Page:History of Greece Vol VI.djvu/269

 FOURTH YEAR OF THE WAR -REVOLT OF MITYLENE. 247 Hyperbolus, who persevered in addressing the public assembly and trying to take a leading part in it, against persons of greater family pretension than themselves, were pretty sure to be men of more than usual audacity. Had they not possessed this quality, they would never have surmounted the opposition made to them : we may well believe that they had it to a displeasing excess, and even if they had not, the same measure of self-assumption which in Alkibiades would be tolerated from his rank and station, would in them pass for insupportable impudence. Unhappily, we have no specimens to enable us to appreciate the invective of Kleon. We cannot determine whether it was more virulent than that of Demosthenes and jEschines, seventy years afterwards, each of those eminent orators imputing to the other the grossest impudence, calumny, perjury, corruption, loud voice, and revolt- ing audacity of manner, in language which Kleon can hardly have surpassed in intensity of vituperation, though he doubtless fell immeasurably short of it in classical finish. Nor can we even tell in what degree Kleon's denunciations of the veteran Perikles were fiercer than those memorable invectives against the old age of Sir Robert Walpole, with which Lord Chatham's political career opened. The talent for invective possessed by Kleon, employed first against Perikles, would be counted as great impudence by the partisans of that illustrious statesman, as well as by impartial and judicious citizens ; but among the numerous enemies of Perikles, it would be applauded as a burst of patriotic indignation, and would procure for the orator that extraneous support at first which would sustain him until he acquired his personal hold on the public assembly. 1 By what degrees or through what causes that hold was gradually increased, we do not. know ; but at the time when the question of Mitylene came on for discussion, it had grown into a sort of ascen- dency which Thucydides describes by saying that Kleon was '< at that time by far the most persuasive speaker in the eyes of the peo- ple." The fact of Kleon's great power of speech, and his capacity 1 Plutarch, Perikles, c. 33. 'Eire^vcro 6e Kal Kheaiv, i/drj 6iu TTJ irpof tKEtvov bpyrjf T&V TroAircjv iropevopEvof elf TTJV Sr]fi,ayuyiav. Perikles was 6i]x$et(alduvi Kteavi in the words of the comic author Hermippus