History of The Peloponnesian War - Book III   

state gives the rewards to others, and takes the dangers for
herself. The persons to blame are you who are so foolish as to
institute these contests; who go to see an oration as you would to see
a sight, take your facts on hearsay, judge of the practicability of
a project by the wit of its advocates, and trust for the truth as to
past events not to the fact which you saw more than to the clever
strictures which you heard; the easy victims of new-fangled arguments,
unwilling to follow received conclusions; slaves to every new paradox,
despisers of the commonplace; the first wish of every man being that
he could speak himself, the next to rival those who can speak by
seeming to be quite up with their ideas by applauding every hit almost
before it is made, and by being as quick in catching an argument as
you are slow in foreseeing its consequences; asking, if I may so
say, for something different from the conditions under which we
live, and yet comprehending inadequately those very conditions; very
slaves to the pleasure of the ear, and more like the audience of a
rhetorician than the council of a city.
"In order to keep you from this, I proceed to show that no one state
has ever injured you as much as Mitylene. I can make allowance for
those who revolt because they cannot bear our empire, or who have been
forced to do so by the enemy. But for those who possessed an island
with fortifications; who could fear our enemies only by sea, and there
had their own force of galleys to protect them; who were independent
and held in the highest honour by you- to act as these have done,
this is not revolt- revolt implies oppression; it is deliberate and
wanton aggression; an attempt to ruin us by siding with our
bitterest enemies; a worse offence than a war undertaken on their
own account in the acquisition of power. The fate of those of their
neighbours who had already rebelled and had been subdued was no lesson
to them; their own prosperity could not dissuade them from
affronting danger; but blindly confident in the future, and full of
hopes beyond their power though not beyond their ambition, they
declared war and made their decision to prefer might to right, their
attack being determined not by provocation but by the moment which
seemed propitious. The truth is that great good fortune coming
suddenly and unexpectedly tends to make a people insolent; in most
cases it is safer for mankind to have success in reason than out of
reason; and it is easier for them, one may say, to stave off adversity
than to preserve prosperity. Our mistake has been to distinguish the
Mitylenians as we have done: had they been long ago treated like the
rest, they never would have so far forgotten themselves, human
nature being as surely made arrogant by consideration as it is awed by
firmness. Let them now therefore be punished as their crime
requires, and do not, while you condemn the aristocracy, absolve the
people. This is certain, that all attacked you without distinction,
although they might have come over to us and been now again in
possession of their city. But no, they thought it safer to throw in
their lot with the aristocracy and so joined their rebellion! Consider
therefore: if you subject to the same punishment the ally who is
forced to rebel by the enemy, and him who does so by his own free
choice, which of them, think you, is there that will not rebel upon
the slightest pretext; when the reward of success is freedom, and
the penalty of failure nothing so very terrible? We meanwhile shall
have to risk our money and our lives against one state after
another; and if successful, shall receive a ruined town from which
we can no longer draw the revenue upon which our strength depends;
while if unsuccessful, we shall have an enemy the more upon our hands,
and shall spend the time that might be employed in combating our
existing foes in warring with our own allies.
"No hope, therefore, that rhetoric may instil or money purchase,
of the mercy due to human infirmity must be held out to the
Mitylenians. Their offence was not involuntary, but of malice and
deliberate; and mercy is only for unwilling offenders. I therefore,
now as before, persist against your reversing your first decision,