would imagine that those on the one side actually were Arcadians, and those on
the other, Spartans. For my part, I see plainly enough the difficulty of
offering the best advice. For you, like them, are deluded, in your desire for
one extreme or the other: and one who endeavours to propose an intermediate
course, which you will not have the patience to understand, will satisfy neither
side and will forfeit the confidence of both. {3} But in spite of this, I shall
prefer, for my own part, to risk being regarded as an idle chatterer (if such is
really to be my lot), rather than to abandon my conviction as to what is best
for Athens, and leave you to the mercy of those who would deceive you. And while
I shall deal with all other points later, by your leave, I shall take for my
starting-point, in explaining the course which I believe to be best, those
principles which are admitted by all.

{4} There can be no possible question that it is to the interest of the city
that both the Spartans and these Thebans should be weak; and the present
situation, if one may judge at all from what has constantly been asserted in
your presence, is such, that if Orchomenus, Thespiae, and Plataeae[n] are re-
established, Thebes becomes weak; and that if the Spartans can reduce Arcadia to
subjection and destroy Megalopolis, Sparta will recover her former strength. {5}
We must, therefore, take care not to allow the Spartans to attain a formidable
degree of strength, before the Thebans have become insignificant, lest there
should take place, unobserved by us, such an increase in the power of Sparta as
would be out of proportion to the decrease in the power of Thebes which our
interests demand. For it is, of course, out of the question that we should
desire merely to substitute the rivalry of Sparta for that of Thebes: that is
not the object upon which we are bent. Our object is rather that neither people
shall be capable of doing us any injury. That is what will best enable us to
live in security.

{6} But, granted that this is what ought to be, still, we are told, it is a