Page:History of Greece Vol VI.djvu/482

 460 HISTORY OF GREECE. prevailed in B.C. 422 : You hold your empire and your proud position, by the condition of being willing to encounter cost, fatigue, and danger: abstain from all views of enlarging the empire, but think no effort too great to maintain it unimpaired. To lose what we have once got is more disgraceful than to fail in attempts at acquisition." 1 The very same language was prob- ably held by Kleon when exhorting his countrymen to an expe- dition for the reconquest of Amphipolis. But when uttered by him, it would have a very different effect from that which it had formerly produced when held by Perikles, and different also from that which it would now have produced if held by Nikias. The entire peace-party would repudiate it when it came from Kleon ; partly out of dislike to the speaker, partly from a conviction, doubtless felt by every one, that an expedition against Brasidas would be a hazardous and painful service to all concerned in it, general as well as soldiers ; partly also from a persuasion, sin- cerely entertained at the time, though afterwards proved to be illusory by the result, that Amphipolis might really be got back through peace with the Lacedaemonians. If Kleon, in proposing the expedition, originally proposed himself as the commander, a new ground of objection, and a very forcible ground, would thus be furnished. Since everything which Kleon does is understood to be a manifestation of some vicious or silly attribute, we are told that this was an instance of his absurd presumption, arising out of the success of Pylus, and persuading him that he was the only general who could put down Brasidas. But if the success at Pylus had really filled him with such overweening military conceit, it is most unaccountable that he should not have procured for himself some command during the year which immediately succeeded the affair at Sphakteria, the eighth year of the war : a season of most active wpjlike enter- prise, when his presumption and influence arising out of the Sphakterian victory must have been fresh and glowing. As he Thucyct. ii, 63. Tj/f <5e TroAeuf t>yuuf clubf T Tifiufievy unb rov upx?w, unavref ayuA^eatff, fior)$Elv, Kal pi eiiyeiv rotif -rovouf fj fitjie TU( Eiv, etc. c. 62, ala^iov 6e, t^ovraf a^aipe&fivai y Krufiivovf < ri - tfoat. Contrast the tenor of the two speeches of Perikles (Thucyd. i, 140- 144 ; ii, 60-64) with the description which Thucydides gives of the simpl* "avoidance of risk," (rd ciKivtivvov,) which characterized Nikias (v. 16).