the edge of his anger blunted;
although where vengeance follows most closely upon the wrong, it best
equals it and most amply requites it. I wonder also who will be the man
who will maintain the contrary, and will pretend to show that the crimes
of the Mitylenians are of service to us, and our misfortunes injurious
to the allies. Such a man must plainly either have such confidence in
his rhetoric as to adventure to prove that what has been once for all
decided is still undetermined, or be bribed to try to delude us by
elaborate sophisms. In such contests the 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