History of the Peloponnesian War

The Grecians there will fear us most if we go not at all; next, if we but show our forces and come quickly away. But if any misfortune befall us, they will presently despise us and join with the Grecians here to invade us. For we all know that those things are most admired which are farthest off, and which least come to give proof of the opinion conceived of them.

And this, Athenians, is your own case with the Lacedaemonians and their confederates, whom because beyond your hope you have overcome in those things for which at first you feared them, you now in contempt of them turn your arms upon Sicily.

But we ought not to be puffed up upon the misfortunes of our enemies, but to be confident then only when we have mastered their designs. Nor ought we to think that the Lacedaemonians set their minds on anything else but how they may yet for the late disgrace repair their reputation, if they can, by our overthrow, and the rather because they have so much and so long laboured to win an opinion in the world of their valour.

The question with us therefore, if we be well advised, will not be of the Egestaeans in Sicily, but how we may speedily defend our city against the insidiation of them that favour the oligarchy.

"We must remember also that we have had now some short recreation from a late great plague and great war, and thereby are improved both in men and money, which it is most meet that we should spend here upon ourselves and not upon those outlaws which seek for aid, seeing it maketh for them to tell us a specious lie; who, contributing only words whilst their friends bear all the danger, if they speed well, shall be disobliged of thanks, if ill, undo their friends for company.

Now if there be any man here that for ends of his own, as being glad to be general, especially being yet too young to have charge in chief, shall advise the expedition to the end he may have admiration for his expense upon horses and help from his place to defray that expense, suffer him not to purchase his private honour and splendour with the danger of the public fortune. Believe rather that such men, though they rob the public, do nevertheless consume also their private wealth. Besides, the matter itself is full of great difficulties, such as it is not fit for a young man to consult of, much less hastily to take in hand.

"And I, seeing those now sit by and abet the same man, am fearful of them; and I do on the other side exhort the elder sort (if any of them sit near those other) not to be ashamed to deliver their minds freely, as fearing that if they gave their voice against the war they should be esteemed cowards, nor to doat (as they do) upon things absent, knowing that by passion the fewest actions and by reason the most do prosper; but rather for the benefit of their country, which is now cast into greater danger than ever before, to hold up their hands on the other side and decree that the Sicilians, within the limits they now enjoy, not misliked by you, and with liberty to sail by the shore in the Ionian gulf, and in the main of the Sicilian sea, shall possess their own and compound their differences between themselves.

And for the Egestaeans, to answer them in particular thus: that as without the Athenians they had begun the war against the Selinuntians, so they should without them likewise end it; and that we shall no more hereafter, as we have used to do, make such men our confederates, as when they do injury, we must maintain it, and when we require their assistance, cannot have it.

And you, the president, if you think it your office to take care of the commonwealth and desire to be a good member of the same, put these things once more to the question, and let the Athenians speak to it again. Think (if you be afraid to infringe the orders of the assembly) that before so many witnesses it will not be made a crime, but that you shall be rather thought a physician of your country, that hath swallowed down evil counsel. And he truly dischargeth the duty of a president who laboureth to do his country the most good, or at least will not willingly do it hurt.