History of the Peloponnesian War

This power, therefore, is clearly not to be compared with the mere use of your houses and fields, things which you value highly because you have been dispossessed of them; nor is it reasonable that you should fret about them, but you should make light of them, regarding them in comparison with this power as a mere flowergarden or ornament of a wealthy estate, and should recognize that freedom, if we hold fast to it and preserve it, will easily restore these losses, but let men once submit to others and even what has been won in the past[*](Or, reading τὰ προσεκτημένα, freedom and all that freedom gives = πρὸς τῇ ἐλευθερίᾳ κεκτημένα, as Poppo explains).) has a way of being lessened. You must therefore show yourselves not inferior in either of these two respects to your fathers, who by their own labours, and not by inheritance, not only acquired but also preserved this empire and bequeathed it to you (and it is a greater disgrace to let a possession you have be taken away than it is to attempt to gain one and fail);

and you must go to meet your enemies not only with confidence in yourselves, but with contempt for them. For even a coward, if his folly is attended with good luck, may boast, but contempt belongs only to the man who is convinced by his reason that he is superior to his opponents, as is the case with us.

And, where fortune is impartial, the result of this feeling of contempt is to render courage more effective through intelligence, that puts its trust not so much in hope, which is strongest in perplexity, as in reason supported by the facts, which gives a surer insight into the future.

" You may reasonably be expected, moreover, to support the dignity which the state has attained through empire—a dignity in which you all take pride—and not to avoid its burdens, unless you resign its honours also. Nor must you think that you are fighting for the simple issue of slavery or freedom; on the contrary, loss of empire is also involved and danger from the hatred incurred in your sway.

From this empire, however, it is too late for you even to withdraw, if any one at the present crisis, through fear and shrinking from action does indeed seek thus to play the honest man; for by this time the empire you hold is a tyranny, which it may seem wrong to have assumed, but which certainly it is dangerous to let go.

Men like these would soon ruin a state, either here, if they should win others to their views, or if they should settle in some other land and have an independent state all to themselves; for men of peace are not safe unless flanked by men of action; nor is it expedient in an imperial state, but only in a vassal state, to seek safety by submission.