History of the Peloponnesian War

but if he is in evil fortune and his country in good fortune, he is far more likely to come through safely. Since, then, the state may bear the misfortunes of her private citizens but the individual cannot bear hers, surely all men ought to defend her, and not to do as you are now doing—proposing to sacrifice the safety of the commonwealth because you are dismayed by the hardships you suffer at home, and are blaming both me who advised you to make war and yourselves who voted with me for it.

And yet I, with whom you are angry, am as competent as any man, I think, both to determine upon the right measures and to expound them, and as good a patriot and superior to the influence of money.

For he who determines upon a policy, and fails to lay it clearly before others, is in the same case as if he never had a conception of it; and he who has both gifts, but is disloyal to his country, cannot speak with the same unselfish devotion; and if he have loyalty also, but a loyalty that cannot resist money, then for that alone everything will be on sale.

If, therefore, when you allowed me to persuade you to go to war, you believed that I possessed these qualities even in a moderate degree more than other men, it is unreasonable that I should now bear the blame, at any rate, of wrongdoing.