Such a sentence was, in principle, nothing more than a very rigorous application of the received laws of war. Not merely the reconquered rebel, but even the prisoner of war, apart from any special convention, was at the mercy of his conqueror, to be slain, sold, or admitted to ransom: and we shall find the Lacedæmonians carrying out the maxim without the smallest abatement towards the Platæan prisoners, in the course of a very short time. And doubtless the Athenian people, so long as they remained in assembly, under that absorbing temporary intensification of the common and predominant sentiment which springs from the mere fact of multitude, and so long as they were discussing the principle of the case, What had Mitylênê deserved? thought only of this view. Less than the most rigorous measure of war, they would conceive, would be inadequate to the wrong done by the Mitylenæans. But when the assembly broke up,—when the citizen, no longer wound up by sympathizing companions and animated speakers in the Pnyx, subsided into the comparative quiescence of individual life,—when the talk came to be, not about the propriety of passing such a resolution, but about the details of executing it, a sensible change and marked repentance became presently visible. We must also recollect, and it is a principle of no small moment in human affairs, especially among a democratical people like the Athenians, who stand charged with so many resolutions passed and afterwards unexecuted, that the sentiment of wrath against the Mitylenæans had been really in part discharged by the mere passing of the sentence, quite apart from its execution; just as a furious man relieves himself from overboiling anger by imprecations against others which he would himself shrink from afterwards realizing. The Athenians, on the whole the most humane people in Greece,—though humanity, according to our ideas, cannot be predicated of any Greeks,—became sensible that they had sanctioned a cruel and frightful decree, and the captain and seamen,[412] to whom it was given to carry, set forth on their voyage with mournful repugnance. The Mitylenæan envoys present in Athens, who had probably been allowed to speak in the assembly and plead their own cause, together with those Athenians who had been proxeni and friends of Mitylênê, and the minority generally of the previous assembly, soon discerned, and did their best to foster, this repentance; which became, during the course of the same evening, so powerful as well as so wide-spread, that the stratêgi acceded to the prayer of the envoys, and convoked a fresh assembly for the morrow to reconsider the proceeding. By so doing, they committed an illegality, and exposed themselves to the chance of impeachment: but the change of feeling among the people was so manifest as to overbear any such scruples.[413]
Though Thucydidês had given us only a short summary, without any speeches, of what passed in the first assembly,—yet as to the second assembly, he gives us at length the speeches both of Kleon and Diodotus, the two principal orators of the first also. We may be sure that this second assembly was in all points one of the most interesting and anxious of the whole war; and though we cannot certainly determine what were the circumstances which determined Thucydidês in his selection of speeches, yet this cause, as well as the signal defeat of Kleon, whom he disliked, may probably be presumed to have influenced him here. That orator came forward to defend his proposition passed on the preceding day, and denounced in terms of indignation the unwise tenderness and scruples of the people, who could not bear to treat their subject-allies, according to the plain reality, as men held only by naked fear. He dwelt upon the mischief and folly of reversing on one day what had been decided on the day preceding,—upon the guilty ambition of orators, who sacrificed the most valuable interests of the commonwealth either to pecuniary gains, or to the personal credit of speaking with effect, triumphing over rivals, and setting up their own fancies in place of fact and reality. He deprecated the mistaken encouragement given to such delusions by a public “wise beyond what was written,” who came to the assembly, not to apply their good sense in judging of public matters, but merely for the delight of hearing speeches.[414] He restated the heinous and unprovoked wrong committed by the Mitylenæans,—and the grounds for inflicting upon them that maximum of punishment which “justice” enjoined. He called for “justice” against them; nothing less, but nothing more: warning the assembly that the imperial necessities of Athens essentially required the constant maintenance of a sentiment of fear in the minds of unwilling subjects, and that they must prepare to see their empire pass away if they suffered themselves to be guided either by compassion for those who, if victors, would have no compassion on them,[415]—or by unseasonable moderation towards those who would neither feel nor requite it,—or by the mere impression of seductive discourses. Justice against the Mitylenæans, not less than the strong political interests of Athens, required the infliction of the sentence decreed on the day preceding.[416]
The harangue of Kleon is in many respects remarkable. If we are surprised to find a man, whose whole importance resided in his tongue, denouncing so severely the license and the undue influence of speech in the public assembly, we must recollect that Kleon had the advantage of addressing himself to the intense prevalent sentiment of the moment,—that he could, therefore, pass off the dictates of this sentiment as plain, downright, honest sense and patriotism; while the opponents, speaking against the reigning sentiment, and therefore driven to collateral argument, circumlocution, and more or less of manœuvre, might be represented as mere clever sophists, showing their talents in making the worse appear the better reason,—if not actually bribed, at least unprincipled, and without any sincere moral conviction. As this is a mode of dealing with questions both of public concern and of private morality, not less common at present than it was in the time of the Peloponnesian war,—to seize upon some strong and tolerably wide-spread sentiment among the public, to treat the dictates of that sentiment as plain common sense and obvious right, and then to shut out all rational estimate of coming good and evil as if it were unholy or immoral, or at best mere uncandid subtlety,—we may well notice a case in which Kleon employs it to support a proposition now justly regarded as barbarous.
Applying our modern views to this proposition, indeed, the prevalent sentiment would not only not be in favor of Kleon, but would be irresistibly in favor of his opponents. To put to death in cold blood some six thousand persons, would so revolt modern feelings, as to overbalance all considerations of past misconduct in the persons to be condemned. Nevertheless, the speech of Diodotus, who followed and opposed Kleon, not only contains no appeal to any such merciful predispositions, but even positively disclaims appealing to them: the orator deprecates, not less than Kleon, the influence of compassionate sentiment, or of a spirit of mere compromise and moderation.[417] He farther discards considerations of justice or the analogies of criminal judicature,[418]—and rests his opposition altogether upon reasons of public prudence, bearing upon the future welfare and security of Athens.
He begins by vindicating[419] the necessity of reconsidering the resolution just passed, and insists on the mischief of deciding so important a question in haste or under strong passion; he enters a protest against the unwarrantable insinuations of corruption or self-conceit by which Kleon had sought to silence or discredit his opponents;[420] and then, taking up the question on the ground of public wisdom and prudence, he proceeds to show that the rigorous sentence decreed on the preceding day was not to be defended. That sentence would not prevent any other among the subject-allies from revolting, if they saw, or fancied that they saw, a fair chance of success: but it might perhaps drive them,[421] if once embarked in revolt, to persist even to desperation, and bury themselves under the ruins of their city. While every means ought to be employed to prevent them from revolting, by precautions beforehand, it was a mistaken reckoning to try to deter them by enormity of punishment, inflicted afterwards upon such as were reconquered. In developing this argument, the speaker gives some remarkable views on the theory of punishment generally, and on the small addition obtained in the way of preventive effect even by the greatest aggravation of the suffering inflicted upon the condemned criminal,—views which might have passed as rare and profound even down to the last century.[422] And he farther supports his argument by emphatically setting forth the impolicy of confounding the Mitylenæan Demos in the same punishment with their oligarchy: the revolt had been the act exclusively of the latter, and the former had not only taken no part in it, but, as soon as they obtained possession of arms, had surrendered the city spontaneously. In all the allied cities, it was the commons who were well-affected to Athens, and upon whom her hold chiefly depended against the doubtful fidelity of the oligarchies:[423] but this feeling could not possibly continue, if it were now seen that all the Mitylenæans indiscriminately were confounded in one common destruction. Diodotus concludes by recommending that those Mitylenæans whom Pachês had sent to Athens as chiefs of the revolt, should be put upon their trial separately; but that the remaining population should be spared.[424]
This speech is that of a man who feels that he has the reigning and avowed sentiment of the audience against him, and that he must therefore win his way by appeals to their reason. The same appeals, however, might have been made, and perhaps had been made, during the preceding discussion, without success; but Diodotus knew that the reigning sentiment, though still ostensibly predominant, had been silently undermined during the last few hours, and that the reaction towards pity and moderation, which had been growing up under it, would work in favor of his arguments, though he might disclaim all intention of invoking its aid. After several other discourses, both for and against,—the assembly came to a vote, and the proposition of Diodotus was adopted; but adopted by so small a majority, that the decision seemed at first doubtful.[425]
But the trireme carrying the first vote had started the day before, and was already twenty-four hours on its way to Mitylênê. A second trireme was immediately put to sea, bearing the new decree; yet nothing short of superhuman exertions could enable it to reach the condemned city before the terrific sentence now on its way might be actually in course of execution. The Mitylenæan envoys stored the vessel well with provisions, promising large rewards to the crew if they arrived in time; and an intensity of effort was manifested, without parallel in the history of Athenian seamanship,—the oar being never once relaxed between Athens and Mitylênê, and the rowers merely taking turns for short intervals of rest, with refreshment of barley-meal steeped with wine and oil swallowed on their seats. Luckily, there was no unfavorable wind to retard them: but the object would have been defeated, if it had not happened that the crew of the first trireme were as slow and averse in the transmission of their rigorous mandate, as those of the second were eager for the delivery of the reprieve in time. And, after all, it came no more than just in time; the first trireme had arrived, the order for execution was actually in the hands of Pachês, and his measures were already preparing. So near was the Mitylenæan population to this wholesale destruction:[426] so near was Athens to the actual perpetration of an enormity which would have raised against her throughout Greece a sentiment of exasperation more deadly than that which she afterwards incurred even from the proceedings at Melos, Skiônê, and elsewhere. Had the execution been realized, the person who would have suffered most by it, and most deservedly, would have been the proposer, Kleon. For if the reaction in Athenian sentiment was so immediate and sensible after the mere passing of the sentence, far more violent would it have been when they learned that the deed had been irrevocably done, and when all its painful details were presented to their imaginations: and Kleon would have been held responsible as the author of that which had so disgraced them in their own eyes. As the case turned out, he was fortunate enough to escape this danger; and his proposition, to put to death those Mitylenæans whom Pachês had sent home as the active revolting party, was afterwards adopted and executed. It doubtless appeared so moderate after the previous decree passed but rescinded, as to be adopted with little resistance, and to provoke no after-repentance: yet the men so slain were rather more than one thousand in number.[427]
Besides this sentence of execution, the Athenians razed the fortifications of Mitylênê, and took possession of all her ships of war. In lieu of tribute, they farther established a new permanent distribution of the land of the island; all except Methymna, which had remained faithful to them. They distributed it into three thousand lots, of which three hundred were reserved for consecration to the gods, and the remainder assigned to Athenian kleruchs, or proprietary settlers, chosen by lot among the citizens; the Lesbian proprietors still remaining on the land as cultivating tenants, and paying to the Athenian kleruch an annual rent of two minæ, near four pounds sterling, for each lot. We should have been glad to learn more about this new land-settlement than the few words of the historian suffice to explain. It would seem that two thousand seven hundred Athenian citizens, with their families must have gone to reside, for the time at least, in Lesbos, as kleruchs; that is, without abnegating their rights as Athenian citizens, and without being exonerated either from Athenian taxation, or from personal military service. But it seems certain that these men did not continue long to reside in Lesbos: and we may even suspect that the kleruchic allotment of the island must have been subsequently abrogated. There was a strip on the opposite mainland of Asia, which had hitherto belonged to Mitylênê; this was now separated from that town, and henceforward enrolled among the tributary subjects of Athens.[428]
To the misfortunes of Mitylênê belongs, as a suitable appendix, the fate of Pachês, the Athenian commander, whose perfidy at Notium has been recently recounted. It appears, that having contracted a passion for two beautiful free women at Mitylênê, Hellânis and Lamaxis, he slew their husbands, and got possession of them by force. Possibly, they may have had private friends at Athens, which must of course have been the case with many Mitylenæan families: at all events they repaired thither, bent on obtaining redress for this outrage, and brought their complaint against Pachês before the Athenian dikastery, in that trial of accountability to which every officer was liable at the close of his command. So profound was the sentiment which their case excited, in this open and numerous assembly of Athenian citizens, that the guilty commander, not waiting for sentence, slew himself with his sword in open court.[429]
The surrender of Platæa to the Lacedæmonians took place not long after that of Mitylênê to the Athenians,—somewhat later in the same summer. Though the escape of one-half of the garrison had made the provisions last longer for the rest, still they had now come to be exhausted, and the remaining defenders were enfeebled and on the point of perishing by starvation. The Lacedæmonian commander of the blockading force, knowing their defenceless condition, could easily have taken the town by storm, had he not been forbidden by express orders from Sparta. For the Spartan government, calculating that peace might one day be concluded with Athens on terms of mutual cession of places acquired by war, wished to acquire Platæa, not by force but by capitulation and voluntary surrender, which would serve as an excuse for not giving it up: though such a distinction, between capture by force and by capitulation, not admissible in modern diplomacy, was afterwards found to tell against the Lacedæmonians quite as much as in their favor.[430] Acting upon these orders, the Lacedæmonian commander sent in a herald, summoning the Platæans to surrender voluntarily, and submit themselves to the Lacedæmonians as judges,—with a stipulation “that the wrong-doers[431] should be punished, but that none should be punished unjustly.” To the besieged, in their state of hopeless starvation, all terms were nearly alike, and they accordingly surrendered the city. After a few days’ interval, during which they received nourishment from the blockading army, five persons arrived from Sparta to sit in judgment upon their fate,—one, Aristomenidas, a Herakleid of the regal family.[432]