The oligarchs who were then in power in <a class="linkToPlace" target="_blank" href="/place?placename=Messenia&groupId=760&placeId=1380">Messenia</a>, aiming at their own immediate advantage, were always too warm advocates of peace.
Consequently though they often found themselves in critical situations and were sometimes exposed to grave peril, they always managed to slip through without friction. But the sum of the evils caused by this policy of theirs continued to accumulate, and at last their country was forced to struggle with the worst calamities.
The cause of this I believe to be, that living as they did on the borders of two of the greatest nations in the <a class="linkToPlace" target="_blank" href="/place?placename=Peloponnese&groupId=861&placeId=1552">Peloponnese</a> or even in Greece, the Arcadians and Laconians, of whom
the latter had been their implacable enemies ever since their first occasion of the country, while the former were their friends and protectors, they were never thoroughly frank and whole-hearted either in their enmity to the Lacedaemonians or in their friendship to the Arcadians.
Consequently when the attention of these two peoples was distracted by wars between themselves or against other states, the Messenians were not ill treated, for they enjoyed tranquillity and peace owing to their country lying outside the theatre of war.
But whenever the Lacedaemonians, finding themselves again at leisure and undistracted, took to maltreating them,
they could neither face the might of <a class="linkToPlace" target="_blank" href="/place?placename=Sparta&groupId=660&placeId=1208">Sparta</a> alone, nor had they secured for themselves friends who would be ready to stand by them in all circumstances, and consequently they were compelled either to be the slaves and carriers of the Lacedaemonians, or if they wished to avoid slavery, to break up their homes and abandon their country with their wives and children,
a fate which has overtaken them more than once in a comparatively short period of time.
Heaven grant that the present tranquillity of the <a class="linkToPlace" target="_blank" href="/place?placename=Peloponnese&groupId=861&placeId=1552">Peloponnese</a> may be firmly established, so that the advice I am about to give may not be required;
but should there be a change and a recurrence of disturbances the only hope I see for the Messenians and Megalopolitans of being able to continue in possession of their countries, is for them, as Epaminondas advised, to be of one mind and resolve on whole-hearted co-operation in all circumstances and in all action.
Walbank Commentary