Think, too, of the great part that is played by the unpredictable in war: think of it now, before you are actually comitted to war. The longer a war … - Thucydides

when people are entering upon a war they do things the wrong way round. Action comes first, and it is only when they have already suffered that they begin to think.

The longer a war lasts, the more things tend to depend on accidents. Neither you nor we can see into them: We have to abide their outcome in the dark.

[T]heir swaying bodies reflected the agitation of their minds, and they suffered the worst agony of all, ever just within the reach of safety or just on the point of destruction.

I could have wished that the reputations of many brave men were not to be imperilled in the mouth of a single individual, to stand or fall according as he spoke well or ill. For it is hard to speak properly upon a subject where it is even difficult to convince your hearers that you are speaking the truth. On the one hand, the friend who is familiar with every fact of the story may think that some point has not been set forth with that fullness which he wishes and knows it to deserve; on the other, he who is a stranger to the matter may be led by envy to suspect exaggeration if he hears anything above his own nature. For men can endure to hear others praised only so long as they can severally persuade themselves of their own ability to equal the actions recounted: when this point is passed, envy comes in and with it incredulity.

For these reasons or reasons very like them he was killed
who, of all the Hellenes in my time, least deserved to come
to so miserable an end, since the whole of his life had been devoted
to the study and the practice of virtue.