Page:History of Greece Vol VI.djvu/270

 248 HISTORY OF GREECE. of handling public business in r. popular manner, is better attested than anything else respecting him, because it depends upon two witnesses both hostile to him, Thucydides and Aristophanes. The assembly and the dikastery were Kleon's theatre and hold- ing-ground : for the Athenian people taken collectively in their place of meeting, and the Athenian people taken individually, were not always the same person and had not the same mode of judgment : Demos sitting in the Pnyx, was a different man from Demos at home. 1 The lofty combination of qualities pos- sessed by Perikles exercised ascendency over both one and the other ; but the qualities of Kleon swayed considerably the formei without standing high in the esteem of the latter. When the fate of Mitylene and its inhabitants was submitted to the Athenian assembly, Kleon took the lead in the discussion. There never was a theme more perfectly suited to his violent temperament and power of fierce invective. Taken collectively, the case of Mitylene presented a revolt as inexcusable and aggra- vated as any revolt could be : and we have only to read the grounds of it, as set forth by the Mitylenajan speakers themselves before the Peloponnesians at Olympia, to be satisfied that such a proceeding, when looked at from the Athenian point of view, would be supposed to justify, and even to require, the very high- est pitch of indignation. The Mitylenagans admit, not only thai they have no ground of complaint against Athens, but that they have been well and honorably treated by her, with special privi- lege. But they fear that she may oppress them in future : they hate the very principle of her empire, and eagerly instigate, as well as aid, her enemies to subdue her : they select the precise moment in which she has been worn down by a fearful pestilence, invasion, and cost of war. Nothing more than this would be required to kindle the most intense wrath in the bosom of an Athenian patriot : but there was yet ar.jther point which weighed as much as the rest, if not more : the revolters had been the first to invite a Peloponnesian fleet across the -/Egean, and the first tc proclaim, both to Athens and her allies, the precarious tenure of her empire. 2 The violent Kleon would on this occasion find in 1 Aristophan. Equit. 750.
 * Thucyd. iii, 36. Trpoa^v ve,3a.Ae-ra OVK. kfaxumv rift offtijf, etc.