Page:The World's Famous Orations Volume 1.djvu/87

 CLEON , and despisers of what is ordinary. Each of you wishes, above all, to be able to speak himself; but if that is not possible, in rivalry of those who so speak, you strive not to appear to have followed his sentiments at second-hand; but when he has said any thing cleverly, you would fain appear to have anticipated its expression by your applause, and are eager to catch beforehand what is said, and at the same time slow to forsee the consequences of it.

Wishing then to call you off from this course, I declare to you that the Mytileneans have injured you more than any one state ever did. For I can make allowance for men who have revolted because they could not endure your government, or because they were compelled by their enemies. But for those who inhabited an island with fortifications, and had only to fear our enemies by sea, on which element, too, they were themselves not unprotected against them by a fleet of triremes, and who lived independent, and were honored in the highest degree by us, and then treated us in this way; what else did those men do than deliberately devise our ruin, and rise up against us, rather than revolt from us (revolt, at least, is the part of those who are subject to some violent treatment), and seek to ruin us by siding with our bitterest enemies? Yet surely that is more intolerable than if they waged war against you by themselves for the acquisition of power.

But success is wont to make those states 37