History of the Peloponnesian War

"But with regard to your trouble in the war, lest you should fear that it may prove great, and we may still be none the more successful, let those arguments suffice you, with which on many other occasions I have proved the error of your suspicions respecting it. At the same time, I will also lay before you the following advantage, which yourselves do not appear ever yet to have thought of as belonging to you, respecting the greatness of your empire, and which I never urged in my former speeches; nor would I even now, as it has rather too boastful an air, if I did not see you unreasonably cast down.

You think then that you only bear rule over your own subject allies; but I declare to you that of the two parts of the world open for man's use, the land and the sea, of the whole of the one you are most absolute masters, both as far as you avail yourselves of it now, and if you should wish to do so still further; and there is no power, neither the king nor any nation besides at the present day, that can prevent your sailing [where you please] with your present naval resources.

This power then evidently is far from being merely on a level with the benefits of your houses and lands, which you think so much to be deprived of: nor is it right for you to give about them, but rather to hold them cheap, considering them, in comparison with this, as a mere gardenplot and embellishment of a rich man's estate You should know, too, that liberty, provided we devote ourselves to that and preserve t, will easily recover these losses; whereas those who have once submitted to others find even their greatest gains diminish. Nor should you how yourselves interior in both respect to your fathers, who with labour, and not by inheritance from others, acquired these possessions, and moreover kept them, and bequeathed them to us for it is more disgraceful to be deprived of a thing when we have got it, than to fail in getting it. On the contrary, you should meet your enemies, nor only with spirit, but also with a spirit of contempt.

For confidence is produced even by lucky ignorance, ay, even in a coward; but contempt is the feeling of the man who trusts that he is superior to his adversaries in counsel also, which is our case.

And ability, with a high spirit, renders more sure the daring which arises from equal fortune; and does not so much trust to mere hope, whose strength mainly displays itself in difficulties; but rather to a judgment grounded upon present realities, whose anticipations may be more relied upon.