Military leaders from Greece

"What an excellent horse do they lose, for want of address and boldness to manage him! ... I could manage this horse better than others do."

"Know ye not that the end and object of conquest is to avoid doing the same thing as the conquered?"

"Holy shadows of the dead, I'm not to blame for your cruel and bitter fate, but the accursed rivalry which brought sister nations and brother people, to fight one another. I do not feel happy for this victory of mine. On the contrary, I would be glad, brothers, if I had all of you standing here next to me, since we are united by the same language, the same blood and the same visions."

"If I were not Alexander, I should wish to be Diogenes."

"I do not steal victory."

"If it were not my purpose to combine barbarian things with things Hellenic, to traverse and civilize every continent, to search out the uttermost parts of land and sea, to push the bounds of Macedonia to the farthest Ocean, and to disseminate and shower the blessings of the Hellenic justice and peace over every nation, I should not be content to sit quietly in the luxury of idle power, but I should emulate the frugality of Diogenes. But as things are, forgive me Diogenes, that I imitate Herakles, and emulate Perseus, and follow in the footsteps of Dionysos, the divine author and progenitor of my family, and desire that victorious Hellenes should dance again in India and revive the memory of the Bacchic revels among the savage mountain tribes beyond the Kaukasos..."

"Our enemies are Medes and Persians, men who for centuries have lived soft and luxurious lives; we of Macedon for generations past have been trained in the hard school of danger and war. Above all, we are free men, and they are slaves. There are Greek troops, to be sure, in Persian service — but how different is their cause from ours! They will be fighting for pay — and not much of at that; we, on the contrary, shall fight for Greece, and our hearts will be in it. As for our foreign troops — Thracians, Paeonians, Illyrians, Agrianes — they are the best and stoutest soldiers in Europe, and they will find as their opponents the slackest and softest of the tribes of Asia. And what, finally, of the two men in supreme command? You have Alexander, they — Darius!"

"Your ancestors came to Macedonia and the rest of Hellas [Greece] and did us great harm, though we had done them no prior injury. I have been appointed leader of the Greeks, and wanting to punish the Persians I have come to Asia, which I took from you."

"So would I, if I were Parmenion."

"Youths of the Pellaians and of the Macedonians and of the Hellenic Amphictiony and of the Lakedaimonians and of the Corinthians... and of all the Hellenic peoples, join your fellow-soldiers and entrust yourselves to me, so that we can move against the barbarians and liberate ourselves from the Persian bondage, for as Greeks we should not be slaves to barbarians."

"Now you fear punishment and beg for your lives, so I will let you free, if not for any other reason so that you can see the difference between a Greek king and a barbarian tyrant, so do not expect to suffer any harm from me. A king does not kill messengers."

"Are you still to learn that the end and perfection of our victories is to avoid the vices and infirmities of those whom we subdue?"

"To the strongest!"

"There is nothing impossible to him who will try."

"I consider not what Parmenion should receive, but what Alexander should give."

"Sex and sleep alone make me conscious that I am mortal."

"Shall I pass by and leave you lying there because of the expedition you led against Greece, or shall I set you up again because of your magnanimity and your virtues in other respects?"

"Dinocrates, I appreciate your design as excellent in composition, and I am delighted with it, but I apprehend that anybody who should found a city in that spot would be censured for bad judgement. For as a newborn babe cannot be nourished without the nurse's milk, nor conducted to the approaches that lead to growth in life, so a city cannot thrive without fields and the fruits thereof pouring into its walls."

"For my part, I assure you, I had rather excel others in the knowledge of what is excellent, than in the extent of my power and dominion."

"An army of sheep led by a lion is better than an army of lions led by a sheep."

"There are no more worlds to conquer!"

"What is the purpose of adventuring around the world? A king must be an administrator. ... Alexander was a man full of great sound, lighting, and thunderbolt; [he was] like a cloud in spring or summer, which passed over the kings of the earth, rained upon them, and disappeared—indeed a summer's cloud disappears very soon [saying italicized]."

"Alexander sacrificed to the gods to whom it was his custom to sacrifice, and gave a public banquet, seated all the Persians, and then any persons from the other peoples who took precedence for rank or any other high quality, and he himself and those around him drank from the same bowl and poured the same libations, with the Greek soothsayers and Magi initiating the ceremony. Alexander prayed for various blessings and especially that the Macedonians and Persians should enjoy harmony as partners in government. The story prevails that those who shared the banquet were nine thousand and that they all poured the same libation and gave the one victory cry as they did."

"[Diogenes speaking to Alexander] “Now perhaps you kings are also doing something like that: each of you has playmates — the eager followers on his side — he [Darius] his Persians and the other peoples of Asia, and you [Alexander] your Macedonians and the other Greeks.”"

"“Demades said that Xerxes fortified the sea with his ships, covered the land with his armies, concealed the sky with his weapons, and filled Persia with Greek prisoners. And now justly the barbarian is praised by Athenians because he took captive Greeks, but Alexander, a Greek, and leading Greeks, did not take captive those arrayed against him.[...]No one of the Greek kings went to Egypt except Alexander alone, and he went, not to make war, but to consult an oracle as to where he should found a city which would forever bear his name.[...]So Alexander was the first of the Greeks to take Egypt, and so became the first both of Greeks and of barbarians.”"

"Remota itaque iustitia quid sunt regna nisi magna latrocinia? [...] Eleganter enim et ueraciter Alexandro illi Magno quidam comprehensus pirata respondit. Nam cum idem rex hominem interrogaret, quid ei uideretur, ut mare haberet infestum, ille libera contumacia: Quod tibi, inquit, ut orbem terrarum; sed quia ego exiguo nauigio facio, latro uocor; quia tu magna classe, imperator."

"After fighting, scheming and murdering in pursuit of the secure tenure of absolute power, he found himself at last on a lonely pinnacle over an abyss, with no use for his power and security unattainable. His genius was such that he ended an epoch and began another - but one of unceasing war and misery, from which exhaustion produced an approach to order after two generations and peace at last under the Roman Empire. He himself never found peace. One is tempted to see him, in medieval terms, as the man who sold his soul to the Devil for power: the Devil kept his part of the bargain but ultimately claimed his own. But to the historian, prosaically such allegory, we must put it differently: to him, when he has done all the work - work that must be done, and done carefully - of analysing the play of faction and the system of government, Alexander illustrates with startling clarity the ultimate loneliness of supreme power."

"Alexander the Great, reflecting on his friends degenerating into sloth and luxury, told them that it was a most slavish thing to luxuriate, and a most royal thing to labour."

"The ancient writers tell of the peculiar "melting" glance of his eyes, or of the way in which, as Plutarch says, his body seemed to glow. They are evidently trying to describe something which they found it difficult to express. He also grew up, to the delight of Philip, serious-minded, untiring, passionately keen to succeed in any difficult task, and yet more keen the more difficult it was. He was a great reader, too. He had been early caught by the glamour of the Tale of Troy, like most Greek boys; and he never grew weary of it. As far as the Oxus and the Indus, he carried with him his personal copy of the Iliad..."

"When he says that in that day all his thoughts perish, or flow away, perhaps under this expression he censures the madness of princes in setting no bounds to their hopes and desires, and scaling the very heavens in their ambition, like the insane Alexander of Macedon, who, upon hearing that there were other worlds, wept that he had not yet conquered one, although soon after the funeral urn sufficed him."

"Having only that one hope, the accomplishment of it, of consequence, must put an end to all my hopes; and what a wretch is he who must survive his hopes! Nothing remains when that day comes, but to sit down and weep like Alexander, when he wanted other worlds to conquer."

"Of the life of Alexander we have five consecutive narratives...Here, it might, he thought, are authorities enough; hut unluckily, among all the five, there is not a single contemporary chronicler. All five write at secondhand, ... Diodorus we believe to be perfectly honest, but he is, at the same time, impenetrably stupid. Plutarch, as he himself tells us, does not write history... his object is to recount anecdotes, rather to point a moral than to give a formal narrative of political and military events. Justin is a feeble and careless epitomizer. Quintus Curtius is, in our eyes, little better than a romance-writer; he is the only one of the five whom we should suspect of any wilful departure from the truth."

"We must remember too that Philip and Alexander were Greeks, descended from Heracles, wished to be recognised as Greeks, as benefactors of the Greeks, even as Heracles had been."

"After Philip's assassination at Aegae in 336, Alexander inherited, together with the Macedonian kingdom, his father's Panhellenic project to lead the Greeks in the conquest of Persia."

"Dhul Qarnayn is Alexander the Greek, the king of Persia and Greece, or the king of the east and the west, for because of this he was called Dhul-Qarnayn [meaning, "the two-horned one"]..."

"We are not in the situation of poor Alexander the Great, who wept, as well indeed he might, because there were no more worlds to conquer; for, to do justice to this queer, odd, rantipole city, and this whimsical country, there is matter enough in them to keep our risible muscles and our pens going until doomsday."

"In the east the day was reddening, When the warriors pass'd; In the west the night was deadening, As they looked their last; As they looked their last on him — He, their comrade — their commander He, the earth's adored — He, the godlike Alexander ! Who can wield his sword ? As they went their eyes were dim, The silver-shielded warriors, The warriors of the world !"

"The only human being with whom I felt any kinship died three hundred years before the birth of Christ. Alexander of Macedonia. I idolized him. A young army commander, he'd swept along the coasts of Turkey and Phoenicia, subduing Egypt before turning his armies towards Persia. He died, thirty-three, ruling most of the civilized world. Ruling without barbarism! At Alexandria, he instituted the ancient world's greatest seat of learning. True, people died ... perhaps unnecessarily, though who can judge such things? Yet how he nearly approached his vision of a united world! I was determined to measure my success against his. Firstly, I gave away my inheritance. to demonstrate the possibility of achieving anything starting from nothing. Next, I departed for Northern Turkey, to retrace my hero's steps. I wanted to match his accomplishment, bringing an age of illumination to a benighted world. Heh. I wanted to have something to say should we meet in the hall of legends. I followed the path of Alexander's war machine along the black sea coast, imagining his armies taking port after port, blood on ancient bronze. Perhaps because of the challenge it represented: the ancient world's greatest puzzle was there, a knot that couldn't be untied. Alexander cut it in two with his sword. Lateral thinking, you see. Centuries ahead of his time. Heading south, he entered Egypt through Memphis, where they proclaimed him son of Amon, judge of the dead, whose name means "hidden one." Under rule from Alexandria, the classic culture of the great Pharaohs was restored. I followed him through Babylon, up through Kabul to Samarkhand then down the Indus, where he met the first elephants of war. Where he'd turned back to quell dissent at home, I travelled on, through China and Tibet, gathering martial wisdom as I went. Alexander returned to Babylon to die of an infection, aged thirty-three, amongst its ruined ziggurats. I saw at last his failings. He'd not united all the world, nor built a unity that would survive him. Disillusioned, but determined, to complete my odyssey, I followed his corpse to its resting place in Alexandria."

"I have wrestled with Thanatos knee to knee and I know how death is vanquished. Man's immortality is not to live forever; for that wish is born of fear. Each moment free from fear makes a man immortal."

"It is better to believe in men too rashly, and regret, than believe too meanly. Men could be more than they are, if they would try for it. He has shown them that. How many have tried, because of him? Not only those I have seen; there will be men to come. Those who look in mankind only for their own littleness, and make them believe in that, kill more than he ever will in all his wars."

"When magic through nerves and reason passes, imagination, force, and passion will thunder. The portrait of the world is changed."

"Once upon a time, in days of long ago, Alexander the Great complained bitterly that there were no worlds left for him to conquer."

"ONCE upon a time, Aristotle taught Alexander that he should restrain himself from frequently approaching his wife, who was very beautiful, lest he should impede his spirit from seeking the general good. Alexander acquiesed to him. The queen, when she perceived this and was upset, began to draw Aristotle to love her. Many times she crossed paths with him alone, with bare feet and disheveled hair, so that she might entice him. At last, being enticed, he began to solicit her carnally. She says, "This I will certainly not do, unless I see a sign of love, lest you be testing me. Therefore, come to my chamber crawling on hand and foot, in order to carry me like a horse. Then I'll know that you aren't deluding me." When he had consented to that condition, she secretly told the matter to Alexander, who lying in wait apprehended him carrying the queen. When Alexander wished to kill Aristotle, in order to excuse himself, Aristotle says, If thus it happened to me, an old man most wise, that I was deceived by a woman, you can see that I taught you well, that it could happen to you, a young man." Hearing that, the king spared him, and made progress in Aristotle's teachings."

"Wait for that wisest of all counselors, Time."

"Trees, though they are cut and lopped, grow up again quickly, but if men are destroyed, it is not easy to get them again."

"The whole Earth is the Sepulchre of famous men; and their story is not graven only on Stone over their native earth, but lives on far away, without visible symbol, woven into the stuff of other men's lives."

"Freedom is the sure possession of those alone who have the courage to defend it."

"Future ages will wonder at us, as the present age wonders at us now. We do not need the praises of a Homer, or of anyone else whose words may delight us for the moment, but the estimation of facts will fall short of what is really true."

"Although only a few may originate a policy, we are all able to judge it."

"What you leave behind is not what is engraved in stone monuments, but what is woven into the lives of others."

"We do not say that a man who takes no interest in politics is a man who minds his own business; we say that he has no business here at all."

"If we turn to our military policy, there also we differ from our antagonists. We throw open our city to the world, and never by alien acts exclude foreigners from any opportunity of learning or observing..."

"Our constitution does not copy the laws of neighboring states; we are rather a pattern to others than imitators ourselves"

"Our love of what is beautiful does not lead to extravagance; our love of the things of the mind does not make us soft. We regard wealth as something to be properly used, rather than as something to boast about. As for poverty, no one need be ashamed to admit it, the real shame is in not taking practical measures to escape from it."

"Hatred and unpopularity at the moment have fallen to the lot of all who have aspired to rule others; but where odium must be incurred, true wisdom incurs it for the highest objects. Hatred also is short-lived; but that which makes the splendour of the present and the glory of the future remains for ever unforgotten. Make your decision, therefore, for glory then and honour now, and attain both objects by instant and zealous effort: do not send heralds to Lacedaemon, and do not betray any sign of being oppressed by your present sufferings, since they whose minds are least sensitive to calamity, and whose hands are most quick to meet it, are the greatest men and the greatest communities."

"I could tell you a long story (and you know it as well as I do) about what is to be gained by beating the enemy back. What I would prefer is that you should fix your eyes every day on the greatness of Athens as she realty is, and should fall in love with her. When you realize her greatness, then reflect that what made her great was men with a spirit of adventure, men who knew their duty, men who were ashamed to fall below a certain standard. If they ever failed in an enterprise, they made up their minds that at any rate the city should not find their courage lacking to her, and they gave to her the best contribution that they could. They gave her their lives, to her and to all of us, and for their own selves they won praises that never grow old, the most splendid of sepulchers — not the sepulchre in which their bodies are laid, but where their glory remains eternal in men's minds, always there on the right occasion to stir others to speech or to action. For famous men have the whole earth as their memorial: it is not only the inscriptions on their graves in their own country that mark them out; no, in foreign lands also, not in any visible form but in people's hearts, their memory abides and grows. It is for you to try to be like them. Make up your minds that happiness depends on being free, and freedom depends on being courageous."

"Nor is it any longer possible for you to give up this empire … Your empire is now like a tyranny: it may have been wrong to take it; it is certainly dangerous to let it go."

"But the bravest are surely those who have the clearest vision of what is before them, glory and danger alike, and yet notwithstanding go out to meet it."

"Instead of looking on discussion as a stumbling block in the way of action, we think it an indispensable preliminary to any wise action at all."

"Pericles did undoubtcdly seek by every means in his power to win an undisputed position at Athens; and undoubtedly he had a passion for art and literature. He was, if we please to say it, a demagogue and a connoisseur. But he was something more. Looking at the whole evidence before us with impartial eyes, we cannot refuse to acknowledge that he cherished aspirations worthy of a great statesman. He sincerely desired that every Athenian should owe to his city the blessing of an education in all that was beautiful, and the opportunity of a happy and useful life. If Solon had laid down rules, not less excellent than precise, for the education of the Athenian youth, Pericles would go further, and educate the Athenian man."

"ἀγαθὸν γαμεῖν καὶ ἀγαθὰ τίκτειν"

"Μολὼν λαβέ [Molōn labe!]"

"Ὦ ξεῖν', ἀγγέλλειν Λακεδαιμονίοις ὅτι τῇδε κείμεθα, τοῖς κείνων ῥήμασι πειθόμενοι."

"Ō xein', angellein Lakedaimoniois hoti tēide keimetha tois keinōn rhēmasi peithomenoi."

"It is said that on the eve of battle, he was told by a native of Trachis that the Persian archers were so numerous that, when they fired their volleys the mass of arrows blocked out the sun. Dienekes, however, quite undaunted by this prospect, remarked with a laugh, "Good. Then we'll have our battle in the shade.""

"This is the mound of Leonidas, with its dust and rank grass, its flowers and lizards, its stones, scruffy laurels and hot gusts of wind. I knew now that something real happened here. It is not just that the human spirit reacts directly and beyond all argument to a story of sacrifice and courage, as a wine glass must vibrate to the sound of the violin. It is also because, way back and at the hundredth remove, that company stood in the right line of history. A little of Leonidas lies in the fact that I can go where I like and write what I like. He contributed to set us free."

"For the love of gain would reconcile the weaker to the dominion of the stronger, and the possession of capital enabled the more powerful to reduce the smaller cities to subjection."

"But as the power of Hellas grew, and the acquisition of wealth became more an objective, the revenues of the states increasing, tyrannies were established almost everywhere..."

"So little pains do the vulgar take in the investigation of truth, accepting readily the first story that comes to hand."

"On the whole, however, the conclusions I have drawn from the proofs quoted may, I believe, safely be relied on. Assuredly they will not be disturbed either by the lays of a poet displaying the exaggeration of his craft, or by the compositions of the chroniclers that are attractive at truth's expense; the subjects they treat of being out of the reach of evidence, and time having robbed most of them of historical value by enthroning them in the region of legend."

"To come to this war: despite the known disposition of the actors in a struggle to overrate its importance, and when it is over to return to their admiration of earlier events, yet an examination of the facts will show that it was much greater than the wars which preceded it."

"In fine, I have written my work, not as an essay which is to win the applause of the moment, but as a possession for all time."

"The real cause I consider to be the one which was formerly most kept out of sight. The growth of the power of Athens, and the alarm which this inspired the Lacedaemon, made war inevitable."

"[C]oncessions to adversaries only end in self reproach, and the more strictly they are avoided the greater will be the chance of security."

"Abstinence from all injustice to other first-rate powers is a greater tower of strength than anything that can be gained by the sacrifice of permanent tranquillity for an apparent temporary advantage."

"For the true author of the subjugation of a people is not so much the immediate agent, as the power which permits it having the means to prevent it."

"Thus they toil on in trouble and danger all the days of their life, with little opportunity for enjoying, being ever engaged in getting: their only idea of a holiday is to do what the occasion demands, and to them laborious occupation is less of a misfortune than the peace of a quiet life. To describe their character in a word, one might truly say that they were born into the world to take no rest themselves and to give none to others."

"It is a common mistake in going to war to begin at the wrong end, to act first, and wait for disaster to discuss the matter."

"war is a matter not so much of arms as of money,"

"self-control contains honour as a chief constituent, and honour bravery."

"[T]he freaks of chance are not determinable by calculation."

"In practice we always base our preparations against an enemy on the assumption that his plans are good; indeed, it is right to rest our hopes not on a belief in his blunders, but on the soundness of our provisions. Nor ought we to believe that there is much difference between man and man, but to think that the superiority lies with him who is reared in the severest school."

"speculation is carried on in safety, but, when it comes to action, fear causes failure."

"There is, however, no advantage in reflections on the past further than may be of service to the present. For the future we must provide by maintaining what the present gives us and redoubling our efforts; it is hereditary to us to win virtue as the fruit of labour, and you must not change the habit, even though you should have a slight advantage in wealth and resources; for it is not right that what was won in want should be lost in plenty."

"If you give way, you will instantly have to meet some greater demand, as having been frightened into obedience in the first instance; while a firm refusal will make them clearly understand that they must treat you more as equals."

"I am more afraid of our own blunders than of the enemy's devices."

"It must be thoroughly understood that war is a necessity, and that the more readily we accept it, the less will be the ardor of our opponents, and that out of the greatest dangers communities and individuals acquire the greatest glory."

"I could have wished that the reputations of many brave men were not to be imperilled in the mouth of a single individual, to stand or fall according as he spoke well or ill. For it is hard to speak properly upon a subject where it is even difficult to convince your hearers that you are speaking the truth. On the one hand, the friend who is familiar with every fact of the story may think that some point has not been set forth with that fullness which he wishes and knows it to deserve; on the other, he who is a stranger to the matter may be led by envy to suspect exaggeration if he hears anything above his own nature. For men can endure to hear others praised only so long as they can severally persuade themselves of their own ability to equal the actions recounted: when this point is passed, envy comes in and with it incredulity."

"Again, in our enterprises we present the singular spectacle of daring and deliberation, each carried to its highest point, and both united in the same persons; although usually decision is the fruit of ignorance, hesitation of reflection. But the palm of courage will surely be adjudged most justly to those, who best know the difference between hardship and pleasure and yet are never tempted to shrink from danger. In generosity we are equally singular, acquiring our friends by conferring, not by receiving, favours."

"Ἀμαθία μὲν θράσος, λογισμὸς δὲ ὄκνον φέρει"

"But the prize for courage will surely be awarded most justly to those who best know the difference between hardship and pleasure and yet are never tempted to shrink from danger."

"The bravest are surely those who have the clearest vision of what is before them, glory and danger alike, and yet notwithstanding, go out to meet it."

"The secret of happiness is freedom and the secret of freedom is courage."

"Disdain is the privilege of those who, like us, have been assured by reflection of their superiority to their adversary. And where the chances are the same, knowledge fortifies courage by the contempt which is its consequence, its trust being placed, not in hope, which is the prop of the desperate, but in a judgment grounded upon existing resources, whose anticipations are more to be depended upon."

"Hatred also is short lived; but that which makes the splendor of the present and the glory of the future remains forever unforgotten"

"[H]e who voluntarily confronts tremendous odds must have very great internal resources to draw upon."

"The country on the sea coast, now called Macedonia, was first acquired by Alexander, the father of Perdiccas, and his ancestors, originally Temenids from Argos...The whole is now called Macedonia, and at the time of the invasion of Sitalces, Perdiccas, Alexander's son, was the reigning king."

"we know that there can never be any solid friendship between individuals, or union between communities that is worth the name, unless the parties be persuaded of each others honesty,"

"Now the only sure basis of an alliance is for each party to be equally afraid of the other..."

"Fire signals of an attack were also raised toward Thebes, but the Plataeans in the city at once displayed a number of others, prepared beforehand for this very purpose, in order to render the enemy's signals unintelligible, and to prevent his friends from getting a true idea of what was happening and coming to his aid before their comrades who had gone out should have made good their escape and be in safety."

"I have often before now been convinced that a democracy is incapable of empire..."

"The fate of those of their neighbours who had already rebelled and had been subdued was no lesson to them; their own prosperity could not dissuade them from affronting danger; but blindly confident in the future, and full of hopes beyond their power though not beyond their ambition, they declared war and made their decision to prefer might to right, their attack being determined not by provocation but by the moment which seemed propitious. The truth is that great good fortune coming suddenly and unexpectedly tends to make a people insolent; in most cases it is safer for mankind to have success in reason than out of reason; and it is easier for them, one may say, to stave off adversity than to preserve prosperity."

"I think the two things most opposed to good counsel are haste and passion; haste usually goes hand in hand with folly, passion with coarseness and narrowness of mind."

"[S]till hope leads men to venture; and no one ever yet put himself in peril without the inward conviction that he would succeed in his design."

"[W]e must make up our minds to look for our protection not to legal terrors but to careful administration."

"Words had to change their ordinary meaning and to take that which was now given them. Reckless audacity came to be considered the courage of a loyal ally; prudent hesitation, specious cowardice; moderation was held to be a cloak for unmanliness; ability to see all sides of a question, inaptness to act on any. Frantic violence became the attribute of manliness; cautious plotting, a justifiable means of self-defence. The advocate of extreme measures was always trustworthy; his opponent a man to be suspected. To succeed in a plot was to have a shrewd head, to divine a plot a still shrewder; but to try to provide against having to do either was to break up your party and to be afraid of your adversaries."

"You can now, if you choose, employ your present success to advantage, so as to keep what you have got and gain honour and reputation besides, and you can avoid the mistake of those who meet with an extraordinary piece of good fortune, and are led on by hope to grasp continually at something further, through having already succeeded without expecting it."

"That war is an evil is a proposition so familiar to every one that it would be tedious to develop it. No one is forced to engage in it by ignorance, or kept out of it by fear, if he fancies there is anything to be gained by it."

"Let him remember that many before now have tried to chastise a wrongdoer, and failing to punish their enemy have not even saved themselves; while many who have trusted in force to gain an advantage, instead of gaining anything more, have been doomed to lose what they had. Vengeance is not necessarily successful because wrong has been done, or strength sure because it is confident; but the incalculable element in the future exercises the widest influence, and is the most treacherous, and yet in fact the most useful of all things, as it frightens us all equally, and thus makes us consider before attacking each other."

"We must march against the enemy, and teach him that he must go and get what he wants by attacking someone who will not resist him, but that men whose glory it is to be always ready to give battle for the liberty of their own country, and never unjustly to enslave that of others, will not let him go without a struggle."

"They stood where they stood by the power of the sword."

"[A]nd their judgment was based more upon blind wishing than upon any sound prediction; for it is a habit of mankind to entrust to careless hope what they long for, and to use sovereign reason to thrust aside what they do not desire."

"[W]hen night came on, the Macedonians and the barbarian crowd suddenly took fright in one of those mysterious panics to which great armies are liable..."

"The Spartans meanwhile, man to man, and with their war songs in the ranks, exhorted each brave comrade to remember what he had learned before; well aware that the long training of action was of more use for saving lives than any brief verbal exhortation, though ever so well delivered."

"We hope that you, instead of thinking to influence us by saying that you did not join the Lacedaemonians, although their colonists, or that you have done us no wrong, will aim at what is feasible, holding in view the real sentiments of us both; since you know as well as we do that right, as the world goes, is only in question between equals in power, while the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must."

"Hope, danger's comforter..."

"Of the gods we believe, and of men we know, that by a necessary law of their nature they rule wherever they can."

"[H]ere we bless your simplicity but do not envy your folly."

"And it is certain that those who do not yield to their equals, who keep terms with their superiors, and are moderate towards their inferiors, on the whole succeed best."

"Men do not rest content with parrying the attacks of a superior, but often strike the first blow to prevent the attack being made."

"I think, therefore, that we ought to take great numbers of hoplites, both from Athens and from our allies, and not merely from our subjects, but also any we may be able to get for love or money in the Peloponnesus, and great numbers also of archers and slingers, to oppose the Sicilian horse."

"We must not disguise from ourselves that we go to found a city among strangers and enemies, and he who undertakes such an enterprise should be prepared to become master of the country the first day he lands, or failing in this find everything hostile to him."

"[T]hey possess most gold and silver, by which war, like everything else, flourishes."

"Contempt for an assailant is best shown by bravery in action."

"As for democracy, the men of sense among us knew what it was, and I perhaps as well as any, as I have more cause to complain of it; but there is nothing new to be said of a patent absurdity-meanwhile we did not think it safe to alter it under the pressure of your hostility."

"They have discovered that the length of time we have now been in commission has rotted our ships and wasted our crews, and that with the completeness of our crews and the soundness of the pristine efficiency of our navy has departed. For it is impossible for us to haul our ships ashore and dry them out because the enemy's vessels being as many or more than our own, we are constantly anticipating an attack."

"But what most oppressed them was that they had two wars at once, and has thus reached a pitch of frenzy which no one would have believed possible if he had heard of it before it had come to pass."

"[T]he Thracian people, like the bloodiest of the barbarians, being ever most murderous when it has nothing to fear."

"By day certainly the combatants have a clearer notion, though even then by no means of all that takes place, no one knowing much of anything that does not does not go on in his own immediate neighborhood; but in a night engagement (and this was the only one that occurred between great armies during the war) how could anyone know anything for certain?"

"Right or community of blood was not the bond of union between them, so much as interest or compulsion as the case may be."

"When men are once checked in what they consider their special excellence, their whole opinion of themselves suffers more than if they had not at first believed in their superiority, the unexpected shock to their pride causing them to give way more than their real strength warrants; and that is probably now the case with the Athenians."

"And the rarest dangers are those in which failure brings little loss and success the greatest advantage."

"[T]heir swaying bodies reflected the agitation of their minds, and they suffered the worst agony of all, ever just within the reach of safety or just on the point of destruction."

"The dead lay unburied, and each man as he recognized a friend among them shuddered with grief and horror; while the living whom they were leaving behind, wounded or sick, were to the living far more shocking than the dead, and more to be pitied than those who had perished."

"In a democracy ...someone who fails to get elected to office can always console himself with the thought that there was something not quite fair about it."

"The wide difference between the two characters, the slowness and want of energy of the Spartans as contrasted with the dash and enterprise of their opponents, proved of the greatest service, especially to a maritime empire like Athens. Indeed this was shown by the Syracusans, who were most like the Athenians in character, and also most successful in combating them."

"Of all histories I think Tacitus simply the best; Livy is very good; Thucydides above any of the writers of Greek matters."

"What we have done must convince us that Thucydides was right, that peace is better than war not only in being more agreeable but also in being very much more predictable. A plan and policy which offers a good promise of deterring war is therefore by orders of magnitude better in every way than one which depreciates the objective of deterrence in order to improve somewhat the chances of winning."

"Nor did Lord Chatham neglect to exercise an influence over the direction of William's graver studies. The Earl prudently, indeed, left to professional teachers the legitimate routine in the classic authors, but he made it his particular desire that Thucydides, the eternal manual of statesmen, should be the first Greek book which his son read after coming to college."

"The antithesis between interest and principle, and the subordination of the latter when vital political interests are at stake, is a recurring theme in Thucydidean speeches, as is the view that the possession of power confers the right to exercise it over the weak, and that this is normal behaviour. That is the way the world is. The best possible combination...is power exercised with moderation and realism."

"The "Machiavellian" or, if we want to avoid anachronism, Sophists' theme that might is right is so prominent that it was clearly a preoccupation of Thucydides, and it is one to which no really effective reply — only a reminder of the fickleness of fortune — is made."

"Surely no more lucid, unillusioned intelligence has ever applied itself to the writing of history."

"The emotional power of the work is not to be denied, repressed, branded as modern sentimentality or condemned as a form of "brain-washing." The ancient critics recognized Thucydides' ability to recreate the pathos of events, that is, to lead his readers to participate vicariously in the sufferings of the war. That experience is at the center of any reading of Thucydides and is the product of the shaping of the text to involve and implicate the reader, both mentally and emotionally. The result is the intensity of engagement that so many readers experience as they struggle with the Histories. If we want to fully appreciate Thucydides' work, we must give the emotional power of the work its place and shape our reactions by its development."

"Thucydides' The Athenian General—a narrative which would give you the chills. It was written four hundred years before Christ and it talks about how human nature is always the enemy of anything superior. Thucydides writes about how words in his time have changed from their ordinary meaning, how actions and opinions can be altered in the blink of an eye. It's like nothing has changed from his time to mine."

"Power, Thucydides wrote, or its equivalent wealth, created the desire for more power, more wealth. The Athenians and the Spartans fought for one reason — because they were powerful, and therefore were compelled (the words are Thucydides' own) to seek more power. They fought not because they were different — democratic Athens and oligarchical Sparta — but because they were alike. The war had nothing to do with differences in ideas or with considerations of right and wrong. Is democracy right and the rule of the few over the many wrong? To Thucydides the question would have seemed an evasion of the issue. There was no right power. Power, whoever wielded it, was evil, the corrupter of men."

"Thucydides saw that the foundation stone of all morality, the regard for the rights of others, had crumbled and fallen away. It had been the acknowledged foundation when Euripides wrote the Suppliants, not only of dealings between man and man, but also between state and state. The state embodied the idea of honorable men. But when Thucydides wrote, Athens had won an empire by dismissing that idea. In the big business of power politics it was not only necessary, it was right, for the state to seize every opportunity for self-advantage. Thucydides was the first probably to see, certainly to put into words, this new doctrine which was to become the avowed doctrine of the world. He makes Pericles explicitly deny that fair dealing and compassion are proper to the state as they are to the individual. A country pursuing her own way with no thought of imposing that way on others might, he points out, keep to such ideas, but not one bent upon dominion. "A city that rules an empire," he writes, "holds nothing which is to its own interest as contrary to right and reason.""

"One other Greek book of history all should know, perhaps the greatest of all histories, that of the Athenian Thucydides. Now Thucydides was in pre-eminent degree what Herodotus was not—a strictly scientific historian; one whose conception of the canons of historic precision has never been surpassed, against whom hardly a single error of fact, hardly a single mistaken judgment, has ever been brought home. Thucydides is much more than a great historian; or, rather, he was what every great historian ought to be—he was a profound philosopher. His history of the Peloponneslan War is like a portrait by Titian: the whole mind and character, the inner spirit and ideals, the very tricks and foibles, of the man or the age come before us in living reality. No more memorable, truthful, and profound portrait exists than that wherein Thucydides has painted the Athens of the age of Pericles."

"Recorded history is not an entirely unbroken saga of violence, but the historian knows that he must look much earlier than the twentieth century for the first examples of all the paraphernalia of violence with which the twentieth century has been familiar. International aggression, continuous, calculated, pathologically inspired? Thucydides is still the author of the best book on that subject."

"Another profound impression made on me at Oxford came when one morning I sat down in my huge basket chair and read the account of the Athenian expedition against Syracuse given by Thucydides in his History of the Peloponnesian War. It was the most dramatic thing I have ever read, the most overwhelming in its effect, and I have over and over again returned to it in my dramatic criticism."

"In the whole politics of Greece, the anxiety, with regard to the balance [of power], is most apparent, and is expressly pointed out to us, even by the antient historians. Thucydides represents the league, which was form'd against Athens, and which produc'd the Peloponnesian war, as entirely owing to this principle."

"The first page of Thucydides is, in my opinion, the commencement of real history. All preceding narrations are so intermixt with fable, that philosophers ought to abandon them, in a great measure, to the embellishment of poets and orators."

"A greater master of stern pathos than Thucydides never lived, and this is partly because he never says too much. He was not only a political philosopher, but also an artist who felt the tragic force of his story. Thus he fixes our attention on Athens at the summit of her cruelty and insolence—in the massacre at Mêlos—just before he passes to the terrible narrative of her ruin in Sicily. His style has many faults. It is often involved, abrupt, obscure. But no writer has grander bursts of rugged eloquence, or more of that greatness which is given by sustained intensity of noble thought and feeling."

"Reading the other day...in Thucydides the sad story of the destruction of the Athenian Expeditionary Force, the A.E.F., in Sicily, which after so many centuries still fills one's eyes with tears."

"For close, cogent, and appropriate reasoning upon practical political questions, the speeches of Thucydides have never been surpassed; and, indeed, they may be considered as having reached the highest excellence of which the human mind is capable in this department."

"This day I finished Thucydides, after reading him with inexpressible interest and admiration. He is the greatest historian that ever lived."

"I do assure you that there is no prose composition in the world, not even the De Coronâ, which I place so high as the seventh book of Thucydides. It is the ne plus ultra of human art. I was delighted to find in Gray's letters the other day this query to Wharton: "The retreat from Syracuse—Is it or is it not the finest thing you ever read in your life?""

"It was, of course, Thucydides who, coming immediately after Herodotus and accepting this theme, contributed more than anybody else to making it [war] an essential ingredient of European thought."

"Thucydides' history is a study in political and military leadership which after 2400 years still defies comparison."

"Thucydides concentrated on political life; it was here that he found the meaning of human effort. By understanding the political life of the present, and its military consequences, he believed that he had understood the nature of man in its perennial elements. He refrained almost completely from descriptions of foreign lands, unusual occurrences (with the exception of the plague), anecdotes about famous individuals, myths and cults, or information about monuments conspicuous for beauty or greatness. He was at pains to understand the Peloponnesian War as the sum of human nature – so much that he entertained no doubt whatsoever about the premises of his method."

"Why was it worth while for Mr. Jowett, the other day, to give us a new translation of Thucydides' history of the Peloponnesian War? and why is it worth your while, at least to dip in a serious spirit into its pages? Partly, because the gravity and concision of Thucydides are of specially wholesome example in these days of over-coloured and over-voluminous narrative; partly, because he knows how to invest the wreck and overthrow of those small states with the pathos and dignity of mighty imperial fall; but most of all, for the sake of the wise sentences that are sown with apt but not unsparing hand through the progress of the story. Well might Gray ask his friend whether Thucydides' description of the final destruction of the Athenian host at Syracuse was not the finest thing he ever read in his life; and assuredly the man who can read that stern tale without admiration, pity, and awe, may be certain that he has no taste for noble composition, and no feeling for the deepest tragedy of mortal things. But it is the sagacious sentences in the speeches of Athenians, Corinthians, Lacedaemonians, that do most of all to give to the historian his perpetuity of interest to every reader with the rudiments of a political instinct, and make Thucydides as modern as if he had written yesterday."

"My recreation, my preference, my cure from all Platonism has always been Thucydides. Thucydides and, perhaps, Machiavelli's Principe are most closely related to me by the unconditional will not to gull oneself and to see reason in reality—not in "reason," still less in "morality." For the wretched embellishment of the Greeks into an ideal, which the "classically educated" youth carries into life as a prize for his classroom drill, there is no more complete cure than Thucydides. One must follow him line by line and read no less clearly between the lines: there are few thinkers who say so much between the lines. With him the culture of the Sophists, by which I mean the culture of the realists, reaches its perfect expression—this inestimable movement amid the moralistic and idealistic swindle set loose on all sides by the Socratic schools. Greek philosophy: the decadence of the Greek instinct. Thucydides: the great sum, the last revelation of that strong, severe, hard factuality which was instinctive with the older Hellenes. In the end, it is courage in the face of reality that distinguishes a man like Thucydides from Plato: Plato is a coward before reality, consequently he flees into the ideal; Thucydides has control of himself, consequently he also maintains control of things."

"It seems to me now as if I had known Thucydides, as I knew Homer (Pope's!), since I could spell; but the fact was, that for a youth who had so little Greek to bless himself with at seventeen, to know every syllable of his Thucydides at half past eighteen meant some steady sitting at it. The perfect honesty of the Greek soldier, his high breeding, his political insight, and the scorn of construction with which he knotted his meaning into a rhythmic strength that writhed and wrought every way at once, all interested me intensely in him as a writer; while his subject, the central tragedy of all the world, the suicide of Greece, was felt by me with a sympathy in which the best powers of my heart and brain were brought up to their fullest, for my years."

"The importance of the Peloponnesian War for our purposes is obvious. First, it—on Thucydides's account of it—exemplifies the strengths and weaknesses of democracy in ways that every succeeding age has seized on. On the one side, the resourcefulness, patriotism, energy, and determination of Athens were astonishing; on the other, the fickleness, cruelty, and proneness to dissension were equally astonishing. (…) Second, it reveals one major reason for the ultimate failure of the Greek states to survive the rise of the Macedonian and Roman empires. Greek city-states were conscious both of being Greek and of their own narrower ethnicity: Athenian, Theban, Spartan."

"The characteristics of his method of composing history consist, first, in the interweaving of political speeches, framed in a manner at once clear and elaborate, which introduce us into the secret motives and councils by which the political events of the period were governed, enable us to survey every particular incident exactly from that point of view in which it was regarded by each of the most opposite parties, and lay open the most hidden wiles of contending statesmen, with an acumen superior to what was ever exerted by the craftiest of them all; secondly, in an almost poetical, minute, energetic, and lively representation of battles, and those other external incidents which occupy but too great a space in the history of human affairs; and lastly, in the accumulation of all those highest excellencies of style, which can be embodied in the richest, most ornamented, and most energetic prose."

"The history of the Peloponnesian War finds an appropriately severe and penetrating recorder in the exiled Athenian Thucydides, unquestionably one of the greatest historians of all time. George Marshall said that no-one could understand the Second World War in our own time unless they had read him. Thucydides too wished to record great events; but he had no illusions about war: "In peace and prosperity both states and individuals are activated by higher motives because they do not fall under the dominion of imperious necessities. But war, which takes away the comfortable provision of daily life, is a violent teacher and assimilates men's characters to their conditions..." War, Thucydides believed like Homer, was a prerequisite of human society – "the ultimate constraint by which all settled societies protect themselves", as John Keegan puts it. He also believed that human nature will under necessity use ultimate force."

"Tell your king (Xerxes), who sent you, how his Greek viceroy of Macedonia has received you hospitably."

"Men of Athens... In truth I would not tell it to you if I did not care so much for all Hellas; I myself am by ancient descent a Greek, and I would not willingly see Hellas change her freedom for slavery. I tell you, then, that Mardonius and his army cannot get omens to his liking from the sacrifices. Otherwise you would have fought long before this. Now, however, it is his purpose to pay no heed to the sacrifices, and to attack at the first glimmer of dawn, for he fears, as I surmise, that your numbers will become still greater. Therefore, I urge you to prepare, and if (as may be) Mardonius should delay and not attack, wait patiently where you are; for he has but a few days' provisions left. If, however, this war ends as you wish, then must you take thought how to save me too from slavery, who have done so desperate a deed as this for the sake of Hellas in my desire to declare to you Mardonius' intent so that the barbarians may not attack you suddenly before you yet expect them. I who speak am Alexander the Macedonian."

"It is only for those to employ force who possess strength without judgment; but the well advised will have recourse to other means. Besides, he who pretends to carry his point by force hath need of many associates; but the man who can persuade knows that he is himself sufficient for the purpose; neither can such a one be supposed forward to shed blood; for, who is there would choose to destroy a fellow citizen rather than make a friend of him by mildness and persuasion?"

"The most delightful of all music, that of your own praises."

"There is small risk a general will be regarded with contempt by those he leads, if, whatever he may have to preach, he shows himself best able to perform."

"For showing loyalty in the midst of prosperity calls for no particular admiration, but always, if men show themselves steadfast when friends have fallen upon misfortunes, this is remembered for all times."

"As to what happened next, it is possible to maintain that the hand of heaven was involved, and also possible to say that when men are desperate no one can stand up to them."

"Every one of you is the leader."

"It is common opinion among us in regard to beauty and wisdom that there is an honourable and a shameful way of bestowing them. For to offer one’s beauty for money to all comers is called prostitution; but we think it virtuous to become friendly with a lover who is known to be a man of honour. So is it with wisdom. Those who offer it to all comers for money are known as sophists, prostitutors of wisdom."

"The company, then, were feasting in silence, as though some one in authority had commanded them to do so, when Philip the buffoon knocked at the door and told the porter to announce who he was and that he desired to be admitted; he added that with regard to food he had come all prepared, in all varieties—to dine on some other person's,—and that his servant was in great distress with the load he carried of—nothing, and with having an empty stomach. Hearing this, Callias said, “Well, gentlemen, we cannot decently begrudge him at the least the shelter of our roof; so let him come in.” With the words he cast a glance at Autolycus, obviously trying to make out what he had thought of the pleasantry. But Philip, standing at the threshold of the men's hall where the banquet was served, announced: “You all know that I am a jester; and so I have come here with a will, thinking it more of a joke to come to your dinner uninvited than to come by invitation.” “Well, then,” said Callias, “take a place; for the guests, though well fed, as you observe, on seriousness, are perhaps rather ill supplied with laughter.”"

"Clearchus spoke, and his words were few; "Conquerors do not, as a rule, give up their arms.""

"In this mood he [Proxenus] threw himself into the projects of Cyrus, and in return expected to derive from this essay the reward of a great name, large power, and wide wealth. But for all that he pitched his hopes so high, it was none the less evident that he would refuse to gain any of the ends he set before him wrongfully. Righteously and honourably he would obtain them, if he might, or else forego them."

"The thing is to get them to turn their thoughts to what they mean to do, instead of to what they are likely to suffer."

"On making prisoners of our generals, they expected that we should perish from want of direction and order. It is incumbent, therefore, on our present commanders to be far more vigilant than our former ones, and on those under command to be far more orderly, and more obedient to their officers, at present than they were before…On the very day that such resolution is passed, they will see before them ten thousand Clearchuses instead of one."

"But if any other course, in any one's opinion, be better than this, let him, even though he be a private soldier, boldly give us his sentiments; for the safety, which we all seek, is a general concern."

"θάλαττα! θάλαττα!"

"Yet is it more honourable, and just, and upright, and pleasing, to treasure in the memory good acts than bad."

"Just as the various trades are most highly developed in large cities, in the same way food at the palace is prepared in a far superior manner. In small towns the same man makes couches, doors, plows and tables, and often he even builds houses, and still he is thankful if only he can find enough work to support himself. And it is impossible for a man of many trades to do all of them well. In large cities, however, because many make demands on each trade, one alone is enough to support a man, and often less than one: for instance one man makes shoes for men, another for women, there are places even where one man earns a living just by mending shoes, another by cutting them out, another just by sewing the uppers together, while there is another who performs none of these operations but assembles the parts, Of necessity, he who pursues a very specialised task will do it best."

"That ... is the road to the obedience of compulsion. But there is a shorter way to a nobler goal, the obedience of the will. When the interests of mankind are at stake, they will obey with joy the man whom they believe to be wiser than themselves. You may prove this on all sides: you may see how the sick man will beg the doctor to tell him what he ought to do, how a whole ship’s company will listen to the pilot."

"If the campaign is in summer the general must show himself greedy for his share of the sun and the heat, and in winter for the cold and the frost, and in all labours for toil and fatigue. This will help to make him beloved of his followers."

"Let thy speech be better than silence, or be silent."

"So, Damocles, since this life delights you, do you wish to taste it yourself and make trial of my fortune?"

"I would like somebody to be hated more than I am."

"Among the Greek kingdoms, Sicily was renowned for its tyrannical regimes. Its rulers exercised habitual violence against their populations and each other. Best known is Dionysus of Syracuse. He rose from humble origins, deposed the local democracy, established firm control and used it to create the most powerful empire in the Greek world. Since he thought more in terms of a nation than a city-state, and acted like a monarch, he is a forerunner of Alexander the Great."

"Do not to your neighbor what you would take ill from him."

"Forgiveness is better than revenge."

"Whatever you do, do it well."

"Even the Gods cannot strive against necessity."

"Power shows the man."

"Do not say before hand what you are going to do; for if you fail, you will be laughed at."

"Do not reproach a man with his misfortunes, fearing lest Nemesis may overtake you."

"Speak no ill of a friend, nor even of an enemy."

"Cultivate truth, good faith, experience, cleverness, sociability, and industry."

"καιρὸν γνῶθι"

"Whatever you rebuke your neighbor for, do not do it yourself."

"I never learned how to tune a harp, or play upon a lute; but I know how to raise a small and inconsiderable city to glory and greatness."

"May I never sit on a tribunal where my friends shall not find more favor from me than strangers."

"Strike, if you will, but hear."

"For the Athenians command the rest of Greece, I command the Athenians; your mother commands me, and you command your mother."

"I have with me two gods, Persuasion and Compulsion."

"I choose the likely man in preference to the rich man; I want a man without money rather than money without a man."

"He who controls the sea controls everything."

"Themistocles was a man who exhibited the most indubitable signs of genius; indeed, in this particular he has a claim on our admiration quite extraordinary and unparalleled. By his own native capacity, alike unformed and unsupplemented by study, he was at once the best judge in those sudden crises which admit of little or of no deliberation, and the best prophet of the future, even to its most distant possibilities. An able theoretical expositor of all that came within the sphere of his practice, he was not without the power of passing an adequate judgment in matters in which he had no experience. He could also excellently divine the good and evil which lay hid in the unseen future. In fine, whether we consider the extent of his natural powers, or the slightness of his application, this extraordinary man must be allowed to have surpassed all others in the faculty of intuitively meeting an emergency."

"I was born in 1770, on April the 3rd, on the Easter Monday. The rebellion in the Peloponnese broke out in 1769. I was born under a tree on a mountain called Ramovouni, situated in old Messenia"

"Greeks, God has signed our Liberty and will not go back on his promise."

"It was not until our rising that all the Greeks were brought into communication. There were men who knew of no place beyond a mile of their own locality."

"Fire and Axe to those who submit!"

"According to my judgement, the French Revolution and the doings of Napoleon opened the eyes of the world. The nations knew nothing before and the people thought that kings were gods upon the earth and that they were bound to say that whatever they did as well done. Through this present change it is more difficult to rule the people."

"Greeks! today we are born and today we shall die for the salvation of our Homeland."

"He was the God of War."

"When we got our weapons, first we said for [Christian] Faith and then for the Nation."

"49 years I fight for the Fatherland."

"-"The Italian Government has repeatedly noted that, during the course of the present war, the Greek Government has adopted and maintained a position which goes not only against the smooth and peaceful..." -Alors, c'est la guerre. -Pas nécessaire, mon excellence. -Non, c'est nécessaire."

"Greece since the 4th of August became an anticommunist State, an antiparliamentary State, a totalitarian State. A State based on its peasants and workers, and so antiplutocratic. There is not, of course, a particular party to govern. This party is all the People, except of the incorrigible communists and the reactionary politicians of the old parties."

"...Greece, which has the highest estimation of the renowned leader, heroic soldier, and enlightened creator of Turkey. We will never forget that President Atatürk was the true founder of the Greco-Turkish alliance based on a framework of common ideals and peaceful cooperation. He developed ties of friendship between the two nations which it would be unthinkable to dissolve. Greece will guard its fervent memories of this great man, who determined an unalterable future path for the noble Turkish nation."

"Ασθενή έχομεν. Εις τον γύψον τον εβάλαμεν. Τον δοκιμάζομεν εάν ημπορεί να περπατάει χωρίς τον γύψον. Σπάζομεν τον αρχικόν γύψον και ξαναβάζομεν ενδεχομένως τον καινούργιο εκεί όπου χρειάζεται [...] Ας προσευχηθώμεν να μη χρειάζεται ξανά γύψον. Εάν χρειάζεται, θα του τον βάλομεν. Και το μόνον που ημπορώ να σας υποσχεθώ, είναι να σας καλέσω να ειδήτε και σεις το πόδι χωρίς γύψον!"

"Καὶ Μέλισσος δὲ τὸ ἀγένητον τοῦ ὄντος ἔδειξε τῶι κοινῶι τούτωι χρησάμενος ἀξιώματι· γράφει δὲ οὕτως·᾿ἀεὶ ἦν ὅ τι ἦν καὶ ἀεὶ ἔσται. Εἰ γὰρ ἐγένετο, ἀναγκαῖόν ἐστι πρὶν γενέσθαι εἶναι μηδέν· εἰ τοίνυν μηδὲν ἦν, οὐδαμὰ ἂν γένοιτο οὐδὲν ἐκ μηδενός᾿."

"Οὕτως οὖν ἀίδιόν ἐστι καὶ ἄπειρον καὶ ἓν καὶ ὅμοιον πᾶν."

"Οὐδ᾿ ἂν τὸ ὑγιὲς ἀλγῆσαι δύναιτο· ἀπὸ γὰρ ἂν ὄλοιτο τὸ ὑγιὲς καὶ τὸ ἐόν, τὸ δὲ οὐκ ἐὸν γένοιτο. Καὶ περὶ τοῦ ἀνιᾶσθαι ὡυτὸς λόγος τῶι ἀλγέοντι. Οὐδὲ κενεόν ἐστιν οὐδέν· τὸ γὰρ κενεὸν οὐδέν ἐστιν· οὐκ ἂν οὖν εἴη τό γε μηδέν. Οὐδὲ κινεῖται· ὑποχωρῆσαι γὰρ οὐκ ἔχει οὐδαμῆι, ἀλλὰ πλέων ἐστίν. Εἰ μὲν γὰρ κενεὸν ἦν, ὑπεχώρει ἂν εἰς τὸ κενόν· κενοῦ δὲ μὴ ἐόντος οὐκ ἔχει ὅκηι ὑποχωρήσει."

"Τοῦ γὰρ ἐόντος ἀληθινοῦ κρεῖσσον οὐδέν."

"This is indeed the first question we have to ask: is generation a fact or not? Earlier speculation was at variance both with itself and with the views here put forward as to the true answer to this question. Some removed generation and destruction from the world altogether. Nothing that is, they said, is generated or destroyed, and our conviction to the contrary is an illusion. So maintained the school of Melissus and Parmenides. But however excellent their theories may otherwise be, anyhow they cannot be held to speak as students of nature. There may be things not subject to generation or any kind of movement, but if so they belong to another and a higher inquiry than the study of nature. They, however, had no idea of any form of being other than the substance of things perceived; and when they saw, what no one previously had seen, that there could be no knowledge or wisdom without some such unchanging entities, they naturally transferred what was true of them to things perceived."

"[W]hen in company where people engaged themselves in what are commonly thought the liberal and elegant amusements, he was obliged to defend himself against the observations of those who considered themselves highly accomplished, by the somewhat arrogant retort, that he certainly could not make use of any stringed instrument, could only, were a small and obscure city put into his hands, make it great and glorious. Notwithstanding this, Stesimbrotus says that Themistocles was a hearer of Anaxagoras, and that he studied natural philosophy under Melissus, contrary to chronology; for Melissus commanded the Samians in their siege by Pericles, who was much Themistocles's junior; and with Pericles, also, Anaxagoras was intimate."

"Together with his victory and pursuit, having made himself master of the port, he laid siege to the Samians, and blocked them up, who yet, one way or another, still ventured to make sallies, and fight under the city walls. But after that another greater fleet from Athens was arrived, and that the Samians were now shut up with a close leaguer on every side, Pericles, taking with him sixty galleys, sailed out into the main sea, with the intention, as most authors give the account, to meet a squadron of Phoenician ships that were coming for the Samians' relief, and to fight them at as great distance as could be from the island; but, as Stesimbrotus says, with a design of putting over to Cyprus, which does not seem to be probable. But, whichever of the two was his intention, it seems to have been a miscalculation. For on his departure, Melissus, the son of Ithagenes, a philosopher, being at that time the general in Samos, despising either the small number of the ships that were left or the inexperience of the commanders, prevailed with the citizens to attack the Athenians. And the Samians having won the battle, and taken several of the men prisoners, and disabled several of the ships, were masters of the sea, and brought into port all necessaries they wanted for the war, which they had not before. Aristotle says, too, that Pericles had been once before this worsted by this Melissus in a sea-fight. … Pericles, as soon as news was brought him of the disaster that had befallen his army, made all the haste he could to come in to their relief, and having defeated Melissus, who bore up against him, and put the enemy to flight, he immediately proceeded to hem them in with a wall, resolving to master them and take the town, rather with some cost and time than with the wounds and hazards of his citizens."

"Melissus, the son of Ithaegenes, was a native of Samos. He was a pupil of Parmenides. Moreover he came into relations with Heraclitus, on which occasion the latter was introduced by him to the Ephesians, who did not know him, as Democritus was to the citizens of Abdera by Hippocrates. He took part also in politics and won the approval of his countrymen, and for this reason he was elected admiral and won more admiration than ever through his own merit.In his view the universe was unlimited, unchangeable and immovable, and was one, uniform and full of matter. There was no real, but only apparent, motion. Moreover he said that we ought not to make any statements about the gods, for it was impossible to have knowledge of them.According to Apollodorus, he flourished in the 84th Olympiad."

"Melissus seems to infer that what really exists must be permanent and immutable, because it is too tough to pass away, and all change involves the destruction of a previous state of being. The argument depends upon investigating what we mean by saying something is real or exists. Permanence, Melissus suggests, is part of the concept of truth or existence. Is that so? How would we check up?"

"[...] when it is a question of foreign affairs, great international questions, I think that so long as I believe a thing is right or not right, I must insist upon its being done or not being done, because I am responsible before God."

"When he is with me, I confess that his arguments are so convincing that I quickly begin to imagine that they are my own."

"The Emperor knows that my personal sympathies and my political opinions draw me to his side [...] After deep reflection it is, however, impossible for me to see how I could be of service to him by mobilizing at once my Army [...] I am forced to think that neutrality is imposed on us which may be useful to him, and I assure him that I will not touch any of my neighbours who are his friends, as long as they do not touch our local Balkan interests. [...] What I ask for to-day is to put into execution that which we have so often discussed together."

"Constantinos must go, for he has betrayed Greece. But why should his son suffer for the folly of his father? The Crown Prince shares his father's guilt, but his younger sons are only boys, and they can be trained to become worthy Kings of Greece. It is only on condition that you preserve the dynasty that shall consent to return to Athens."

"Κρειττότερον ἐστὶν εἰδέναι ἐν μέσῃ τῇ Πόλει φακιόλιον βασιλεῦον Τούρκου, ἢ καλύπτραν Λατινικήν."

"Phormio, fearing that his sailors might be frightened, and observing that they were gathering in knots and were evidently apprehensive of the enemy's numbers, resolved to call them together and inspirit them by a suitable admonition. He had always been in the habit of telling them and training their minds to believe that no superiority of hostile forces could justify them in retreating. And it had long been a received opinion among the sailors that, as Athenians, they were bound to face any number of Peloponnesian ships. When, however, he found them dispirited by the sight which met their eyes, he determined to revive their drooping courage, and, having assembled them together, he spoke as follows:'Soldiers, I have summoned you because I see that you are alarmed at the numbers of the enemy, and I would not have you dismayed when there is nothing to fear. In the first place, the reason why they have pro-vided a fleet so disproportionate is because we have defeated them already, and they can see themselves that they are no match for us; next, as to the courage which they suppose to be native to them and which is the ground of their confidence when they attack us, that reliance is merely inspired by the success which their experience on land usually gives them, and will, as they fancy, equally ensure them by sea. But the superiority which we allow to them on land we may justly claim for ourselves at sea; for in courage at least we are their equals, and the superior confidence of either of us is really based upon greater experience. The Lacedaemonians lead the allies for their own honour and glory; the majority of them are dragged into battle against their will; if they were not compelled they would never have ventured after so great a defeat to fight again at sea. So that you need not fear their valour; they are far more afraid of you and with better reason, not only because you have already defeated them, but because they cannot believe that you would oppose them at all if you did not mean to do something worthy of that great victory. For most men when, like these Peloponnesians, they are a match for their enemies rely more upon their strength than upon their courage; but those who go into battle against far superior numbers and under no constraint must be inspired by some extraordinary force of resolution. Our enemies are well aware of this, and are more afraid of our surprising boldness than they would be if our forces were less out of proportion to their own. Many an army before now has been overthrown by smaller numbers owing to want of experience; some too through cowardice; and from both these faults we are certainly free. If I can help I shall not give battle in the gulf, or even sail into it. For I know that where a few vessels which are skilfully handled and are better sailers engage with a larger number which are badly managed the confined space is a disadvantage. Unless the captain of a ship see his enemy a good way off he cannot come on or strike properly; nor can he retreat when he is pressed hard. The manœuvres suited to fast-sailing vessels, such as breaking of the line or returning to the charge, cannot be practised in a narrow space. The sea-fight must of necessity be reduced to a land-fight in which numbers tell. For all this I shall do my best to provide. Do you meanwhile keep order and remain close to your ships. Be prompt in taking your instructions, for the enemy is near at hand and watching us. In the moment of action remember the value of silence and order, which are always important in war, especially at sea. Repel the enemy in a spirit worthy of your former exploits. There is much at stake; for you will either destroy the rising hope of the Peloponnesian navy, or bring home to Athens the fear of losing the sea. Once more I remind you that you have beaten most of the enemy's fleet already; and, once defeated, men do not meet the same dangers with their old spirit.'"

"You deceive your countrymen with words, in dissuading them from war, since under the name of peace you are bringing upon them slavery; for peace is procured by war, and they, accordingly, who would enjoy it long, ought to be trained to war. If therefore, my countrymen, you wish to be leaders of Greece, you must devote yourselves to the camp, not to the ."

"As to supposing that I am emulous of , you are mistaken; for he, with the support of all Greece, hardly took one city in ten years; I, on the contrary with the force of this one city of ours, and in one day, delivered all Greece by defeating the Lacedaemonians."

"It was his habit to appear at all times with a well-groomed body and a cheerful countenance, but on the day after that battle he went forth unwashed and with a look of dejection. When his friends asked if anything distressing had befallen him, he said, "Nothing ; but yesterday I found myself feeling a pride greater than is well. Therefore to-day I am chastising my immoderate indulgence in rejoicing.""

"When the Spartans accused the Thebans of a long list of serious offences, he retorted, "These Thebans, however, have put a stop to your brevity of speech!""

"When somebody reported that the Athenians had sent an army, decked out with novel equipment, into the Pelopennese, he said, "Why should Antigenidas cry if Tellen has a new flute or two?" (Tellen was the worst of flute-players, and Antigenidas the best.)"

"Learning that his shield-bearer had received a great deal of money from a man who had been taken captive in the war, he said to him, "Give me back my shield, and buy yourself a tavern in which to spend the rest of your days ; for you will no longer be willing to face danger as before, now that you have become one of the rich and prosperous.""

"His indifference to money was put to the proof by Diomedon of Cyzicus; for he, at the request of , had undertaken to bribe Epaminondas. He accordingly came to Thebes with a large sum in gold, and, by a present of five talents, brought over Micythus, a young man for whom Epaminondas had then a great affection, to further his views. Micythus went to Epaminondas, and told him the cause of Diomedon's coming. But Epaminondas, in the presence of Diomedon, said to him, "There is no need of money in the matter; for if what the king desires is for the good of the Thebans, I am ready to do it for nothing; but if otherwise, he has not gold and silver enough to move me, for I would not accept the riches of the whole world in exchange for my love for my country.""

"Epaminondas is reported wittily to have said of a good man that died about the time of the battle of Leuctra, "How came he to have so much leisure as to die, when there was so much stirring?""

"He was so frugal in his manner of living that once, when he was invited to dinner by a neighbour, and found there an elaborate display of cake and pastry and other dishes, and perfumes as well, he left at once, saying, "I thought this was to be a meal and not a display of arrogance.""

"On the statue of Epaminondas is an inscription in elegiac verse relating among other things that he founded Messene, and that through him the Greeks won freedom. The elegiac verses are these: By my counsels was Sparta shorn of her glory, And holy received at last her children. By the arms of Thebe was Megalopolis encircled with walls, And all Greece won independence and freedom."

"Spintharus, speaking in commendation of Epaminondas, says he scarce ever met with any man who knew more and spoke less."

"I find so vast a distance betwixt Epaminondas, according to my judgment of him, and some that I know, who are yet men of good sense, that I could willingly enhance upon Plutarch, and say that there is more difference betwixt such and such a man than there is betwixt such a man and such a beast: and that there are as many and innumerable degrees of mind as there are cubits betwixt this and heaven."

"Of this virtue of his, he has, in my idea, given as ample proof as Alexander himself or Caesar: for although his warlike exploits were neither so frequent nor so full, they were yet, if duly considered in all their circumstances, as important, as bravely fought, and carried with them as manifest testimony of valour and military conduct, as those of any whatever."

"The Greeks have done him the honour, without contradiction, to pronounce him the greatest man of their nation; and to be the first of Greece, is easily to be the first of the world. As to his knowledge, we have this ancient judgment of him, "That never any man knew so much, and spake so little as he"; for he was of the Pythagorean sect; but when he did speak, never any man spake better; an excellent orator, and of powerful persuasion."

"'Tis true that I look upon his obstinate poverty, as it is set out by his best friends, as a little too scrupulous and nice; and this is the only feature, though high in itself and well worthy of admiration, that I find so rugged as not to desire to imitate, to the degree it was in him."

"This was a soul of a rich composition: he married goodness and humanity, nay, even the tenderest and most delicate in the whole school of philosophy, to the roughest and most violent human actions. Was it nature or art that had intenerated that great courage of his, so full, so obstinate against pain and death and poverty, to such an extreme degree of sweetness and compassion? Dreadful in arms and blood, he overran and subdued a nation invincible by all others but by him alone; and yet in the heat of an encounter, could turn aside from his friend and guest. Certainly he was fit to command in war who could so rein himself with the curb of good nature, in the height and heat of his fury, a fury inflamed and foaming with blood and slaughter. ‘Tis a miracle to be able to mix any image of justice with such violent actions: and it was only possible for such a steadfastness of mind as that of Epaminondas therein to mix sweetness and the facility of the gentlest manners and purest innocence."

"Relaxation and facility, methinks, wonderfully honour and best become a strong and generous soul. Epaminondas did not think that to take part, and that heartily, in songs and sports and dances with the young men of his city, were things that in any way derogated from the honour of his glorious victories and the perfect purity of manners that was in him."

"He was so great a lover of truth, that he would not tell a falsehood even in jest."

"He bore poverty so easily, that he received nothing from the state but glory. He did not avail himself of the means of his friends to maintain himself; but he often used his credit to relieve others, to such a degree that it might be thought all things were in common between him and his friends; for when any one of his countrymen had been taken by the enemy, or when the marriageable daughter of a friend could not be married for want of fortune, he used to call a council of his friends, and to prescribe how much each should give according to his means; and when he had made up the sum required, he brought the man who wanted it to those who contributed, and made them pay it to the person himself, in order that he, into whose hands the sum passed, might know to whom he was indebted, and how much to each."

"His eloquence shone most at Sparta (when he was ambassador before the battle of Leuctra), where, when the ambassadors from all the allies had met, Epaminondas, in a full assembly of the embassies, so clearly exposed the tyranny of the Lacedaemonians, that he shook their power by that speech not less than by the battle of Leuctra; for he was at that time the cause (as it afterwards appeared) that they were deprived of the support of their allies."

"Epameinondas, however, was carried back to camp still living, and the physicians were summoned, but when they declared that undoubtedly as soon as the spear-point should be drawn from his chest, death would ensue, with supreme courage he met his end. For first summoning his armour-bearer he asked him if he had saved his shield. On his replying yes and placing it before his eyes, he again asked, which side was victorious. At the boy's answer that the Boeotians were victorious, he said, "It is time to die," and directed them to withdraw the spear point. His friends present cried out in protest, and one of them said: "You die childless, Epameinondas," and burst into tears. To this he replied, "No, by Zeus, on the contrary I leave behind two daughters, Leuctra and Mantineia, my victories." Then when the spear point was withdrawn, without any commotion he breathed his last."