112.
So the Athenians went aside from the conference;
and the Melians, after they had decreed the very same things which before they had spoken, made answer unto them in this manner:
[2]
‘Men of Athens, our resolution is no other than what you have heard before;
nor will we, in a small portion of time, overthrow that liberty in which our city hath remained for the space of seven hundred years since it was first founded.
But trusting to the fortune by which the gods have preserved it hitherto and unto the help of men, that is, of the Lacedaemonians, we will do our best to maintain the same.
[3]
But this we offer: to be your friends, enemies to neither side, and you to depart out of our land, after agreement such as we shall both think fit.’
The English works of Thomas Hobbes of Malmesbury. Thucydides. Thomas Hobbes. translator. London. Bohn. 1843.
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