It is, then, difficult to define who are the men to whom we may legitimately give this name,
but one would most nearly approach the truth by applying it to those who in a season of imminent danger, either for their own safety or advantage or owing to their differences with the opposite party, put their cities into the hands of the enemy,
or still more justifiably to those who, admitting a garrison and employing external assistance to further their own inclinations and aims, submit their countries to the domination of a superior power.
It would be quite fair to class all the above as traitors.
The treachery of these men never resulted in any real advantage or good to themselves, but in every case, as no one can deny, just the reverse.
And this makes us wonder what their original motives are; with what aim and reckoning on what they rush headlong into such misfortune.
For not a single man ever betrays a town or army or fort without being found out, but even if any be not detected at the actual moment, the progress of time discovers them all at the end. Nor did any one of them who had once been recognized ever lead a happy life, but in most instances they meet with the punishment they deserve at the hands of the very men with whom they tried to ingratiate themselves.
For generals and princes often employ traitors to further their interest, but when they have no further use for them they afterwards, as Demosthenes says, treat them as traitors, very naturally thinking that a man who has betrayed his country and his original friends to the enemy could never become really well disposed to themselves or keep faith with them.
And if they should happen to escape punishment at the hands of their employers, it is by no means easy for them to escape it at the hands of those they betrayed.
Should they, however, give the slip to the retribution of both, their evil name among other men clings to them for their whole life, producing many false apprehensions and many real ones by night and by day, aiding and abetting all who have evil designs against them,
and finally not allowing them even in sleep to forget their offence, but compelling them to dream of every kind of plot and peril, conscious as they are of the estrangement of everybody and of men's universal hatred of them.
But in spite of all this being so, no one ever, when he had need of one, failed to find a traitor, except in a very few cases.
All this would justify us in saying that man, who is supposed to be the cleverest of the animals, may with good reason be called the least intelligent.
For the other animals are the slaves of their bodily wants alone and only get into trouble owing to these, but man, for all the high opinion that has been formed of him, makes mistakes just as much owing to want of thought as owing to his physical impulses.
I have now said enough on this subject.
Walbank Commentary