History of the Peloponnesian War

"The trustiness of your policy and intercourse amongst yourselves, Lacedaemonians, renders you the more distrustful with regard to others, if we say any thing [against them]; and from this you have a character for sober-mindedness, but betray too great ignorance with regard to foreign affairs.

For though we often forewarned you what injuries we were going to receive from the Athenians, you did not gain information respecting what we told you from time to time, but rather suspected the speakers of speaking for their own private interests. And for this reason it was not before we suffered, but when we are in the very act of suffering, that you have summoned the allies here; amongst whom we may speak with the greatest propriety, inasmuch as we have also the greatest complaints to make, being insulted by the Athenians, and neglected by you. And if they were an obscure people any where [*]( The που in the original would perhaps be most fully expressed by our colloquial phrase, in some corner or other. ) who were injuring Greece, you might have required additional warning, as not being acquainted with them;