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141.
Make your decision therefore at once, either to submit before you are
harmed, or if we are to go to war, as I for one think we ought, to do so
without caring whether the ostensible cause be great or small, resolved
against making concessions or consenting to a precarious tenure of our
possessions.
For all claims from an equal, urged upon a neighbor as commands, before any
attempt at legal settlement, be they great or be they small, have only one
meaning, and that is slavery.
[2]
As to the war and the resources of either
party, a detailed comparison will not show you the inferiority of Athens.
[3]
Personally engaged in the cultivation of their land, without funds either
private or public, the Peloponnesians are also without experience in long
wars across sea, from the strict limit which poverty imposes on their
attacks upon each other.
[4]
Powers of this description are quite incapable of often manning a fleet or
often sending out an army: they cannot afford the absence from their homes,
the expenditure from their own funds; and besides, they have not command of the sea.
[5]
Capital, it must be remembered, maintains a war more than forced
contributions.
Farmers are a class of men that are always more ready to serve in person
than in purse.
Confident that the former will survive the dangers, they are by no means so
sure that the latter will not be prematurely exhausted, especially if the
war last longer than they expect, which it very likely will.
[6]
In a single battle the Peloponnesians and their allies may be able to defy
all Hellas, but they are incapacitated from carrying on a war against a
power different in character from their own, by the want of the single
council-chamber requisite to prompt and vigorous action, and the
substitution of a diet composed of various races, in which every state
possesses an equal vote, and each presses its own ends, a condition of
things which generally results in no action at all.
[7]
The great wish of some is to avenge themselves on some particular enemy,
the great wish of others to save their own pocket.
Slow in assembling, they devote a very small fraction of the time to the
consideration of any public object, most of it to the prosecution of their
own objects.
Meanwhile each fancies that no harm will come of his neglect, that it is
the business of somebody else to look after this or that for him; and so, by the same notion being entertained by all separately, the common
cause imperceptibly decays.
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References (54 total)
- Commentary references to this page
(16):
- Sir Richard C. Jebb, Commentary on Sophocles: Oedipus at Colonus, 441
- E.C. Marchant, Commentary on Thucydides: Book 2, 2.2
- E.C. Marchant, Commentary on Thucydides: Book 2, 2.93
- E.C. Marchant, Commentary on Thucydides: Book 3, 3.46
- E.C. Marchant, Commentary on Thucydides: Book 6, 6.21
- E.C. Marchant, Commentary on Thucydides: Book 6, 6.82
- E.C. Marchant, Commentary on Thucydides: Book 6, 6.85
- T. G. Tucker, Commentary on Thucydides: Book 8, 8.66
- T. G. Tucker, Commentary on Thucydides: Book 8, 8.89
- C.E. Graves, Commentary on Thucydides: Book 4, CHAPTER X
- C.E. Graves, Commentary on Thucydides: Book 4, CHAPTER XXIX
- C.E. Graves, Commentary on Thucydides: Book 4, CHAPTER III
- C.E. Graves, Commentary on Thucydides: Book 4, CHAPTER LXXIII
- C.E. Graves, Commentary on Thucydides: Book 5, 5.17
- C.E. Graves, Commentary on Thucydides: Book 5, 5.21
- E.C. Marchant, Commentary on Thucydides Book 1, 1.84
- Cross-references to this page (3):
- Cross-references in notes to this page
(2):
- Raphael Kühner, Bernhard Gerth, Ausführliche Grammatik der griechischen Sprache, KG 3.6.1
- Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War, Thuc. 8.96
- Cross-references in general dictionaries to this page
(33):
- LSJ, ἄπειμι
- LSJ, ἄπειρος
- LSJ, ἀνέχω
- LSJ, ἀνθόπλ-ι^σις
- LSJ, ἀντιπαρα-σκευή
- LSJ, ἀθρόος
- LSJ, ἀσθεν-ής
- LSJ, αὐτόθεν
- LSJ, αὐτουργ-ός
- LSJ, βρα^χύς
- LSJ, δίκη
- LSJ, διανο-έω
- LSJ, διαπόντιος
- LSJ, δι^καί-ωσις
- LSJ, δόξ-ασμα
- LSJ, δύνα^μαι
- LSJ, ἑαυτοῦ
- LSJ, ἐπιφέρω
- LSJ, ἐπιτάσσω
- LSJ, ἐπιτελ-ής
- LSJ, εἴκω
- LSJ, ἴδιος
- LSJ, ἰσό-ψηφος
- LSJ, μέλω
- LSJ, ὁμό-φυ_λος
- LSJ, πα^ρά
- LSJ, πιστός
- LSJ, πρόφα^σ-ις
- LSJ, προανα_λίσκω
- LSJ, σπεύδω
- LSJ, ὑπέρ
- LSJ, ὡς
- LSJ, χρόν-ιος
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