(Pericles:) 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… - Thucydides
" "(Pericles:) 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.
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.
(Book 2 Chapter 63.1-2)
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About Thucydides
Thucydides (or Thoukydides)(c. 472 BC – c. 400 BC) was an ancient Greek historian, author of the History of the Peloponnesian War, which recounts the 5th century BC war between Sparta and Athens. This work is widely regarded a classic and represents the first work of its kind.
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Θουκυδίδης
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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
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(Corinthians:) The spirit of trust, Lacedaemonians, which animates your own political and social life, makes you distrust others who, like ourselves, have something unpleasant to say, and this temper of mind, though favourable to moderation, too often leaves you in ignorance of what is going on outside your own country, but instead of taking our words to heart, you chose to suspect that we only spoke from interested motives.
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