History of the Peloponnesian War

"For those indeed to go to war, who, while successful in other things, have had a choice in the matter allowed them, it is great folly. But if [in our case] it were necessary, either immediately to submit to our neighbours, if we made concessions, or to preserve our independence by running a great risk;

then he who shrank from the risk is more reprehensible than he who faced it. For my part then, I am the same that I ever was, and do not depart from my opinion; but you are changing, since it happens that you were persuaded [to go to war] while unscathed, but repent of it now you are suffering: and that my advice appears wrong through the weakness of your resolution; because pain is now in possession of each man's feeling, while the certainty of the benefit is as yet hidden from all: and a great reverse having befallen you, and that suddenly, your mind is too prostrated to persevere in your determinations.

For the spirit is enslaved by what is sudden and unlooked for, and most beyond our calculation; which has been your case, in addition to every thing else, more especially with regard to the plague.

Living, however, as you do in a great city, and brought up with habits corresponding to it, you ought to be willing to encounter the greatest misfortunes, and not to sully your reputation; (for men think it equally just to find fault with him who weakly falls short of his proper character, and to hate him who rashly grasps at that which does not belong to him;) and you ought to cease grieving for your private sufferings, and to devote yourselves to the safety of the commonwealth.

"But with regard to your trouble in the war, lest you should fear that it may prove great, and we may still be none the more successful, let those arguments suffice you, with which on many other occasions I have proved the error of your suspicions respecting it. At the same time, I will also lay before you the following advantage, which yourselves do not appear ever yet to have thought of as belonging to you, respecting the greatness of your empire, and which I never urged in my former speeches; nor would I even now, as it has rather too boastful an air, if I did not see you unreasonably cast down.

You think then that you only bear rule over your own subject allies; but I declare to you that of the two parts of the world open for man's use, the land and the sea, of the whole of the one you are most absolute masters, both as far as you avail yourselves of it now, and if you should wish to do so still further; and there is no power, neither the king nor any nation besides at the present day, that can prevent your sailing [where you please] with your present naval resources.

This power then evidently is far from being merely on a level with the benefits of your houses and lands, which you think so much to be deprived of: nor is it right for you to give about them, but rather to hold them cheap, considering them, in comparison with this, as a mere gardenplot and embellishment of a rich man's estate You should know, too, that liberty, provided we devote ourselves to that and preserve t, will easily recover these losses; whereas those who have once submitted to others find even their greatest gains diminish. Nor should you how yourselves interior in both respect to your fathers, who with labour, and not by inheritance from others, acquired these possessions, and moreover kept them, and bequeathed them to us for it is more disgraceful to be deprived of a thing when we have got it, than to fail in getting it. On the contrary, you should meet your enemies, nor only with spirit, but also with a spirit of contempt.