Chapter L (2)

It is in this debate that Thucydidês first takes notice of Kleon, who is, however, mentioned by Plutarch as rising into importance some few years earlier, during the lifetime of Periklês. Under the great increase of trade and population in Athens and Peiræus during the last forty years, a new class of politicians seem to have grown up, men engaged in various descriptions of trade and manufacture, who began to rival more or less in importance the ancient families of Attic proprietors. This change was substantially analogous to that which took place in the cities of mediæval Europe, when the merchants and traders of the various guilds gradually came to compete with, and ultimately supplanted, the patrician families in whom the supremacy had originally resided. In Athens, persons of ancient family and station enjoyed at this time no political privilege, and since the reforms of Ephialtês and Periklês, the political constitution had become thoroughly democratical. But they still continued to form the two highest classes in the Solonian census founded on property,—the pentakosiomedimni, and the hippeis, or knights: new men enriched by trade doubtless got into these classes, but probably only in minority, and imbibed the feeling of the class as they found it, instead of bringing into it any new spirit. Now an individual Athenian of this class, though without any legal title to preference, yet when he stood forward as candidate for political influence, continued to be decidedly preferred and welcomed by the social sentiment at Athens, which preserved in its spontaneous sympathies distinctions effaced from the political code.[404] Besides this place ready prepared for him in the public sympathy, especially advantageous at the outset of political life,—he found himself farther borne up by the family connections, associations, and political clubs, etc., which exercised very great influence both on the politics and the judicature of Athens, and of which he became a member as a matter of course. Such advantages were doubtless only auxiliary, carrying a man up to a certain point of influence, but leaving him to achieve the rest by his own personal qualities and capacity. But their effect was nevertheless very real, and those who, without possessing them, met and buffeted him in the public assembly, contended against great disadvantages. A person of such low or middling station obtained no favorable presumptions or indulgence on the part of the public to meet him half-way,—nor had he established connections to encourage first successes, or help him out of early scrapes. He found others already in possession of ascendency, and well-disposed to keep down new competitors; so that he had to win his own way unaided, from the first step to the last, by qualities personal to himself; by assiduity of attendance, by acquaintance with business, by powers of striking speech, and withal by unflinching audacity, indispensable to enable him to bear up against that opposition and enmity which he would incur from the high-born politicians, and organized party clubs, as soon as he appeared to be rising up into ascendency.

[404] Thucyd. v, 43. Ἀλκιβιάδης—ἀνὴρ ἡλικίᾳ μὲν ὢν ἔτι τότε
νέος, ὡς ἐν ἄλλῃ πόλει, ἀξιώματι δὲ προγόνων τιμώμενος. Compare
Xenophon, Memorabil. i, 2, 25; iii, 6, 1.

The free march of political and judicial affairs raised up several such men, during the years beginning and immediately preceding the Peloponnesian war. Even during the lifetime of Periklês, they appear to have arisen in greater or less numbers: but the personal ascendency of that great man,—who combined an aristocratical position with a strong and genuine democratical sentiment, and an enlarged intellect rarely found attached to either,—impressed a peculiar character on Athenian politics. The Athenian world was divided into his partisans and his opponents, among each of whom there were individuals high-born and low-born,—though the aristocratical party, properly so called, the majority of wealthy and high-born Athenians, either opposed or disliked him. It is about two years after his death that we begin to hear of a new class of politicians: Eukratês, the rope-seller; Kleon, the leather-seller; Lysiklês, the sheep-seller; Hyperbolus, the lamp-maker;[405] the two first of whom must have been already well-known as speakers in the ekklesia, even during the lifetime of Periklês. Among them all, the most distinguished was Kleon, son of Kleænetus.

[405] Aristophan. Equit. 130, _seqq._, and Scholia; Eupolis,
Demi, Fram. xv, p. 466, ed. Meineke. See the remarks in Ranck,
Commentat. de Vitâ Aristophanis, p. cccxxxiv, _seqq._

Kleon acquired his first importance among the speakers against Periklês, so that he would thus obtain for himself, during his early political career, the countenance of the numerous and aristocratical anti-Perikleans. He is described by Thucydidês in general terms as a person of the most violent temper and character in Athens,—as being dishonest in his calumnies, and virulent in his invective and accusation.[406] Aristophanês, in his comedy of the Knights, reproduces these features, with others new and distinct, as well as with exaggerated details, comic, satirical, and contemptuous. His comedy depicts Kleon in the point of view in which he would appear to the knights of Athens,—a leather-dresser, smelling of the tan-yard,—a low-born brawler, terrifying opponents by the violence of his criminations, the loudness of his voice, the impudence of his gestures,—moreover, as venal in his politics, threatening men with accusations, and then receiving money to withdraw them; a robber of the public treasury, persecuting merit as well as rank, and courting the favor of the assembly by the basest and most guilty cajolery. The general attributes set forth by Thucydidês (apart from Aristophanês, who does not profess to write history), we may well accept; the powerful and violent invective of Kleon, often dishonest, together with his self-confidence and audacity in the public assembly. Men of the middling class, like Kleon and Hyperbolus, who persevered in addressing the public assembly and trying to take a leading part in it, against persons of greater family pretension than themselves, were pretty sure to be men of more than usual audacity. Had they not possessed this quality, they would never have surmounted the opposition made to them: we may well believe that they had it to a displeasing excess,—and even if they had not, the same measure of self-assumption which in Alkibiadês would be tolerated from his rank and station, would in them pass for insupportable impudence. Unhappily, we have no specimens to enable us to appreciate the invective of Kleon. We cannot determine whether it was more virulent than that of Demosthenês and Æschinês, seventy years afterwards,—each of those eminent orators imputing to the other the grossest impudence, calumny, perjury, corruption, loud voice, and revolting audacity of manner, in language which Kleon can hardly have surpassed in intensity of vituperation, though he doubtless fell immeasurably short of it in classical finish. Nor can we even tell in what degree Kleon’s denunciations of the veteran Periklês were fiercer than those memorable invectives against the old age of Sir Robert Walpole, with which Lord Chatham’s political career opened. The talent for invective possessed by Kleon, employed first against Periklês, would be counted as great impudence by the partisans of that illustrious statesman, as well as by impartial and judicious citizens; but among the numerous enemies of Periklês, it would be applauded as a burst of patriotic indignation, and would procure for the orator that extraneous support at first which would sustain him until he acquired his personal hold on the public assembly.[407]

[406] Thucyd. iii, 36. Κλέων—ὢν καὶ ἐς τὰ ἄλλα βιαιότατος τῶν
πολιτῶν, καὶ τῷ δήμῳ παραπολὺ ἐν τῷ τότε πιθανώτατος.

He also mentions Kleon a second time, two years afterwards, but
in terms which also seem to imply a first introduction,—μάλιστα
δὲ αὐτοὺς ἐνῆγε Κλέων ὁ Κλεαινέτου, ἀνὴρ δημαγωγὸς κατ᾽ ἐκεῖνον
τὸν χρόνον ὢν καὶ τῷ πλήθει πιθανώτατος, iv, 21-28, also v, 16.
Κλέων—νομίζων καταφανέστερος ἂν εἶναι κακουργῶν, καὶ ἀπιστότερος
διαβάλλων, etc.

[407] Plutarch, Periklês, c. 33. Ἐπεφύετο δὲ καὶ Κλέων, ἤδη διὰ
τῆς πρὸς ἐκεῖνον ὀργῆς τῶν πολιτῶν πορευόμενος εἰς τὴν δημαγωγίαν.

Periklês was δηχθεὶς αἴθωνι Κλέωνι—in the words of the comic
author Hermippus.

By what degrees or through what causes that hold was gradually increased, we do not know; but at the time when the question of Mitylênê came on for discussion, it had grown into a sort of ascendency which Thucydidês describes by saying that Kleon was “at that time by far the most persuasive speaker in the eyes of the people.” The fact of Kleon’s great power of speech, and his capacity of handling public business in a popular manner, is better attested than anything else respecting him, because it depends upon two witnesses both hostile to him,—Thucydidês and Aristophanês. The assembly and the dikastery were Kleon’s theatre and holding-ground: for the Athenian people taken collectively in their place of meeting, and the Athenian people taken individually, were not always the same person and had not the same mode of judgment: Demos sitting in the Pnyx, was a different man from Demos at home.[408] The lofty combination of qualities possessed by Periklês exercised ascendency over both one and the other; but the qualities of Kleon swayed considerably the former without standing high in the esteem of the latter.

[408] Aristophan. Equit. 750.

When the fate of Mitylênê and its inhabitants was submitted to the Athenian assembly, Kleon took the lead in the discussion. There never was a theme more perfectly suited to his violent temperament and power of fierce invective. Taken collectively, the case of Mitylênê presented a revolt as inexcusable and aggravated as any revolt could be: and we have only to read the grounds of it, as set forth by the Mitylenæan speakers themselves before the Peloponnesians at Olympia, to be satisfied that such a proceeding, when looked at from the Athenian point of view, would be supposed to justify, and even to require, the very highest pitch of indignation. The Mitylenæans admit, not only that they have no ground of complaint against Athens, but that they have been well and honorably treated by her, with special privilege. But they fear that she may oppress them in future: they hate the very principle of her empire, and eagerly instigate, as well as aid, her enemies to subdue her: they select the precise moment in which she has been worn down by a fearful pestilence, invasion, and cost of war. Nothing more than this would be required to kindle the most intense wrath in the bosom of an Athenian patriot: but there was yet another point which weighed as much as the rest, if not more: the revolters had been the first to invite a Peloponnesian fleet across the Ægean, and the first to proclaim, both to Athens and her allies, the precarious tenure of her empire.[409] The violent Kleon would on this occasion find in the assembly an audience hardly less violent than himself, and would easily be able to satisfy them that anything like mercy to the Mitylenæans was treason to Athens. He proposed to apply to the captive city the penalties tolerated by the custom of war in their harshest and fullest measure: to kill the whole Mitylenæan male population of military age, probably about six thousand persons,—and to sell as slaves all the women and children.[410] The proposition, though strongly opposed by Diodotus and others, was sanctioned and passed by the assembly, and a trireme was forthwith despatched to Mitylênê, enjoining Pachês to put it in execution.[411]

[409] Thucyd. iii, 36. προσξυνεβάλετο οὐκ ἐλάχιστον τῆς ὁρμῆς,
etc.

[410] I infer this total number from the fact that the number
sent to Athens by Pachês, as foremost instigators, was rather
more than one thousand (Thucyd. iii, 50). The total of ἡβῶντες,
or males of military age, must have been (I imagine) six times
this number.

[411] Thucyd. iii, 36.

Such a sentence was, in principle, nothing more than a very rigorous application of the received laws of war. Not merely the reconquered rebel, but even the prisoner of war, apart from any special convention, was at the mercy of his conqueror, to be slain, sold, or admitted to ransom: and we shall find the Lacedæmonians carrying out the maxim without the smallest abatement towards the Platæan prisoners, in the course of a very short time. And doubtless the Athenian people, so long as they remained in assembly, under that absorbing temporary intensification of the common and predominant sentiment which springs from the mere fact of multitude, and so long as they were discussing the principle of the case, What had Mitylênê deserved? thought only of this view. Less than the most rigorous measure of war, they would conceive, would be inadequate to the wrong done by the Mitylenæans. But when the assembly broke up,—when the citizen, no longer wound up by sympathizing companions and animated speakers in the Pnyx, subsided into the comparative quiescence of individual life,—when the talk came to be, not about the propriety of passing such a resolution, but about the details of executing it, a sensible change and marked repentance became presently visible. We must also recollect, and it is a principle of no small moment in human affairs, especially among a democratical people like the Athenians, who stand charged with so many resolutions passed and afterwards unexecuted, that the sentiment of wrath against the Mitylenæans had been really in part discharged by the mere _passing_ of the sentence, quite apart from its execution; just as a furious man relieves himself from overboiling anger by imprecations against others which he would himself shrink from afterwards realizing. The Athenians, on the whole the most humane people in Greece,—though humanity, according to our ideas, cannot be predicated of any Greeks,—became sensible that they had sanctioned a cruel and frightful decree, and the captain and seamen,[412] to whom it was given to carry, set forth on their voyage with mournful repugnance. The Mitylenæan envoys present in Athens, who had probably been allowed to speak in the assembly and plead their own cause, together with those Athenians who had been proxeni and friends of Mitylênê, and the minority generally of the previous assembly, soon discerned, and did their best to foster, this repentance; which became, during the course of the same evening, so powerful as well as so wide-spread, that the stratêgi acceded to the prayer of the envoys, and convoked a fresh assembly for the morrow to reconsider the proceeding. By so doing, they committed an illegality, and exposed themselves to the chance of impeachment: but the change of feeling among the people was so manifest as to overbear any such scruples.[413]

[412] Thucyd. iii, 36. Καὶ τῇ ὑστεραίᾳ μετάνοιά τις εὐθὺς ἦν
αὐτοῖς καὶ ἀναλογισμὸς, ὠμὸν τὸ βούλευμα καὶ μέγα ἐγνῶσθαι, πόλιν
ὅλην διαφθεῖραι μᾶλλον ἢ οὐ τοὺς αἰτίους.

The feelings of the seamen, in the trireme appointed to carry
the order of execution, are a striking point of evidence in this
case: τῆς προτέρας νεὼς οὐ σπουδῇ πλεούσης ἐπὶ πρᾶγμα ἀλλόκοτον,
etc. (iii, 50).

[413] Thucyd. iii, 36. As to the illegality, see Thucyd. vi,
14, which I think is good evidence to prove that there was
illegality. I agree with Schömann on this point, in spite of the
doubts of Dr. Arnold.

Though Thucydidês had given us only a short summary, without any speeches, of what passed in the first assembly,—yet as to the second assembly, he gives us at length the speeches both of Kleon and Diodotus, the two principal orators of the first also. We may be sure that this second assembly was in all points one of the most interesting and anxious of the whole war; and though we cannot certainly determine what were the circumstances which determined Thucydidês in his selection of speeches, yet this cause, as well as the signal defeat of Kleon, whom he disliked, may probably be presumed to have influenced him here. That orator came forward to defend his proposition passed on the preceding day, and denounced in terms of indignation the unwise tenderness and scruples of the people, who could not bear to treat their subject-allies, according to the plain reality, as men held only by naked fear. He dwelt upon the mischief and folly of reversing on one day what had been decided on the day preceding,—upon the guilty ambition of orators, who sacrificed the most valuable interests of the commonwealth either to pecuniary gains, or to the personal credit of speaking with effect, triumphing over rivals, and setting up their own fancies in place of fact and reality. He deprecated the mistaken encouragement given to such delusions by a public “wise beyond what was written,” who came to the assembly, not to apply their good sense in judging of public matters, but merely for the delight of hearing speeches.[414] He restated the heinous and unprovoked wrong committed by the Mitylenæans,—and the grounds for inflicting upon them that maximum of punishment which “justice” enjoined. He called for “justice” against them; nothing less, but nothing more: warning the assembly that the imperial necessities of Athens essentially required the constant maintenance of a sentiment of fear in the minds of unwilling subjects, and that they must prepare to see their empire pass away if they suffered themselves to be guided either by compassion for those who, if victors, would have no compassion on them,[415]—or by unseasonable moderation towards those who would neither feel nor requite it,—or by the mere impression of seductive discourses. Justice against the Mitylenæans, not less than the strong political interests of Athens, required the infliction of the sentence decreed on the day preceding.[416]

[414] Thucyd. iii, 37. οἱ μὲν γὰρ τῶν τε νόμων σοφώτεροι
βούλονται φαίνεσθαι, τῶν τε ἀεὶ λεγομένων ἐς τὸ κοινὸν
περιγίγνεσθαι ... οἱ δ᾽ ἀπιστοῦντες τῇ ἐαυτῶν ξυνέσει ἀμαθέστεροι
μὲν τῶν νόμων ἀξιοῦσιν εἶναι, ἀδυνατώτεροι δὲ τοῦ καλῶς εἰπόντος
μέμψασθαι λόγον.

Compare the language of Archidamus at Sparta in the congress,
where he takes credit to the Spartans for being ἀμαθέστερον τῶν
νόμων τῆς ὑπεροψίας παιδευόμενοι, etc. (Thucyd. i, 84)—very
similar in spirit to the remarks of Kleon about the Athenians.

[415] Thucyd. iii, 40. μηδὲ τρισὶ τοῖς ἀξυμφορωτάτοις τῇ ἀρχῇ,
οἴκτῳ, καὶ ἡδονῇ λόγων, καὶ ἐπιεικείᾳ, ἁμαρτάνειν.

[416] Thucyd. iii, 40. πειθόμενοι δὲ ἐμοὶ τά τε δίκαια ἐς
Μυτιληναίους καὶ τὰ ξύμφορα ἅμα ποιήσετε· ἄλλως δὲ γνόντες τοῖς
μὲν οὐ χαριεῖσθε, ὑμᾶς δὲ αὐτοὺς μᾶλλον δικαιώσεσθε.

The harangue of Kleon is in many respects remarkable. If we are surprised to find a man, whose whole importance resided in his tongue, denouncing so severely the license and the undue influence of speech in the public assembly, we must recollect that Kleon had the advantage of addressing himself to the intense prevalent sentiment of the moment,—that he could, therefore, pass off the dictates of this sentiment as plain, downright, honest sense and patriotism; while the opponents, speaking against the reigning sentiment, and therefore driven to collateral argument, circumlocution, and more or less of manœuvre, might be represented as mere clever sophists, showing their talents in making the worse appear the better reason,—if not actually bribed, at least unprincipled, and without any sincere moral conviction. As this is a mode of dealing with questions both of public concern and of private morality, not less common at present than it was in the time of the Peloponnesian war,—to seize upon some strong and tolerably wide-spread sentiment among the public, to treat the dictates of that sentiment as plain common sense and obvious right, and then to shut out all rational estimate of coming good and evil as if it were unholy or immoral, or at best mere uncandid subtlety,—we may well notice a case in which Kleon employs it to support a proposition now justly regarded as barbarous.

Applying our modern views to this proposition, indeed, the prevalent sentiment would not only not be in favor of Kleon, but would be irresistibly in favor of his opponents. To put to death in cold blood some six thousand persons, would so revolt modern feelings, as to overbalance all considerations of past misconduct in the persons to be condemned. Nevertheless, the speech of Diodotus, who followed and opposed Kleon, not only contains no appeal to any such merciful predispositions, but even positively disclaims appealing to them: the orator deprecates, not less than Kleon, the influence of compassionate sentiment, or of a spirit of mere compromise and moderation.[417] He farther discards considerations of justice or the analogies of criminal judicature,[418]—and rests his opposition altogether upon reasons of public prudence, bearing upon the future welfare and security of Athens.

[417] Thucyd. iii. 48: compare the speech of Kleon. iii, 40.
ὑμεῖς δὲ γνόντες ἀμείνω τάδε εἶναι, καὶ μήτε οἴκτῳ πλέον
νείμαντες μήτε ἐπιεικείᾳ, ~οἷς οὐδὲ ἐγὼ ἐῶ προσάγεσθαι~, ἀπ᾽
αὐτῶν δὲ τῶν παραινουμένων, etc.

Dr. Arnold distinguishes οἶκτος (or ἔλεος) from ἐπιεικεία,
by saying that “the former is a feeling, the latter a habit:
οἶκτος, pity or compassion, may occasionally touch those who are
generally very far from being ἐπιεικεῖς—mild or gentle. Ἐπιεικεία
relates to all persons,—οἶκτος, to particular individuals.” The
distinction here taken is certainly in itself just, and ἐπιεικὴς
sometimes has the meaning ascribed to it by Dr. Arnold: but in
this passage I believe it has a different meaning. The contrast
between οἶκτος and ἐπιεικεία—as Dr. Arnold explains them—would be
too feeble, and too little marked, to serve the purpose of Kleon
and Diodotus. Ἐπιεικεία here rather means the disposition to stop
short of your full rights; a spirit of fairness and adjustment;
an abatement on your part likely to be requited by abatement on
the part of your adversary: compare Thucyd. i, 76; iv, 19; v, 86;
viii, 93.

[418] Thucyd. iii, 44. ἐγὼ δὲ παρῆλθον οὔτε ἀντερῶν περὶ
Μυτιληναίων οὔτε κατηγορήσων· οὐ γὰρ περὶ τῆς ἐκείνων ἀδικίας
ἡμῖν ὁ ἀγὼν, εἰ σωφρονοῦμεν, ἀλλὰ περὶ τῆς ἡμετέρας εὐβουλίας ...
~δικαιότερος γὰρ ὢν αὐτοῦ (Κλέωνος) ὁ λόγος πρὸς τὴν νῦν ὑμετέραν
ὀργὴν ἐς Μυτιληναίους~, τάχα ἂν ἐπισπάσαιτο· ~ἡμεῖς δὲ οὐ
δικαζόμεθα πρὸς αὐτοὺς, ὥστε τῶν δικαίων δεῖν~, ἀλλὰ βουλευόμεθα
περὶ αὐτῶν, ὅπως χρησίμως ἕξουσιν.

So Mr. Burke, in his speech on Conciliation with America (Burke’s
Works, vol. iii. pp. 69-74), in discussing the proposition of
prosecuting the acts of the refractory colonies as criminal: “The
thing seems a great deal too big for my ideas of jurisprudence.
It should seem, to my way of conceiving such matters, that there
is a wide difference in reason and policy, between the mode of
proceeding on the irregular conduct of scattered individuals, or
even of bands of men who disturb order within the state,—and the
civil dissensions which may from time to time agitate the several
communities which compose a great empire. It looks to me to be
narrow and pedantic, to apply the ordinary ideas of criminal
justice to this great public contest. I do not know the method
of drawing up an indictment against a whole people,” etc.—“My
consideration is narrow, confined, and wholly limited to the
policy of the question.”

He begins by vindicating[419] the necessity of reconsidering the resolution just passed, and insists on the mischief of deciding so important a question in haste or under strong passion; he enters a protest against the unwarrantable insinuations of corruption or self-conceit by which Kleon had sought to silence or discredit his opponents;[420] and then, taking up the question on the ground of public wisdom and prudence, he proceeds to show that the rigorous sentence decreed on the preceding day was not to be defended. That sentence would not prevent any other among the subject-allies from revolting, if they saw, or fancied that they saw, a fair chance of success: but it might perhaps drive them,[421] if once embarked in revolt, to persist even to desperation, and bury themselves under the ruins of their city. While every means ought to be employed to prevent them from revolting, by precautions beforehand, it was a mistaken reckoning to try to deter them by enormity of punishment, inflicted afterwards upon such as were reconquered. In developing this argument, the speaker gives some remarkable views on the theory of punishment generally, and on the small addition obtained in the way of preventive effect even by the greatest aggravation of the suffering inflicted upon the condemned criminal,—views which might have passed as rare and profound even down to the last century.[422] And he farther supports his argument by emphatically setting forth the impolicy of confounding the Mitylenæan Demos in the same punishment with their oligarchy: the revolt had been the act exclusively of the latter, and the former had not only taken no part in it, but, as soon as they obtained possession of arms, had surrendered the city spontaneously. In all the allied cities, it was the commons who were well-affected to Athens, and upon whom her hold chiefly depended against the doubtful fidelity of the oligarchies:[423] but this feeling could not possibly continue, if it were now seen that all the Mitylenæans indiscriminately were confounded in one common destruction. Diodotus concludes by recommending that those Mitylenæans whom Pachês had sent to Athens as chiefs of the revolt, should be put upon their trial separately; but that the remaining population should be spared.[424]

[419] Thucyd. iii, 42.

[420] Thucyd. iii, 43.

[421] Thucyd. iii, 45, 46.

[422] Compare this speech of Diodotus with the views of
punishment implied by Xenophon in his Anabasis, where he is
describing the government of Cyrus the younger:—

“Nor can any man contend, that Cyrus suffered criminals and
wrong-doers to laugh at him: he punished them with the most
unmeasured severity (ἀφειδέστατα πάντων ἐτιμωρεῖτο). And you
might often see along the frequented roads men deprived of their
eyes, their hands, and their feet: so that in his government
either Greek or barbarian, if he had no criminal purpose, might
go fearlessly through and carry whatever he found convenient.”
(Anabasis, i, 9, 13.)

The severity of the punishment is, in Xenophon’s mind, the
measure both of its effects in deterring criminals, and of the
character of the ruler inflicting it.

[423] Thucyd. iii, 47. Νῦν μὲν γὰρ ὑμῖν ὁ δῆμος ἐν πάσαις ταῖς
πόλεσιν εὔνους ἐστὶ, καὶ ἢ οὐ ξυναφίσταται τοῖς ὀλίγοις, ἢ
ἐὰν βιασθῇ, ὑπάρχει τοῖς ἀποστήσασι πολέμιος εὐθὺς, καὶ τῆς
ἀντικαθισταμένης πόλεως τὸ πλῆθος ξύμμαχον ἔχοντες ἐς πόλεμον
ἐπέρχεσθε.

[424] Thucyd. iii, 48.

This speech is that of a man who feels that he has the reigning and avowed sentiment of the audience against him, and that he must therefore win his way by appeals to their reason. The same appeals, however, might have been made, and perhaps had been made, during the preceding discussion, without success; but Diodotus knew that the reigning sentiment, though still ostensibly predominant, had been silently undermined during the last few hours, and that the reaction towards pity and moderation, which had been growing up under it, would work in favor of his arguments, though he might disclaim all intention of invoking its aid. After several other discourses, both for and against,—the assembly came to a vote, and the proposition of Diodotus was adopted; but adopted by so small a majority, that the decision seemed at first doubtful.[425]

[425] Thucyd. iii, 49. ἐγένοντο ἐν τῇ χειροτονίᾳ ἀγχώμαλοι,
ἐκράτησε δ᾽ ἡ τοῦ Διοδότου.

But the trireme carrying the first vote had started the day before, and was already twenty-four hours on its way to Mitylênê. A second trireme was immediately put to sea, bearing the new decree; yet nothing short of superhuman exertions could enable it to reach the condemned city before the terrific sentence now on its way might be actually in course of execution. The Mitylenæan envoys stored the vessel well with provisions, promising large rewards to the crew if they arrived in time; and an intensity of effort was manifested, without parallel in the history of Athenian seamanship,—the oar being never once relaxed between Athens and Mitylênê, and the rowers merely taking turns for short intervals of rest, with refreshment of barley-meal steeped with wine and oil swallowed on their seats. Luckily, there was no unfavorable wind to retard them: but the object would have been defeated, if it had not happened that the crew of the first trireme were as slow and averse in the transmission of their rigorous mandate, as those of the second were eager for the delivery of the reprieve in time. And, after all, it came no more than just in time; the first trireme had arrived, the order for execution was actually in the hands of Pachês, and his measures were already preparing. So near was the Mitylenæan population to this wholesale destruction:[426] so near was Athens to the actual perpetration of an enormity which would have raised against her throughout Greece a sentiment of exasperation more deadly than that which she afterwards incurred even from the proceedings at Melos, Skiônê, and elsewhere. Had the execution been realized, the person who would have suffered most by it, and most deservedly, would have been the proposer, Kleon. For if the reaction in Athenian sentiment was so immediate and sensible after the mere passing of the sentence, far more violent would it have been when they learned that the deed had been irrevocably done, and when all its painful details were presented to their imaginations: and Kleon would have been held responsible as the author of that which had so disgraced them in their own eyes. As the case turned out, he was fortunate enough to escape this danger; and his proposition, to put to death those Mitylenæans whom Pachês had sent home as the active revolting party, was afterwards adopted and executed. It doubtless appeared so moderate after the previous decree passed but rescinded, as to be adopted with little resistance, and to provoke no after-repentance: yet the men so slain were rather more than one thousand in number.[427]

[426] Thucyd. iii, 49. παρὰ τοσοῦτον μὲν ἡ Μυτιλήνη ἦλθε κινδύνου.

[427] Thucyd. iii, 50.

Besides this sentence of execution, the Athenians razed the fortifications of Mitylênê, and took possession of all her ships of war. In lieu of tribute, they farther established a new permanent distribution of the land of the island; all except Methymna, which had remained faithful to them. They distributed it into three thousand lots, of which three hundred were reserved for consecration to the gods, and the remainder assigned to Athenian kleruchs, or proprietary settlers, chosen by lot among the citizens; the Lesbian proprietors still remaining on the land as cultivating tenants, and paying to the Athenian kleruch an annual rent of two minæ, near four pounds sterling, for each lot. We should have been glad to learn more about this new land-settlement than the few words of the historian suffice to explain. It would seem that two thousand seven hundred Athenian citizens, with their families must have gone to reside, for the time at least, in Lesbos, as kleruchs; that is, without abnegating their rights as Athenian citizens, and without being exonerated either from Athenian taxation, or from personal military service. But it seems certain that these men did not continue long to reside in Lesbos: and we may even suspect that the kleruchic allotment of the island must have been subsequently abrogated. There was a strip on the opposite mainland of Asia, which had hitherto belonged to Mitylênê; this was now separated from that town, and henceforward enrolled among the tributary subjects of Athens.[428]

[428] Thucyd. iii, 50; iv, 52. About the Lesbian kleruchs,
see Boeckh, Public Econ. of Athens, B. iii, c. 18; Wachsmuth,
Hell. Alt. i. 2, p. 36. These kleruchs must originally have
gone thither as a garrison, as M. Boeckh remarks; and may
probably have come back, either all or a part, when needed for
military service at home, and when it was ascertained that the
island might be kept without them. Still, however, there is
much which is puzzling in this arrangement. It seems remarkable
that the Athenians, at a time when their accumulated treasure
had been exhausted, and when they were beginning to pay direct
contributions from their private property, should sacrifice
five thousand four hundred minæ (ninety talents) annual revenue
capable of being appropriated by the state, unless that sum were
required to maintain the kleruchs as resident garrison for the
maintenance of Lesbos. And as it turned out afterwards that their
residence was not necessary, we may doubt whether the state did
not convert the kleruchic grants into a public tribute, wholly or
partially.

We may farther remark, that if the kleruch be supposed a citizen
resident at Athens, but receiving rent from his lot of land in
some other territory,—the analogy between him and the Roman
colonist fails. The Roman colonists, though retaining their
privileges as citizens, were sent out to reside on their grants
of land, and to constitute a sort of resident garrison over
the prior inhabitants, who had been despoiled of a portion of
territory to make room for them.

See, on this subject and analogy, the excellent Dissertation of
Madwig: De jure et conditione coloniarum Populi Romani quæstio
historica,—Madwig, Opuscul. Copenhag. 1834. Diss. viii, p. 246.

M. Boeckh and Dr. Arnold contend justly that at the time of the
expedition of Athens against Syracuse and afterwards (Thucyd.
vii, 57; viii, 23), there could have been but few, if any,
Athenian kleruchs resident in Lesbos. We might even push this
argument farther, and apply the same inference to an earlier
period, the eighth year of the war (Thucyd. iv, 75), when the
Mitylenæan exiles were so active in their aggressions upon
Antandrus and the other towns, originally Mitylenæan possessions,
on the opposite mainland. There was no force near at hand on the
part of Athens to deal with these exiles except the ἀργυρόλογαι
νῆες,—had there been kleruchs at Mitylênê, they would probably
have been able to defeat the exiles in their first attempts, and
would certainly have been among the most important forces to put
them down afterwards,—whereas Thucydidês makes no allusion to
them.

Farther, the oration of Antipho (De Cæde Herod. c. 13) makes
no allusion to Athenian kleruchs, either as resident in the
island, or even as absentees receiving the annual rent mentioned
by Thucydidês. The Mitylenæan citizen, father of the speaker
of that oration, had been one of those implicated—as he says,
unwillingly—in the past revolt of the city against Athens: since
the deplorable termination of that revolt he had continued
possessor of his Lesbian property, and continued also to
discharge his obligations as well (choregic obligations—χορηγίας)
towards Mitylênê as (his obligations of pecuniary payment—τέλη)
towards Athens. If the arrangement mentioned by Thucydidês had
been persisted in, this Mitylenæan proprietor would have paid
nothing towards the city of Athens, but merely a rent of two
minæ to some Athenian kleruch, or citizen; which can hardly be
reconciled with the words of the speaker as we find them in
Antipho.

To the misfortunes of Mitylênê belongs, as a suitable appendix, the fate of Pachês, the Athenian commander, whose perfidy at Notium has been recently recounted. It appears, that having contracted a passion for two beautiful free women at Mitylênê, Hellânis and Lamaxis, he slew their husbands, and got possession of them by force. Possibly, they may have had private friends at Athens, which must of course have been the case with many Mitylenæan families: at all events they repaired thither, bent on obtaining redress for this outrage, and brought their complaint against Pachês before the Athenian dikastery, in that trial of accountability to which every officer was liable at the close of his command. So profound was the sentiment which their case excited, in this open and numerous assembly of Athenian citizens, that the guilty commander, not waiting for sentence, slew himself with his sword in open court.[429]

[429] See the Epigram of Agathias, 57, p. 377. Agathias, ed. Bonn.

Ἑλλανὶς τριμάκαιρα, καὶ ἁ χαρίεσσα Λάμαξις,
ἤστην μὲν πάτρας φέγγεα Λεσβιάδος.
Ὅκκα δ᾽ Ἀθηναίῃσι σὺν ὅλκασιν ἔνθαδε κέλσας
τὰν Μιτυληναίαν γᾶν ἀλάπαξε Πάχης,
Τᾶν κουρᾶν αδίκως ἡράσσατο, τὼς δὲ συνεύνως
ἔκτανεν, ὡς τήνας τῇδε βιησόμενος.
Ταὶ δὲ κατ᾽ Αἰγαίοιο ῥόου πλατὺ λαῖτμα φερέσθην,
καὶ ποτὶ τὰν κραναὰν Μοψοπίαν δραμέτην,
Δάμῳ δ᾽ ἀγγελέτην ἀλιτήμονος ἔργα Πάχητος
μέσφα μιν εἰς ὀλοὴν κῆρα συνηλασάτην.
Τοῖα μὲν, ὦ κούρα, πεπονήκατον· ἄψ δ᾽ ἐπὶ πάτραν
ἥκετον, ἐν δ᾽ αὐτᾷ κεῖσθον ἀποφθιμένα.
Εὖ δὲ πόνων ἀπόνασθον, ἐπεὶ ποτὶ σᾶμα συνεύνων
εὕδετον, ἐς κλεινᾶς μνᾶμα σαοφροσύνας·
Ὑμνεῦσιν δ᾽ ἔτι πάντες ὁμόφρονας ἡρωΐνας,
πάτρας καὶ ποσίων πήματα τισαμένας.

Plutarch (Nikias, 6: compare Plutarch, Aristeidês, c. 26) states
the fact of Pachês having slain himself before the dikastery
on occasion of his trial of accountability. Πάχητα τὸν ἕλοντα
Λέσβον, ὃς, εὐθύνας δίδους τῆς στρατηγίας, ἐν αὐτῷ τῷ δικαστηρίῳ
σπασάμενος ξίφος ἀνεῖλεν ἑαυτὸν, etc.

The statement in Plutarch, and that in the Epigram, hang together
so perfectly well, that each lends authority to the other, and
I think there is good reason for crediting the Epigram. The
suicide of Pachês, and that too before the dikasts, implies
circumstances very different from those usually brought in
accusation against a general on trial: it implies an intensity
of anger in the numerous dikasts greater than that which acts
of peculation would be likely to raise, and such as to strike a
guilty man with insupportable remorse and humiliation. The story
of Lamaxis and Hellânis would be just of a nature to produce
this vehement emotion among the Athenian dikasts. Moreover, the
words of the Epigram,—μέσφα μιν εἰς ὀλοὴν κῆρα συνηλασάτην,—are
precisely applicable to a self-inflicted death. It would seem by
the Epigram, moreover, that, even in the time of Agathias (A.D.
550—the reign of Justinian), there must have been preserved at
Mitylênê a sepulchral monument commemorating this incident.

Schneider (ad Aristotel. Politic. v, 3, 2) erroneously identifies
this story with that of Doxander and the two ἐπίκληροι whom he
wished to obtain in marriage for his two sons.

The surrender of Platæa to the Lacedæmonians took place not long after that of Mitylênê to the Athenians,—somewhat later in the same summer. Though the escape of one-half of the garrison had made the provisions last longer for the rest, still they had now come to be exhausted, and the remaining defenders were enfeebled and on the point of perishing by starvation. The Lacedæmonian commander of the blockading force, knowing their defenceless condition, could easily have taken the town by storm, had he not been forbidden by express orders from Sparta. For the Spartan government, calculating that peace might one day be concluded with Athens on terms of mutual cession of places acquired by war, wished to acquire Platæa, not by force but by capitulation and voluntary surrender, which would serve as an excuse for not giving it up: though such a distinction, between capture by force and by capitulation, not admissible in modern diplomacy, was afterwards found to tell against the Lacedæmonians quite as much as in their favor.[430] Acting upon these orders, the Lacedæmonian commander sent in a herald, summoning the Platæans to surrender voluntarily, and submit themselves to the Lacedæmonians as judges,—with a stipulation “that the wrong-doers[431] should be punished, but that none should be punished unjustly.” To the besieged, in their state of hopeless starvation, all terms were nearly alike, and they accordingly surrendered the city. After a few days’ interval, during which they received nourishment from the blockading army, five persons arrived from Sparta to sit in judgment upon their fate,—one, Aristomenidas, a Herakleid of the regal family.[432]

[430] Thucyd. v, 17.

[431] Thucyd. iii, 52. προσπέμπει δ᾽ αὐτοῖς κήρυκα λέγοντα, εἰ
βούλονται παραδοῦναι τὴν πόλιν ~ἑκόντες~ τοῖς Λακεδαιμονίοις,
καὶ δικασταῖς ἐκείνοις χρήσασθαι, τούς τε ἀδίκους κολάζειν, παρὰ
δίκην δὲ οὐδένα.

[432] Pausan. iii, 9, 1.

The five Spartans having taken their seat as judges, doubtless in full presence of the blockading army, and especially with the Thebans, the great enemies of Platæa, by their side,—the prisoners taken, two hundred Platæans and twenty-five Athenians, were brought up for trial, or sentence. No accusation was preferred against them by any one: but the simple question was put to them by the judges: “Have you, during the present war, rendered any service to the Lacedæmonians or to their allies?” The Platæans were confounded at a question alike unexpected and preposterous: it admitted but of one answer,—but before returning any categorical answer at all, they entreated permission to plead their cause at length. In spite of the opposition of the Thebans,[433] their request was granted: and Astymachus and Lakon, the latter proxenus of Sparta at Platæa, were appointed to speak on behalf of the body. Possibly, both these delegates may have spoken: if so, Thucydidês has blended the two speeches into one.

[433] Thucyd. iii, 60. ἐπειδὴ καὶ ἐκείνοις ~παρὰ γνώμην τὴν
αὑτῶν~ μακρότερος λόγος ἐδόθη τῆς πρὸς τὸ ἐρώτημα ἀποκρίσεως.
αὑτῶν here means _the Thebans_.

A more desperate position cannot be imagined, for the interrogatory was expressly so framed as to exclude allusion to any facts preceding the Peloponnesian war,—but the speakers, though fully conscious how slight was their chance of success, disregarded the limits of the question itself, and while upholding with unshaken courage the dignity of their little city, neglected no topic which could touch the sympathies of their judges. After remonstrating against the mere mockery of trial and judgment to which they were submitted, they appealed to the Hellenic sympathies, and lofty reputation for commanding virtue, of the Lacedæmonians,—they adverted to the first alliance of Platæa with Athens, concluded at the recommendation of the Lacedæmonians themselves, who had then declined, though formally solicited, to undertake the protection of the town against Theban oppression. They next turned to the Persian war, wherein Platæan patriotism towards Greece was not less conspicuous than Theban treason,[434]—to the victory gained over the Persians on their soil, whereby it had become hallowed under the promises of Pausanias, and by solemn appeals to the local gods. From the Persian war, they passed on to the flagitious attack made by the Thebans on Platæa, in the midst of the truce,—nor did they omit to remind the judges of an obligation personal to Sparta,—the aid which they had rendered, along with the Athenians, to Sparta, when pressed by the revolt of the Helots at Ithôme. This speech is as touching as any which we find in Thucydidês, and the skill of it consists in the frequency with which the hearers are brought back, time after time, and by well-managed transitions, to these same topics.[435] And such was the impression which it seemed to make on the five Lacedæmonian judges, that the Thebans near at hand found themselves under the necessity of making a reply to it: although we see plainly that the whole scheme of proceeding—the formal and insulting question, as well as the sentence destined to follow upon answer given—had been settled beforehand between them and the Lacedæmonians.

[434] See this point emphatically set forth in Orat. xiv, called
Λόγος Πλαταϊκὸς, of Isokratês, p. 308, sect. 62.

The whole of that oration is interesting to be read in
illustration of the renewed sufferings of the Platæans near fifty
years after this capture.

[435] Thucyd. iii, 54-59. Dionysius of Halikarnassus bestows
especial commendation on the speech of the Platæan orator (De
Thucyd. Hist. Judic. p. 921). Concurring with him as to its
merits, I do not concur in the opinion which he expresses that
it is less artistically put together than those other harangues
which he considers inferior.

Mr. Mitford doubts whether these two orations are to be taken
as approximating to anything really delivered on the occasion.
But it seems to me that the means possessed by Thucydidês for
informing himself of what was actually said at this scene before
the captured Platæa must have been considerable and satisfactory:
I therefore place full confidence in them, as I do in most of the
other harangues in his work, so far as _the substance_ goes.

The Theban speakers contended that the Platæans had deserved, and brought upon themselves by their own fault, the enmity of Thebes,—that they had stood forward earnestly against the Persians, only because Athens had done so too, and that all the merit, whatever it might be, which they had thereby acquired, was counterbalanced and cancelled by their having allied themselves with Athens afterwards for the oppression and enslavement of the Æginetans, and of other Greeks equally conspicuous for zeal against Xerxes, and equally entitled to protection under the promises of Pausanias. The Thebans went on to vindicate their nocturnal surprise of Platæa, by maintaining that they had been invited by the most respectable citizens of the town,[436] who were anxious only to bring back Platæa from its alliance with a stranger to its natural Bœotian home,—and that they had abstained from anything like injurious treatment of the inhabitants, until constrained to use force in their own defence. They then reproached the Platæans, in their turn, with that breach of faith whereby ultimately the Theban prisoners in the town had been put to death. And while they excused their alliance with Xerxes, at the time of the Persian invasion, by affirming that Thebes was then under a dishonest party-oligarchy, who took this side for their own factious purposes, and carried the people with them by force,—they at the same time charged the Platæans with permanent treason against the Bœotian customs and brotherhood.[437] All this was farther enforced by setting forth the claims of Thebes to the gratitude of Lacedæmon, both for having brought Bœotia into the Lacedæmonian alliance, at the time of the battle of Korôneia, and for having furnished so large a portion of the common force in the war then going on.[438]

[436] Thucyd. iii, 65.

[437] Thucyd. iii, 66. τὰ πάντων Βοιωτῶν πάτρια—iii, 62. ἔξω τῶν
ἄλλων Βοιωτῶν παραβαίνοντες τὰ πάτρια.

[438] Thucyd. iii, 61-68. It is probable that the slaughter of
the Theban prisoners taken in the town of Platæa was committed
by the Platæans in breach of a convention concluded with the
Thebans: and on this point, therefore, the Thebans had really
ground to complain. Respecting this convention, however, there
were two conflicting stories, between which Thucydidês does not
decide: see Thucyd. ii, 3, 4, and this History, above, chap.
xlviii.

The discourse of the Thebans, inspired by bitter, and as yet unsatisfied hatred against Platæa, proved effectual: or rather it was superfluous,—the minds of the Lacedæmonians having before been made up. After the proposition twice made by Archidamus to the Platæans, inviting them to remain neutral, and even offering to guarantee their neutrality,—after the solemn apologetic protest tendered by him upon their refusal, to the gods, before he began the siege,—the Lacedæmonians conceived themselves exonerated from all obligation to respect the sanctity of the place;[439] looking upon the inhabitants as having voluntarily renounced their inviolability and sealed their own ruin. Hence the importance attached to that protest, and the emphatic detail with which it is set forth in Thucydidês. The five judges, as their only reply to the two harangues, again called the Platæans before them, and repeated to every one of them individually, the same question which had before been put: each one of them, as he successively replied in the negative,[440] was taken away and killed, together with the twenty-five Athenian prisoners. The women captured were sold as slaves: and the town and territory of Platæa were handed over to the Thebans, who at first established in them a few oligarchical Platæan exiles, together with some Megarian exiles,—but after a few months recalled this step, and blotted out Platæa,[441] as a separate town and territory, from the muster-roll of Hellas. They pulled down all the private buildings and employed the materials to build a vast barrack all round the Heræum, or temple of Hêrê, two hundred feet in every direction, with apartments of two stories above and below; partly as accommodation for visitors to the temple, partly as an abode for the tenant-farmers or graziers who were to occupy the land. A new temple of one hundred feet in length, was also built in honor of Hêrê, and ornamented with couches, prepared from the brass and iron furniture found in the private houses of the Platæans.[442] The Platæan territory was let out for ten years, as public property belonging to Thebes, and was hired by private Theban cultivators.

[439] Thucyd. iii, 68; ii, 74. To construe the former of these
passages (iii, 68) as it now stands, is very difficult, if not
impossible; we can only pretend to give what seems to be its
substantial meaning.

[440] Diodorus (xii, 56) in his meagre abridgment of the siege
and fate of Platæa, somewhat amplifies the brevity and simplicity
of the question as given by Thucydidês.

[441] Thucyd. iii, 57. ὑμᾶς δὲ (you Spartans) καὶ ἐκ παντὸς τοῦ
Ἑλληνικοῦ πανοικησίᾳ διὰ Θηβαίους (Πλάταιαν) ~ἐξαλεῖψαι~.

[442] Thucyd. iii, 69.

Such was the melancholy fate of Platæa, after sustaining a blockade of about two years.[443] Its identity and local traditions seemed thus extinguished, and the sacrifices, in honor of the deceased victors who had fought under Pausanias, suspended,—which the Platæan speakers had urged upon the Lacedæmonians as an impiety not to be tolerated,[444] and which perhaps the latter would hardly have consented to under any other circumstances except from an anxious desire of conciliating the Thebans in their prominent antipathy. It is in this way that Thucydidês explains the conduct of Sparta, which he pronounces to have been rigorous in the extreme.[445] And in truth it was more rigorous, considering only the principle of the case, and apart from the number of victims, than even the first unexecuted sentence of Athens against the Mitylenæans: for neither Sparta, nor even Thebes, had any fair pretence for considering Platæa as a revolted town, whereas Mitylênê was a city which had revolted under circumstances peculiarly offensive to Athens. Moreover, Sparta promised trial and justice to the Platæans on their surrender: Pachês promised nothing to the Mitylenæans, except that their fate should be reserved for the decision of the Athenian people. This little city—interesting from its Hellenic patriotism, its grateful and tenacious attachments, and its unmerited suffering—now existed only in the persons of its citizens harbored at Athens: we shall find it hereafter restored, destroyed again, and finally again restored: so checkered was the fate of a little Grecian state swept away by the contending politics of the greater neighbors. The slaughter of the twenty-five Athenian prisoners, like that of Salæthus by the Athenians, was not beyond the rigor admitted and tolerated, though not always practised, on both sides, towards prisoners of war.

[443] Demosthenês—or the Pseudo-Demosthenês—in the oration
against Neæra (p. 1380, c. 25), says that the blockade of Platæa
was continued for ten years before it surrendered,—ἐπολιόρκουν
αὐτοὺς διπλῷ τείχει περιτειχίσαντες δέκα ἔτη. That the real
duration of the blockade was only _two_ years, is most certain:
accordingly, several eminent critics—Palmerius, Wasse, Duker,
Taylor, Auger, etc., all with one accord confidently enjoin us
to correct the text of Demosthenês from δέκα to δύο. “Repone
_fidenter_ δύο,” says Duker.

I have before protested against corrections of the text of
ancient authors grounded upon the reason which all these
critics think so obvious and so convincing; and I must again
renew the protest here. It shows how little the principles of
historical evidence have been reflected upon, when critics can
thus concur in forcing dissentient witnesses into harmony, and
in substituting a true statement of their own in place of an
erroneous statement which one of these witnesses gives them. And
in the present instance, the principle adopted by these critics
is the less defensible, because the Pseudo-Demosthenês introduces
a great many other errors and inaccuracies respecting Platæa,
besides his mistake about the duration of the siege. The ten
years’ siege of Troy was constantly present to the imaginations
of these literary Greeks.

[444] Thucyd. iii, 59.

[445] Thucyd. iii, 69. σχεδὸν δέ τι καὶ τὸ ξύμπαν περὶ Πλαταιῶν
οἱ Λακεδαιμόνιοι οὕτως ἀποτετραμμένοι ἐγένοντο Θηβαίων ἕνεκα,
νομίζοντες ἐς τὸν πόλεμον αὐτοὺς ἄρτι τότε καθιστάμενον ὠφελίμους
εἶναι.

We have now gone through the circumstances, painfully illustrating the manners of the age, which followed on the surrender of Mitylênê and Platæa. We next pass to the west of Greece,—the island of Korkyra,—where we shall find scenes not less bloody, and even more revolting.

It has been already mentioned,[446] that in the naval combats between the Corinthians and Korkyræans during the year before the Peloponnesian war, the former had captured two hundred and fifty Korkyræan prisoners, men of the first rank and consequence in the island. Instead of following the impulse of blind hatred in slaughtering their prisoners, the Corinthians displayed, if not greater humanity, at least a more long-sighted calculation: they had treated the prisoners well, and made every effort to gain them over, with a view of employing them on the first opportunity to effect a revolution in the island,—to bring it into alliance with Corinth,[447] and disconnect it from Athens. Such an opportunity appears first to have occurred during the winter or spring of the present year, while both Mitylênê and Platæa were under blockade; probably about the time when Alkidas departed for Ionia, and when it was hoped that not only Mitylênê would be relieved, but the neighboring dependencies of Athens excited to revolt, and her whole attention thus occupied in that quarter. Accordingly, the Korkyræan prisoners were then sent home from Corinth, nominally under a heavy ransom of eight hundred talents, for which those Korkyræan citizens who acted as proxeni to Corinth made themselves responsible:[448] the proxeni, lending themselves thus to the deception, were doubtless participant in the entire design.

[446] See above, chap. xlvii.

[447] Thucyd. i, 55.

[448] Thucyd. iii, 70: compare Diodor. xii, 57.