Such were the causes of ill feeling which at this time existed between
the Athenians and Peloponnesians;[20] the Corinthians complaining that
the Athenians were blockading their colony of Potidæa, which was
occupied by a Corinthian and Peloponnesian garrison; the Athenians
rejoining that the Peloponnesians had excited to revolt a state which
was an ally and tributary of theirs, and that they had now openly
joined the Potidæans, and were fighting on their side. The
Peloponnesian war, however, had not yet broken out; the peace still
continued; for thus far the Corinthians had acted alone.
But now, seeing Potidæa[21] besieged, they bestirred themselves in
earnest. Corinthian troops were shut up within the walls, and they
were afraid of losing the town; so without delay they invited the
allies to meet at Sparta. There they inveighed against the Athenians,
whom they affirmed to have broken the treaty and to have wronged the
Peloponnesians.... The Megarians alleged, among other grounds of
complaint, that they were excluded from all harbors within the
Athenian dominion and from the Athenian market, contrary to the
treaty. The Corinthians waited until the other allies had stirred up
the Lacedæmonians; at length they came forward, and, last of all,
spoke as follows:
"The spirit of trust, Lacedæmonians, which animates your own political
and social life makes you distrust others who, like ourselves, have
something unpleasant to say, and this temper of mind, tho favorable to
moderation, too often leaves you in ignorance of what is going on
outside your own country. Time after time we have warned you of the
mischief which the Athenians would do to us, but instead of taking our
words to heart, you chose to suspect that we spoke only from
interested motives. And this is the reason why you have brought the
allies to Sparta, too late, not before but after the injury has been
inflicted, and when they are smarting under the sense of it. Which of
them all has a better right to speak than ourselves, who have the
heaviest accusations to make, outraged as we are by the Athenians, and
neglected by you? If the crimes which they are committing against
Hellas were being done in a corner, then you might be ignorant, and we
should have to inform you of them; but now, what need of many words?
Some of us, as you see, have been already enslaved; they are at this
moment intriguing against others, notably against allies of ours; and
long ago they had made all their preparations in expectation of war.
Else why did they seduce from her allegiance Corcyra, which they still
hold in defiance of us, and why are they blockading Potidæa, the
latter a most advantageous post for the command of the Thracian
peninsula, the former a great naval power which might have assisted
the Peloponnesians?
"And the blame of all this rests on you; for you originally allowed
them to fortify their city after the Persian war, and afterward to
build their Long Walls;[22] and to this hour you have gone on
defrauding of liberty their unfortunate subjects, and are now
beginning to take it away from your own allies. For the true enslaver
of a people is he who can put an end to their slavery, but has no care
about it; and all the more, if he be reputed the champion of liberty
in Hellas. And so we have met at last, but with what difficulty! and
even now we have no definite object. By this time we ought to have
been considering, not whether we are wronged, but how we are to be
revenged. The aggressor is not now threatening, but advancing; he has
made up his mind, while we are resolved about nothing. And we know too
well how by slow degrees and with stealthy steps the Athenians
encroach upon their neighbors. While they think that you are too dull
to observe them, they are more careful; but, when they know that you
wilfully overlook their aggressions, they will strike you and not
spare. Of all Hellenes, Lacedæmonians, you are the only people who
never do anything; on the approach of an enemy, you are content to
defend yourselves against him, not by acts, but by intentions, and
seek to overthrow him, not in the infancy but in the fulness of his
strength. How came you to be considered safe? That reputation of
yours was never justified by facts. We all know that the Persian made
his way from the ends of the earth against Peloponnesus before you
encountered him in a worthy manner; and now you are blind to the
doings of the Athenians, who are not at a distance, as he was, but
close at hand. Instead of attacking your enemy, you wait to be
attacked, and take the chances of a struggle which has been deferred
until his power is doubled. And you know that the barbarian miscarried
chiefly through his own errors, and that we have oftener been
delivered from these very Athenians by blunders of their own than by
any aid from you. Some have already been ruined by the hopes which you
inspired in them; for so entirely did they trust you that they took no
precautions themselves. These things we say in no accusing or hostile
spirit--let that be understood--but by way of expostulation. For men
expostulate with erring friends; they bring accusations against
enemies who have done them a wrong.
"And surely we have a right to find fault with our neighbors if any
one ever had. There are important interests at stake to which, as far
as we can see, you are insensible. And you have never considered what
manner of men are these Athenians with whom you will have to fight,
and how utterly unlike yourselves. They are revolutionary, equally
quick in the conception and in the execution of every new plan; while
you are conservative--careful only to keep what you have, originating
nothing, and not acting even when action is most necessary. They are
bold beyond their strength; they run risks which prudence would
condemn; and in the midst of misfortune they are full of hope. Whereas
it is your nature, tho strong, to act feebly; when your plans are most
prudent, to distrust them; and when calamities come upon you, to think
that you will never be delivered from them. They are impetuous, and
you are dilatory; they are always abroad, and you are always at home.
For they hope to gain something by leaving their homes; but you are
afraid that any new enterprise may imperil what you have already. When
conquerors, they pursue their victory to the utmost; when defeated,
they fall back the least. Their bodies they devote to their country as
tho they belonged to other men; their true self is in their mind,
which is most truly their own when employed in her service. When they
do not carry out an intention which they have formed, they seem to
have sustained a personal bereavement; when an enterprise succeeds,
they have gained a mere instalment of what is to come; but if they
fail, they at once conceive new hopes and so fill up the void. With
them alone to hope is to have, for they lose not a moment in the
execution of an idea. This is the lifelong task, full of danger and
toil, which they are always imposing upon themselves. None enjoy their
good things less, because they are always seeking for more. To do
their duty is their only holiday, and they deem the quiet of inaction
to be as disagreeable as the most tiresome business. If a man should
say to them, in a word, that they were born neither to have peace
themselves nor to allow peace to other men, he would simply speak the
truth.
"In the face of such an enemy, Lacedæmonians, you persist in doing
nothing. You do not see that peace is best secured by those who use
their strength justly, but whose attitude shows that they have no
intention of submitting to wrong. Justice with you seems to consist in
giving no annoyance to others and in defending yourselves only against
positive injury. But this policy would hardly be successful, even if
your neighbors were like yourselves; and in the present case, as we
pointed out just now, your ways compared with theirs are
old-fashioned. And, as in the arts, so also in politics, the new must
always prevail over the old. In settled times the traditions of
government should be observed; but when circumstances are changing and
men are compelled to meet them, much originality is required.
"The Athenians have had a wider experience, and therefore the
administration of their state has improved faster than yours. But here
let your procrastination end; send an army at once into Attica and
assist your allies, especially the Potidæans, to whom your word is
pledged. Do not allow friends and kindred to fall into the hands of
their worst enemies, or drive us in despair to seek the alliance of
others; in taking such a course we should be doing wrong either before
the gods who are witnesses of our oaths or before men whose eyes are
upon us. For the true breakers of treaties are not only those who,
when forsaken, turn to others, but those who forsake allies whom they
have sworn to defend. We will remain your friends if you choose to
bestir yourselves; for we should be guilty of an impiety if we
deserted you without cause; and we shall not easily find allies
equally congenial to us. Take heed then; you have inherited from your
fathers the leadership of Peloponnesus; see that her greatness suffers
no diminution at your hands."
Thus spake the Corinthians. Now there happened to be staying at
Lacedæmon an Athenian embassy which had come on other business, and
when the envoys heard what the Corinthians had said, they felt bound
to go before the Lacedæmonian assembly, not with the views of
answering the accusations brought against them by the cities, but they
wanted to put before the Lacedæmonians the whole question, and make
them understand that they should take time to deliberate and not be
rash. They desired also to set forth the greatness of their city,
reminding the elder men of what they knew, and informing the younger
of what lay beyond their experience. They thought that their words
would sway the Lacedæmonians in the direction of peace. So they came
and said that, if they might be allowed, they too would like to
address the people. The Lacedæmonians invited them to come forward,
and they spoke as follows:
"We were not sent here to argue with your allies, but on a special
mission; observing, however, that no small outcry has arisen against
us, we have come forward, not to answer the accusations which they
bring (for you are not judges before whom either we or they have to
plead), but to prevent you from lending too ready an ear to their bad
advice and so deciding wrongly about a very serious question. We
propose also, in reply to the wider charges which are raised against
us, to show that what we have acquired we hold rightfully.
"Of the ancient deeds handed down by tradition and which no eye of any
one who hears us ever saw, why should we speak? But of the Persian
war, and other events which you yourselves remember, speak we must,
altho we have brought them forward so often that the repetition of
them is disagreeable to us. When we faced those perils we did so for
the common benefit; in the solid good you shared, and of the glory,
whatever good there may be in that, we would not be wholly deprived.
Our words are not designed to deprecate hostility, but to set forth in
evidence the character of the city with which, unless you are very
careful, you will soon be involved in war. We tell you that we, first
and alone, dared to engage with the barbarian at Marathon,[23] and
that, when he came again, being too weak to defend ourselves by land,
we and our whole people embarked on shipboard and shared with the
other Hellenes in the victory of Salamis.[24] Thereby he was prevented
from sailing to the Peloponnesus and ravaging city after city; for
against so mighty a fleet how could you have helped one another? He
himself is the best witness of our words; for when he was once
defeated at sea, he felt that his power was gone and quickly retreated
with the greater part of his army.
"The event proved undeniably that the fate of Hellas depended on her
navy. And the three chief elements of success were contributed by us;
namely, the greatest number of ships, the ablest general, the most
devoted patriotism. The ships in all numbered four hundred, and of
these, our own contingent amounted to nearly two-thirds. To the
influence of Themistocles, our general, it was chiefly due that we
fought in the strait, which was confessedly our salvation; and for
this service you yourselves honored him above any stranger who ever
visited you. Thirdly, we displayed the most extraordinary courage and
devotion; there was no one to help us by land; for up to our frontier
those who lay in the enemy's path were already slaves; so we
determined to leave our city and sacrifice our homes. Even in that
extremity we did not choose to desert the cause of the allies who
still resisted, and by dispersing ourselves to become useless to them;
but we embarked and fought, taking no offense at your failure to
assist us sooner. We maintain then that we rendered you a service at
least as great as you rendered us. The cities from which you came to
help us were still inhabited and you might hope to return to them;
your concern was for yourselves and not for us; at any rate, you
remained at a distance while we had anything to lose. But we went
forth from a city which was no more, and fought for one of which there
was small hope; and yet we saved ourselves, and bore our part in
saving you. If, in order to preserve our land, like other states, we
had gone over to the Persians at first, or afterward had not ventured
to embark because our ruin was already complete, it would have been
useless for you with your weak navy to fight at sea, but everything
would have gone quietly just as the Persian desired.
"Considering, Lacedæmonians, the energy and sagacity which we then
displayed, do we deserve to be so bitterly hated by the other Hellenes
merely because we have an empire? That empire was not acquired by
force; but you would not stay and make an end of the barbarian, and
the allies came of their own accord and asked us to be their leaders.
The subsequent development of our power was originally forced upon us
by circumstances; fear was our first motive; afterward ambition, and
then interest stept in. And when we had incurred the hatred of most of
our allies, when some of them had already revolted and been
subjugated, and you were no longer the friends to us which you once
had been, but suspicious and ill-disposed, how could we without great
risk relax our hold? For the cities as fast as they fell away from us
would have gone over to you. And no man is to be reproached who seizes
every possible advantage when the danger is so great.
"At all events, Lacedæmonians, we may retort that you, in the exercise
of your supremacy, manage the cities of Peloponnesus to suit your own
views, and that if you, and not we, had persevered in the command of
the allies long enough to be hated, you would have been quite as
intolerable to them as we are, and would have been compelled, for the
sake of your own safety, to rule with a strong hand. An empire was
offered to us: can you wonder that, acting as human nature always
will, we accepted it, and refused to give it up again, constrained by
three all powerful motives, ambition, fear, interest? We are not the
first who have aspired to rule; the world has ever held that the
weaker must be kept down by the stronger. And we think that we are
worthy of power; and there was a time when you thought so too; but now
when you mean expediency you talk about justice. Did justice ever
deter any one from taking by force whatever he could? Men who indulge
the natural ambition of empire deserve credit if they are in any
degree more careful of justice than they need be. How moderate we are
would speedily appear if others took our place; indeed, our very
moderation, which should be our glory, has been unjustly converted
into a reproach.
"For because in our suits with our allies, regulated by treaty, we do
not even stand upon our rights, but have instituted the practise of
deciding them at Athens and by Athenian law, we are supposed to be
litigious. None of our opponents observes why others, who exercise
dominion elsewhere and are less moderate than we are in their dealings
with their subjects, escape this reproach. Why is it? Because men who
practise violence have no longer any need of law. But we are in the
habit of meeting our allies on terms of equality, and, therefore, if
through some legal decision of ours, or exercise of our imperial
power, contrary to their own ideas of right, they suffer ever so
little, they are not grateful for our moderation in leaving them so
much, but are far more offended at their trifling loss than if we had
from the first plundered them in the face of day, laying aside all
thought of law. For then they would themselves have admitted that the
weaker must give way to the stronger. Mankind resents injustice more
than violence, because the one seems to be an unfair advantage taken
by an equal, the other is the irresistible force of a superior. They
were patient under the yoke of the Persian, who inflicted on them far
more grievous wrongs; but now our dominion is odious in their eyes.
And no wonder: the ruler of the day is always detested by his
subjects. And should your empire supplant ours, may not you lose the
good-will which you owe to the fear of us? Lose it you certainly will,
if you mean again to exhibit the temper of which you gave a specimen
when, for a short time, you led the confederacy against the Persian.
For the institutions under which you live are incompatible with those
of foreign states; and further, when any of you goes abroad, he
respects neither these nor any other Hellenic laws.
"Do not then be hasty in deciding a question which is serious; and do
not, by listening to the misrepresentations and complaints of others,
bring trouble upon yourselves. Realize, while there is time, the
inscrutable nature of war; and how when protracted it generally ends
in becoming a mere matter of chance, over which neither of us can have
any control, the event being equally unknown and equally hazardous to
both. The misfortune is that in their hurry to go to war, men begin
with blows, and when a reverse comes upon them, then have recourse to
words. But neither you nor we have as yet committed this mistake; and
therefore while both of us can still choose the prudent part, we tell
you not to break the peace or violate your oaths. Let our differences
be determined by arbitration, according to the treaty. If you refuse,
we call to witness the gods by whom you have sworn that you are the
authors of the war; and we will do our best to strike in return."
When the Lacedæmonians had heard the charges brought by the allies
against the Athenians, and their rejoinder, they ordered everybody but
themselves to withdraw, and deliberated alone. The majority were
agreed that there was now a clear case against the Athenians, and that
they must fight at once.[25]