eloponnese. In our settlement of the states here in Sicily, we should
therefore; naturally be guided by our interest, and by fear, as we say,
of the Syracusans. Their ambition is to rule you, their object to use
the suspicions that we excite to unite you, and then, when we have gone
away without effecting anything, by force or through your isolation, to
become the masters of Sicily. And masters they must become, if you unite
with them; as a force of that magnitude would be no longer easy for us
to deal with united, and they would be more than a match for you as soon
as we were away.

"Any other view of the case is condemned by the facts. When you first
asked us over, the fear which you held out was that of danger to Athens
if we let you come under the dominion of Syracuse; and it is not right
now to mistrust the very same argument by which you claimed to convince
us, or to give way to suspicion because we are come with a larger force
against the power of that city. Those whom you should really distrust
are the Syracusans. We are not able to stay here without you, and if
we proved perfidious enough to bring you into subjection, we should be
unable to keep you in bondage, owing to the length of the voyage and
the difficulty of guarding large, and in a military sense continental,
towns: they, the Syracusans, live close to you, not in a camp, but in
a city greater than the force we have with us, plot always against you,
never let slip an opportunity once offered, as they have shown in the
case of the Leontines and others, and now have the face, just as if you
were fools, to invite you to aid them against the power that hinders
this, and that has thus far maintained Sicily independent. We, as
against them, invite you to a much more real safety, when we beg you
not to betray that common safety which we each have in the other, and
to reflect that they, even without allies, will, by their numbers,
have always the way open to you, while you will not often have the
opportunity of defending yourselves with such numerous auxiliaries;
if, through your suspicions, you once let these go away unsuccessful
or defeated, you will wish to see if only a handful of them back again,
when the day is past in which their presence could do anything for you.

"But we hope, Camarinaeans, that the calumnies of the Syracusans will
not be allowed to succeed either with you or with the rest: we have told
you the whole truth upon the things we are suspe