History of the Peloponnesian War

But they ought to have come to you when they were in no peril at all, and not at a time when we are victims of their injustice and they are consequently in danger, nor when you, without having had the benefit of their power before, will now have to give them a share of your aid, and, though you had nothing to do with their blunders, will have to bear an equal part of the blame we shall bestow. For only if you from the first had shared their power ought you to share the consequences also now of their acts.

" Now it has been clearly shown that we have come with proper grounds of complaint against them and that they are violent and overreaching; but you have still to learn that you have no right to receive them into your alliance.

For even though it is stipulated in the treaty that any unenrolled city may join whichever party it pleases, the provision is not intended for those who apply to one side for admission with a view to the injury of the other, but for any one who, without defrauding another state of his services, asks for protection, and any one who to those who received him will not—if they are prudent—bring war instead of peace.[*](i.e., “who will permit peace to be maintained by their new friends if they exercise ordinary disretion.” No new allies should be received who will render ordinary discretion unavailing to prevent war, as the Corcyraeans are sure to do.) But this is precisely what will be your fate if you do not listen to us.