History of the Peloponnesian War

"But the Athenians, as I tell you, being aware of this, are engaged, I am well assured, in preserving their own possessions; and it is persons here that are making up these stories of what neither is, nor could ever be, the case.

And I am not now for the first time convinced of them, but have ever been so, that they wish to terrify your populace by such tales as these, and still more wicked ones, if not even by deeds; and so themselves to have the rule of the city. And in truth I am afraid, lest some time or other, by making many attempts, they should even succeed; while we are ill disposed, before we are in the act of suffering, to take precautionary measures against them, and after finding them out, to proceed against them.