“So I heard! Athens or Sparta! Government by the people, or government by donkeys. The people, the weightiest element in the State, the cultivators of the land, the producers of wealth, lie at the bottom like gold. The worthless, the drones, the rich, the aristocratic, the most frivolous, swim on the surface like chips and corks. Athens has always represented government by the people, and will always do so; Sparta represents the donkey-government.
“The oligarchy, you mean, Cleon.”
“No; donkeys. Therefore, Anytos, Athens is badly governed, for Pericles the rich man, who boasts of royal ancestors, has come to power. How can he sympathise with these people, since he has never been down there below? How can he see them rightly from above? He sits on the gable-roof of the Parthenon, and views the Athenians as ants, while they are lions, with their claws pared and their teeth drawn. We, Anytos, born down there amid the skins of the tanyard and dog’s-dung, we understand our perspiring brothers—we know them by the smell, so to speak. But like readily associates with like; therefore Sparta feels attracted to Athens, to Pericles and his followers. Pericles draws Sparta to himself, and we sink....”
Anytos, himself an orator, did not like to hear eloquence from others, therefore he cut abruptly through Cleon’s speech.
“Pericles is ill.”
“Is he ill?”
“Yes, he has fever!”
“Really? Perhaps the plague.”
“Perhaps.”
This interjected remark of Anytos had crossed Cleon’s prolix discourse, and a new hope glimmered before him.