(Corcyraeans:) The policy of not making alliances lest they should endanger us at another's bidding, instead of being wisdom, as we once fancied, has… - Thucydides

straight into action. And those who contemptuously supposed that they would know all in advance, and that there was no need to seize by force what would come to them through intellect, were instead caught off guard and destroyed. [84] In Corcyra, then, most of these atrocities were first committed: all that men do in resisting those who, after ruling them abusively rather than moderately, provide opportunity for revenge; all that men resolve unjustly when, wishing to escape their usual poverty — especially if pressed by disaster — they desire their neighbors’ possessions; all that others, attacking not for gain but on clearly equal terms, impelled most by

Mankind are tolerant of the praises of others as long as each hearer thinks that he can do as well or nearly as well himself, but, when the speaker rises above him, jealousy is aroused and he begins to be incredulous.

In their troubles they naturally called to mind a verse which the elder men among them declared to have been current long ago: — A Dorian war will come and a plague with it.

There was a dispute about the precise expression some saying that limos, a famine, and not loimos, a plague, was the original word. Nevertheless, as might have been expected, for men's memories reflected their sufferings, the argument in favour of loimos prevailed at the time. But if ever in future years another Dorian war arises which happens to be accompanied by a famine, they will probably repeat the verse in the other form.

(Book 2 Chapter 54.2-3)