History of the Peloponnesian War

" These, then, are the considerations of right which we urge upon you—and they are adequate according to the institutions of the Hellenes; but we have also to remind you of a favour and to urge a claim based upon it;

and since we are not your enemies so as to want to injure you, nor yet your friends so that we could make use of you, we think this favour should be repaid us at the present time. It is this: when once, before the Persian war, you were deficient in battle-ships for the war you were waging with the Aeginetans, you borrowed twenty from the Corinthians. And this service and that we rendered in connection with the Samians—our preventing the Peloponnesians from aiding themenabled you to prevail over the Aeginetans and to chastise the Samians.

Both incidents happened, too, at a critical time, when men, engaged in assailing their enemies, are most indifferent to everyconsideration except victory, regarding any one who assists them as a friend, even if he was an enemy before, and any one who stands in their way as an enemy, even if he happen to be a friend; for they even mismanage their own interests in the eager rivalry of the moment.

"Bearing these favours in mind—let every young man here be told of them by one who is older—do you consider it your duty to requite us with the like. And do not think that this course is indeed equitable to urge in a speech, but that another course is advantageous if you come to war.

For advantage is most likely to result when one errs least, and the contingency of the war, with which the Corcyraeans would frighten you into wrongdoing, is still uncertain; and it is not worth while for you to be so carried away by it as to acquire an enmity with the Corinthians that will be from that moment on a manifest fact and no longer a contingency. It would be, rather, the prudent course to remove something of the suspicion which has heretofore existed on account of the Megarians[*](Referring apparently to the exclusion of the Megarians from all harbours within the Athenian dominion and from the market at Athens, Thuc. 1.67.4.);

for the favour which comes last, if conferred at the right moment, even though a small one, can cancel a greater offence.