern popular newspaper, Plato's democracy makes it its business
to sati