5
For we see both the gravity of our dangers and their imminence on every side: you are aware that empire is for those who command the sea, that the KingArtaxerxes II., who reigned 405-362 B.C. has control of the money, that the Greeks are in thrall to those who are able to spend it, that our master possesses many ships, and that the despot of SicilyDionysius I of Syracuse, who reigned 405-367 B.C. has many also.
6
We ought therefore to relinquish our mutual warfare, and with a single purpose in our hearts to secure our salvation; to feel shame for past events and fear for those that lie in the future, and to compete with our ancestors, by whom the foreigner, in grasping at the land of others, was deprived of his own, and who expelled the despots and established freedom for all in common.
7
But I wonder at the Lacedaemonians most of all: what can be their policy in tolerating the devastation of Greece, when they are leaders of the Greeks by the just claims alike of their inborn valor and their martial science, and when they alone have their dwelling-places unravaged though unwalled and, strangers to faction and defeat, observe always the same rules of life? Wherefore it may be expected that the liberty they possess will never die, and that having achieved the salvation of Greece in her past dangers they are providing against those that are to come.
