Now if I say this concerning you while I believe the contrary to be true, I deceive myself utterly. For if any of these qualities shall fail to be forthcoming in you, the loss will fall on me. But I feel confident, you see, both from my own experience and from your good-will toward me and from the ignorance of the enemy that these sanguine hopes will not deceive me. So let us set out with good heart, since we are free from the suspicion of even seeming to aim unjustly at other men’s possessions. For, as it is, the enemy are coming, aggressors in wrong, and our friends are calling us to their assistance. What, then, is more justifiable than to defend oneself, or what more noble than to assist one’s friends?
Cyropaedia. Xenophon. Walter Miller (Translator). Cambridge, MA. 1914.
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