History of the Peloponnesian War

ATH. “Of these contingencies one or another might indeed happen; but they would not be new to our experience, and you yourselves are not unaware that the Athenians have never in a single instance withdrawn from a siege through fear of any foe.

However, we cannot but reflect that, although you said[*](See chs. lxxxvii., lxxxviii.) that you would take counsel concerning your deliverance, you have not in this long discussion advanced a single argument that ordinary men[*](ie. men who expect to be saved by human means, not by divine intervention; cf. ch. civ. f.) would put their confidence in if they expected to be delivered. On the contrary, your strongest grounds for confidence are merely cherished hopes whose fulfilment is in the future, whereas your present resources are too slight, compared with those already arrayed against you, for any chance of success.

And you exhibit a quite unreasonable attitude of mind if you do not even now, after permitting us to withdraw, come to some decision that is wiser than your present purpose. For surely you will not take refuge in that feeling which most often brings men to ruin when they are confronted by dangers that are clearly foreseen and therefore disgraceful—the fear of such disgrace. For many men, though they can still clearly foresee the dangers into which they are drifting, are lured on by the power of a seductive word—the thing called disgrace—until, the victims of a phrase, they are indeed plunged, of their own act, into irretrievable calamities, and thus incur in addition a disgrace that is more disgraceful, because associated with folly rather than with misfortune.

Such a course you will avoid, if you take wise counsel, and you will not consider it degrading to acknowledge yourselves inferior to the most powerful state when it offers you moderate terms—to become allies, keeping your own territory but paying tribute—and, when a choice is given you of war or safety, not to hold out stubbornly for the worse alternative. Since those who, while refusing to submit to their equals, yet comport themselves wisely towards their superiors and are moderate towards their inferiors—these, we say, are most likely to prosper.

Consider, then, once more after our withdrawal, and reflect many times in your deliberations that your fatherland is at stake, your one and only fatherland, and that upon one decision only will depend her fate for weal or woe.”