allies together
before the blow fell, you have delayed to do so till we are smarting
under it; allies among whom we have not the worst title to speak, as
having the greatest complaints to make, complaints of Athenian outrage
and Lacedaemonian neglect. Now if these assaults on the rights of Hellas
had been made in the dark, you might be unacquainted with the facts, and
it would be our duty to enlighten you. As it is, long speeches are not
needed where you see servitude accomplished for some of us, meditated
for others--in particular for our allies--and prolonged preparations in
the aggressor against the hour of war. Or what, pray, is the meaning of
their reception of Corcyra by fraud, and their holding it against us
by force? what of the siege of Potidaea?--places one of which lies most
conveniently for any action against the Thracian towns; while the other
would have contributed a very large navy to the Peloponnesians?

"For all this you are responsible. You it was who first allowed them
to fortify their city after the Median war, and afterwards to erect the
long walls--you who, then and now, are always depriving of freedom not
only those whom they have enslaved, but also those who have as yet been
your allies. For the true author of the subjugation of a people is not
so much the immediate agent, as the power which permits it having the
means to prevent it; particularly if that power aspires to the glory of
being the liberator of Hellas. We are at last assembled. It has not been
easy to assemble, nor even now are our objects defined. We ought not to
be still inquiring into the fact of our wrongs, but into the means of
our defence. For the aggressors with matured plans to oppose to our
indecision have cast threats aside and betaken themselves to action. And
we know what are the paths by which Athenian aggression travels, and how
insidious is its progress. A degree of confidence she may feel from the
idea that your bluntness of perception prevents your noticing her; but
it is nothing to the impulse which her advance will receive from
the knowledge that you see, but do not care to interfere. You,
Lacedaemonians, of all the Hellenes are alone inactive, and defend
yourselves not by doing anything but by looking as if you would do
something; you alone wait till the power of an enemy is becoming twice
its original size, instead of crushing it in its infancy. And yet the
world used to say that you were to be depended upon; but i