Both these two points, it will be observed, are prominently marked in the dialogue set forth by Thucydidês. I have already stated that this dialogue can hardly represent what actually passed, except as to a few general points, which the historian has followed out into deductions and illustrations,[164] thus dramatizing the given situation in a powerful and characteristic manner. The language put into the mouth of the Athenian envoys is that of pirates and robbers, as Dionysius of Halikarnassus[165] long ago remarked; intimating his suspicion that Thucydidês had so set out the case for the purpose of discrediting the country which had sent him into exile. Whatever may be thought of this suspicion, we may at least affirm that the arguments which he here ascribes to Athens are not in harmony even with the defects of the Athenian character. Athenian speakers are more open to the charge of equivocal wording, multiplication of false pretences, softening down the bad points of their case, putting an amiable name upon vicious acts, employing what is properly called sophistry, where their purpose needs it.[166] Now the language of the envoy at Mêlos, which has been sometimes cited as illustrating the immorality of the class or profession—falsely called a school—named Sophists at Athens, is above all things remarkable for a sort of audacious frankness; a disdain not merely of sophistry, in the modern sense of the word, but even of such plausible excuse as might have been offered. It has been strangely argued, as if “The good old plan, that they should take who have the power, and they should keep who can,” had been first discovered and openly promulgated by Athenian sophists; whereas the true purpose and value of sophists, even in the modern and worst sense of the word—putting aside the perversion of applying that sense to the persons called sophists at Athens—is, to furnish plausible matter of deceptive justification, so that the strong man may be enabled to act upon this “good old plan” as much as he pleases, but without avowing it, and while professing fair dealing or just retaliation for some imaginary wrong. The wolf in Æsop’s fable (of the Wolf and the Lamb) speaks like a sophist; the Athenian envoy at Mêlos speaks in a manner totally unlike a sophist, either in the Athenian sense or in the modern sense of the word; we may add, unlike an Athenian at all, as Dionysius has observed.
As a matter of fact and practice, it is true that stronger states, in Greece and in the contemporary world, did habitually tend, as they have tended throughout the course of history down to the present day, to enlarge their power at the expense of the weaker. Every territory in Greece, except Attica and Arcadia, had been seized by conquerors who dispossessed or enslaved the prior inhabitants. We find Brasidas reminding his soldiers of the good sword of their forefathers, which had established dominion over men far more numerous than themselves, as matter of pride and glory:[167] and when we come to the times of Philip and Alexander of Macedon, we shall see the lust of conquest reaching a pitch never witnessed among free Greeks. Of right thus founded on simple superiority of force, there were abundant examples to be quoted, as parallels to the Athenian conquest of Mêlos: but that which is unparalleled is the mode adopted by the Athenian envoy of justifying it, or rather of setting aside all justification, looking at the actual state of civilization in Greece. A barbarous invader casts his sword into the scale in lieu of argument: a civilized conqueror is bound by received international morality to furnish some justification,—a good plea, if he can,—a false plea, or sham plea, if he has no better. But the Athenian envoy neither copies the contemptuous silence of the barbarian nor the smooth lying of the civilized invader. Though coming from the most cultivated city in Greece, where the vices prevalent were those of refinement and not of barbarism, he disdains the conventional arts of civilized diplomacy more than would have been done by an envoy even of Argos or Korkyra. He even disdains to mention, what might have been said with perfect truth as a matter of fact, whatever may be thought of its sufficiency as a justification, that the Melians had enjoyed for the last fifty years the security of the Ægean waters at the cost of Athens and her allies, without any payment of their own.
So at least he is made to do in the Thucydidean dramatic fragment,—Μήλου Ἅλωσις (The Capture of Melos),—if we may parody the title of the lost tragedy of Phrynichus “The Capture of Miletus.” And I think a comprehensive view of the history of Thucydidês will suggest to us the explanation of this drama, with its powerful and tragical effect. The capture of Mêlos comes immediately before the great Athenian expedition against Syracuse, which was resolved upon three or four months afterwards, and despatched during the course of the following summer. That expedition was the gigantic effort of Athens, which ended in the most ruinous catastrophe known to ancient history. From such a blow it was impossible for Athens to recover. Though thus crippled, indeed, she struggled against its effects with surprising energy; but her fortune went on, in the main, declining,—yet with occasional moments of apparent restoration,—until her complete prostration and subjugation by Lysander. Now Thucydidês, just before he gets upon the plane of this descending progress, makes a halt, to illustrate the sentiment of Athenian power in its most exaggerated, insolent, and cruel manifestation, by this dramatic fragment of the envoys at Mêlos. It will be recollected that Herodotus, when about to describe the forward march of Xerxês into Greece, destined to terminate in such fatal humiliation, impresses his readers with an elaborate idea of the monarch’s insolence and superhuman pride, by various conversations between him and the courtiers about him, as well as by other anecdotes, combined with the overwhelming specifications of the muster at Doriskus. Such moral contrasts and juxtapositions, especially that of ruinous reverse following upon overweening good fortune, were highly interesting to the Greek mind. And Thucydidês—having before him an act of great injustice and cruelty on the part of Athens, committed exactly at this point of time—has availed himself of the form of dialogue, for once in his history, to bring out the sentiments of a disdainful and confident conqueror in dramatic antithesis. They are, however, his own sentiments, conceived as suitable to the situation; not those of the Athenian envoy,—still less, those of the Athenian public,—least of all, those of that much-calumniated class of men, the Athenian sophists.
CHAPTER LVII.
SICILIAN AFFAIRS AFTER THE EXTINCTION OF THE GELONIAN DYNASTY.
In the preceding chapters, I have brought down the general history of the Peloponnesian war to the time immediately preceding the memorable Athenian expedition against Syracuse, which changed the whole face of the war. At this period, and for some time to come, the history of the Peloponnesian Greeks becomes intimately blended with that of the Sicilian Greeks. But hitherto the connection between the two has been merely occasional, and of little reciprocal effect: so that I have thought it for the convenience of the reader to keep the two streams entirely separate, omitting the proceedings of Athens in Sicily during the first ten years of the war. I now proceed to fill up this blank: to recount as much as can be made out of Sicilian events during the interval between 461-416 B.C., and to assign the successive steps whereby the Athenians entangled themselves in ambitious projects against Syracuse, until they at length came to stake the larger portion of their force upon that fatal hazard.
The extinction of the Gelonian dynasty at Syracuse,[168] followed by the expulsion or retirement of all the other despots throughout the island, left the various Grecian cities to reorganize themselves in free and self-constituted governments. Unfortunately, our memorials respecting this revolution are miserably scanty; but there is enough to indicate that it was something much more than a change from single-headed to popular government. It included, farther, transfers on the largest scale both of inhabitants and of property. The preceding despots had sent many old citizens into exile, transplanted others from one part of Sicily to another, and provided settlements for numerous emigrants and mercenaries devoted to their interest. Of these proceedings much was reversed, when the dynasties were overthrown, so that the personal and proprietary revolution was more complicated and perplexing than the political. After a period of severe commotion, an accommodation was concluded, whereby the adherents of the expelled dynasty were planted partly in the territory of Messêne, partly in the reëstablished city of Kamarina in the eastern portion of the southern coast, bordering on Syracuse.[169]
But though peace was thus reëstablished, these large mutations of inhabitants first begun by the despots,—and the incoherent mixture of races, religious institutions, dialects, etc., which was brought about unavoidably during the process,—left throughout Sicily a feeling of local instability, very different from the long traditional tenures in Peloponnesus and Attica, and numbered by foreign enemies among the elements of its weakness.[170] The wonder indeed rather is, that such real and powerful causes of disorder were soon so efficaciously controlled by the popular governments, that the half century now approaching was decidedly the most prosperous and undisturbed period in the history of the island.
The southern coast of Sicily was occupied, beginning from the westward by Selinus, Agrigentum, Gela, and Kamarina. Then came Syracuse, possessing the southeastern cape, and the southern portion of the eastern coast: next, on the eastern coast, Leontini, Katana, and Naxos: Messênê, on the strait adjoining Italy. The centre of the island, and even much of the northern coast, was occupied by the non-Hellenic Sikels and Sikans: on this coast, Himera was the only Grecian city. Between Himera and Cape Lilybæum, the western corner of the island was occupied by the non-Hellenic cities of Egesta and Eryx, and by the Carthaginian seaports, of which Panormus (Palermo) was the principal.
Of these various Grecian cities, all independent, Syracuse was the first in power, Agrigentum the second. The causes above noticed, disturbing the first commencement of popular governments in all of them, were most powerfully operative at Syracuse. We do not know the particulars of the democratical constitution which was there established, but its stability was threatened by more than one ambitious pretender, eager to seize the sceptre of Gelo and Hiero. The most prominent among these pretenders was Tyndarion, who employed a considerable fortune in distributing largesses and procuring partisans among the poor. His political designs were at length so openly manifested, that he was brought to trial, condemned, and put to death; yet not without an abortive insurrection of his partisans to rescue him. After several leading citizens had tried, and failed in a similar manner, the people thought it expedient to pass a law similar to the Athenian ostracism, authorizing the infliction of temporary preventive banishment.[171] Under this law several powerful citizens were actually and speedily banished; and such was the abuse of the new engine, by the political parties in the city, that men of conspicuous position are said to have become afraid of meddling with public affairs. Thus put in practice, the institution is said to have given rise to new political contentions not less violent than those which it checked, insomuch that the Syracusans found themselves obliged to repeal the law not long after its introduction. We should have been glad to learn some particulars concerning this political experiment, beyond the meagre abstract given by Diodorus, and especially to know the precautionary securities by which the application of the ostracizing sentence was restrained at Syracuse. Perhaps no care was taken to copy the checks and formalities provided by Kleisthenês at Athens. Yet under all circumstances, the institution, though tutelary, if reserved for its proper emergencies, was eminently open to abuse, so that we have no reason to wonder that abuse occurred, especially at a period of great violence and discord. The wonder rather is, that it was so little abused at Athens.