Book 1
It must therefore be your part, we offering and you accepting the league, to begin with them and to anticipate plotting rather than to counterplot against them.
"If they object injustice in that you receive their colony, henceforth let them learn that all colonies so long as they receive no wrong from their mother city, so long they honour her; but when they suffer injury from her, they then become alienate; for they are not sent out to be the slaves of them that stay, but to be their equals.
That they have done us the injury is manifest; for when we offered them a judicial trial of the controversy touching Epidamnus, they chose to prosecute their quarrel rather by arms than judgment.
Now let that which they have done unto us, who are their kindred, serve you for some argument not to be seduced by their demands and made their instruments before you be aware. For he lives most secure that hath fewest benefits bestowed upon him by his enemies to repent of.
"As for the articles between you and the Lacedaemonians, they are not broken by receiving us into your league, because we are in league with neither party.
For there it is said that whosoever is confederate of neither party may have access lawfully to either.
And sure it were very unreasonable that the Corinthians should have the liberty to man their fleet out of the cities comprised in the league, and out of any other parts of Greece, and not the least out of places in your dominion, and we be denied both the league now propounded and also all other help from whencesoever. And if they impute it to you as a fault that you grant our request, we shall take it for a greater that you grant it not.
For therein you shall reject us that are invaded and be none of your enemies; and them, who are your enemies and make the invasion, you shall not only not oppose but also suffer to raise unlawful forces in your dominions. Whereas you ought in truth either not to suffer them to take up mercenaries in your states, or else to send us succours also in such manner as you shall think good yourselves, but especially by taking us into your league and so aiding us.
Many commodities, as we said in the beginning, we show unto you, but this for the greatest: that whereas they are your enemies (which is manifest enough) and not weak ones but able to hurt those that stand up against them, we offer you a naval, not a terrestrial, league; and the want of one of these is not as the want of the other. Nay, rather your principal aim, if it could be done, should be to let none at all have shipping but yourselves, or at least, if that cannot be, to make such your friends as are best furnished therewith.
If any man now think thus that what we have spoken is indeed profitable, but fears, if it were admitted, the league were thereby broken, let that man consider that his fear joined with strength will make his enemies fear, and his confidence, having (if he reject us) so much the less strength, will so much the less be feared. Let him also remember that he is now in consultation no less concerning Athens than Corcyra, wherein he forecasteth none of the best (considering the present state of affairs) that makes a question whether against a war at hand and only not already on foot he should join unto it or not that city which with most important advantages or disadvantages will be friend or enemy.
For it lieth so conveniently for sailing into Italy and Sicily that it can both prohibit any fleet to come to Peloponnesus from thence and convoy any coming from Peloponnesus thither, and is also for divers other uses most commodious.
And to comprehend all in brief, consider whether we be to be abandoned or not by this. For Greece having but three navies of any account, yours, ours, and that of Corinth, if you suffer the other two to join in one by letting the Corinthians first seize us, you shall have to fight by sea at one time both against the Corcyraeans and the Peloponnesians; whereas by making league with us, you shall, with your fleet augmented, have to deal against the Peloponnesians alone.
Thus spake the Corcyraeans, and after them the Corinthians, thus:
"The Corcyraeans in their oration having made mention not only of your taking them into league, but also that they are wronged and unjustly warred on, it is also necessary for us first to answer concerning both those points, and then afterwards to proceed to the rest of what we have to say: to the end you may foreknow that ours are the safest demands for you to embrace, and that you may upon reason reject the needy estate of those others.
Whereas they allege in defence of their refusing to enter league with other cities that the same hath proceeded from modesty, the truth is that they took up that custom not from any virtue but mere wickedness, as being unwilling to have any confederate for a witness of their evil actions, and to be put to blush by calling them.
Besides, their city being by the situation sufficient within itself, giveth them this point, that when they do any man a wrong, they themselves are the judges of the same, and not men appointed by consent. For going seldom forth against other nations, they intercept such as by necessity are driven into their harbour.
And in this consisteth their goodly pretext for not admitting confederates, not because they would not be content to accompany others in doing evil, but because they had rather do it alone; that where they were too strong, they might oppress; and when there should be none to observe them, the less of the profit might be shared from them; and that they might escape the shame when they took anything.
But if they had been honest men (as they themselves say they are), by how much the less they are obnoxious to accusation, so much the more means they have, by giving and taking what is due, to make their honesty appear.
"But they are not such, neither towards others nor towards us. For being our colony, they have not only been ever in revolt, but now they also make war upon us and say they were not sent out to be injured by us.
But we say again that we did not send them forth to be scorned by them but to have the leading of them and to be regarded by them as is fit.
For our other colonies both honour and love us much:
which is an argument, seeing the rest are pleased with our actions, that these have no just cause to be offended alone, and that without some manifest wrong we should not have had colour to war against them.
But say we had been in an error, it had been well done in them to have given way to our passion, as it had been also dishonourable in us to have insulted over their modesty. But through pride and wealth they have done wrong, both in many other things and also in this; that Epidamnus being ours which whilst it was vexed with wars they never claimed, as soon as we came to relieve it, was forcibly seized by them, and so holden.
"They say now that before they took it, they offered to put the cause to trial of judgment. But you are not to think that such a one will stand to judgment as hath advantage and is sure already of what he offereth to plead for, but rather he that before the trial will admit equality in the matter itself as well as in the pleading.
Whereas contrarily, these men offered not this specious pretence of a judicial trial before they had besieged the city but after, when they saw we meant not to put it up. And now hither they be come, not content to have been faulty in that business themselves but to get in you, into their confederacy? no, but into their conspiracy, and to receive them in this name that they are enemies to us.
But they should have come to you then when they were most in safety, not now when we have the wrong and they the danger, and when you that never partaked of their power must impart unto them of your aid, and having been free from their faults, must have an equal share from us of the blame. They should communicate their power before hand that mean to make common the issue of the same, and they that share not in the crimes ought also to have no part in the sequel of them.
"Thus it appears that we come for our parts with arguments of equity and right, whereas the proceedings of these other are nothing else but violence and rapine. And now we shall show you likewise that you cannot receive them in point of justice.
For although it be in the articles that the cities written with neither of the parties may come in to whether of them they please, yet it holds not for such as do so to the detriment of either, but only for those that, having revolted from neither part, want protection and bring not a war with them instead of peace to those (if they be wise) that receive them.
For you shall not only be auxiliaries unto these but to us, instead of confederates, enemies. For if you go with them, it follows they must defend themselves not without you.
You should do most uprightly to stand out of both our ways; and if not that, then to take our parts against the Corcyraeans (for between the Corinthians and you there are articles of peace, but with the Corcyraeans you never had so much as a truce) and not to constitute a new law of receiving one another's rebels.
For neither did we give our votes against you when the Samians revolted, though the rest of Peloponnesus was divided in opinion, but plainly alleged that it was reason that everyone should have liberty to proceed against their own revolting confederates.
And if you shall once receive and aid the doers of wrong, it will be seen that they will come over as fast from you to us; and you shall set up a law not so much against us as against yourselves.
"These are the points of justice we had to show you conformable to the law of the Grecians. And now we come to matter of advice and claim of favour, which (being not so much your enemies as to hurt you nor such friends as to surcharge you), we say, ought in the present occasion to be granted us by way of requital.
For when you had want of long barks against the Aeginetae a little before the Medan war, you had twenty lent to you by the Corinthians; which benefit of ours, and that other against the Samians when by us it was that the Peloponnesians did not aid them, was the cause both of your victory against the Aeginetae and of the punishment of the Samians.
And these things were done for you in a season when men, going to fight against their enemies, neglect all respects but of victory. For even a man's domestic affairs are ordered the worse through eagerness of present contention.
"Which benefits considering, and the younger sort taking notice of them from the elder, be you pleased to defend us now in the like manner. And have not this thought: that though in what we have spoken there be equity, yet, if the war should arise, the profit would be found in the contrary.
For utility followeth those actions most wherein we do the least wrong; besides that the likelihood of the war, wherewith the Corcyraeans frighting you go about to draw you to injustice, is yet obscure and not worthy to move you to a manifest and present hostility with the Corinthians; but it were rather fit for you, indeed, to take away our former jealousies concerning the Megareans.
For the last good turn done in season, though but small, is able to cancel an accusation of much greater moment.
Neither suffer yourselves to be drawn on by the greatness of the navy which now shall be at your service by this league. For to do no injury to our equals is a firmer power than that addition of strength which, puffed up with present shows, men are to acquire with danger.
And since we be come to this, which once before we said at Lacedaemon, that everyone ought to proceed as he shall think good against his own confederates, we claim that liberty now of you; and that you that have been helped by our votes will not hurt us now by yours, but render like for like;