History of the Peloponnesian War

We have herein, men of Lacedaemon, been thus large both for your sakes and ours: for yours, to let you see that if you condemn them, it will be no injustice; for ours, that the equity of our revenge may the better appear.

Be not moved with the recital of their virtues of old, if any they had, which, though they ought to help the wronged, should double the punishment of such as commit wickedness because their offence doth not become them. Nor let them fare ever the better for their lamentation or your compassion when they cry out upon your fathers' sepulchres and their own want of friends.

For we on the other side affirm that the youth of our city suffered harder measure from them; and their fathers, partly slain at Coroneia in bringing Boeotia to your confederation and partly alive and now old and deprived of their children, make far juster supplication to you for revenge. And pity belongeth to such as suffer undeservedly;