The Complete Works of Thucydides

by Thucydides

policy of interference because we have many interests to guard. Lastly, we come now, as we came before, not uninvited, but upon your own invitation to assist those of you who are suffering wrong. Do not sit in judgment upon our actions, or seek to school us into moderation and so divert us from our purpose, (the time for good advice has gone by), but in as far as our busy, meddlesome spirit can be of service to you as well as to ourselves, take and use us, remembering that these qualities, so far from being injurious to all alike, actually benefit great numbers of the Hellenes. For in all places — however remote from our sphere — both he who fears and he who intends injustice, the one because he has a lively hope that from us he will obtain redress, and the other because he may well be alarmed for the consequences if we answer to the call, must both alike submit, the one to learn moderation against his will, the other to receive at our hands a deliverance which costs him nothing. Do not reject the common salvation which is offered to you at this moment, as well as to all who seek it, but following the example of your countrymen join with us and, instead of having always to watch the Syracusans, assert your equality and threaten them as they have long been threatening you.’ [88] Thus spoke Euphemus. Now the Camarinaeans were swayed by opposite feelings; they had a good will to the Athenians, tempered by a suspicion that they might be intending to enslave Sicily, whereas the...