History of the Peloponnesian War

"I say, then, that you, leaving behind you many enemies here, are bent upon sailing there land bringing upon you here still other enemies.

And you think perhaps that the treaty which has been made affords you some security—a treaty which indeed, as long as you are quiet, will be a treaty in name (for so certain men here and among our enemies have managed these matters); but should you perchance suffer defeat with a considerable force, our foes will be quick to make their attack upon us. For the compact in the first place was concluded by them under compulsion through stress of misfortune and with less credit to them than to us; and, besides, in the compact itself there are many disputed points.

There are also some states which have not as yet accepted even this agreement, and these not the weakest; on the contrary, some of them are at open war with us, while others again, merely because the Lacedaemonians still keep quiet, are themselves also kept in restraint by a truce renewable every ten days.

But very probably, if they should find our power divided—the very thing we are now so anxious to bring about—they would eagerly join in an attack upon us along with the Siceliots, whose alliance they would heretofore have given much to obtain.

And so we must consider these matters and resolve not to run into danger while the state is still amid the waves, and reach out after another empire before we have secured that which we have, seeing that the Chalcidians in Thrace, after so many years of revolt from us, are still unsubdued, while others at various points on the mainland render us a dubious allegiance. But we, it seems, must rush to bring aid to Egestaeans, being, forsooth, our allies, on the ground that they are wronged, while on those by whose revolt we ourselves have long been wronged we still delay to inflict punishment.