“Soldiers, I am not surprised at your wrath, or that you deem it monstrous treatment so to be cheated; but consider what will be the consequences if we gratify our indignation, and in return for such deception, avenge ourselves on the Lacedaemonians here present, and plunder an innocent city.  We shall be declared enemies of the Lacedaemonians and their allies; and what sort of war that will be, we need not go far to conjecture.  I take it, you have not forgotten some quite recent occurrences.  We Athenians entered into war against the Lacedaemonians and their allies with a fleet consisting of not less than three hundred line-of-battle ships, including those in dock as well as those afloat.  We had vast treasures stored up in the city, and a yearly income which, derived from home or foreign sources, amounted to no less than a thousand talents.  Our empire included all the 27 islands, and we were possessed of numerous cities both in Asia and in Europe.  Amongst others, this very Byzantium, where we are now, was ours; and yet in the end we were vanquished, as you all very well know.

“What, must we anticipate, will now be our fate?  The Lacedaemonians have not only their old allies, but the Athenians and those who were at that time allies of Athens are added to them.  Tissaphernes and all the rest of the Asiatics on the seaboard are our foes, not to speak of our arch-enemy, the king himself, up yonder, whom we came to deprive of his empire, and to kill, if possible.  I ask then, with all these banded together against us, is there any one so insensate as to imagine that we can survive the contest?  For heaven’s sake, let us not go mad or loosely throw away our lives in war with our own native cities—­nay, our own friends, our kith and our kin; for in one or other of the cities they are all included.  Every city will march against us, and not unjustly, if, after refusing to hold one single barbarian city by right of conquest, we seize the first Hellenic city that we come to and make it a ruinous heap.  For my part, my prayer is that before I see such things wrought by you, I, at any rate, may lie ten thousand fathoms under ground!  My counsel to you, as Hellenes, is to try and obtain your just rights, through obedience to those who stand at the head of Hellas; and if so be that you fail in those demands, why, being more sinned against than sinning, need we rob ourselves of Hellas too?  At present, I propose that we should send to Anaxibius and tell him that we have made an entrance into the city, not meditating violence, but merely to discover if he and his will show us any good; for if so, it is well; but of otherwise, at least we will let him see that he does not shut the door upon us as dupes and fools.  We know the meaning of discipline; we turn our backs and go.”