68.
‘Against such confusion, therefore, and against the fortune of our greatest enemies now betraying itself into our hands, let us fight with anger, and with an opinion not only that it is most lawful to fulfil our hearts' desire upon those our enemies that justified their coming hither as a righting of themselves against an assailant, but also that to be revenged on an enemy is both most natural and, as is most commonly said, the sweetest thing in the world.
[2]
And that they are our enemies, and our greatest enemies, you all well enough know, seeing them come hither into our dominion to bring us into servitude.
Wherein if they had sped, they had put the men to the greatest tortures, the women and children to the greatest dishonesty, and the whole city to the most ignominious name in the world.
[3]
In regard whereof, it is not fit that any of you should be so tender as to think it gain if they go away without putting you to further danger;
for so they mean to do, though they get the victory;
but effecting (as it is likely we shall) what we intend, both to be revenged of these and to deliver unto all Sicily their liberty, which they enjoyed before but now is more assured.
Honourable is that combat and rare are those hazards wherein the failing bringeth little loss and the success a great deal of profit.’
The English works of Thomas Hobbes of Malmesbury. Thucydides. Thomas Hobbes. translator. London. Bohn. 1843.
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