On the Peace with Sparta (1-5)

I think you all understand, gentlemen, that it is better to make peace on fair terms than to continue fighting. But some of you fail to see that although our political leaders have no objection to peace in the abstract, they are opposed to such measures as would lead to it, on the ground that the people would be in very grave danger of seeing the existing constitution overthrown once peace was concluded.

Now had the Athenian people never made peace with Sparta in the past, our lack of previous experience and the untrustworthy character of the Spartans might have justified such fears. But you have done so on a number of occasions since the establishment of the democracy; and it is therefore only logical that you should first of all consider the results which followed at the time; one must use the past as a guide to the future, gentlemen.

[*] Now take the days when we were fighting Euboea[*] and controlled Megara, Pegae, and Troezen. We were seized with a longing for peace; and, in virtue of his being Sparta’s representative at Athens, we recalled Cimon’s son, Miltiades[*],who had been ostracized and was living in the Chersonese, for the one purpose of sending him to Sparta to make overtures for an armistice.

On that occasion we secured a peace of fifty years with Sparta; and both sides kept the treaty in question for thirteen. Let us consider this single instance first, gentlemen. Did the Athenian democracy ever fall during this peace? No one can show that it did. On the contrary, I will tell you how much you benefited by this peace.

To begin with, we fortified Peiraeus in the course of this period[*]: secondly, we built the Long Wall to the north[*]: then the existing fleet of old, unseaworthy triremes with which we had won Greece her independence by defeating the king of Persia and his barbarians—these existing vessels were replaced by a hundred new ones[*]: and it was at this time that we first enrolled three hundred cavalry and purchased three hundred Scythian archers[*]. Such were the benefits which Athens derived from the peace with Sparta, such the strength which was added thereby to the Athenian democracy.