History of the Peloponnesian War

which is disgraceful for the Peloponnese to be even mentioned as contingent, and for so many cities to be ill-treated by one. In that case we should appear either to be justly treated, or to put up with it through cowardice, and to show ourselves inferior to our fathers, who liberated Greece; whereas we do not even secure this liberty for ourselves, but allow a tyrant state to set itself up amongst us, though we think it right to put down monarchs in any one state.

And we do not know how this conduct is cleared of three of the greatest evils, folly, or cowardice, or carelessness. For you certainly have not escaped [*]( Or, for surely you have not, through a wish to escape these imputations, betaken yourselves, etc. The play on the words καταφρόνησις and ἀφροσύνη, says Arnold, can hardly be preserved in English: 'A sense of your adversaries' inferiority is so fatal a feeling to those who entertain it, that it more fitly deserves to be called nonsense.' ) these by betaking yourselves to that contempt of your foes, which has injured far more than any thing else; and which, from ruining so many, has been called by the opposite name of senselessness.