* * * *
And hoom sche gooth anon the nexté weye.
This is theffect, ther nys namore to seye.’
Chaucer: Knight’s Tale.
It was towards the end of May, in the year 423, that Kleon gave his celebrated banquet to his friends. His house was large and sumptuous rather than beautiful. Βάναυσον is the word which best describes the feast, for which ‘vulgarly profuse’ is our nearest equivalent. Not that Kleon was altogether what we call a vulgar man. It may be doubted if there was anything known in Greece at that time which we can exactly qualify by the term ‘vulgarity.’ Yet his peculiarities had something akin to that growth of vulgar profusion in later times which came to its perfection in the rich outside society of later Rome, and has not yet entirely disappeared.
Kleon was a man of considerable power. He had shown sound judgment and natural military skill at Sphakteria, where, although unused to arms, he struck the first blow at the military supremacy of Sparta, while, as a politician, during the short time in which he took a leading part in the guidance of the state, he proved himself to be one of the most sagacious and far-sighted of Grecian statesmen.
True, he threw aside the old traditions of the Pnyx, the Athenian House of Commons, as he threw aside his cloak, or let it fall ungracefully from off his shoulders, as he tramped about the tribune. True, his harangues there were not the stately orations of academic Athens. True, he swelled his cheeks when he thundered out the living words which took such hold upon the people, chiefly because they were the expressed embodiment, the unconscious echo, of their own vague thoughts. Yet was there something in his voice—a ring in it—which spake of genius more than of vulgarity. And though his enemies could ridicule his speeches afterwards, and demonstrate the errors in his arguments to small batches of adherents in the Agora, few dare raise their voice to answer him in the Assembly of the people.
He loved the large and splendid in his house and at his entertainments, and there was plenty of the large and splendid at this feast. There was also serious conversation. The times were critical. The two great states of Greece felt a desire for peace. Athens had suffered terribly at Delion, and since then some other of the Thrakian cities dependent upon her had seized the opportunity to shake off her yoke.
But if Athens had suffered much, Sparta, on the whole, had suffered more, and with less power to recuperate, for this is the weakness of an exclusive people such as the Spartans were. Like the Patriciate of Rome, they would admit no strangers to share their privileges. So if a generation of her men were weakened, or, as happened sometimes, well-nigh destroyed by war, she had to wait for another generation to grow up to supply the loss. Not so at Athens. There the gaps made in her ranks were constantly repaired by new-made citizens, who soon caught the spirit of the old Athenian traditions.
Sparta no less than Athens wished for peace. But the treaty which had been made for one year, now just expired, had hardly been concluded before news came that Skione, a thriving town not far from Potidaia, had thrown off her allegiance to Athens, and had invited Brasidas, the Spartan commander in that part, who had taken Amphipolis, to come to help her, and that Brasidas was assisting her in her revolt.