Again, if we are to attempt an insurrection of their allies, these will have to be supported with a fleet, most of them being islanders.

What then is to be our war?
For unless we can either beat them at sea, or deprive them of the revenues which feed their navy, we shall meet with little but disaster.

Meanwhile our honour will be pledged to keeping on, particularly if it be the opinion that we began the quarrel.

For let us never be elated by the fatal hope of the war being quickly ended by the devastation of their lands.

I fear rather that we may leave it as a legacy to our children; so improbable is it that the Athenian spirit will be the slave of their land, or Athenian experience be cowed by war.
"Not that I would bid you be so unfeeling as to suffer them to injure your allies, and to refrain from unmasking their intrigues; but I do bid you not to take up arms at once, but to send and remonstrate with them in a tone not too suggestive of war, nor again too suggestive of submission, and to employ the interval in perfecting our own preparations.