History of the Peloponnesian War

If any here think that the war wherein we may do you service will not at all be, he is in an error and seeth not how the Lacedaemonians, through fear of you, are already in labour of the war; and that the Corinthians, gracious with them and enemies to you, making way for their enterprise, assault us now in the way to the invasion of you hereafter, that we may not stand amongst the rest of their common enemies, but that they may be sure beforehand either to weaken us or to strengthen their own estate.

It must therefore be your part, we offering and you accepting the league, to begin with them and to anticipate plotting rather than to counterplot against them.

"If they object injustice in that you receive their colony, henceforth let them learn that all colonies so long as they receive no wrong from their mother city, so long they honour her; but when they suffer injury from her, they then become alienate; for they are not sent out to be the slaves of them that stay, but to be their equals.

That they have done us the injury is manifest; for when we offered them a judicial trial of the controversy touching Epidamnus, they chose to prosecute their quarrel rather by arms than judgment.

Now let that which they have done unto us, who are their kindred, serve you for some argument not to be seduced by their demands and made their instruments before you be aware. For he lives most secure that hath fewest benefits bestowed upon him by his enemies to repent of.