History of the Peloponnesian War

"It was not, Camarinaeans, from any fear of your being terrified at the present forces of the Athenians that we came on this embassy, but rather from apprehension that the words which would be spoken by them before you heard any thing from us might prevail upon you.

For they are come to Sicily on the pretext, indeed, which you hear, but with the purpose which we all suspect; and, in my opinion, they are wishing, not to restore the Leontines to their home, but to eject us from ours. For surely it is not consistent that they should depopulate the cities in Greece, but re-settle those in Sicily; and that they should care for the Leontines, who are Chalcidians, because of their connexion with them, but keep in slavery the Chalcidians in Euboea, from whom these are a colony.

But the method is the same, by which they both gained possession of those places, and are attempting to do so with these. For after they had been appointed leaders, by the free choice both of the Ionians and of all who were of Athenian origin, for the purpose of talking vengeance on the Mede; by charging some of them with failure in military service, others with mutual hostilities, and others on any specious plea which they severally had to urge, they reduced them to subjection.

And so they did not withstand the Mede for the sake of liberty—neither these men for that of the Greeks, nor the Greeks for their own—but the former did it to enslave the Greeks to themselves, instead of to the Mede; the latter, to get a new master, one not more unwise, but more wise for evil.