68.
The spirit of trust, Lacedaemonians, which animates your own political and social
life,1
2 makes you distrust others who, like ourselves, have something
unpleasant to say3,
and this temper of mind, though favourable to
moderation, too often leaves you in ignorance of what is going on outside your own country,
[2]
but instead of taking our words to heart, you chose to suspect that we only spoke from
interested motives.
And this is the reason why you have brought the allies to Sparta too late, not before
but after the injury has been inflicted, and when they are smarting under the sense of
it. Which of them all has a better right to speak than ourselves, who have the heaviest
accusations to make, outraged as we are by the Athenians, and neglected by you?
[3]
If the crimes which they are committing against Hellas were being done in a corner,
then you might be ignorant, and we should have to inform you of them:
but now, what need
of many words? Some of us, as you see, have been already enslaved; they are at this moment intriguing
against others, notably against allies of ours; and long ago they had made all their
preparations in the prospect of war.
[4]
Else why did they seduce from her allegiance Corcyra, which they still hold in defiance
of us, and why are they blockading Potidaea, the latter a most
advantageous post for the command of the Thracian peninsula, the former a great naval
power which might have assisted the Peloponnesians?
Thucydides translated into English; with introduction, marginal analysis, notes, and indices. Volume 1. Thucydides. Benjamin Jowett. translator. Oxford. Clarendon Press. 1881.
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