But the absence of military knowledge and precaution is not the worst of Kleon’s faults on this occasion. His want of courage at the moment of conflict is yet more lamentable, and divests his end of that personal sympathy which would otherwise have accompanied it. A commander who has been out-generalled is under a double force of obligation to exert and expose himself, to the uttermost, in order to retrieve the consequences of his own mistakes. He will thus at least preserve his own personal honor, whatever censure he may deserve on the score of deficient knowledge and judgment.[749]
What is said about the disgraceful flight of Kleon himself, must be applied, with hardly less severity of criticism, to the Athenian hoplites under him. They behaved in a manner altogether unworthy of the reputation of their city; especially the left wing, which seems to have broken and run away without waiting to be attacked. And when we read in Thucydidês, that the men who thus disgraced themselves were among the best, and the best-armed hoplites in Athens; that they came out unwillingly under Kleon; that they began their scornful murmurs against him before he had committed any fault, despising him for backwardness when he was yet not strong enough to attempt anything serious, and was only manifesting a reasonable prudence in waiting the arrival of expected reinforcements; when we read this, we shall be led to compare the expedition against Amphipolis with former manœuvres respecting the attack of Sphakteria, and to discern other causes for its failure besides the military incompetence of the commander. These hoplites brought out with them from Athens the feelings prevalent among the political adversaries of Kleon. The expedition was proposed and carried by him, contrary to their wishes: they could not prevent it, but their opposition enfeebled it from the beginning, kept within too narrow limits the force assigned to it, and was one main reason which frustrated its success.
Had Periklês been alive, Amphipolis might perhaps still have been lost, since its capture was the fault of the officers employed to defend it. But if lost, it would probably have been attacked and recovered with the same energy as the revolted Samos had been, with the full force and the best generals that Athens could furnish. With such an armament under good officers, there was nothing at all impracticable in the reconquest of the place; especially as at that time it had no defence on three sides except the Strymon, and might thus be approached by Athenian ships on that navigable river. The armament of Kleon,[750] even if his reinforcements had arrived, was hardly sufficient for the purpose. But Periklês would have been able to concentrate upon it the whole strength of the city, without being paralyzed by the contentions of political party: he would have seen as clearly as Kleon, that the place could only be recovered by force, and that its recovery was the most important object to which Athens could devote her energies.
It was thus that the Athenians, partly from political intrigue, partly from the incompetence of Kleon, underwent a disastrous defeat instead of carrying Amphipolis. But the death of Brasidas converted their defeat into a substantial victory. There remained no Spartan either like or second to that eminent man, either as a soldier or a conciliating politician; none who could replace him in the confidence and affection of the allies of Athens in Thrace; none who could prosecute those enterprising plans against Athens on her unshielded side, which he had first shown to be practicable. The fears of Athens, and the hopes of Sparta, in respect to the future, disappeared alike with him. The Athenian generals, Phormio and Demosthenês, had both of them acquired among the Akarnanians an influence personal to themselves, apart from their post and from their country: but the career of Brasidas, exhibited an extent of personal ascendency and admiration, obtained as well as deserved, such as had never before been paralleled by any military chieftain in Greece: and Plato might well select him as the most suitable historical counterpart to the heroic Achilles.[751] All the achievements of Brasidas were his own individually, with nothing more than bare encouragement, sometimes even without encouragement, from his country. And when we recollect the strict and narrow routine in which as a Spartan he had been educated, so fatal to the development of everything like original thought or impulse, and so completely estranged from all experience of party or political discussion, we are amazed at his resource and flexibility of character, his power of adapting himself to new circumstances and new persons, and his felicitous dexterity in making himself the rallying-point of opposite political parties in each of the various cities which he acquired. The combination “of every sort of practical excellence,” valor, intelligence, probity, and gentleness of dealing, which his character presented, was never forgotten among the subject-allies of Athens, and procured for other Spartan officers in subsequent years favorable presumptions, which their conduct was seldom found to realize.[752] At the time when Brasidas perished, in the flower of his age, he was unquestionably the first man in Greece; and though it is not given to us to predict what he would have become had he lived, we may be sure that the future course of the war would have been sensibly modified; perhaps even to the advantage of Athens, since she might have had sufficient occupation at home to keep her from the disastrous enterprise in Sicily.
Thucydidês seems to take pleasure in setting forth the gallant exploits of Brasidas, from the first at Methônê to the last at Amphipolis, not less than the dark side of Kleon; both, though in different senses, the causes of his banishment. He never mentions the latter except in connection with some proceeding represented as unwise or discreditable. The barbarities which the offended majesty of empire thought itself entitled to practise in ancient times against dependencies revolted and reconquered, reach their maximum in the propositions against Mitylênê and Skiônê: both of them are ascribed to Kleon by name as their author. But when we come to the slaughter of the Melians, equally barbarous, and worse in respect to grounds of excuse, inasmuch as the Melians had never been subjects of Athens, we find Thucydidês mentioning the deed without naming the proposer.[753]
Respecting the foreign policy of Kleon, the facts already narrated will enable the reader to form an idea of it as compared with that of his opponents. I have shown grounds for believing that Thucydidês has forgotten his usual impartiality in criticizing this personal enemy; that in regard to Sphakteria, Kleon was really one main and indispensable cause of procuring for his country the greatest advantage which she obtained throughout the whole war; and that in regard to his judgment as advocating the prosecution of war, three different times must be distinguished: 1. After the first blockade of the hoplites in Sphakteria; 2. After the capture of the island; 3. After the expiration of the one year truce. On the earliest of those three occasions he was wrong, for he seems to have shut the door on all possibilities of negotiation, by his manner of dealing with the Lacedæmonian envoys. On the second occasion, he had fair and plausible grounds to offer on behalf of his opinion, though it turned out unfortunate: moreover, at that time, all Athens was warlike, and Kleon is not to be treated as the peculiar adviser of that policy. On the third and last occasion, after the expiration of the truce, the political counsel of Kleon was right, judicious, and truly Periklêan, much surpassing in wisdom that of his opponents. We shall see in the coming chapters how those opponents managed the affairs of the state after his death; how Nikias threw away the interests of Athens in the enforcement of the conditions of peace; how Nikias and Alkibiadês together shipwrecked the power of their country on the shores of Syracuse. And when we judge the demagogue Kleon in this comparison, we shall find ground for remarking that Thucydidês is reserved and even indulgent towards the errors and vices of other statesmen, harsh only towards those of his accuser.
As to the internal policy of Kleon, and his conduct as a politician in Athenian constitutional life, we have but little trustworthy evidence. There exists, indeed, a portrait of him, drawn in colors broad and glaring, most impressive to the imagination, and hardly effaceable from the memory; the portrait in the “Knights” of Aristophanês. It is through this representation that Kleon has been transmitted to posterity, crucified by a poet who admits himself to have had a personal grudge against him, just as he has been commemorated in the prose of an historian whose banishment he had proposed. Of all the productions of Aristophanês, so replete with comic genius throughout, the “Knights” is the most consummate and irresistible; the most distinct in its character, symmetry, and purpose. Looked at with a view to the object of its author, both in reference to the audience and to Kleon, it deserves the greatest possible admiration, and we are not surprised to learn that it obtained the first prize. It displays the maximum of that which wit combined with malice can achieve, in covering an enemy with ridicule, contempt, and odium. Dean Swift would have desired nothing worse, even for Ditton and Winston. The old man, Demos of Pnyx, introduced on the stage as personifying the Athenian people,—Kleon, brought on as his newly-bought Paphlagonian slave, who by coaxing, lying, impudent and false denunciation of others, has gained his master’s ear, and heaps ill-usage upon every one else, while he enriches himself,—the Knights, or chief members of what we may call the Athenian aristocracy, forming the Chorus of the piece as Kleon’s pronounced enemies,—the sausage-seller from the market-place, who, instigated by Nikias find Demosthenês along with these Knights, overdoes Kleon in all his own low arts, and supplants him in the favor of Demos; all this, exhibited with inimitable vivacity of expression, forms the masterpiece and glory of libellous comedy. The effect produced upon the Athenian audience when this piece was represented at the Lenæan festival, January B.C. 424, about six months after the capture of Sphakteria, with Kleon himself and most of the real Knights present, must have been intense beyond what we can now easily imagine. That Kleon could maintain himself after this humiliating exposure, is no small proof of his mental vigor and ability. It does not seem to have impaired his influence, at least not permanently; for not only do we see him the most effective opponent of peace during the next two years, but there is ground for believing that the poet himself found it convenient to soften his tone towards this powerful enemy.
So ready are most writers to find Kleon guilty, that they are satisfied with Aristophanês as a witness against him: though no other public man, of any age or nation, has ever been condemned upon such evidence. No man thinks of judging Sir Robert Walpole, or Mr. Fox, or Mirabeau, from the numerous lampoons put in circulation against them: no man will take measure of a political Englishman from Punch, or of a Frenchman from the Charivari. The unrivalled comic merit of the “Knights” of Aristophanês is only one reason the more for distrusting the resemblance of its picture to the real Kleon. We have means too of testing the candor and accuracy of Aristophanês by his delineation of Sokratês, whom he introduced in the comedy of “Clouds” in the year after that of the “Knights.” As a comedy, the “Clouds” stands second only to the “Knights”: as a picture of Sokratês, it is little better than pure fancy: it is not even a caricature, but a totally different person. We may indeed perceive single features of resemblance; the bare feet, and the argumentative subtlety, belong to both; but the entire portrait is such, that if it bore a different name, no one would think of comparing it with Sokratês, whom we know well from other sources. With such an analogy before us, not to mention what we know generally of the portraits of Periklês by these authors, we are not warranted in treating the portrait of Kleon as a likeness, except on points where there is corroborative evidence. And we may add, that some of the hits against him, where we can accidentally test their pertinence, are decidedly not founded in fact; as, for example, where the poet accuses Kleon of having deliberately and cunningly robbed Demosthenês of his laurels in the enterprise against Sphakteria.[754]
In the prose of Thucydidês, we find Kleon described as a dishonest politician, a wrongful accuser of others, the most violent of all the citizens:[755] throughout the verse of Aristophanês, these same charges are set forth with his characteristic emphasis, but others are also superadded; Kleon practises the basest artifices and deceptions to gain favor with the people, steals the public money, receives bribes, and extorts compositions from private persons by wholesale, and thus enriches himself under pretence of zeal for the public treasury. In the comedy of the Acharnians, represented one year earlier than the Knights, the poet alludes with great delight to a sum of five talents, which Kleon had been compelled “to disgorge”: a present tendered to him by the insular subjects of Athens, if we may believe Theopompus, for the purpose of procuring a remission of their tribute, and which the Knights, whose evasions of military service he had exposed, compelled him to relinquish.[756]
But when we put together the different heads of indictment accumulated by Aristophanês, it will be found that they are not easily reconcilable one with the other; for an Athenian, whose temper led him to violent crimination of others, at the inevitable price of multiplying and exasperating personal enemies, would find it peculiarly dangerous, if not impossible, to carry on peculation for his own account. If, on the other hand, he took the latter turn, he would be inclined to purchase connivance from others even by winking at real guilt on their part, far from making himself conspicuous as a calumniator of innocence. We must therefore discuss the side of the indictment which is indicated in Thucydidês; not Kleon, as truckling to the people and cheating for his own pecuniary profit (which is certainly not the character implied in his speech about the Mitylenæans, as given to us by the historian),[757] but Kleon as a man of violent temper and fierce political antipathies, a bitter speaker, and sometimes dishonest in his calumnies against adversaries. These are the qualities which, in all countries of free debate, go to form what is called a great opposition speaker. It was thus that the elder Cato, “the universal biter, whom Persephonê was afraid even to admit into Hades after his death,” was characterized at Rome, even by the admission of his admirers to some extent, and in a still stronger manner by those who were unfriendly to him, as Thucydidês was to Kleon.[758] In Cato, such a temper was not inconsistent with a high sense of public duty. And Plutarch recounts an anecdote respecting Kleon, that, on first beginning his political career, he called his friends together, and dissolved his intimacy with them, conceiving that private friendships would distract him from his paramount duty to the commonwealth.[759]