History of the Peloponnesian War

Thucydides

Thucydides. The English works of Thomas Hobbes of Malmesbury. Hobbes, Thomas. translator. London: John Bohn, 1843.

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 PRINCIPAL CONTENTSThe entry of the Theban soldiers into Plataea by the treason of some within.Their repulse and slaughter. The irruption of the Peloponnesians into Attica.The wasting of the coast of Peloponnesus by the Athenian fleet.The public funeral of the first slain. The second invasion of Attica.The pestilence in the city of Athens.The Ambraciotes' war against the Amphilochi.Plataea assaulted, besieged.The Peloponnesian fleet beaten by Phormio before the strait of the Gulf of Crissa.The same fleet repaired and reinforced, and beaten again by Phormio before Naupactus.The attempt of the Peloponnesians on Salamis.The fruitless expedition of the Thracians against the Macedonians.This in the first three years of the war.)

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.