History of The Peloponnesian War - Book I   

now. The treaty provides that we shall mutually submit our differences
to legal settlement, and that we shall meanwhile each keep what we
have. Yet the Lacedaemonians never yet made us any such offer, never
yet would accept from us any such offer; on the contrary, they wish
complaints to be settled by war instead of by negotiation; and in
the end we find them here dropping the tone of expostulation and
adopting that of command. They order us to raise the siege of
Potidaea, to let Aegina be independent, to revoke the Megara decree;
and they conclude with an ultimatum warning us to leave the Hellenes
independent. I hope that you will none of you think that we shall be
going to war for a trifle if we refuse to revoke the Megara decree,
which appears in front of their complaints, and the revocation of
which is to save us from war, or let any feeling of self-reproach
linger in your minds, as if you went to war for slight cause. Why,
this trifle contains the whole seal and trial of your resolution. If
you give way, you will instantly have to meet some greater demand,
as having been frightened into obedience in the first instance;
while a firm refusal will make them clearly understand that they
must treat you more as equals. Make your decision therefore at once,
either to submit before you are harmed, or if we are to go to war,
as I for one think we ought, to do so without caring whether the
ostensible cause be great or small, resolved against making
concessions or consenting to a precarious tenure of our possessions.
For all claims from an equal, urged upon a neighbour as commands
before any attempt at legal settlement, be they great or be they
small, have only one meaning, and that is slavery.
"As to the war and the resources of either party, a detailed
comparison will not show you the inferiority of Athens. Personally
engaged in the cultivation of their land, without funds either private
or public, the Peloponnesians are also without experience in long wars
across sea, from the strict limit which poverty imposes on their
attacks upon each other. Powers of this description are quite
incapable of often manning a fleet or often sending out an army:
they cannot afford the absence from their homes, the expenditure
from their own funds; and besides, they have not command of the sea.
Capital, it must be remembered, maintains a war more than forced
contributions. Farmers are a class of men that are always more ready
to serve in person than in purse. Confident that the former will
survive the dangers, they are by no means so sure that the latter will
not be prematurely exhausted, especially if the war last longer than
they expect, which it very likely will. In a single battle the
Peloponnesians and their allies may be able to defy all Hellas, but
they are incapacitated from carrying on a war against a power
different in character from their own, by the want of the single
council-chamber requisite to prompt and vigorous action, and the
substitution of a diet composed of various races, in which every state
possesses an equal vote, and each presses its own ends, a condition of
things which generally results in no action at all. The great wish
of some is to avenge themselves on some particular enemy, the great
wish of others to save their own pocket. Slow in assembling, they
devote a very small fraction of the time to the consideration of any
public object, most of it to the prosecution of their own objects.
Meanwhile each fancies that no harm will come of his neglect, that
it is the business of somebody else to look after this or that for
him; and so, by the same notion being entertained by all separately,
the common cause imperceptibly decays.
"But the principal point is the hindrance that they will
experience from want of money. The slowness with which it comes in
will cause delay; but the opportunities of war wait for no man. Again,
we need not be alarmed either at the possibility of their raising
fortifications in Attica, or at their navy. It would be difficult
for any system of fortifications to establish a rival city, even in
time of peace, much more, surely, in an enemy's country, with Athens
just as much fortified against it as it against Athens; while a mere