On the Peace with Sparta (33)

A number of you are extremely anxious to see peace concluded as quickly as possible. In fact, according to those in question, the forty days allowed you for consideration are a waste of time and a concession which we delegates have done wrong to obtain, as the one object of our being sent to Sparta with full powers was to avoid any further reference of the matter to the Assembly. Our desire to secure our position by such a reference they call nervousness, since no one, they argue, has ever yet saved the Athenian people by open persuasion: measures for its good must be secret or disguised.