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.

for we are here now, having come as soon as opportunity offered, and together with you we shall try to subdue them.

But I am amazed at the closing of your gates against me, and that my coming has been unwelcome to you. For we Lacedaemonians, thinking, even before we actually came, that we should find ourselves among men who were allies in spirit at least and that we should be welcomed, have hazarded the great danger of travelling a journey of many days through an alien territory and have shown all possible zeal.