History of the Peloponnesian War

For the dominion of the sea is a great matter. Consider but this. If we dwelt in the islands, whether of us then were more inexpugnable? We must therefore now, drawing as near as can be to that imagination, lay aside the care of fields and villages, and not for the loss of them, out of passion, give battle to the Peloponnesians, far more in number than ourselves. For though we give them an overthrow, we must fight again with as many more; and if we be overthrown, we shall lose the help of our confederates, which are our strength; for when we cannot war upon them, they will revolt. Nor bewail ye the loss of fields or houses but of men's bodies; for men may acquire these, but these cannot acquire men. And if I thought I should prevail, I would advise you to go out and destroy them yourselves and show the Peloponnesians that you will never the sooner obey them for such things as these.

There be many other things that give hope of victory in case you do not, whilst you are in this war, strive to enlarge your dominion and undergo other voluntary dangers (for I am afraid of our own errors more than of their designs);

but they shall be spoken of at another time in prosecution of the war itself. For the present, let us send away these men with this answer: 'that the Megareans shall have the liberty of our fairs and ports if the Lacedaemonians will also make no banishment of us nor of our confederates as of strangers,' for neither our act concerning Megara nor their banishment of strangers is forbidden in the articles, 'also, that we will let the Grecian cities be free if they were so when the peace was made; and if the Lacedaemonians will also give leave unto their confederates to use their freedom not as shall serve the turn of the Lacedaemonians, but as they themselves shall every one think good; also that we will stand to judgment according to the articles and will not begin the war but be revenged on those that shall.' For this is both just and for the dignity of the city to answer.

Nevertheless you must know that of necessity war there will be; and the more willingly we embrace it, the less pressing we shall have our enemies, and that out of the greatest dangers, whether to cities or private men, arise the greatest honours.

For our fathers, when they undertook the Medes, did from less beginnings, nay abandoning the little they had, by wisdom rather than fortune, by courage rather than strength, both repel the barbarian and advance this state to the height it now is at. Of whom we ought not now to come short but rather to revenge us by all means upon our enemies, and do our best to deliver the state unimpaired by us to posterity.

Thus spake Pericles. The Athenians, liking best of his advice, decreed as he would have them, answering the Lacedaemonians according to his direction, both in particulars as he had spoken and generally, that they would do nothing on command, but were ready to answer their accusations upon equal terms by way of arbitrament. So the ambassadors went home, and after these there came no more.

These were the quarrels and differences on either side before the war, which quarrels began presently upon the business of Epidamnus and Corcyra. Nevertheless there was still commerce betwixt them, and they went to each other without any herald, though not without jealousy. For the things that had passed were but the confusion of the articles and matter of the war to follow.

The war between the Athenians and the Peloponnesians beginneth now from the time they had no longer commerce one with another without a herald, and that having once begun it they warred without intermission. And it is written in order by summers and winters according as from time to time the several matters came to pass.