Page:History of Greece Vol VI.djvu/371

 JUDGMENT OF T1IUCYDIDES. 349 in assuming as a certainty that the Lacedaemonians would choose the former. But Kleon had never promised to bring them home as prisoners : his promise was disjunctive, that they should be either so brought home, or slain, within twenty days : and no sentence throughout the whole of Thucydides astonishes me so much as that in which he stigmatizes such an expectation as 'insane." Here are four hundred and twenty Lacedaemonian iioplites, without any other description of troops to aid them, without the possibility of being reinforced, without any regular fortification, without any narrow pass, such as that of Ther- mopylae, without either a sufficient or a certain supply of food, cooped up in a small open island less than two miles in length. Against them are brought ten thousand troops of diverse arms, including eight hundred fresh hoplites from Athens, and mar- shalled by Demosthenes, a man alike enterprising and experi- enced : for the talents as well as the presence and preparations of Demosthenes are a part of the data of the case, and the personal competence of Kleon to command alone, is foreign to the calcu- lation. Now if, under such circumstances, Kleon engaged that this forlorn company of brave men should be either slain or taken prisoners, how could he be looked upon, I will not say as indulg- ing in an insane boast, but even as overstepping the most cautious and mistrustful estimate of probability ? Even to doubt of this result, much more to pronounce such an opinion as that of Thu- cydides, implies an idea not only of superhuman power in the Lacedaemonian hoplites, but of disgraceful cowardice on the part of Demosthenes and the assailants. Nor was the interval of twenty days, named by Kleon, at all extravagantly narrow, con- sidering the distance of Athens from Pylus : for the attack of this petty island could not possibly occupy more than one or two days at the utmost, though the blockade of it might by various accidents have been prolonged, or might even, by some terrible storm, be altogether broken off. If, then, we carefully consider this promise made by Kleon in the assembly, we shall find that so far from thoroughly unjustifiable ; not less unjustifiable than the language of tin modern historjan about the "extraordinary circumstances," and the way in which Kleon Avas ''favored by fortune." Not a single incident can be speci- fied in tte narrative to bear out these invidioi s assertions.