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Hereat broke in the Athenian envoy, before the Spartan could
answer, and thus addressed Gelo -
"King of the Syracusans! Greece sent us here to thee to ask for an
army, and not to ask for a general. Thou, however, dost not promise
to send us any army at all, if thou art not made leader of the
Greeks; and this command is what alone thou sticklest for. Now when
thy request was to have the whole command, we were content to keep
silence; for well we knew that we might trust the Spartan envoy to
make answer for us both. But since, after failing in thy claim to
lead the whole armament, thou hast now put forward a request to have
the command of the fleet, know that, even should the Spartan envoy
consent to this, we will not consent. The command by sea, if the
Lacedaemonians do not wish for it, belongs to us. While they like to
keep this command, we shall raise no dispute; but we will not yield
our right to it in favour of any one else. Where would be the
advantage of our having raised up a naval force greater than that of any
other Greek people, if nevertheless we should suffer Syracusans to
take the command away from us? - from us, I say, who are
Athenians, the most ancient nation in Greece, the only Greeks who
have never changed their abode - the people who are said by the poet
Homer to have sent to Troy the man best able of all the Greeks to
array and marshal an army - so that we may be allowed to boast somewhat."
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