History of the Peloponnesian War

By this means our city is seldom quiet, but subject to sedition and contention, not so much against the enemy as within itself, and sometimes also to tyranny and usurpation. Which I will endeavour (if you will second me) so to prevent hereafter as nothing more of this kind shall befall you;

which must be done, first by gaining you the multitude, and then by punishing the authors of these plots, not only when I find them in the action (for it will be hard to take them so), but also for those things which they would and cannot do. For one must not only take revenge upon an enemy for what he hath already done, but strike him first for his evil purpose; for if a man strike not first, he shall first be stricken. And as for the few, I shall in somewhat reprove them, in somewhat have an eye to them, and in somewhat advise them. For this, I think, will be the best course to avert them from their bad intentions.