far stronger
than you are.

Melians. But we know that the fortune of war is sometimes more impartial
than the disproportion of numbers might lead one to suppose; to submit
is to give ourselves over to despair, while action still preserves for
us a hope that we may stand erect.

Athenians. Hope, danger's comforter, may be indulged in by those who
have abundant resources, if not without loss at all events without ruin;
but its nature is to be extravagant, and those who go so far as to put
their all upon the venture see it in its true colours only when they are
ruined; but so long as the discovery would enable them to guard against
it, it is never found wanting. Let not this be the case with you, who
are weak and hang on a single turn of the scale; nor be like the vulgar,
who, abandoning such security as human means may still afford, when
visible hopes fail them in extremity, turn to invisible, to prophecies
and oracles, and other such inventions that delude men with hopes to
their destruction.

Melians. You may be sure that we are as well aware as you of the
difficulty of contending against your power and fortune, unless the
terms be equal. But we trust that the gods may grant us fortune as good
as yours, since we are just men fighting against unjust, and that what
we want in power will be made up by the alliance of the Lacedaemonians,
who are bound, if only for very shame, to come to the aid of their
kindred. Our confidence, therefore, after all is not so utterly
irrational.

Athenians. When you speak of the favour of the gods, we may as fairly
hope for that as yourselves; neither our pretensions nor our conduct
being in any way contrary to what men believe of the gods, or practise
among themselves. Of the gods we believe, and of men we know, that by a
necessary law of their nature they rule wherever they can. And it is not
as if we were the first to make this law, or to act upon it when made:
we found it existing before us, and shall leave it to exist for ever
after us; all we do is to make use of it, knowing that you and everybody
else, having the same power as we have, would do the same as we do.
Thus, as far as the gods are concerned, we have no fear and no reason to
fear that we shall be at a disadvantage. But when we come to your notion
about the Lacedaemonians, which leads you to believe that shame will
make them help you, here we bless your simplicity but do not envy your
folly. The Lacedaemonians, when thei