19.
"The Lacedaemonians call you to a peace and end of the war, giving you peace and alliance and much other friendship and mutual familiarity, requiring for the same [only] those their men that are in the island, though also we think it better for both sides not to try the chance of war, whether it fall out that by some occasion of safety offered they escape by force, or being expugned by siege should be more in your power than they be.
[2]
For we are of this mind, that great hatred is most safely cancelled not when one that having beaten his enemy and gotten much the better in the war brings him through necessity to take an oath and to make peace on unequal terms, but when having it in his power lawfully so to do if he please, he overcome him likewise in goodness, and, contrary to what he expects, be reconciled to him on moderate conditions.
[3]
For in this case, his enemy being obliged not to seek revenge as one that had been forced, but to requite his goodness, will, for shame, be the more inclined to the conditions agreed on.
[4]
And, naturally, to those that relent of their own accord men give way reciprocally with content;
but against the arrogant they will hazard all, even when in their own judgments they be too weak.
The English works of Thomas Hobbes of Malmesbury. Thucydides. Thomas Hobbes. translator. London. Bohn. 1843.
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