Page:History of Greece Vol VI.djvu/278

 256 HISTORY OF GREECE. large rewards to the crew if they arrived in time ; and an intes sity of effort was manifested, without parallel in the history ol Athenian seamanship, the oar being never once relaxed be tweer. Athens and Mitylene, and the rowers merely taking turns for short intervals of rest, with refreshment of barley-meaJ steeped with wine and oil swallowed on their seats. Luckily, there was no unfavorable wind to retard them : but the object would have been defeated, if it had not happened that the crew of the first trireme were as slow and averse in the transmission of their rigorous mandate, as those of the second were eager for the delivery of the reprieve in time. And, after all, it came no more than just in time ; the first trireme had arrived, the order for execution was actually in the hands of Paches, and his meas- ures were already preparing. So near was the Mitylenaean population to this wholesale destruction :' so near Avas Athens to the actual perpetration of an enormity which would have raised against her throughout Greece a sentiment of exasperation more deadly than that which she afterwards incurred even from the proceedings at Melos, Skione, and elsewhere. Had the execu- tion been realized, the person who would have suffered most by it, and most deservedly, would have been the proposer, Kleon. For if the reaction in Athenian sentiment was so immediate and sensible after the mere passing of the sentence, far more violent would it have been when they learned that the deed had been irrevocably done, and when all its painful details were presented to their imaginations : and Kleon would have been held respon- sible as the author of that which had so disgraced them in their own eyes. As the case turned out, he was fortunate enough to escape this danger ; and his proposition, to put to death those Mitylenaeans whom Paches had sent home as the active revolting party, was afterwards adopted and executed. It doubtless ap- peared so moderate after the previous decree passed but rescinded, as to be adopted with little resistance, and to provoke no after- repentance: yet the men so slain were rather more than one thousand in number. 2 Besides this sentence of execution, the Athenians razed th 1 Thucyd. iii, 49. napu TOOOVTOV fiei- i 'M.iT-jXfivT) ?i/.fle mvdvvov.
 * Thucyd. iii. 50.