Iberians,[25] and others in those regions, who are allowed to make the
best possible soldiers. _Then_, when we had done all this, we intended
to assail Peloponnesus with our collected force. Our fleets would
blockade you by sea and desolate your coasts, our armies would be landed
at different points and assail your cities. Some of these we expected to
storm,[26] and others we meant to take by surrounding them with
fortified lines. We thought that it would thus be an easy matter
thoroughly to war you down; and then we should become the masters of the
whole Greek race. As for expense, we reckoned that each conquered state
would give us supplies of money and provisions sufficient to pay for its
own conquest, and furnish the means for the conquest of its neighbors."

[Footnote 24: Arnold, in his notes on this passage, well reminds the
reader that Agathocles, with a Greek force far inferior to that of the
Athenians at this period, did, some years afterward, very nearly conquer
Carthage.]

[Footnote 25: It will be remembered that Spanish infantry were the
staple of the Carthaginian armies. Doubtless Alcibiades and other
leading Athenians had made themselves acquainted with the Carthaginian
system of carrying on war, and meant to adopt it. With the marvellous
powers which Alcibiades possessed of ingratiating himself with men of
every class and every nation, and his high military genius, he would
have been as formidable a chief of an army of _condottieri_ as Hannibal
afterward was.]

[Footnote 26: Alcibiades here alluded to Sparta itself, which was
unfortified. His Spartan hearers must have glanced round them at these
words with mixed alarm and indignation.]