Kitap 5
112.2
Men of Athens, our resolution is no other than what you have heard before; nor will we, in a small portion of time, overthrow that liberty in which our city hath remained for the space of seven hundred years since it was first founded. But trusting to the fortune by which the gods have preserved it hitherto and unto the help of men, that is, of the Lacedaemonians, we will do our best to maintain the same.
112.3
But this we offer: to be your friends, enemies to neither side, and you to depart out of our land, after agreement such as we shall both think fit.
113.1
Thus the Melians answered. To which the Athenians, the conference being already broken off, replied thus: You are the only men, as it seemeth to us, by this consultation, that think future things more certain than things seen, and behold things doubtful, through desire to have them true, as if they were already come to pass. As you attribute and trust the most unto the Lacedaemonians, and to fortune and hopes, so will you be the most deceived.
114.1
This said, the Athenian ambassadors departed to their camp. And the commanders, seeing that the Melians stood out, fell presently to the war, and dividing the work among the several cities, encompassed the city of the Melians with a wall.
114.2
The Athenians afterwards left some forces of their own and of their confederates for a guard both by sea and land, and with the greatest part of their army went home. The rest that were left besieged the place.
115.1
About the same time the Argives, making a road into Phliasia, lost about eighty of their men by ambush laid for them by the men of Phlius and the outlaws of their own city.
115.2
And the Athenians that lay in Pylus fetched in thither a great booty from the Lacedaemonians. Notwithstanding which, the Lacedaemonians did not war upon them [as] renouncing the peace, but gave leave by edict only to any of their people that would to take booties reciprocally in the territory of the Athenians.
