History of the Peloponnesian War

But we ought not to be puffed up upon the misfortunes of our enemies, but to be confident then only when we have mastered their designs. Nor ought we to think that the Lacedaemonians set their minds on anything else but how they may yet for the late disgrace repair their reputation, if they can, by our overthrow, and the rather because they have so much and so long laboured to win an opinion in the world of their valour.

The question with us therefore, if we be well advised, will not be of the Egestaeans in Sicily, but how we may speedily defend our city against the insidiation of them that favour the oligarchy.

"We must remember also that we have had now some short recreation from a late great plague and great war, and thereby are improved both in men and money, which it is most meet that we should spend here upon ourselves and not upon those outlaws which seek for aid, seeing it maketh for them to tell us a specious lie; who, contributing only words whilst their friends bear all the danger, if they speed well, shall be disobliged of thanks, if ill, undo their friends for company.

Now if there be any man here that for ends of his own, as being glad to be general, especially being yet too young to have charge in chief, shall advise the expedition to the end he may have admiration for his expense upon horses and help from his place to defray that expense, suffer him not to purchase his private honour and splendour with the danger of the public fortune. Believe rather that such men, though they rob the public, do nevertheless consume also their private wealth. Besides, the matter itself is full of great difficulties, such as it is not fit for a young man to consult of, much less hastily to take in hand.

"And I, seeing those now sit by and abet the same man, am fearful of them; and I do on the other side exhort the elder sort (if any of them sit near those other) not to be ashamed to deliver their minds freely, as fearing that if they gave their voice against the war they should be esteemed cowards, nor to doat (as they do) upon things absent, knowing that by passion the fewest actions and by reason the most do prosper; but rather for the benefit of their country, which is now cast into greater danger than ever before, to hold up their hands on the other side and decree that the Sicilians, within the limits they now enjoy, not misliked by you, and with liberty to sail by the shore in the Ionian gulf, and in the main of the Sicilian sea, shall possess their own and compound their differences between themselves.