History of the Peloponnesian War

Thucydides

Thucydides, Vol. 1-4. Smith, Charles Foster, translator. London and Cambridge, MA: Heinemann and Harvard University Press, 1919-1923.

To some extent also we owe our salvation to the court we paid to the Athenian people and to the political leaders of the day.

But we could not have expected to be able to survive for long, if we may judge by their conduct toward the other allies, unless this war had broken out.