25. Towards the close of the same winter, Salaethus, a Lacedaemonian, was sent out in a galley from Lacedaemon to
Mitylene. Going by sea to Pyrrha, and from thence overland, he passed along the bed of a torrent, where the line of
circumvallation was passable, and thus entering unperceived into Mitylene told the magistrates that Attica would certainly
be invaded, and the forty ships destined to relieve them arrive, and that he had been sent on to announce this and to
superintend matters generally. The Mitylenians upon this took courage, and laid aside the idea of treating with the
Athenians; and now this winter ended, and with it ended the fourth year of the war of which Thucydides was the historian.
26. The next summer the Peloponnesians sent off the forty-two ships for Mitylene, under Alcidas, their high admiral, and
themselves and their allies invaded Attica, their object being to distract the Athenians by a double movement, and thus to
make it less easy for them to act against the fleet sailing to Mitylene. The commander in this invasion was Cleomenes, in
the place of King Pausanias, son of Pleistoanax, his nephew, who was still a minor. Not content with laying waste whatever
had shot up in the parts which they had before devastated, the invaders now extended their ravages to lands passed over in
their previous incursions; so that this invasion was more severely felt by the Athenians than any except the second; the
enemy staying on and on until they had overrun most of the country, in the expectation of hearing from Lesbos of something
having been achieved by their fleet, which they thought must now have got over. However, as they did not obtain any of the
results expected, and their provisions began to run short, they retreated and dispersed to their different cities.
27. In the meantime the Mitylenians, finding their provisions failing, while the fleet from Peloponnese was loitering on the
way instead of appearing at Mitylene, were compelled to come to terms with the Athenians in the following manner.
Salaethus having himself ceased to expect the fleet to arrive, now armed the commons with heavy armour, which they had
not before possessed, with the intention of making a sortie against the Athenians. The commons, however, no sooner
found themselves possessed of arms than they refused any longer to obey their officers; and forming in knots together, told
the authorities to bring out in public the provisions and divide them amongst them all, or they would themselves come to
terms with the Athenians and deliver up the city.
28. The government, aware of their inability to prevent this, and of the danger they would be in, if left out of the capitulation,
publicly agreed with Paches and the army to surrender Mitylene at discretion and to admit the troops into the town; upon the
understanding that the Mitylenians should be allowed to send an embassy to Athens to plead their cause, and that Paches
should not imprison, make slaves of, or put to death any of the citizens until its return. Such were the terms of the
capitulation; in spite of which the chief authors of the negotiation with Lacedaemon were so completely overcome by terror
when the army entered that they went and seated themselves by the altars, from which they were raised up by Paches
under promise that he would do them no wrong, and lodged by him in Tenedos, until he should learn the pleasure of the
Athenians concerning them. Paches also sent some galleys and seized Antissa, and took such other military measures as
he thought advisable.
35. Arrived at Mitylene, Paches reduced Pyrrha and Eresus; and finding the Lacedaemonian, Salaethus, in hiding in the
town, sent him off to Athens, together with the Mitylenians that he had placed in Tenedos, and any other persons that he
thought concerned in the revolt. He also sent back the greater part of his forces, remaining with the rest to settle Mitylene
and the rest of Lesbos as he thought best.
36. 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:
37. "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.
38. "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.
39. "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.
40. "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."
41. 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:
42. "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.
43. "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.
44. "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.
45. "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.
46. "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.
47. "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.
48. "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."
49. 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.
50. 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.
From Thucydides; History of the Peloponnesian War: The Mitylenian Debate
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