ple more imperious arguments for peace than
any which I can advance, when we see the first power in Hellas watching
our mistakes with the few ships that she has at present in our waters,
and under the fair name of alliance speciously seeking to turn to
account the natural hostility that exists between us. If we go to war,
and call in to help us a people that are ready enough to carry their
arms even where they are not invited; and if we injure ourselves at
our own expense, and at the same time serve as the pioneers of their
dominion, we may expect, when they see us worn out, that they will
one day come with a larger armament, and seek to bring all of us into
subjection.

"And yet as sensible men, if we call in allies and court danger,
it should be in order to enrich our different countries with new
acquisitions, and not to ruin what they possess already; and we should
understand that the intestine discords which are so fatal to communities
generally, will be equally so to Sicily, if we, its inhabitants,
absorbed in our local quarrels, neglect the common enemy. These
considerations should reconcile individual with individual, and city
with city, and unite us in a common effort to save the whole of Sicily.
Nor should any one imagine that the Dorians only are enemies of Athens,
while the Chalcidian race is secured by its Ionian blood; the attack in
question is not inspired by hatred of one of two nationalities, but by
a desire for the good things in Sicily, the common property of us all.
This is proved by the Athenian reception of the Chalcidian invitation:
an ally who has never given them any assistance whatever, at once
receives from them almost more than the treaty entitles him to. That the
Athenians should cherish this ambition and practise this policy is very
excusable; and I do not blame those who wish to rule, but those who are
over-ready to serve. It is just as much in men's nature to rule those
who submit to them, as it is to resist those who molest them; one is not
less invariable than the other. Meanwhile all who see these dangers
and refuse to provide for them properly, or who have come here without
having made up their minds that our first duty is to unite to get rid of
the common peril, are mistaken. The quickest way to be rid of it is to
make peace with each other; since the Athenians menace us not from their
own country, but from that of those who invited them here. In this way
instead of war issuing in war