HKB
of lively talent, were fond of laughing at themselves, would be especially amused by his humorous description of their own besetting weakness, their restless vanity, and inordinate love of change.
The chief advocate for mitigating the sentence against Mytilene was a certain Diodotus, who had taken a leading part in the previous debate, and now stood up again to oppose the blood-thirsty counsels of Cleon. The speech of Diodotus is calm, sober, and business-like. After a dignified remonstrance against the vile insinuations of Cleon, by whom all who differed from him were decried as fools or knaves, Diodotus proceeded to argue the question from the point of view of expediency. He was not there, he said, to plead the cause of the Mytilenaeans, or to discuss abstract questions of law and justice. What they had to consider was what course would be most conducive to the interests of Athens. According to Cleon, those interests would be best served by a wholesale massacre of the inhabitants of Mytilene, which would strike terror into the other subjects of Athens, and prevent them from yielding to the same temptation. But, reasoned Diodotus, experience had shown that intending criminals were not deterred from wrongdoing by the increased severity of penal statutes. For a long time lawgivers had framed their codes in this belief, thinking to drive mankind into the path of rectitude by appealing to their terrors. Yet crime had not diminished, but rather increased. And what was true of individuals, was still more true of cities, where each man hoped to be concealed among the crowd of transgressors. Criminals, whether they acted singly, or in large numbers, were only rendered desperate, if all degrees of crime were confounded in one common penalty of death.
Such were the enlightened principles of jurisprudence set forth by an Athenian of the fifth century before Christ--principles which were first recognised in modern Europe within the memory of men still living. Then, bringing his theories to a practical test, he pointed out the gross impolicy of driving a revolted city to desperation, by excluding all rebels from the hope of pardon. This, he said, would be the effect on the subjects of Athens, if they passed the same sentence on the Mytilenaeans, without distinction between the innocent and the guilty. At present the commons in every city were loyal to Athens; and though they might be beguiled or coerced into rebellion, they would, if assured of fair treatment, take the first opportunity of returning to their allegiance, as the commoners of Mytilene had done. "Do not, therefore," concluded Diodotus, "destroy this, the strongest guarantee of your security, but punish the ringleaders of the revolt, after due deliberation, and leave the rest in peace."