“Though we are met to-day, Athenians, to settle the particulars of the expedition already pronounced against Sicily, yet I think we ought to take farther counsel whether it be well to send that expedition at all; nor ought we thus hastily to plunge, at the instance of aliens, into a dangerous war noway belonging to us. To myself personally, indeed, your resolution has offered an honorable appointment, and for my own bodily danger I care as little as any man: yet no considerations of personal dignity have ever before prevented me, nor shall now prevent me, from giving you my honest opinion, however it may clash with your habitual judgments. I tell you, then, that in your desire to go to Sicily, you leave many enemies here behind you, and that you will bring upon yourselves new enemies from thence to help them. Perhaps you fancy that your truce with Sparta is an adequate protection. In name, indeed (though only in name, thanks to the intrigues of parties both here and there), that truce may stand, so long as your power remains unimpaired; but on your first serious reverses, the enemy will eagerly take the opportunity of assailing you. Some of your most powerful enemies have never even accepted the truce; and if you divide your force as you now propose, they will probably set upon you at once along with the Sicilians, whom they would have been too happy to procure as coöperating allies at the beginning of the war. Recollect that your Chalkidian subjects in Thrace are still in revolt, and have never yet been conquered: other continental subjects, too, are not much to be trusted; and you are going to redress injuries offered to Egesta, before you have yet thought of redressing your own. Now your conquests in Thrace, if you make any, can be maintained; but Sicily is so distant, and the people so powerful, that you will never be able to maintain permanent ascendency; and it is absurd to undertake an expedition wherein conquest cannot be permanent, while failure will be destructive. The Egestæans alarm you by the prospect of Syracusan aggrandizement. But to me it seems that the Sicilian Greeks, even if they become subjects of Syracuse, will be less dangerous to you than they are at present: for as matters stand now, they might possibly send aid to Peloponnesus, from desire on the part of each to gain the favor of Lacedæmon, but imperial Syracuse would have no motive to endanger her own empire for the purpose of putting down yours. You are now full of confidence, because you have come out of the war better than you at first feared. But do not trust the Spartans: they, the most sensitive of all men to the reputation of superiority, are lying in wait to play you a trick in order to repair their own dishonor: their oligarchical machinations against you demand all your vigilance, and leave you no leisure to think of these foreigners at Egesta. Having just recovered ourselves somewhat from the pressure of disease and war, we ought to reserve this