History of the Peloponnesian War

" You may reasonably be expected, moreover, to support the dignity which the state has attained through empire—a dignity in which you all take pride—and not to avoid its burdens, unless you resign its honours also. Nor must you think that you are fighting for the simple issue of slavery or freedom; on the contrary, loss of empire is also involved and danger from the hatred incurred in your sway.

From this empire, however, it is too late for you even to withdraw, if any one at the present crisis, through fear and shrinking from action does indeed seek thus to play the honest man; for by this time the empire you hold is a tyranny, which it may seem wrong to have assumed, but which certainly it is dangerous to let go.

Men like these would soon ruin a state, either here, if they should win others to their views, or if they should settle in some other land and have an independent state all to themselves; for men of peace are not safe unless flanked by men of action; nor is it expedient in an imperial state, but only in a vassal state, to seek safety by submission.