On the Peace with Sparta (26-30)

Perfectly well, say some, provided that we protect Corinth and are allied with Argos. But if Sparta attacks Argos, shall we go to her help or not? For we shall assuredly have no choice but to follow the one course or the other. Yet should we withhold our help, we are left without a single argument wherewith to justify ourselves or to show that Argos has not the right to act as she pleases. On the other hand, should we give her our aid, is not a conflict with Sparta inevitable? And to what end? To enable us to lose our own territory as well as that of Corinth in the event of defeat, and to secure Corinth for Argos in the event of victory. Will not that prove to be our object in fighting?

Now let us examine the Argive proposals in their turn. Argos urges us to join Corinth and herself in maintaining the war; yet in virtue of a private peace which she has negotiated,[*] she has withdrawn her own territory from the field of hostilities. She forbids us to place the least trust in Sparta, although all our allies are joining us in making peace; yet she admits that Sparta’s treaty with herself, which was made without any such support, has been faithfully observed. Again, Argos calls her own peace traditional, but forbids the other Greeks to secure a traditional peace for themselves: the reason being that she expects to annex Corinth by prolonging the war, and after gaining control of the state which has always controlled her, she hopes to extend her influence over her partners in victory as well.

Such are the prospects to which we are committed; and we have a choice between two alternatives, that of joining Argos in fighting Sparta, and that of joining Boeotia in making common peace with her. Now what alarms me above all else, gentlemen, is our old, old fault of invariably abandoning powerful friends in preference for weak, and of going to war for the sake of others when, as far as we ourselves are concerned, we could perfectly well remain at peace.

Thus—and it is only by calling the past to mind that one can properly determine policy—we began by making a truce with the Great King and establishing a permanent accord with him, thanks to the diplomacy of my mother’s brother, Epilycus, the son of Teisander.[*] But later the king’s runaway slave, Amorges,[*] induced us to discard the powerful support of his master as worthless. We chose instead what we imagined to be a more advantageous understanding with Amorges himself. The king in his anger replied by allying himself with Sparta,[*] and furnished her with five thousand talents with which to prosecute the war; nor was he satisfied until he had overthrown our empire. That is one instance of such policy.

Again, an urgent request came to us from Syracuse; she was ready to end our differences by a pact of friendship, to end war by peace; and she pointed out the advantages of an alliance with herself, if only we would consent to it, over those of the existing alliance with Segesta and Catana.[*] But once more we chose war instead of peace, Segesta instead of Syracuse; instead of staying at home as the allies of Syracuse, we chose to send an armament to Sicily. The result was the loss of a large part of the Athenian and allied forces, the bravest being the first to fall; a reckless waste of ships, money, and resources: and the return of the survivors in disgrace.