55.
"Such then we showed ourselves in those ancient and most important affairs.
It is true, we have been your enemies since;
but for that you are to blame yourselves.
For when oppressed by the Thebans we sought league of you, you rejected us and bade us go to the Athenians that were nearer hand, yourselves being far off.
[2]
Nevertheless, you neither have in this war nor were to have suffered at our hands anything that misbecame us.
[3]
And if we denied to revolt from the Athenians when you bade us, we did you no injury in it.
For they both aided us against the Thebans when you shrunk from us, and it was now no more any honesty to betray them, especially having been well used by them, and we ourselves having sought their league and being made denizens also of their city.
[4]
Nay, we ought rather to have followed them in all their commands with alacrity.
When you or the Athenians have the leading of the confederates, if evil be done, not they that follow are culpable but you that lead to the evil.
The English works of Thomas Hobbes of Malmesbury. Thucydides. Thomas Hobbes. translator. London. Bohn. 1843.
This text was converted to electronic form by optical character recognition and has been proofread to a high level of accuracy.
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.
An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.