come to grief,
and most ready to make peace, if they can, while their fortune lasts.
This, Athenians, you have a good opportunity to do now with us, and thus
to escape the possible disasters which may follow upon your refusal, and
the consequent imputation of having owed to accident even your present
advantages, when you might have left behind you a reputation for power
and wisdom which nothing could endanger.

"The Lacedaemonians accordingly invite you to make a treaty and to end
the war, and offer peace and alliance and the most friendly and intimate
relations in every way and on every occasion between us; and in return
ask for the men on the island, thinking it better for both parties
not to stand out to the end, on the chance of some favourable accident
enabling the men to force their way out, or of their being compelled
to succumb under the pressure of blockade. Indeed if great enmities are
ever to be really settled, we think it will be, not by the system of
revenge and military success, and by forcing an opponent to swear to a
treaty to his disadvantage, but when the more fortunate combatant waives
these his privileges, to be guided by gentler feelings conquers his
rival in generosity, and accords peace on more moderate conditions than
he expected. From that moment, instead of the debt of revenge which
violence must entail, his adversary owes a debt of generosity to be paid
in kind, and is inclined by honour to stand to his agreement. And men
oftener act in this manner towards their greatest enemies than where the
quarrel is of less importance; they are also by nature as glad to give
way to those who first yield to them, as they are apt to be provoked by
arrogance to risks condemned by their own judgment.

"To apply this to ourselves: if peace was ever desirable for both
parties, it is surely so at the present moment, before anything
irremediable befall us and force us to hate you eternally, personally
as well as politically, and you to miss the advantages that we now offer
you. While the issue is still in doubt, and you have reputation and our
friendship in prospect, and we the compromise of our misfortune before
anything fatal occur, let us be reconciled, and for ourselves choose
peace instead of war, and grant to the rest of the Hellenes a remission
from their sufferings, for which be sure they will think they have
chiefly you to thank. The war that they labour under they know not which
began, but the peace th