selves, who, with the warnings we possess in the
Hellenes in those parts that have been enslaved through not supporting
each other, and seeing the same sophisms being now tried upon
ourselves--such as restorations of Leontine kinsfolk and support of
Egestaean allies--do not stand together and resolutely show them
that here are no Ionians, or Hellespontines, or islanders, who change
continually, but always serve a master, sometimes the Mede and sometimes
some other, but free Dorians from independent Peloponnese, dwelling in
Sicily. Or, are we waiting until we be taken in detail, one city after
another; knowing as we do that in no other way can we be conquered, and
seeing that they turn to this plan, so as to divide some of us by words,
to draw some by the bait of an alliance into open war with each other,
and to ruin others by such flattery as different circumstances may
render acceptable? And do we fancy when destruction first overtakes a
distant fellow countryman that the danger will not come to each of us
also, or that he who suffers before us will suffer in himself alone?

"As for the Camarinaean who says that it is the Syracusan, not he,
that is the enemy of the Athenian, and who thinks it hard to have to
encounter risk in behalf of my country, I would have him bear in mind
that he will fight in my country, not more for mine than for his own,
and by so much the more safely in that he will enter on the struggle
not alone, after the way has been cleared by my ruin, but with me as his
ally, and that the object of the Athenian is not so much to punish the
enmity of the Syracusan as to use me as a blind to secure the friendship
of the Camarinaean. As for him who envies or even fears us (and envied
and feared great powers must always be), and who on this account wishes
Syracuse to be humbled to teach us a lesson, but would still have her
survive, in the interest of his own security the wish that he indulges
is not humanly possible. A man can control his own desires, but
he cannot likewise control circumstances; and in the event of his
calculations proving mistaken, he may live to bewail his own misfortune,
and wish to be again envying my prosperity. An idle wish, if he now
sacrifice us and refuse to take his share of perils which are the same,
in reality though not in name, for him as for us; what is nominally the
preservation of our power being really his own salvation. It was to be
expected that you, of all people in the