History of the Peloponnesian War, Thucydides [best free ebook reader TXT] 📗
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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;
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