Page:History of Greece Vol VI.djvu/360

 338 HISTORY OF GREECE. months afterwards, 1 laughing at him as having achieved nothing at all, as having cunningly put himself into the shoes of De- mosthenes, and stolen away from that general the glory of taking Sphakteria, after all the difficulties of the enterprise had been already got over, and " the cake ready baked," to use the phrase of the comic poet. Both of the jests are exaggerations in opposite directions ; but the last in order of time, if it be good at all against Kleon, is a galling sarcasm against those who derided Kleon as an extravagant boaster. If we intend fairly to compare the behavior of Kleon with that of his political adversaries, we must distinguish between the two occasions : first, that in which he had frustrated the pacific mission of the Lacedaemonian envoys ; next, the subsequent delay and dilemma which has been recently described. On the first occasion, his advice appears to have been mistaken in policy, as well as offensive in manner : his opponents, proposing a discus- sion by special commissioners as a fair chance for honorable terms of peace, took a juster view of the public interests. But the case was entirely altered when the mission for peace (wisely or unwisely) had been broken up, and when the fate of Sphak- teria had been committed to the chances of Avar. There were then imperative reasons for prosecuting the Avar vigorously, and for employing all the force requisite to insure the capture of that island. And looking to this end, we shall find that there Avas nothing in the conduct of Kleon either to blame or to deride ; while his political adversaries, Nikias among them, are deplorably Aristophanes, Equit. 54 : Hal Trpuqv y' tpov Mu^av //e/ia^oroc h> Hiity AaKuvinqv, Havovp-yoTdTa TTWC trepcdpapuv, v<jtap-ucaf Aiirdf irapf:$T)Ke Tijv VTT' kpov [tE/wyficvTiv . It is Demosthenes who speaks in reference to Kleon, termed in that comedy the Paphlagonian slave of Demos. Compare v, 391, Kdr' U.VTIP edo^ev clvai, TuTJ.oTpiov uftiJv tJepof, etc., and 740-1197. So far from cunningly thrusting himself into the post as general, Kleon did everything he possibly could to avoid the post, and was only forced into it by the artifices of his enemies. It is important tc notice how little the jests of Aristophanes can be taken as any evidence of historical reality