History of the Peloponnesian War

"Then again, if they should lay hands upon the money at Olympia or Delphi and try to entice away the mercenaries among our sailors by the inducement of higher pay, that indeed might be a dangerous matter if we were not a match for them, assuming that both citizens and our resident aliens have manned our ships. But as a matter of fact we are a match for them, and, what is of the highest importance, we have citizens for pilots, and our crews in general are more numerous and better than those of all the rest of Hellas.

And no one of our mercenaries,[*](The mercenaries drawn from the states of the Athenian confederacy; no one of those who had taken part with the Peloponnesians would be allowed to return to his native city.) when it came to facing the risk, would elect to be exiled from his own land and, with a lesser hope of victory at the same time, fight on their side because of the offer of a few days' high pay.

"Such, as it seems to me at least, or approximately such, is the situation as far as the Peloponnesians are concerned; as regards our own, I believe we are free from the defects I have remarked upon in them, and that we have in other respects advantages which more than counterbalance theirs.

If they march against our territory, we shall sail against theirs; and the devastation of a part of the Peloponnesus will be quite a different thing from that of tle whole of Attica. For they will be unable to get other territory in its place without fighting, while we leave an abundance of territory both in the islands and on the mainland.