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For they that are afraid of anything themselves will put the city into affright that they may shadow their own with the common fear. And this may the reports do at this time, not raised by chance, but framed on purpose by such as always trouble the state.
But if you mean to deliberate wisely, make not your reckoning by the reports of these men but by that which wise men and men of great experience, such as I hold the Athenians to be, are likely to do.
For it is not probable that, leaving the Peloponnesians and the war there not yet surely ended, they should willingly come hither to a new war no less the former, seeing, in my opinion, they may be glad that we invade not them, so many and so great cities as we are.
"And if indeed they come, as these men say they will, I think Sicily more sufficient to dispatch the war than Peloponnesus, as being in all respects better furnished, and that this our own city is much stronger than the army which they say is now coming, though it were twice as great as it is. For I know they neither bring horses with them nor can they get any here, save only a few from the Egestaeans, nor have men of arms so many as we, in that they are to bring them by sea. For it is a hard matter to come so far as this by sea, though they carried no men of arms in their galleys at all, if they carry with them all other their necessaries, which cannot be small against so great a city.