History of the Peloponnesian War

“The accomplishment of any of these projects promptly and more zealously depends, men of Lacedaemon, upon you, for that they are possible— and I do not think that I shall prove wrong in my judgment—I am fully assured.

And I claim that no one of you shall think more harshly of me because I, who seemed once to be a lover of my city, now make assault with all my might upon her, in concert with her bitterest enemies;

nor do I think that my word should be suspected on the score of the outcast's zeal. For outcast as I am from the villainy of those that expelled me, I am not ousted from doing you good service, if you will but hearken to me; and the worse enemies are not those who, like you, have merely hurt their enemies, but those who have forced their friends to become foes.

And as to love of country— I have it not when I am wronged, but had it when I possessed my civil rights in security. And it is not, as I conceive, against a country still my own that I am now going, but far rather one no longer mine that I am seeking to recover. And the true patriot is not the man who, having unjustly lost his fatherland, refrains from attacking it, but he who in his yearning for it tries in every way to get it back.

So I urge you, Lacedaemonians, to use me without misgiving for any danger and for any hardships, recognising that, according to the saying which is on everybody's lips, if as an enemy I did you exceeding injury, I might also be of some sufficient service to you as a friend, in so far as I know the affairs of the Athenians, while I could only conjecture yours. And I urge, too, that you yourselves now, convinced that you are deliberating about interests that are of the greatest importance, shrink not from sending an expedition into Sicily, and also into Attica, in order that, by keeping a small detachment on the island, you may preserve the large interests you have over there and may overthrow the power of the Athenians both present and prospective, and after that may yourselves live in security and be accepted by all the Hellenes of their free will, not by force but through affection, as their leaders.”