63.
"And we will endeavour to prove now that the Grecians have been rather wronged by you and that you are more worthy of all manner of punishment.
You became, you say, confederates and denizens of Athens for to be righted against us.
[2]
Against us then only the Athenians should have come with you and not you with them have gone to the invasion of the rest, especially when if the Athenians would have led you whither you would not, you had the league of the Lacedaemonians made with you against the Medes, which you so often object, to have resorted unto, which was sufficient not only to have protected you from us but, which is the main matter, to have secured you to take what course you had pleased.
But voluntarily and without constraint you rather chose to follow the Athenians.
[3]
And you say it had been a dishonest thing to have betrayed your benefactors.
But it is more dishonest and more unjust by far to betray the Grecians universally, to whom you have sworn, than to betray the Athenians alone, especially when these go about to deliver Greece from subjection and the other to subdue it.
[4]
Besides, the requital you make the Athenians is not proportionable nor free from dishonesty.
For you, as you say yourselves, brought in the Athenians to right you against injuries;
and you co-operate with them in injuring others.
And howsoever, it is not so dishonest to leave a benefit unrequited as to make such a requital, as though justly due cannot be justly done.
The English works of Thomas Hobbes of Malmesbury. Thucydides. Thomas Hobbes. translator. London. Bohn. 1843.
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