endure anything that may be necessary, not only will the need for such a step be
less, the more firmly your minds are made up, but you will also be regarded as
showing the spirit which you ought to show.

{9} To prove to you that I am not suggesting anything unprecedented in bidding
you liberate the Rhodians, and that you will not be acting without precedent, if
you take my advice, I will remind you of one of those incidents in the past
which have ended happily for you. You once sent out Timotheus, men of Athens, to
assist Ariobarzanes,[n] adding to your resolution the provision that he must not
break our treaty with the king; and Timotheus, seeing that Ariobarzanes was now
openly in revolt against the king, but that Samos was occupied by a garrison
under Cyprothemis, who had been placed there by Tigranes, the king's viceroy,
abandoned his intention of helping Ariobarzanes, but sat down before Samos,
relieved it, and set it free. {10} And to this day no war has ever arisen to
trouble you on account of this. For to enter upon a war for the purpose of
aggrandizement is never the same thing as to do so in defence of one's own
possessions. Every one fights his hardest to recover what he has lost; but when
men endeavour to gain at the expense of others, it is not so. They desire to do
this, if it is allowed them; but if they are prevented, they do not consider
that their opponents have done them any wrong.

{11} Now listen for a moment, and consider whether I am right or wrong, when I
conclude that if Athens were actively at work, Artemisia herself would now not
even oppose our action. If the king effects in Egypt all that he is bent upon, I
believe that Artemisia would make every attempt to secure for him the continued
possession of Rhodes--not from any goodwill towards him, but from the desire to
be credited with a great service to him, while he is still in her
neighbourhood,[n] and so to win from him as friendly a reception as possible.
{12} But if he is faring as we are told, if all his attempts have failed, she
will consider, and rightly, that the island can be of no further use to the