Book 2
61.4
Nevertheless, seeing that you are citizens of a great city and have been reared amid customs which correspond to her greatness,Described by Pericles in the Funeral Oration, Thuc. 2.37 - Thuc. 2.42. you should willingly endure even the greatest calamities and not mar your good fame. For as all men claim the right to detest him who through presumption tries to grasp a reputation to which he has no title, so they equally claim a right to censure him who through faintheartedness fails to live up to the reputation he already enjoys. You should, rather, put away your grief for private ills and devote yourselves to the safety of the commonwealth.
62.1
"As to the hardships involved in this war, and your misgivings lest they prove very great and we succumb after all, let those arguments suffice which I have advanced on many other occasionsThuc. 2.13 and Thuc. 1.140 - Thuc. 1.144. in order to convince you that your fears are groundless. But there is one point I propose to lay before you on which, I think, you have never yourselves as yet reflected, in spite of the advantage it gives you as regards your empire and its greatness, and which I have never previously dealt with in my speeches, and should not have done so now—for it makes a somewhat boastful claim—had I not seen that you are unreasonably dejected.
62.2
You think that it is only over your allies that your empire extends, but I declare that of two divisions of the world which lie open to man's use, the land and the sea, you hold the absolute mastery over the whole of one, not only to the extent to which you now exercise it, but also to whatever fuller extent you may choose; and there is no one, either the Great King or any nation of those now on the earth, who will block your path as you sail the seas with such a naval armament as you now possess.
