When people are not trusted, their words, I notice, merely drift about without force in themselves and without inspiring confidence in others. But when people are known to have a respect for the truth, their words are just as powerful as other people’s force in securing any object at which they aim. If they want to bring anyone to a proper sense of his position, I know that threats from them have just as much of a sobering effect as actual punishment inflicted by others. And if people of this sort make promises, they gain their ends just as successfully as others who pay out money on the spot. Think of your own case. How much did you pay us before you gained our alliance? You know that you paid nothing at all. No, we trusted you and believed you would be true to your word, and so you raised a great army to march with you and gain you an empire worth not only the thirty talents, which our men think they should be paid, but many times as much. First of all, then, it is this feeling that you can be trusted–the thing which won you your kingdom–which is being bartered away for this sum of money.
Xenophon, The Persian Expedition 341-42 (Rex Warner trans., Penguin Books 1972).
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