History of the Peloponnesian War

"For though I admit that going to war is always sheer folly for men who are free to choose, and in general are enjoying good fortune, yet if the necessary choice was either to yield and forthwith submit to their neighbours' dictation, or by accepting the hazard of war to preserve their independence, then those who shrink from the hazard are more blameworthy than those who face it.

For my part, I stand where I stood before, and do not recede from my position; but it is you who have changed. For it has happened, now that you are suffering, that you repent of the consent you gave me when you were still unscathed, and in your infirmity of purpose my advice now appears to you wrong. The reason is that each one of you is already sensible of his hardships, whereas the proof of the advantages is still lacking to all, and now that a great reverse has come upon you without any warning, you are too dejected in mind to persevere in your former resolutions.

For the spirit is cowed by that which is sudden and unexpected and happens contrary to all calculation; and this is precisely the experience you have had, not only in other matters, but especially as regards the plague.

Nevertheless, seeing that you are citizens of a great city and have been reared amid customs which correspond to her greatness,[*](Described by Pericles in the Funeral Oration, Thuc. 2.37 - Thuc. 2.42.) you should willingly endure even the greatest calamities and not mar your good fame. For as all men claim the right to detest him who through presumption tries to grasp a reputation to which he has no title, so they equally claim a right to censure him who through faintheartedness fails to live up to the reputation he already enjoys. You should, rather, put away your grief for private ills and devote yourselves to the safety of the commonwealth.

"As to the hardships involved in this war, and your misgivings lest they prove very great and we succumb after all, let those arguments suffice which I have advanced on many other occasions[*](Thuc. 2.13 and Thuc. 1.140 - Thuc. 1.144.) in order to convince you that your fears are groundless. But there is one point I propose to lay before you on which, I think, you have never yourselves as yet reflected, in spite of the advantage it gives you as regards your empire and its greatness, and which I have never previously dealt with in my speeches, and should not have done so now—for it makes a somewhat boastful claim—had I not seen that you are unreasonably dejected.

You think that it is only over your allies that your empire extends, but I declare that of two divisions of the world which lie open to man's use, the land and the sea, you hold the absolute mastery over the whole of one, not only to the extent to which you now exercise it, but also to whatever fuller extent you may choose; and there is no one, either the Great King or any nation of those now on the earth, who will block your path as you sail the seas with such a naval armament as you now possess.

This power, therefore, is clearly not to be compared with the mere use of your houses and fields, things which you value highly because you have been dispossessed of them; nor is it reasonable that you should fret about them, but you should make light of them, regarding them in comparison with this power as a mere flowergarden or ornament of a wealthy estate, and should recognize that freedom, if we hold fast to it and preserve it, will easily restore these losses, but let men once submit to others and even what has been won in the past[*](Or, reading τὰ προσεκτημένα, freedom and all that freedom gives = πρὸς τῇ ἐλευθερίᾳ κεκτημένα, as Poppo explains).) has a way of being lessened. You must therefore show yourselves not inferior in either of these two respects to your fathers, who by their own labours, and not by inheritance, not only acquired but also preserved this empire and bequeathed it to you (and it is a greater disgrace to let a possession you have be taken away than it is to attempt to gain one and fail);