History of the Peloponnesian War

Thucydides

Thucydides. The English works of Thomas Hobbes of Malmesbury. Hobbes, Thomas. translator. London: John Bohn, 1843.

"Men of Acanthus, the reason why the Lacedaemonians have sent me and this army abroad is to make good what we gave out in the beginning for the cause of our war against the Athenians, which was that we meant to make a war for the liberties of Greece.

But if we be come late, as deceived by the war there in the opinion we had that we ourselves should soon have pulled the Athenians down without any danger of yours, no man hath reason therefore to blame us.

For we are come as soon as occasion served, and with your help will do our best to bring them under.

But I wonder why you shut me forth of your gates, and why I was not welcome. For we Lacedaemonians have undergone this great danger of passing many days' journey through the territory of strangers, and showed all possible zeal, because we imagined that we went to such confederates as before we came had us present in their hearts and were desirous of our coming.

And therefore it were hard that you should now be otherwise minded and withstand your own and the rest of the Grecians' liberty,

not only in that yourselves resist us, but also because others whom I go to will be the less willing to come in, making difficulty because you to whom I came first, having a flourishing city and being esteemed wise, have refused us. For which I shall have no sufficient excuse to plead, but must be thought either to pretend to set up liberty unjustly, or to come weak and without power to maintain you against the Athenians.

And yet against this same army I now have, when I went to encounter the Athenians at Nisaea, though more in number they durst not hazard battle. Nor is it likely that the Athenians will send forth so great a number against you as they had in their fleet there at Nisaea.