Upon the arrival of the prisoners with Salaethus, the Athenians at once put the latter to
death, although he offered, among other things, to procure the withdrawal of the
Peloponnesians from Plataea, which was still under siege; and after deliberating as to what
they should do with the former, in the fury of the moment determined to put to death not
only the prisoners at Athens, but the whole adult male population of Mitylene, and to make
slaves of the women and children. It was remarked that Mitylene had revolted without
being, like the rest, subjected to the empire; and what above all swelled the wrath of the
Athenians was the fact of the Peloponnesian fleet having ventured over to Ionia to her
support, a fact which was held to argue a long meditated rebellion. They accordingly sent a
galley to communicate the decree to Paches, commanding him to lose no time in
dispatching the Mitylenians. The morrow brought repentance with it and reflection on the
horrid cruelty of a decree, which condemned a whole city to the fate merited only by the
guilty. This was no sooner perceived by the Mitylenian ambassadors at Athens and their
Athenian supporters, than they moved the authorities to put the question again to the vote;
which they the more easily consented to do, as they themselves plainly saw that most of
the citizens wished some one to give them an opportunity for reconsidering the matter. An
assembly was therefore at once called, and after much expression of opinion upon both
sides, Cleon, son of Cleaenetus, the same who had carried the former motion of putting
the Mitylenians to death, the most violent man at Athens, and at that time by far the most
powerful with the commons, came forward again and spoke as follows:
"I have often before now been convinced that a democracy is incapable of empire, and
never more so than by your present change of mind in the matter of Mitylene. Fears or
plots being unknown to you in your daily relations with each other, you feel just the same
with regard to your allies, and never reflect that the mistakes into which you may be led by
listening to their appeals, or by giving way to your own compassion, are full of danger to
yourselves, and bring you no thanks for your weakness from your allies; entirely forgetting
that your empire is a despotism and your subjects disaffected conspirators, whose
obedience is ensured not by your suicidal concessions, but by the superiority given you by
your own strength and not their loyalty. The most alarming feature in the case is the
constant change of measures with which we appear to be threatened, and our seeming
ignorance of the fact that bad laws which are never changed are better for a city than good
ones that have no authority; that unlearned loyalty is more serviceable than quick-witted
insubordination; and that ordinary men usually manage public affairs better than their more
gifted fellows. The latter are always wanting to appear wiser than the laws, and to overrule
every proposition brought forward, thinking that they cannot show their wit in more
important matters, and by such behaviour too often ruin their country; while those who
mistrust their own cleverness are content to be less learned than the laws, and less able to
pick holes in the speech of a good speaker; and being fair judges rather than rival athletes,
generally conduct affairs successfully. These we ought to imitate, instead of being led on by
cleverness and 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; and where Cleon is so positive as to the useful deterrent effects
that will follow from making rebellion capital, I, who consider the interests of the future
quite as much as he, as positively maintain the contrary. And I require you not to reject my
useful considerations for his specious ones: his speech may have the attraction of seeming
the more just in your present temper against Mitylene; but we are not in a court of justice,
but in a political assembly; and the question is not justice, but how to make the Mitylenians
useful to Athens.
"Now of course communities have enacted the penalty of death for many offences far
lighter than this: still hope leads men to venture, and no one ever yet put himself in peril
without the inward conviction that he would succeed in his design. Again, was there ever
city rebelling that did not believe that it possessed either in itself or in its alliances resources
adequate to the enterprise? All, states and individuals, are alike prone to err, and there is
no law that will prevent them; or why should men have exhausted the list of punishments in
search of enactments to protect them from evildoers? It is probable that in early times the
penalties for the greatest offences were less severe, and that, as these were disregarded,
the penalty of death has been by degrees in most cases arrived at, which is itself
disregarded in like manner. Either then some means of terror more terrible than this must
be discovered, or it must be owned that this restraint is useless; and that as long as poverty
gives men the courage of necessity, or plenty fills them with the ambition which belongs to
insolence and pride, and the other conditions of life remain each under the thraldom of
some fatal and master passion, so long will the impulse never be wanting to drive men into
danger. Hope also and cupidity, the one leading and the other following, the one
conceiving the attempt, the other suggesting the facility of succeeding, cause the widest
ruin, and, although invisible agents, are far stronger than the dangers that are seen. Fortune,
too, powerfully helps the delusion and, by the unexpected aid that she sometimes lends,
tempts men to venture with inferior means; and this is especially the case with communities,
because the stakes played for are the highest, freedom or empire, and, when all are acting
together, each man irrationally magnifies his own capacity. In fine, it is impossible to
prevent, and only great simplicity can hope to prevent, human nature doing what it has
once set its mind upon, by force of law or by any other deterrent force whatsoever.
"We must not, therefore, commit ourselves to a false policy through a belief in the efficacy
of the punishment of death, or exclude rebels from the hope of repentance and an early
atonement of their error. Consider a moment. At present, if a city that has already revolted
perceive that it cannot succeed, it will come to terms while it is still able to refund
expenses, and pay tribute afterwards. In the other case, what city, think you, would not
prepare better than is now done, and hold out to the last against its besiegers, if it is all one
whether it surrender late or soon? And how can it be otherwise than hurtful to us to be put
to the expense of a siege, because surrender is out of the question; and if we take the city,
to receive a ruined town from which we can no longer draw the revenue which forms our
real strength against the enemy? We must not, therefore, sit as strict judges of the
offenders to our own prejudice, but rather see how by moderate chastisements we may be
enabled to benefit in future by the revenue-producing powers of our dependencies; and we
must make up our minds to look for our protection not to legal terrors but to careful
administration. At present we do exactly the opposite. When a free community, held in
subjection by force, rises, as is only natural, and asserts its independence, it is no sooner
reduced than we fancy ourselves obliged to punish it severely; although the right course
with freemen is not to chastise them rigorously when they do rise, but rigorously to watch
them before they rise, and to prevent their ever entertaining the idea, and, the insurrection
suppressed, to make as few responsible for it as possible.
"Only consider what a blunder you would commit in doing as Cleon recommends. As
things are at present, in all the cities the people is your friend, and either does not revolt
with the oligarchy, or, if forced to do so, becomes at once the enemy of the insurgents; so
that in the war with the hostile city you have the masses on your side. But if you butcher
the people of Mitylene, who had nothing to do with the revolt, and who, as soon as they
got arms, of their own motion surrendered the town, first you will commit the crime of
killing your benefactors; and next you will play directly into the hands of the higher classes,
who when they induce their cities to rise, will immediately have the people on their side,
through your having announced in advance the same punishment for those who are guilty
and for those who are not. On the contrary, even if they were guilty, you ought to seem not
to notice it, in order to avoid alienating the only class still friendly to us. In short, I consider
it far more useful for the preservation of our empire voluntarily to put up with injustice, than
to put to death, however justly, those whom it is our interest to keep alive. As for Cleon's
idea that in punishment the claims of justice and expediency can both be satisfied, facts do
not confirm the possibility of such a combination.
"Confess, therefore, that this is the wisest course, and without conceding too much either
to pity or to indulgence, by neither of which motives do I any more than Cleon wish you to
be influenced, upon the plain merits of the case before you, be persuaded by me to try
calmly those of the Mitylenians whom Paches sent off as guilty, and to leave the rest
undisturbed. This is at once best for the future, and most terrible to your enemies at the
present moment; inasmuch as good policy against an adversary is superior to the blind
attacks of brute force."
Such were the words of Diodotus. The two opinions thus expressed were the ones that
most directly contradicted each other; and the Athenians, notwithstanding their change of
feeling, now proceeded to a division, in which the show of hands was almost equal,
although the motion of Diodotus carried the day. Another galley was at once sent off in
haste, for fear that the first might reach Lesbos in the interval, and the city be found
destroyed; the first ship having about a day and a night's start. Wine and barley-cakes
were provided for the vessel by the Mitylenian ambassadors, and great promises made if
they arrived in time; which caused the men to use such diligence upon the voyage that they
took their meals of barley-cakes kneaded with oil and wine as they rowed, and only slept
by turns while the others were at the oar. Luckily they met with no contrary wind, and the
first ship making no haste upon so horrid an errand, while the second pressed on in the
manner described, the first arrived so little before them, that Paches had only just had time
to read the decree, and to prepare to execute the sentence, when the second put into port
and prevented the massacre. The danger of Mitylene had indeed been great.
The other party whom Paches had sent off as the prime movers in the rebellion, were upon
Cleon's motion put to death by the Athenians, the number being rather more than a
thousand. The Athenians also demolished the walls of the Mitylenians, and took
possession of their ships. Afterwards tribute was not imposed upon the Lesbians; but all
their land, except that of the Methymnians, was divided into three thousand allotments,
three hundred of which were reserved as sacred for the gods, and the rest assigned by lot
to Athenian shareholders, who were sent out to the island. With these the Lesbians agreed
to pay a rent of two minae a year for each allotment, and cultivated the land themselves.
The Athenians also took possession of the towns on the continent belonging to the
Mitylenians, which thus became for the future subject to Athens. Such were the events that
took place at Lesbos.
