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

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.