To Archidamus (6-10)

It is not, I assure you, because I am ambitious to be an orator, nor because I am prepared to change my former mode of life that I have spoken as I have about these things, but because I want to urge you not to reject any time of life, but to seek among all ages for the man who can offer good advice on the problems which now confront us;

for never since we have dwelt in Sparta has any war or any peril come upon us in which so much has been at stake as in this question which we are now assembled to discuss. For while in times past we fought that we might have dominion over the other states, now we must fight that we ourselves may not be forced to do their bidding—which is proof of a free spirit, to preserve which no hardship on earth is too great to endure, not for us alone, but for all others as well who have not renounced every claim to manhood but still make even slight pretensions to courage.

As for myself, at any rate, if I may speak my own mind, I had rather die this moment for not complying with the dictates of the foe than live many times my allotted span of life at the price of voting what the Thebans demand. For I should feel disgraced, I who am descended from Heracles,[*] who am the son of the ruling king and likely myself to attain to this honor,[*] if I did not strive with all the strength that is in me to prevent this territory, which our fathers left to us, from becoming the possession of our slaves.

And I expect you also to share my feelings when you reflect that, while until the present day we seem to have been unfortunate in our contest with the Thebans,[*] and to have been overcome in body because of the mistakes of our leader,[*] yet up to this moment we possess our spirits unconquered;

but that if through fear of the dangers which now threaten us we relinquish anything that is ours, we shall justify the boasts of the Thebans, and erect against ourselves a trophy far more imposing and conspicuous than that which was raised at Leuctra; for the one will stand as a memorial of our ill-fortune; the other, of our abject spirit. Let no man, therefore, persuade you to fasten such a disgrace upon the state.