ambitious designs of others, Athens does not change.

{16} I believe that the Spartans are playing a very unscrupulous part. At
present they tell us that the Eleans are to recover part of Triphylia,[n] and
the Phliasians, Tricaranum;[n] other Arcadians are to recover their own
possessions, and we ourselves are to recover Oropus--not that they have any
desire to see every state enjoying its own--far from it!-- such generosity on
their part would be late indeed in showing itself. {17} They wish rather to
present the appearance of co-operating with each separate state in the recovery
of the territory that it claims, in order that when they themselves march
against Messene, all may take the field with them, and give them their hearty
assistance, on pain of seeming to act unfairly, in refusing to return an
equivalent for the support which each of them received from Sparta in regard to
their own several claims. {18} My own view is that, even without the tacit
surrender of some of the Arcadians to Sparta, we can recover Oropus, aided not
only by the Spartans, if they are ready to act honourably, but by all who
disapprove of allowing Thebes to retain what is not her own. But even if it were
made quite plain to us, that without allowing Sparta to subdue the Peloponnese,
we should not be able to take Oropus, I should still think it preferable, if I
may dare to say so, to let Oropus go, rather than sacrifice Messene and the
Peloponnese to Sparta. For our quarrel with them would not, I believe, be
confined to this; since--I will not say what occurs to me; but there are many
risks which we should run.

{19} But, to pass on, it is a monstrous thing to use the hostile actions which,
they say, the Megalopolitans committed against us, under the influence of
Thebes, as a ground of accusation against them to-day; and, when they wish to be
friends and so atone for their action by doing us good, to look askance at them,
to seek for some way of avoiding their friendship, to refuse to recognize that
in proportion to the zeal which my opponents can prove the Megalopolitans to