Antidosis (121-125)

These are great things and compel our admiration; but the facts which I now give entitle him to even greater praise. For although he saw that you respected only the kind of generals who threatened and tried to terrify the other cities and were always for setting up some revolution or other among your allies, he did not fall in with your prejudices, nor was he willing to enhance his own reputation to the injury of Athens; on the contrary, he made it the object of his thought and of his actions to see to it that no one of the cities of Hellas should be afraid of him, but that all should feel secure excepting those which did wrong;

for he realized that men who are afraid hate those who inspire this feeling in them, and that it was due to the friendship of the other cities that Athens rose to great power and prosperity, just as it was due to their hatred that she barely escaped the most disastrous fate. Bearing in mind these facts, he used the power of Athens in order to subdue her enemies, and the force of his own character in order to win the good will of the rest of the world, believing that this is a greater and nobler kind of generalship than to conquer many cities many times in battle.

So concerned was he that none of the cities should in the slightest degree suspect him of sinister designs that whenever he intended to take his fleet to any of the cities which had been remiss in their contributions,[*] he sent word to the authorities and announced his coming beforehand, lest his appearance without warning in front of their ports might plunge them into disquiet and confusion;

and if he happened to harbor his fleet in any place, he would never permit his soldiers to plunder and pillage and sack the people’s houses, but took as great precautions to prevent such an occurrence as the owners would take to guard their own possessions; for his mind was not upon winning for himself the good opinion of his soldiers by such license, but upon winning for Athens the good opinion of the Hellenes.

Moreover, when cities had been taken by him in battle, he would treat them with a mildness and a consideration for their rights which no one else has ever shown to allies in war; for he thought that if he showed such an attitude toward those who had made war upon him, he could give no greater guarantee that he would never bring himself to wrong the others.