Page:History of Greece Vol VI.djvu/105

 BEGINNING OF THE PELOPONNESIAN WAG. 83 peculiarity is, that your performance comes short of your power, you have no faith even in what your judgment guarantees, when in difficulties, you despair of all escape. They never hang back, you are habitual laggards: they love foreign service, you cannot stir from home : for they are always under the belief that their movements will lead to some farther gain, while you fancy that new projects will endanger what you have already. When successful, they make the greatest forward march ; when defeated, they fall back the least. Moreover, they task their bodies on behalf of their city as if they were the bodies of others, while their minds are most of all their own, for exer tion in her service. 1 When their plans for acquisition do not come successfully out, they feel like men robbed of what belongs to them : yet the acquisitions when realized appear like trifles compared with what remains to be acquired. If they sometimes fail in an attempt, new hopes arise in some other direction to supply the want: for with them alone the possession and the hope of what they aim at is almost simultaneous, from their habit of quickly executing all that they have once resolved. And in this manner do they toil throughout all their lives amidst hard- ship and peril, disregarding present enjoyment in the continual thirst for increase, knowing no other festival recreation except the performance of active duty, and deeming inactive repose A worse condition than fatiguing occupation. To speak the truth in two words : such is their inborn temper, that they will neither remain at rest themselves, nor allow rest to others. 2 " Such is the city which stands opposed to you, Lacedaemo- nians, yet ye still hang back from action ...... Your continual scruples and apathy would hardly be safe, even if ye had neigh- 1 Thucyd. i, 70. eri 6s rolg /J.EV au/iaatv d Xpuvrai, TTJ jvufttj Se oiKEtoTuTy kg rb irpdaaeiv rt vnep It is difficult to convey, in translation, the antithesis between u roif and olKeiorarij not without a certain conceit, which Thucydides is occasionally fond of. aluvof fiox&ovai, Kal uTrohavovaiv eTidxtOTa T&V vnapxovTuv, 6ia rb del KTucr&ac Kal pyre Eoprrjv a/Uo n ijyela&ai r) rb ra deovra rcput-ai, t-vuopav ie oi>x Tjvaov qavxiav dirpayftova % aaxohiav kmirovov &GTE el rif avroi){
 * Thucyd. I. c. Kal ravra peril irovuv ndvra Kal Kivdiivuv Ji' oAov row