History of the Peloponnesian War

This fate, we beg of you, weak as you are and dependent on a single turn of the scale, do not willingly incur; nor make yourselves like the common crowd who, when it is possible still to be saved by human means, as soon as distress comes and all visible grounds of hope fail them, betake themselves to those that are invisible—to divination, oracles, and the like, which, with the hopes they inspire, bring men to ruin.”