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.

Tell me forsooth (I have asked this question often), you that are the younger sort, What would you have? Would you now bear office? The law allows it not; and the law was made because ye are not [now] sufficient for government, not to disgrace you when you shall be sufficient. But forsooth, you would not be ranked with the multitude! But what justice is it, that the same men should not have the same privileges?

"Some will say that the democracy is neither a well-governed nor a just state, and that the most wealthy are aptest to make the best government. But I answer first, democracy is a name of the whole, oligarchy but of a part. Next, though the rich are indeed fittest to keep the treasure, yet the wise are the best counsellors, and the multitude, upon hearing, the best judge. Now in a democracy all these, both jointly and severally, participate equal privileges.

But in the oligarchy they allow indeed to the multitude a participation of all dangers, but in matters of profit, they not only encroach upon the multitude, but take from them and keep the whole. Which is the thing that you the rich and the younger sort affect, but in a great city cannot possibly embrace. But yet, O ye the most unwise of all men, unless you know that what you affect is evil, and if you know not that, you are the most ignorant of all the Grecians I know; or, ye most wicked of all men, if knowing it you dare do this.