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[4] Never mind the words I use but learn from the facts. As for us, we till the entire Peloponnesus, but you only a small part1 of Attica. While to the Laconians the war has brought many allies, from the Athenians it has taken away as many as it has given to their enemies. For us the richest king to be found in the inhabited world2 defrays the cost of the war, for you the most poverty-stricken folk of the inhabited world.

1 From Deceleia, some 13 miles north and a little east of Athens, which the Lacedaemonians had seized and fortified, they could raid the larger part of Attica.

2 The King of Persia, who was contributing to the maintenance of the Peloponnesian fleet, but not as yet so generously as toward the end of the war.

Diodorus Siculus. Diodorus of Sicily in Twelve Volumes with an English Translation by C. H. Oldfather. Vol. 4-8. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press; London: William Heinemann, Ltd. 1989.

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