History of the Peloponnesian War by Thucydides (free ebooks for android .txt) 📕

intellectual rivalry to advise your people against our real opinions.

“For myself, I adhere to my former opinion, and wonder at those

who have proposed to reopen the case of the Mitylenians, and who are

thus causing a delay which is all in favour of the guilty, by making

the sufferer proceed against the offender with the edge of his anger

blunted; although where vengeance follows most closely upon the wrong,

it best equals it and most amply requites it. I wonder also who will

be the man who will maintain the contrary, and will pretend to show

that the crimes of the Mitylenians are of service to us, and our

misfortunes injurious to the allies. Such a man must plainly either

have such confidence in his rhetoric as to adventure to prove that

what has been once for all decided is still undetermined, or be bribed

to try to delude us by elaborate sophisms. In such contests the

state gives the rewards to others, and takes the dangers for

herself. The persons to blame are you who are so foolish as to

institute these contests; who go to see an oration as you would to see

a sight, take your facts on hearsay, judge of the practicability of

a project by the wit of its advocates, and trust for the truth as to

past events not to the fact which you saw more than to the clever

strictures which you heard; the easy victims of new-fangled arguments,

unwilling to follow received conclusions; slaves to every new paradox,

despisers of the commonplace; the first wish of every man being that

he could speak himself, the next to rival those who can speak by

seeming to be quite up with their ideas by applauding every hit almost

before it is made, and by being as quick in catching an argument as

you are slow in foreseeing its consequences; asking, if I may so

say, for something different from the conditions under which we

live, and yet comprehending inadequately those very conditions; very

slaves to the pleasure of the ear, and more like the audience of a

rhetorician than the council of a city.

“In order to keep you from this, I proceed to show that no one state

has ever injured you as much as Mitylene. I can make allowance for

those who revolt because they cannot bear our empire, or who have been

forced to do so by the enemy. But for those who possessed an island

with fortifications; who could fear our enemies only by sea, and there

had their own force of galleys to protect them; who were independent

and held in the highest honour by you—to act as these have done,

this is not revolt—revolt implies oppression; it is deliberate and

wanton aggression; an attempt to ruin us by siding with our

bitterest enemies; a worse offence than a war undertaken on their

own account in the acquisition of power. The fate of those of their

neighbours who had already rebelled and had been subdued was no lesson

to them; their own prosperity could not dissuade them from

affronting danger; but blindly confident in the future, and full of

hopes beyond their power though not beyond their ambition, they

declared war and made their decision to prefer might to right, their

attack being determined not by provocation but by the moment which

seemed propitious. The truth is that great good fortune coming

suddenly and unexpectedly tends to make a people insolent; in most

cases it is safer for mankind to have success in reason than out of

reason; and it is easier for them, one may say, to stave off adversity

than to preserve prosperity. Our mistake has been to distinguish the

Mitylenians as we have done: had they been long ago treated like the

rest, they never would have so far forgotten themselves, human

nature being as surely made arrogant by consideration as it is awed by

firmness. Let them now therefore be punished as their crime

requires, and do not, while you condemn the aristocracy, absolve the

people. This is certain, that all attacked you without distinction,

although they might have come over to us and been now again in

possession of their city. But no, they thought it safer to throw in

their lot with the aristocracy and so joined their rebellion! Consider

therefore: if you subject to the same punishment the ally who is

forced to rebel by the enemy, and him who does so by his own free

choice, which of them, think you, is there that will not rebel upon

the slightest pretext; when the reward of success is freedom, and

the penalty of failure nothing so very terrible? We meanwhile shall

have to risk our money and our lives against one state after

another; and if successful, shall receive a ruined town from which

we can no longer draw the revenue upon which our strength depends;

while if unsuccessful, we shall have an enemy the more upon our hands,

and shall spend the time that might be employed in combating our

existing foes in warring with our own allies.

“No hope, therefore, that rhetoric may instil or money purchase,

of the mercy due to human infirmity must be held out to the

Mitylenians. Their offence was not involuntary, but of malice and

deliberate; and mercy is only for unwilling offenders. I therefore,

now as before, persist against your reversing your first decision,

or giving way to the three failings most fatal to empire—pity,

sentiment, and indulgence. Compassion is due to those who can

reciprocate the feeling, not to those who will never pity us in

return, but are our natural and necessary foes: the orators who

charm us with sentiment may find other less important arenas for their

talents, in the place of one where the city pays a heavy penalty for a

momentary pleasure, themselves receiving fine acknowledgments for

their fine phrases; while indulgence should be shown towards those who

will be our friends in future, instead of towards men who will

remain just what they were, and as much our enemies as before. To

sum up shortly, I say that if you follow my advice you will do what is

just towards the Mitylenians, and at the same time expedient; while by

a different decision you will not oblige them so much as pass sentence

upon yourselves. For if they were right in rebelling, you must be

wrong in ruling. However, if, right or wrong, you determine to rule,

you must carry out your principle and punish the Mitylenians as your

interest requires; or else you must give up your empire and

cultivate honesty without danger. Make up your minds, therefore, to

give them like for like; and do not let the victims who escaped the

plot be more insensible than the conspirators who hatched it; but

reflect what they would have done if victorious over you, especially

they were the aggressors. It is they who wrong their neighbour without

a cause, that pursue their victim to the death, on account of the

danger which they foresee in letting their enemy survive; since the

object of a wanton wrong is more dangerous, if he escape, than an

enemy who has not this to complain of. Do not, therefore, be

traitors to yourselves, but recall as nearly as possible the moment of

suffering and the supreme importance which you then attached to

their reduction; and now pay them back in their turn, without yielding

to present weakness or forgetting the peril that once hung over you.

Punish them as they deserve, and teach your other allies by a striking

example that the penalty of rebellion is death. Let them once

understand this and you will not have so often to neglect your enemies

while you are fighting with your own confederates.”

Such were the words of Cleon. After him Diodotus, son of Eucrates,

who had also in the previous assembly spoken most strongly against

putting the Mitylenians to death, came forward and spoke as follows:

“I do not blame the persons who have reopened the case of the

Mitylenians, nor do I approve the protests which we have heard against

important questions being frequently debated. I think the two things

most opposed to good counsel are haste and passion; haste usually goes

hand in hand with folly, passion with coarseness and narrowness of

mind. As for the argument that speech ought not to be the exponent

of action, the man who uses it must be either senseless or interested:

senseless if he believes it possible to treat of the uncertain

future through any other medium; interested if, wishing to carry a

disgraceful measure and doubting his ability to speak well in a bad

cause, he thinks to frighten opponents and hearers by well-aimed

calumny. What is still more intolerable is to accuse a speaker of

making a display in order to be paid for it. If ignorance only were

imputed, an unsuccessful speaker might retire with a reputation for

honesty, if not for wisdom; while the charge of dishonesty makes him

suspected, if successful, and thought, if defeated, not only a fool

but a rogue. The city is no gainer by such a system, since fear

deprives it of its advisers; although in truth, if our speakers are to

make such assertions, it would be better for the country if they could

not speak at all, as we should then make fewer blunders. The good

citizen ought to triumph not by frightening his opponents but by

beating them fairly in argument; and a wise city, without

over-distinguishing its best advisers, will nevertheless not deprive

them of their due, and, far from punishing an unlucky counsellor, will

not even regard him as disgraced. In this way successful orators would

be least tempted to sacrifice their convictions to popularity, in

the hope of still higher honours, and unsuccessful speakers to

resort to the same popular arts in order to win over the multitude.

“This is not our way; and, besides, the moment that a man is

suspected of giving advice, however good, from corrupt motives, we

feel such a grudge against him for the gain which after all we are not

certain he will receive, that we deprive the city of its certain

benefit. Plain good advice has thus come to be no less suspected

than bad; and the advocate of the most monstrous measures is not

more obliged to use deceit to gain the people, than the best

counsellor is to lie in order to be believed. The city and the city

only, owing to these refinements, can never be served openly and

without disguise; he who does serve it openly being always suspected

of serving himself in some secret way in return. Still, considering

the magnitude of the interests involved, and the position of

affairs, we orators must make it our business to look a little farther

than you who judge offhand; especially as we, your advisers, are

responsible, while you, our audience, are not so. For if those who

gave the advice, and those who took it, suffered equally, you would

judge more calmly; as it is, you visit the disasters into which the

whim of the moment may have led you upon the single person of your

adviser, not upon yourselves, his numerous companions in error.

“However, I have not come forward either to oppose or to accuse in

the matter of Mitylene; indeed, the question before us as sensible men

is not their guilt, but our interests. Though I prove them ever so

guilty, I shall not, therefore, advise their death, unless it be

expedient; nor though they should have claims to indulgence, shall I

recommend it, unless it be dearly for the good of the country. I

consider that we are deliberating for the future more than for the

present;