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[5]
The rule of the sea is indeed a great matter.
Consider for a moment.
Suppose that we were islanders: can you conceive a more impregnable
position?
Well, this in future should, as far as possible, be our conception of our
position.
Dismissing all thought of our land and houses, we must vigilantly guard the
sea and the city.
No irritation that we may feel for the former must provoke us to a battle
with the numerical superiority of the Peloponnesians.
A victory would only be succeeded by another battle against the same
superiority: a reverse involves the loss of our allies, the source of our
strength, who will not remain quiet a day after we become unable to march
against them.
We must cry not over the loss of houses and land but of men's lives; since houses and land do not gain men, but men them.
And if I had thought that I could persuade you, I would have bid you go out
and lay them waste with your own hands, and show the Peloponnesians that
this at any rate will not make you submit.
Thucydides. The Peloponnesian War. London, J. M. Dent; New York, E. P. Dutton. 1910.
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