5
and the people, after recalling them, restored your city to you, but did not venture to participate in it themselves. Thus, if you take my advice, you will not be depriving your benefactors, so far as you may, of their native land, nor be placing more confidence in words than in deeds, in the future than in the past, especially if you remember the champions of oligarchy, who in speech make war on the people,i.e., they pretend to be battling with the principle of democracy, but are really busy with robbery. but in fact are aiming at your property; and this they will acquire when they find you destitute of allies.
6
And then they ask us, when such is our plight, what deliverance there can be for the city, unless we do as the Lacedaemonians demand. But I call upon them to tell us what profit will accrue to the people if we obey their orders. If we do not, it will be far nobler to die fighting than to pass a manifest sentence of death upon ourselves.
7
For I believe that if I can persuade you, the danger will be common to both sidesThere is probably a gap here in the text. And I observe the same attitude in both the Argives and the Mantineans, each inhabiting their own land,—the former bordering on the Lacedaemonians, the latter dwelling near them; in the one case, their number is no greater than ours, in the other it is less than three thousand.
8
For their enemies know that, often as they may invade the territories of these peoples, as often will they march out to oppose them under arms, so that they see no glory in the venture: if they should be victorious, they could not enslave them, and if they should be defeated, they must deprive themselves of the advantages that they already possess. The more they prosper, the less is their appetite for risk.
