Page:History of Greece Vol VI.djvu/314

 292 HISTOBY OF GREECE. specific acts, and saw to the execution of that which the senate and the public assembly resolved. Especially in regard to the military and naval force of the city, so large and so actively employed at this time, the powers of detail possessed by the strategi must have been very great and essential to the safety of the state. While Nikias was thus in what may be called ministerial func- tion, Kleon was not of sufficient importance to attain the same, but was confined to the inferior function of opposition : we shall see in the coming chapter how he became as it were promoted, partly by his own superior penetration, partly by the dishonest artifice and misjudgment of Nikias and other opponents, in the affair of Sphakteria. But his vocation was now to find fault, to censure, to denounce ; his theatre of action was the senate, the public assembly, the dikasteries ; his principal talent was that of speech, in which he must unquestionably have surpassed all his contemporaries. The two gifts which had been united in Peri- kles superior capacity for speech as well as for action were now severed, and had fallen, though both in greatly inferior degree, the one to Nikias, the other to Kleon. As an opposition- man, fierce and violent in temper, Kleon was extremely formid- able to all acting functionaries; and from his influence in the public assembly, he was doubtless the author of many important positive measures, thus going beyond the functions belonging to what is called opposition. But though the most effective speaker in the public assembly, he was not for that reason the most influ- ential person in the democracy : his powers of speech in fact, stood out the more prominently, because they were found apart from that station, and those qualities which were considered, even at Athens, all but essential to make a man a leader in political life. To understand the political condition of Athens at this time, it has been necessary to take this comparison between Nikias and Kleon, and to remark, that though the latter might be a more victorious speaker, the former was the more guiding and influential leader ; the points gained by Kleon were all noisy and palpable, sometimes however, without doubt, of considerable mo- ment, but the course of affairs was much more under the direction of Nikias. It was during the summer of this year, the fifth of the war, -