Page:History of Greece Vol VI.djvu/497

 FAULTS OF KLEON. 475 embarked on the enterprise against Pylus, in the blind confidence that no one would resist him. 1 Now I have already, in a former thapter, shown grounds for concluding that the anticipations of Kleon respecting the capture of Sphakteria, far from being marked by any spirit of unmeasured presumption, were sober and judicious, realized to the letter without any unlooked-for aid from fortune. Nor are the remarks, here made by Thucydides on that affair, more reasonable than the judgment on it in his former chapter ; for it is not true, as he here implies, that Kleon expected no resistance in Sphakteria ; he calculated on resistance, but knew that he had force sufficient to overcome it. His fault even at Amphipolis, great as that fault was, did not consist in rashness and presumption. This charge at least is rebutted by the circumstance, that he himself wished to make no aggressive movement until his reinforcements should arrive, and that he was only constrained, against his own will, to abandon his in- tended temporary inactivity during that interval, by the angry murmurs of his soldiers, who reproached him with ignorance and backwardness, the latter quality being the reverse of that with which he is branded by Thucydides. When Kleon was thus driven to do something, his march up to the top of the hill, for the purpose of reconnoitring the ground, was not in itself unreasonable, and might have been accomplished in perfect safety, if he had kept his army in orderly array, pre- pared for contingencies. But he suffered himself to be completely out-generalled and overreached by that simulated consciousness of impotence and unwillingness to fight, which Brasidas took jare to present to him. Among all military stratagems, this has perhaps been the most frequently practised with success against inexperienced generals, who are thrown off their guard and induced to neglect precaution, not because they are naturally more rash or presumptuous than ordinary men, but because nothing except either a high order of intellect, or special practice and training, will enable a man to keep steadily present to his mind 1 Thucyd. v, 7. Kat xP% ffaTO rpovctv if fJ-u,X r l v I^ EV 7&P v&z ffliriOEV ol ii caru deav 6e uuX^ov irj uvafiaiveiv TOV xupiov, Kai rqv /i etc.