The Peloponnesian War
by Thucydides (Translated by Rex Warner)
Penguin Books – 1954 (1980)
There is often no more logic in the course of events
than there is in the plans of men,
and this is why we usually blame our luck
when things happen in ways that we do not expect.
(Pericles, in his speech to the Athenian Assembly, 432-431 BCE)
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One does not feel sad at not having some good thing which is outside one’s experience:
real grief is felt at the loss of something which one is used to.
(Pericles, in his speech to the Athenian Assembly, 432-431 BCE)
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A man who has the knowledge but lacks the power to clearly express it
is no better off if he never had any ideas at all.
(Pericles, in his speech to the Athenian Assembly, 430 BCE)
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The fact is that when great prosperity comes suddenly and unexpectedly to a state,
it usually breeds arrogance;
in most cases it is safer for people to enjoy an average amount of success
rather than something which is out of all proportion;
and it is easier, I should say, to ward off hardship than to maintain happiness.
(Cleon, in his speech to the Athenian Assembly, 427 BCE)
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Has not peace its honors and its glories,
less attended by danger than those to be won in war?
(Hermocrates, in his speech to the Syracusans, 424 BCE)
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Such was the effect on the Athenians of their present good fortune
that they though that nothing could go wrong with them;
that the possible and the difficult were alike attainable,
whether the forces employed were large or wholly inadequate.
It was their surprising success in most directions
which caused this state of mind and suggested to them
that their strength was equal with their hopes.
(Fighting at Megara, 424)
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They made a proclamation to the effect that
the helots should choose out of their own number
those who claimed to have done the best service to Sparta on the battlefield,
implying that they would be given their freedom.
This was,however,
a test conducted in the belief that the ones who showed most spirit
and came forward first to claim their freedom
would be the ones most likely to turn against Sparta.
So about 2,000 were selected, who put garlands on their heads
and went round the temples under the impression that they were being made free men.
Soon afterwards, however, the Spartans did away with them,
and no one ever knew exactly how each one of them was killed.
(Brasidas in Thrace, 424)
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One cannot regulate fortune to fit in with what one has decided one wants to happen.
(The Debate at Camarina, 415 / 414 BCE)