History of The Peloponnesian War - Book V   

friendship will be an argument to our subjects of our weakness, and
your enmity of our power.
Melians. Is that your subjects' idea of equity, to put those who
have nothing to do with you in the same category with peoples that are
most of them your own colonists, and some conquered rebels?
Athenians. As far as right goes they think one has as much of it
as the other, and that if any maintain their independence it is
because they are strong, and that if we do not molest them it is
because we are afraid; so that besides extending our empire we
should gain in security by your subjection; the fact that you are
islanders and weaker than others rendering it all the more important
that you should not succeed in baffling the masters of the sea.
Melians. But do you consider that there is no security in the policy
which we indicate? For here again if you debar us from talking about
justice and invite us to obey your interest, we also must explain
ours, and try to persuade you, if the two happen to coincide. How
can you avoid making enemies of all existing neutrals who shall look
at case from it that one day or another you will attack them? And what
is this but to make greater the enemies that you have already, and
to force others to become so who would otherwise have never thought of
it?
Athenians. Why, the fact is that continentals generally give us
but little alarm; the liberty which they enjoy will long prevent their
taking precautions against us; it is rather islanders like yourselves,
outside our empire, and subjects smarting under the yoke, who would be
the most likely to take a rash step and lead themselves and us into
obvious danger.
Melians. Well then, if you risk so much to retain your empire, and
your subjects to get rid of it, it were surely great baseness and
cowardice in us who are still free not to try everything that can be
tried, before submitting to your yoke.
Athenians. Not if you are well advised, the contest not being an
equal one, with honour as the prize and shame as the penalty, but a
question of self-preservation and of not resisting those who are 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