ou or to the rest what you know already as well
as we do; but we entreat, and if our entreaty fail, we protest that we
are menaced by our eternal enemies the Ionians, and are betrayed by
you our fellow Dorians. If the Athenians reduce us, they will owe their
victory to your decision, but in their own name will reap the honour,
and will receive as the prize of their triumph the very men who enabled
them to gain it. On the other hand, if we are the conquerors, you
will have to pay for having been the cause of our danger. Consider,
therefore; and now make your choice between the security which present
servitude offers and the prospect of conquering with us and so escaping
disgraceful submission to an Athenian master and avoiding the lasting
enmity of Syracuse."

Such were the words of Hermocrates; after whom Euphemus, the Athenian
ambassador, spoke as follows:

"Although we came here only to renew the former alliance, the attack of
the Syracusans compels us to speak of our empire and of the good right
we have to it. The best proof of this the speaker himself furnished,
when he called the Ionians eternal enemies of the Dorians. It is the
fact; and the Peloponnesian Dorians being our superiors in numbers and
next neighbours, we Ionians looked out for the best means of escaping
their domination. After the Median War we had a fleet, and so got rid of
the empire and supremacy of the Lacedaemonians, who had no right to give
orders to us more than we to them, except that of being the strongest at
that moment; and being appointed leaders of the King's former subjects,
we continue to be so, thinking that we are least likely to fall under
the dominion of the Peloponnesians, if we have a force to defend
ourselves with, and in strict truth having done nothing unfair in
reducing to subjection the Ionians and islanders, the kinsfolk whom the
Syracusans say we have enslaved. They, our kinsfolk, came against their
mother country, that is to say against us, together with the Mede, and,
instead of having the courage to revolt and sacrifice their property as
we did when we abandoned our city, chose to be slaves themselves, and to
try to make us so.

"We, therefore, deserve to rule because we placed the largest fleet and
an unflinching patriotism at the service of the Hellenes, and because
these, our subjects, did us mischief by their ready subservience to the
Medes; and, desert apart, we seek to strengthen ourselves against the
Peloponnes