History of the Peloponnesian War

There are also some states which have not as yet accepted even this agreement, and these not the weakest; on the contrary, some of them are at open war with us, while others again, merely because the Lacedaemonians still keep quiet, are themselves also kept in restraint by a truce renewable every ten days.

But very probably, if they should find our power divided—the very thing we are now so anxious to bring about—they would eagerly join in an attack upon us along with the Siceliots, whose alliance they would heretofore have given much to obtain.

And so we must consider these matters and resolve not to run into danger while the state is still amid the waves, and reach out after another empire before we have secured that which we have, seeing that the Chalcidians in Thrace, after so many years of revolt from us, are still unsubdued, while others at various points on the mainland render us a dubious allegiance. But we, it seems, must rush to bring aid to Egestaeans, being, forsooth, our allies, on the ground that they are wronged, while on those by whose revolt we ourselves have long been wronged we still delay to inflict punishment.

"And yet these, if once brought under control, we might also keep under control; but the Siceliots, even if we should get the better of them, we should find it hard to govern, far off as they are and formidable in numbers. But it is folly to go against men when victory will not bring control over them and failure will not leave matters in the same condition as before the attack was made.

The Siceliots, moreover, it seems to me, at least as things now stand, would be even less dangerous to us if the Syracusans should acquire rule over them—that prospect with which the Egestaeans especially try to terrify us.