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[8]
The cause of all these evils was the lust for power arising from greed and
ambition; and from these passions proceeded the violence of parties once engaged in
contention.
The leaders in the cities, each provided with the fairest professions, on
the one side with the cry of political equality of the people, on the other
of a moderate aristocracy, sought prizes for themselves in those public
interests which they pretended to cherish, and, recoiling from no means in
their struggles for ascendancy, engaged in the direct excesses; in their acts of vengeance they went to even greater lengths, not stopping
at what justice or the good of the state demanded, but making the party
caprice of the moment their only standard, and invoking with equal readiness
the condemnation of an unjust verdict or the authority of the strong arm to
glut the animosities of the hour.
Thus religion was in honor with neither party; but the use of fair phrases to arrive at guilty ends was in high
reputation.
Meanwhile the moderate part of the citizens perished between the two,
either for not joining in the quarrel, or because envy would not suffer them
to escape.
Thucydides. The Peloponnesian War. London, J. M. Dent; New York, E. P. Dutton. 1910.
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