n reciprocate the feeling, not to those
who will never pity us in return, but are our natural and necessary
foes: the orators who charm us with sentiment may find other less
important arenas for their talents, in the place of one where the city
pays a heavy penalty for a momentary pleasure, themselves receiving fine
acknowledgments for their fine phrases; while indulgence should be shown
towards those who will be our friends in future, instead of towards men
who will remain just what they were, and as much our enemies as before.
To sum up shortly, I say that if you follow my advice you will do what
is just towards the Mitylenians, and at the same time expedient;
while by a different decision you will not oblige them so much as pass
sentence upon yourselves. For if they were right in rebelling, you must
be wrong in ruling. However, if, right or wrong, you determine to rule,
you must carry out your principle and punish the Mitylenians as your
interest requires; or else you must give up your empire and cultivate
honesty without danger. Make up your minds, therefore, to give them
like for like; and do not let the victims who escaped the plot be more
insensible than the conspirators who hatched it; but reflect what
they would have done if victorious over you, especially they were the
aggressors. It is they who wrong their neighbour without a cause, that
pursue their victim to the death, on account of the danger which they
foresee in letting their enemy survive; since the object of a wanton
wrong is more dangerous, if he escape, than an enemy who has not this to
complain of. Do not, therefore, be traitors to yourselves, but recall
as nearly as possible the moment of suffering and the supreme importance
which you then attached to their reduction; and now pay them back in
their turn, without yielding to present weakness or forgetting the peril
that once hung over you. Punish them as they deserve, and teach your
other allies by a striking example that the penalty of rebellion is
death. Let them once understand this and you will not have so often to
neglect your enemies while you are fighting with your own confederates."

Such were the words of Cleon. After him Diodotus, son of Eucrates, who
had also in the previous assembly spoken most strongly against putting
the Mitylenians to death, came forward and spoke as follows:

"I do not blame the persons who have reopened the case of the
Mitylenians, nor do I approve the protests whic