Pericles on the Burdens of Empire

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

*****   Again, your country has a right to your services in 
sustaining the glories of her position.  These are a common source of 
pride to you all, and you cannot decline the burdens of empire and 
still expect to share its honors.  You should remember also that what 
you are fighting against is not merely slavery as an exchange for 
independence, but also loss of empire and danger from the animosities 
incurred in its exercise.  Besides, to recede is no longer possible, 
if indeed any of you in the alarm of the moment has become enamored 
of the honesty of such an unambitious part.  For what you hold is, to 
speak somewhat plainly, a tyranny; to take it perhaps was wrong, but 
to let it go is unsafe.

Thucydides, _The Peloponnesian War_, 2.63.1-2, 
<http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/cgi-bin/ptext?lookup=Thuc.+2.63.1> 
*****
-- 
Yoshie

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