90.
Mel. 'Well, then, since you set aside justice and invite us to speak of expediency, in our1 judgment it is certainly expedient that you should respect a principle which is for the common good; that to every man when in peril a reasonable claim should be accounted a claim of right, and that any plea which he is disposed to urge, even if failing of the point a little, should help his cause. Your interest in this principle is quite as great as ours,2 inasmuch as you, if you fall, will incur the heaviest vengeance, and will be the most terrible example to mankind3.'
1 For your own sakes, then, it is expedient that you should not be too Strict.
2 Or, 'inasmuch as you, if you disregard it, will by your example justify others in inflicting the heaviest vengeance on you should you fall.'
3 Or, 'inasmuch as you, if you disregard it, will by your example justify others in inflicting the heaviest vengeance on you should you fall.'
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.