56.
The Syracusians went presently about the haven without fear and meditated how to shut up the same that the Athenians might not steal away without their knowledge, though they would.
[2]
For now they studied not only how to save themselves, but how to hinder the safety of the Athenians.
For the Syracusians conceived, not untruly, that their own strength was at this present the greater, and that if they could vanquish the Athenians and their confederates both by sea and land, it would be a mastery of great honour to them amongst the rest of the Grecians.
For all the rest of Greece should be one part freed by it, and the other part out of fear of subjection hereafter;
for it would be impossible for the Athenians, with the remainder of their strength, to sustain the war that would be made upon them afterwards.
And they, being reputed the authors of it, should be had in admiration, not only with all men now living, but also with posterity.
[3]
And to say truth, it was a worthy mastery, both for the causes shewn and also for that they became victors not of the Athenians only but many others, their confederates;
nor again they themselves alone but their confederates also, having been in joint command with the Corinthians and Lacedaemonians, and both exposed their city to the first hazard, and of the business by sea performed the greatest part themselves.
[4]
The greatest number of nations, except the general roll of those which in this war adhered to Athens and Lacedaemon, were together at this one city.
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.