History of the Peloponnesian War

And a forwardness we showed more adventurous than any other in this, that when none of them had aided us by land before, and the rest of the cities, as far as to our own, were brought into servitude, we were nevertheless content both to quit our city and lose our goods, and even in that estate not to betray the common cause of the confederates, or divided from them to be unuseful, but to put ourselves into our navy and undergo the danger with them, and that without passion against you for not having formerly defended us in the like manner.

So that we may say that we have no less conferred a benefit upon you than we received it from you. You came indeed to aid us, but it was from cities inhabited and to the end you might still keep them so, and when you were afraid not of our danger but your own. Whereas we, coming from a city no more being, and putting ourselves into danger for a city hopeless ever to be again, saved both you in part and ourselves.

But if we had joined with the Persian, fearing (as others did) to have our territories wasted, or afterwards, as men lost, durst not have put ourselves into our galleys, you must not have fought with him by sea because your fleet had been too small; but his affairs had succeeded as he would himself.

"Therefore, men of Lacedaemon, we deserve not so great envy of the Grecians, for our courage at that time and for our prudence and for the dominion we hold, as we now undergo.

Which dominion we obtained not by violence, but because the confederates, when yourselves would not stay out the relics of the war against the barbarian, came in and entreated us to take the command of their own accord.

So that at first we were forced to advance our dominion to what it is out of the nature of the thing itself, as chiefly for fear, next for honour, and lastly for profit.