Page:History of Greece Vol VII.djvu/134

116 HO HISTORY OF GREECE. of such plausible excuse as might have been ofl'ered. It has been strangely argued, as if " The good old plan, that t/ny should take who have the power, and they should keep who can" had been first discovered and openly promulgated by Athenian sophists ; whereas the true purpose and value of sophists, even in the modern and worst sense of the word putting aside the perver- sion of applying that sense to the persons called sophists at Athens is, to furnish plausible matter of deceptive justification, so that the strong man may be enabled to act upon this " good old plan " as much as he pleases, but without avowing it, and while professing fair dealing or just retaliation for some imaginary wrong. The wolf in ^Esop's fable (of the Wolf and the Lamb) speaks like a sophist ; the Athenian envoy at Melos speaks in a manner totally unlike a sophist, either in the Athenian sense or in the modern sense of the word ; we may add, unlike an Athe- nian at all, as Dionysius has observed. As a matter of fact and practice, it is true that stronger states, in Greece and in the contemporary world, did habitually tend, as they have tended throughout the course of history down to the present day, to enlarge their power at the expense of the weaker. Every territory in Greece, except Attica and Arcadia, had been seized by conquerors who dispossessed or enslaved the prior inhabitants. We find Brasidas reminding his soldiers of the good sword of their forefathers, which had established dominion over men far more numerous than themselves, as matter of pride and glory : ! and when we come to the times of Philip and Alex- ander of Macedon, we shall see the lust of conquest reaching a pitch never witnessed among free Greeks. Of right thus founded on simple superiority of force, there were abundant examples to be quoted, as parallels to the Athenian conquest of Melos : but that which is unparalleled is the mode adopted by the Athenian envoy of justifying it, or rather of setting aside all justification, look- ing at the actual state of civilization in Greece. A barbarous invader casts his sword into the scale in lieu of argument : a civilized conqueror is bound by received international morality to furnish some justification, a good plea, if he can, a false 1 Compare also what Brasidas says in his speech to the Akanthians, v, 86 I ff%v of fiiKaiuaet f/v tj TV^TJ ifiunev, etc.