89.
"It will be necessary that I say something first concerning mine own accusation, lest through jealousy of me you bring a prejudicate ear to the common business.
[2]
My ancestors having on a certain quarrel renounced the office of receiving you, I was the man that restored the same again and showed you all possible respect, both otherwise and in the matter of your loss at Pylus.
Whilst I persisted in my good will to you, being to make a peace at Athens, by treating the same with my adversaries, you invested them with authority and me with disgrace.
[3]
For which cause, if in applying myself afterwards to the Mantineans and Argives, or in anything else I did you hurt, I did it justly;
and if any man here were causelessly angry with me then when he suffered, let him be now content again when he knows the true cause of the same.
Or if any man think the worse of me for inclining to the people, let him acknowledge that therein also he is offended without a cause.
[4]
For we have been always enemies to tyrants;
and what is contrary to a tyrant is called the people;
and from thence hath continued our adherence to the multitude.
Besides, in a city governed by democracy, it was necessary in most things to follow the present course;
nevertheless we have endeavoured to be more moderate than suiteth with the now headstrong humour of the people.
[5]
But others there have been, both formerly and now, that have incited the common people to worse things than I;
and they are those that have also driven out me.
[6]
But as for us, when we had the charge of the whole, we thought it reason, by what form it was grown most great and most free and in which we received it, in the same to preserve it.
For though such of us as have judgment do know well enough what the democracy is, and I no less than another (insomuch as I could inveigh against it;
but of confessed madness nothing can be said that is new), yet we thought it not safe to change it when you our enemies were so near us.
The English works of Thomas Hobbes of Malmesbury. Thucydides. Thomas Hobbes. translator. London. Bohn. 1843.
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