History of the Peloponnesian War

"We have come on this embassy, men of Camarina, not because we feared that you will be dismayed by the presence of the Athenian force, but rather through fear of the words that are going to be said on their part, lest these persuade you before you hear anything from us.

For they are come to Sicily on the pretext that you hear, but with the design that we all suspect; and to me they seem to wish, not to resettle the Leontines, but rather to unsettle us. For surely it is not reasonable to suppose that, while desolating the cities in their own country, they are resettling the cities of Sicily, and that they care for the Leontines, on the score of kinship, as being Chalcidians, while holding in slavery the Chalcidians in Euboea, of whom these are colonists.

Nay, one and the same design has guided them in acquiring their possessions over there and is now guiding them in their endeavour to acquire possessions here: after they had become leaders, by the free choice of their associates, both of the Ionians and of all those, descendants of the Ionians, who were members of the alliance that was concluded, avowedly, for revenge upon the Persians, they charged some with refusal to serve, others with warring upon one another, others with whatever specious charge they had at hand, and so reduced them to subjection.

And so, after all, it was not for ' freedom' that they withstood the Persians, neither the Athenians to win it for the Hellenes nor the Hellenes to win it for themselves, but they fought for the enslavement of the rest to themselves, and the Hellenes for a change of master, not to one more unwise, but more wickedly wise.