History of the Peloponnesian War

"Now if you are persuaded by us, the occurrence of our request will be honourable to you in many respects: first, because you will be granting the assistance to men who are injured, and not injuring others: in the next place, by receiving men who have their highest interests at stake, you would bestow the obligation with testimony [to the fact] [*]( i. e. The fact of their having been preserved from such imminent peril will be the most enduring record of the obligation under which you have thereby laid them. Göller explains καταθεῖσθε as being a metaphor taken from laying up money in a bank that it may be drawn out afterwards with interest. ) that would, as far as possible, be always remembered;

and, [lastly,] we are in possession of a navy the largest except yours. And consider what good fortune is more rare, or what more annoying to the enemy, than if that power, the addition of which to yours you would have valued above much money and favour, come of its own accord, offering itself without dangers and expense; and moreover affording, in the eyes of the world at large, a character for goodness, and to those whom you will assist, obligation; and to yourselves, strength; all of which advantages together have fallen to the lot of few indeed in the whole course of time: and few are there who, when begging alliance, go conferring safety and honour on the men whose aid they invoke, no less than to receive them.

And as for the war in which we should be useful, if any of you do not think that it will arise, he is deceived in his opinion; and does not observe that the Lacedaemonians, through their fear of you, are longing for war and that the Corinthians have power with them, and are hostile to you, and are now first subduing us with a view to attacking you, that we may not stand with each other in common hostility to them; and that they may not fail to gain one of two advantages, either to injure us, or to strengthen themselves.

But it is our business, on the contrary, to be beforehand with them, by our offering and your accepting the alliance; and to plot against them first, rather than to meet their plots against us.