History of the Peloponnesian War

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.

"I come not hither to hurt, but to set free the Grecians; and I have the Lacedaemonian magistrates bound unto me by great oaths that whatsoever confederates shall be added to their side, at least by me, shall still enjoy their own laws; and that we shall not hold you as confederates to us brought in either by force or fraud, but on the contrary, be confederates to you that are kept in servitude by the Athenians.

And therefore I claim not only that you be not jealous of me (especially having given you so good assurance), or think me unable to defend you, but also that you declare yourselves boldly with me.

And if any man be unwilling so to do through fear of some particular man, apprehending that I would put the city into the hands of a few, let him cast away that fear;