Plato, Protagoras, 359E. There is little of pacifism in any of Plato’s dialogues, which instead assume that war is a tragic but nonetheless natural event. His criticism of wars per se is pragmatic rather than what we would recognize as moral, and instead arises over particular modes of fighting that involved Greeks being killed by Greeks, or good hoplites brought down by their social inferiors in less than heroic skirmishes and at sea.
