45.
'To many offences less than theirs states have affixed. the punishment of death;
nevertheless,1 excited by hope, men still risk their lives.
No one when venturing on a perilous enterprise ever yet passed a sentence of failure on
himself.
[2]
And what city when entering on a revolt ever imagined that the power which she had,
whether her own or obtained from her allies, did not justify the attempt?
[3]
All are by nature prone to err both in public and in private life, and no law will
prevent them.
Men have gone through the whole catalogue of penalties in the hope that, by increasing
their severity, they may suffer less at the hands of evil-doers.
In early ages the punishments, even of the worst offences, would naturally be milder;
but as time went on and mankind continued to transgress, they seldom stopped short of
death.
[4]
And still there are transgressors.
Some greater terror then has yet to be discovered; certainly death is no deterrent.
For poverty inspires necessity with daring; and wealth engenders avarice in pride and
insolence; and the various conditions of human life, as they severally fall
under the sway of some mighty and fatal power, lure men through their passions to
destruction.
[5]
Desire and hope are never wanting, the one leading, the other following the one
devising the enterprise, the other suggesting that fortune will be kind; and they are
the most ruinous, for, being unseen, they far outweigh the dangers which are seen.
[6]
Fortune too assists the illusion, for she often presents herself unexpectedly, and
induces states as well as individuals to run into peril, however inadequate their means;
and states even more than individuals, because they are throwing for a higher stake,
freedom or empire, and because when a man has a whole people acting with him,2 he magnifies himself3 out of all reason.
[7]
In a word then, it is impossible and simply absurd to suppose that human nature when
bent upon some favourite project can be restrained either by the strength of law or by
any other terror.
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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