History of the Peloponnesian War

Let us not therefore cast aside the institutions of our ancestors which we have so long retained to our profit; nor let us of many men's lives, of much money, of many cities, and much honour, hastily resolve in so small a part of one day, but at leisure, the which we have better commodity than any other to do, by reason of our power.

Send to the Athenians about the matter of Potidaea; send about that wherein the confederates say they are injured; and the rather because they be content to refer the cause to judgment, and one that offereth himself to judgment may not lawfully be invaded as a doer of injury before the judgment be given. And prepare withal for the war. So shall you take the most profitable counsel for yourselves, and the most formidable to the enemy.

Thus spake Archidamus. But Sthenelaidas, then one of the Ephori, stood up last of all and spake to the Lacedaemonians in this manner: