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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Hellenica by Xenophon: one community contract relations of friendship and hospitality with
one another;[13] but if these states should go to war, then each man
will side with his fatherland, and friend will find himself pitted
against friend in the field of battle, and, if it so betide, the one
may even deal the other his death-blow. So too we to-day, being at war
with your sovereign lord the king, must needs regard as our enemy all
that he calls his; not but that with yourself personally we should
esteem it our high fortune to be friends. If indeed it were merely an
exchange of service--were you asked to give up your lord the king and
to take us as your masters in his stead, I could not so advise you;
but the fact is, by joining with us it is in your power to-day to bow
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