History of the Peloponnesian War

And so with us at the present time, if we could be persuaded of the wisdom of this course it would be to our great advantage; for each of us began the war in the first place because we desired to promote our private interests. So now let us endeavour by setting forth our conflicting claims to become reconciled with each other; and then, if we do not after all succeed in securing, each of us, what is fair and just before we part, we shall go to war again.

"And yet we should recognise the fact that the subject of our conference will not, if we are wise, be our private interests merely, but rather the question whether we shall still be able to save Sicily as a whole, for it is against it, in my judgment, that the Athenians are plotting; and we must consider that we have an argument far more cogent to bring us together on these matters than my words, namely, the Athenians, who possess a military power greater than that of any other Hellenic state and are now at hand with a few ships watching for our mistakes, and under the lawful name of alliance are speciously trying to turn to their own advantage our natural hostility to them.

For if we begin war and call them in—men who of their own accord are ready enough to intrude their forces even on those who do not ask for their intervention—and if we spend our own revenues in doing hurt to ourselves, and at the same time pave the way for their supremacy, we may well expect them, when they see that we are worn out, to come sometime with a larger armament and try to bring everything here under their sway.

"And yet, if we are prudent, we ought, each of us in behalf of his own state, to call in allies and incur dangers only when we are seeking to win what does not belong to us and not when we imperil what is already ours; and we should remember that faction is the chief cause of ruin to states and indeed to Sicily, seeing that we her inhabitants, although we are all being plotted against, are disunited, each city by itself.