Justice and honesty will be the first topics of our speech, especially as we are asking for alliance; because we know that there can never be any solid friendship between individuals, or union between communities that is worth the name, unless the parties be persuaded of each other's honesty, and be generally congenial the one to the other; since from difference in feeling springs also difference in conduct. Between ourselves and the Athenians alliance began, when you withdrew from the Median war and they remained to finish the business. But we did not become allies of the Athenians for the subjugation of the Hellenes, but allies of the Hellenes for their liberation from the Mede; and as long as the Athenians led us fairly we followed them loyally; but when we saw them relax their hostility to the Mede, to try to compass the subjection of the allies, then our apprehensions began. Unable, however, to unite and defend themselves, on account of the number of confederates that had votes, all the allies were enslaved, except ourselves and the Chians, who continued to send our contingents as independent and nominally free. Trust in Athens as a leader, however, we could no longer feel, judging by the examples already given; it being unlikely that she would reduce our fellow-confederates, and not do the same by us who were left, if ever she had the power.
The Greek stands ready in the workroom; the English is served. Both faces will read together.
Mede — a candidate entry
History of the Peloponnesian War, Thucydides — translated by Richard Crawley, 1874
Perseus Digital Library — Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War (Richard Crawley translation) · Richard Crawley (1874); J. M. Dent / E. P. Dutton edition (1910); Perseus Project digital edition
license: public-domain (the Crawley translation — Crawley 1840-1893, per the shelf copy's own bibliographical note; the digitized Dent/Dutton edition is pre-1930); Perseus digital edition CC BY-SA 4.0, attribution recorded per ops/corpus-staging/SOURCES.md pattern