n your case,
we fear, it said more than the truth. The Mede, we ourselves know, had
time to come from the ends of the earth to Peloponnese, without any
force of yours worthy of the name advancing to meet him. But this was a
distant enemy. Well, Athens at all events is a near neighbour, and yet
Athens you utterly disregard; against Athens you prefer to act on the
defensive instead of on the offensive, and to make it an affair of
chances by deferring the struggle till she has grown far stronger than
at first. And yet you know that on the whole the rock on which the
barbarian was wrecked was himself, and that if our present enemy Athens
has not again and again annihilated us, we owe it more to her blunders
than to your protection; Indeed, expectations from you have before now
been the ruin of some, whose faith induced them to omit preparation.

"We hope that none of you will consider these words of remonstrance to
be rather words of hostility; men remonstrate with friends who are
in error, accusations they reserve for enemies who have wronged them.
Besides, we consider that we have as good a right as any one to point
out a neighbour's faults, particularly when we contemplate the great
contrast between the two national characters; a contrast of which,
as far as we can see, you have little perception, having never yet
considered what sort of antagonists you will encounter in the Athenians,
how widely, how absolutely different from yourselves. The Athenians are
addicted to innovation, and their designs are characterized by swiftness
alike in conception and execution; you have a genius for keeping what
you have got, accompanied by a total want of invention, and when forced
to act you never go far enough. Again, they are adventurous beyond
their power, and daring beyond their judgment, and in danger they are
sanguine; your wont is to attempt less than is justified by your power,
to mistrust even what is sanctioned by your judgment, and to fancy that
from danger there is no release. Further, there is promptitude on their
side against procrastination on yours; they are never at home, you
are never from it: for they hope by their absence to extend their
acquisitions, you fear by your advance to endanger what you have left
behind. They are swift to follow up a success, and slow to recoil from a
reverse. Their bodies they spend ungrudgingly in their country's cause;
their intellect they jealously husband to be employed in her service