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63.
'Once more, you are bound to maintain the imperial dignity of your city in which you
all1 take pride; for you should not covet the glory unless you will endure the toil.
And do not imagine that you are fighting about a simple issue, freedom or slavery; you
have an empire to lose, and there is the danger to which the hatred of your imperial
rule has exposed you.
[2]
Neither can you resign your power, if, at this crisis, any timorous or inactive spirit
is for thus playing the honest man.
For by this time your empire has become a tyranny which in the opinion of mankind may
have been unjustly gained, but which cannot be safely surrendered.
[3]
The men of whom I was speaking, if they could find followers, would soon ruin a city,
and if they were to go and found a state of their own, would equally ruin that.
For inaction is secure only when arrayed by the side of activity; nor is it expedient
or safe for a sovereign, but only for a subject state, to be a servant.
1 Your empire is at stake, and it is too late to resign it; for you have already incurred the hatred of mankind.
Thucydides translated into English; with introduction, marginal analysis, notes, and indices. Volume 1. Thucydides. Benjamin Jowett. translator. Oxford. Clarendon Press. 1881.
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