Page:History of Greece Vol VI.djvu/361

 SENTIMENT AND CONDUCT OF THE EKKLESIA. 339 riraid, ignorant, and reckless of the public interest ; seeking only to turn the existing disappointment and dilemma into a party opportunity for ruining him. To grant the reinforcement asked for by Demosthenes was obviously the proper measure, and Kleon saw that the people would go along with him in proposing it : but he had at the same time good grounds for reproaching Nikias, and the other strategi, whose duty it was to originate that proposition, with their back- wardness in remaining silent, and in leaving the matter to go by default, as if it were Kleon's affair and not theirs. His taunt : " This is what / would have done, if / were general," was a mere phrase of the heat of debate, such as must have been very often used, without any idea on the part of the hearers of con- struing it as a pledge which the speaker was bound to realize : nor was it any disgrace to Kleon to decline a charge which he had never sought, and to confess his incompetence to command. The reason why he was forced into the post, in spite of his own unaffected reluctance, was not, as some historians would have us believe, because the Athenian people loved a joke, but from two feelings, both perfectly serious, which divided the assembly, feelings opposite in their nature, but coinciding on this occasion to the same result. His enemies loudly urged him forward, anticipating that the enterprise under him would miscarry, and that he would thus be ruined : his friends, perceiving this ma- noeuvre, but not sharing in such anticipations, and ascribing his reluctance to modesty, pronounced themselves so much the more vehemently on behalf of their leader, and repaid the scornful cheer by cheers of sincere encouragement. " Why do you not try your hand at this enterprise, Kleon, if you think it so easy ? You will soon find that it is too much for you ;" was the cry of his enemies : to which his friends would reply : " Yes, to be sure, try, Kleon : by all means, try : do not be backward ; we warrant that you will come honorably out of it, and we will stand by you." Such cheer and counter-cheer is precisely in the tempei of an animated multitude, as Thucydides 1 states it, divided in feeling ; and friends as well as enemies thus concurred to impose upon Kleon a compulsion not to be eluded. Of all the parties 1 Thuc'.'d. iv, - 2S. olov o^/lof (j>ifal KOUIV, etc-