History of the Peloponnesian War

And so it will be good for you, men of Athens, to do with us, and not, if rejecting our advice you chance to miscarry (as many ways you may), to have it thought hereafter that all your present successes were but mere fortune; whereas, on the contrary, it is in your hands without danger to leave a reputation to posterity both of strength and wisdom.

"The Lacedaemonians call you to a peace and end of the war, giving you peace and alliance and much other friendship and mutual familiarity, requiring for the same [only] those their men that are in the island, though also we think it better for both sides not to try the chance of war, whether it fall out that by some occasion of safety offered they escape by force, or being expugned by siege should be more in your power than they be.

For we are of this mind, that great hatred is most safely cancelled not when one that having beaten his enemy and gotten much the better in the war brings him through necessity to take an oath and to make peace on unequal terms, but when having it in his power lawfully so to do if he please, he overcome him likewise in goodness, and, contrary to what he expects, be reconciled to him on moderate conditions.