35
As delegates, we must be guided not only by your written instructions, but by your character, gentlemen. You have a way of suspecting and being dissatisfied with a thing if you can have it: while if there is anything which you have not, you airily talk as though it lay ready to your hand. If it is your duty to go to war, you want peace; if peace is arranged for you, you count up the benefits which war has brought you.
36
Thus there are those who are already complaining that they cannot see the meaning of the treaty, if it is walls and ships which Athens is to recover. They are not recovering their own private property from abroad: and walls cannot feed them. This objection also requires an answer.
37
There was once a time, gentlemen, when we had no walls or fleet: but it was when we acquired them that our prosperity began. If you have a similar desire for prosperity today, then make sure of your walls and your ships. It was with them that our forefathers started; and, partly by persuasion, partly by stealth, partly by bribery, and partly by force, they won for Athens a greater empire than any other state has ever gained.
