21.
Thus spake the Lacedaemonians, thinking that in times past the Athenians had coveted peace and been hindered of it by them, and that being now offered, they would gladly accept of it.
[2]
But they, having these men intercepted in the island, thought they might compound at pleasure and aspired to greater matters.
To this they were set on for the most part by Cleon, the son of Cleaenetus, a popular man at that time and of greatest sway with the multitude.
[3]
He persuaded them to give this answer: ‘That they in the island ought first to deliver up their arms, and come themselves to Athens;
and when they should be there, if the Lacedaemonians would make restitution of Nisaea and Pegae and Troezen and Achaia’—the which they had not won in war but had received by former treaty when the Athenians, being in distress and at that time in more need of peace than now, [yielded them up into their hands]—‘then they should have their men again, and peace should be made for as long as they both should think good.’
The English works of Thomas Hobbes of Malmesbury. Thucydides. Thomas Hobbes. translator. London. Bohn. 1843.
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