The folly of ill-considered combat

It is folly to go against men who could not be kept under even if conquered, while failure would leave us in a very different position from that which we occupied before the enterprise. Thucydides quoting Nicias before the invasion of Sicily. The History of the Peloponnesian War. Book 6.

Image: Shaft-hole axe head with bird-headed demon, boar, and dragon from Bactria-Margiana late 3rd to early 2nd millennium BCE, bronze, silver, and gold foil. Image courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.