Book 1
It is our business, on the other hand, to get the start of them—we offering and you accepting the alliance—and to forestall their schemes rather than to counteract them.
" But if they say that it is not right for you to receive their colonists, let them know that while every colony honours the mother-city so long as it is well treated, yet that if wronged it becomes alienated; for colonists are not sent out to be slaves to those who are left behind, but to be their equals.
And that they were in the wrong is manifest; for when challenged to arbitrate the case of Epidamnus they preferred to prosecute their charges by war rather than by equity.
And let their present treatment of us, who are their kinsmen, be a warning to you, that you be not misled by their deceit, or, if they seek aid from you directly, that you may refuse it. For whoever finds fewest occasions to regret doing favours to his opponents will ever remain most secure.
" Neither will you be breaking your treaty with the Lacedaemonians by receiving us, who are allies of neither party.
For in this treaty it is stipulated that if any of the Hellenic cities is a member of no alliance, it is at liberty to join whichever side it pleases.
And it is monstrous if they are to be allowed to recruit their navy, not only from their own allies, but also from the rest of Hellas besides, and particularly from your subjects, but are to debar us from the alliance that should naturally be open to us as well as from aid from any other quarter, and then shall count it a crime if you are persuaded to concede what we ask. Far more shall we hold you at fault if we fail to win your consent;
for you will be repulsing us who are in peril and are not your enemies, while as regards these men, who are enemies and aggressors, you will not only not be thwarting them, but will even be allowing them to get fresh forces from your own dominions. To that they have no right; but it is right that you should either prevent them from raising mercenaries in places under your control, or else send aid to us also, on whatever terms you may be induced to make; but it would be best of all for you openly to receive and help us.
And many, as we suggested at the outset,Thuc. 1.23.1. are the advantages which we can show you, and the most important of all is this, that the enemies of both of us are, as we see,So ἦσαν seems to mean here, where εἰσί was to be expected; cf. Thuc. 1.33.3. the same—which is the surest guarantee of fidelity—and these are not weak, but able to injure those who withdraw from them. And furthermore, when the alliance that is offered is with a maritime and not with a continental power, the alienation of such an ally is not a matter of indifference; on the contrary, you shouldδεῖ or συμφέρει seems to be implied. by all means, if possible, permit no one else to possess ships; but if that is impossible, you should have as your friend him who is strongest therein.
" If anyone thinks that this course is indeed expedient, but fears that if he yields to this consideration he will be breaking off the truce,The thirty-years' truce with Sparta, cf. Thuc. 1.23.4. he should understand that his fear, if backed by strength, will make his enemies more afraid;i.e. of themselves breaking the truce. whereas, if he reject our alliance, his confidencei.e. in the security of the truce. will be unsupported by might and will therefore be less formidable against enemies that are strong. He should understand, furthermore, that he is deliberating upon the interests, not so much of Corcyra, as of Athens, and that he is not making the best provision for her when, in the face of the war that is impending and all but present, he hesitates, through cautious consideration of the immediate chances, to attach to himself a country which is not made a friend or a foe except with the most momentous consequences.
For Corcyra is favourably situated for a coasting voyage either to Italy or Sicily,Ancient mariners preferred to hug the coast rather than sail through the open sea. so that you could prevent a fleet from coming thence to join the Peloponnesians, or could convoy thither a fleet from here;
and in other respects it is a most advantageous place. And by one briefest concluding word, which embraces both the whole issue and all separate facts, you will be convinced that you should not abandon us: The Hellenes have only three fleets that are worthy of mention, yours, ours, and that of the Corinthians; if, now, the Corinthians shall seize us first and you thus let two of these fleets become united, you will have to fight on the sea against both Corcyraeans and Peloponnesians at once; but if you accept us, you will be able to contend against them with your navy augmented by our own.
Thus spoke the Corcyraeans, and after them the Corinthians as follows:
" Since these Corcyraeans have not confined themselves to the question of their admission into your alliance, but have gone further and urged that we are the wrong-doers and they are unfairly attacked, we too must of necessity touch upon both these points before we proceed to our general argument, in order that you may be more definitely forewarned of the nature of tle demand we have to make, and may have good grounds for rejecting their petition. "They say that 'a wise discretion' has hitherto kept them from accepting an alliance with anyone;
but the fact is that they adopted this policy with a view to villainy and not from virtuous motives, and because they wished in their misdeeds not to have any ally as witness, or to be put to shame if they invited his presence.
Moreover, the insular and independent position of this state causes them to be arbitrary judges of the injuries they do to others instead of being judges appointed by mutual agreement; owing to the fact that they resort very little to the ports of their neighbours, but to a very large extent receive into their ports others who are compelled to put in there.
And meanwhile they have used as a cloak their specious policy of avoiding alliances, adopted not in order to avoid joining others in wrong-doing, but that they may do wrong all alone; that wherever they have power they may use violence, and wherever they can escape detection they may overreach someone; and if, perchance, they can steal a march on anyone, that they may brazen it out.
And yet, if they were really honest men, as they pretend to be, the less liable they were to attack by their neighbours the more clearly they might have demonstrated their virtuous motives by offering and accepting proposals of arbitration.
"But neither toward others nor toward us have they shown themselves honest men; on the contrary, although they are colonists of ours, they have constantly stood aloof from us, and now they are at war with us, claiming that they were not sent out to be ill treated.
But neither did we colonize them to be insulted by them, but to be their leaders and to receive from them all due reverence.
The rest of our colonies, at any rate, honour us, and by our colonists we are beloved more than is any other mother-city.
And it is clear that, if we are acceptable to the majority, it cannot be on good grounds that we are unacceptable to these alone; nor are we making war upon them in a way so unusual without being also signally wronged.
And even if we were at fault, the honourable course for them would have been to make allowance for our temper, in which case it would have been shameful for us to outrage their moderation; but in the insolence and arrogance of wealth they have wronged us in many other ways, and particularly in the case of Epidamnus, our colony, which they made no claim to when it was in distress, but seized by force the moment we came to its relief, and continue to hold.
"They pretend, forsooth, that they were the first to agree to an arbitration of the issue; but surely it is not the proposals of the one who has the advantage, and occupies a safe position when he invites arbitration, that ought to have weight, but rather those of the one who has made his actions tally with his professions before appealing to arms.
These men, however, bring forward their specious offer of a court of arbitration, not before laying siege to the place, but only after they had concluded that we would not permit it. And now, not satisfied with the blunders they have committed themselves at Epidamnus, they have come here demanding that you too at this juncture, shall be, not their allies, but their accomplices in crime, and that you shall receive them, now that they are at variance with us.
But they ought to have come to you when they were in no peril at all, and not at a time when we are victims of their injustice and they are consequently in danger, nor when you, without having had the benefit of their power before, will now have to give them a share of your aid, and, though you had nothing to do with their blunders, will have to bear an equal part of the blame we shall bestow. For only if you from the first had shared their power ought you to share the consequences also now of their acts.
" Now it has been clearly shown that we have come with proper grounds of complaint against them and that they are violent and overreaching; but you have still to learn that you have no right to receive them into your alliance.
For even though it is stipulated in the treaty that any unenrolled city may join whichever party it pleases, the provision is not intended for those who apply to one side for admission with a view to the injury of the other, but for any one who, without defrauding another state of his services, asks for protection, and any one who to those who received him will not—if they are prudent—bring war instead of peace.i.e., “who will permit peace to be maintained by their new friends if they exercise ordinary disretion.” No new allies should be received who will render ordinary discretion unavailing to prevent war, as the Corcyraeans are sure to do. But this is precisely what will be your fate if you do not listen to us.
For you will not merely become allies to them, but also enemies to us instead of being at truce with us. For it will be necessary for us, if you go with them, to include you when we proceed to take vengeance upon them.
And yet the right course for you would be, preferably, to stand aloof from us both,—or else to go with us against them, remembering that you are under treaty with the Corinthians, but have never had with the Corcyraeans even an arrangement to refrain from hostilities for a time,—and not to establish the precedent of admitting into your alliance those who revolt from the other side.
Why, when the Samians440 B.C. cf. Thuc. 1.115. revolted from you, and the other Peloponnesians were divided in their votes on the question of aiding them, we on our part did not vote against you;
on the contrary, we openly maintained that each one should discipline his own allies without interference. If you receive and assist evil-doers, you will surely find that full as many of your allies will come over to us, and the precedent you establish will be against yourselves rather than against us.
" These, then, are the considerations of right which we urge upon you—and they are adequate according to the institutions of the Hellenes; but we have also to remind you of a favour and to urge a claim based upon it;
and since we are not your enemies so as to want to injure you, nor yet your friends so that we could make use of you, we think this favour should be repaid us at the present time. It is this: when once, before the Persian war, you were deficient in battle-ships for the war you were waging with the Aeginetans, you borrowed twenty from the Corinthians. And this service and that we rendered in connection with the Samians—our preventing the Peloponnesians from aiding themenabled you to prevail over the Aeginetans and to chastise the Samians.
Both incidents happened, too, at a critical time, when men, engaged in assailing their enemies, are most indifferent to everyconsideration except victory, regarding any one who assists them as a friend, even if he was an enemy before, and any one who stands in their way as an enemy, even if he happen to be a friend; for they even mismanage their own interests in the eager rivalry of the moment.
"Bearing these favours in mind—let every young man here be told of them by one who is older—do you consider it your duty to requite us with the like. And do not think that this course is indeed equitable to urge in a speech, but that another course is advantageous if you come to war.
For advantage is most likely to result when one errs least, and the contingency of the war, with which the Corcyraeans would frighten you into wrongdoing, is still uncertain; and it is not worth while for you to be so carried away by it as to acquire an enmity with the Corinthians that will be from that moment on a manifest fact and no longer a contingency. It would be, rather, the prudent course to remove something of the suspicion which has heretofore existed on account of the MegariansReferring apparently to the exclusion of the Megarians from all harbours within the Athenian dominion and from the market at Athens, Thuc. 1.67.4.;
for the favour which comes last, if conferred at the right moment, even though a small one, can cancel a greater offence.
Nor ought you to be tempted by their offer of a great naval alliance; for to refrain from wronging equals is a surer strength than to be carried away by present appearances and seek an advantage by incurring dangers.
"But we, since events have brought us under the rule which we ourselves proclaimed at Sparta, that each should discipline his own allies, now claim from you in return the same treatment—that you who were then aided by our vote should not injure us by yours.