Now that God has instructed us in the arts of legislation, there is no merit in seeing all this, or in learning wisdom after the event.

But if the coming danger could have been foreseen, and the union preserved, then no Persian or other enemy would have dared to attack Hellas; and indeed there was not so much credit to us in defeating the enemy, as discredit in our disloyalty to one another.

For of the three cities one only fought on behalf of Hellas; and of the two others, Argos refused her aid; and Messenia was actually at war with Sparta: and if the Lacedaemonians and Athenians had not united, the Hellenes would have been absorbed in the Persian empire, and dispersed among the barbarians.
We make these reflections upon past and present legislators because we desire to find out what other course could have been followed.

We were saying just now, that a state can only be free and wise and harmonious when there is a balance of powers.

There are many words by which we express the aims of the legislator,--temperance, wisdom, friendship; but we need not be disturbed by the variety of expression,--these words have all the same meaning.