77.
"But in truth we come not to accuse the Athenian state, though it be obnoxious enough, before you that know sufficiently the injuries they have done, but far rather to accuse ourselves, who, though we have the examples before our eyes of the Grecians there brought into servitude for want of defending themselves, and though we see them now, with the same sophistry of replanting the Leontines and their kindred and aiding of their confederates the Egestaeans, prepare to do the like unto us, do not yet unite ourselves and with better courage make them to know that we be not Ionians nor Hellespontines nor islanders, that changing serve always the Mede or some other master, but that we are Dorians and freemen, come to dwell here in Sicily out of Peloponnesus, a free country.
[2]
Shall we stand still till we be taken city after city when we know that that only way we are conquerable;
and when we find them wholly bent to this, that by drawing some from our alliance with their words, and causing some to wear each other out with war upon hope of their confederacy, and winning others by other fit language, they may have the power to do us hurt?
But we think, though one of the same island perish, yet if he dwell far off, the danger will not come to us;
and before it arrive, we count unhappy only him that suffereth before us.
The English works of Thomas Hobbes of Malmesbury. Thucydides. Thomas Hobbes. translator. London. Bohn. 1843.
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