History of the Peloponnesian War

And indeed it is the rule, that such states as come to unexpected prosperity most fully and most suddenly, do turn to insolence, whereas men generally find success less precarious when it comes in accordance with reasonable calculations than when it surpasses expectation, and more easily, as it seems, they repel adversity than maintain prosperity.

But the Mytilenaeans from the first ought never to have been treated by us with any more consideration than our other allies, and then they would not have broken out into such insolence;

for it is human nature in any case to be contemptuous of those who pay court but to admire those who will not yield. "Let them be punished, therefore, even now, in a manner befitting their crime, and do not put the blame upon the aristocrats and exonerate the common people. For they all alike attacked you, even the commons, who, if they had taken our side, might now have been reinstated in their city; but they thought there was less risk in sharing the dangers of the oligarchs, and so joined them in the revolt.

Consider, moreover, your allies: if you inflict upon those who wilfully revolt no greater punishment than upon those who revolt under compulsion from our foes, which of them, think you, will not revolt on a slight pretext, when the alternatives are liberty if he succeeds or a fate not irreparable if he fails?