123.
But why should we dwell reproachfully upon the past, except in the interest of the
present?
We should rather, looking to the future,1 devote our energies to the task which we have immediately in hand.
By labour to win virtue,—that is the lesson which we2 have learnt from our fathers, and which you ought not to unlearn, because you
chance to have some trifling advantage over them in wealth and power; for men should not
lose in the time of their wealth what was gained by them in their time of want.
There are many reasons why you may advance with confidence.
The God has spoken and has promised to take our part himself.
All Hellas will fight at our side, from motives either of fear or of interest.
[2]
And you will not break the treaty,—the God in bidding you go to war
pronounces it to have been already broken,—
but you will avenge the violation
of it.
For those who attack others, not those who defend themselves, are the real violators of
treaties3.
Thucydides translated into English; with introduction, marginal analysis, notes, and indices. Volume 1. Thucydides. Benjamin Jowett. translator. Oxford. Clarendon Press. 1881.
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.