History of the Peloponnesian War

since we are not enemies, that you should justly take vengeance on us, but men well disposed towards you, and who went to war with you only on compulsion. You would judge the case therefore rightly, if you both granted us personal security, and considered beforehand that you received us by our own consent, and while holding forth our hands to you—and the law of the Greeks is not to kill such—and, moreover, after our being all along your benefactors.

For look to the sepulchres of your fathers, whom, after being slain by the Medes, and buried in our country, we used to honour every year at the public expense with both garments and other things that are usual, and by offering first-fruits of all that our land produced in its season; as friends from a friendly country, and as allies to our former companions in arms.