Thucydides remarks that Sparta's fear, which he believes to be the ‘truest cause’ of the war, was ‘the one least openly stated’ at the time (1.23.6). This is not to say that he reports no one having mentioned it. Corcyraeans spoke of it to Athenians and Corinthians addressing Spartans did their best to fan it. But no Spartan openly acknowledged it. This is scarcely surprising. A state that values the perception of its power will rarely admit to fear of another. If fear is the motive or ‘true cause’ of hostility it will usually be attributed to a fault elsewhere: to an enemy's greed or real or apparent aggression, or to an ally's failure. Even if the terms in which Thucydides distinguishes between what motivates but is not spoken and what is spoken but may not motivate are unstable, he is clear about the difference. At this moment however he does not identify either as clearly as he might have done. He leaves it to the reader to see how in the years before the start of open hostilities between Sparta and Athens, it was to be exaggerated arguments advanced by an ally of Sparta's in response to events which need not in themselves have been decisive that for a different and deeper reason caused Sparta to move to war, and that for reasons of its own, the leadership in Athens let it do so.