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before the war broke out. We are now come, at the persuasion of the Beotians your allies, to disengage ourselves from the oppressors of Greece, and join our arms with its defenders, and to provide for the security of our state, which is now in imminent danger. If any thing can be objected to our conduct, it is our declaring so precipitately, with more generosity than prudence, and without having made the least preparations: but this also ought to engage you to be the more ready in succouring us, that you may not lose the opportunity of protecting the oppressed, and avenge yourselves on your enemies. There never was a more favourable conjuncture than that which now offers itself; a conjuncture, when war and pestilence have consumed their forces, and exhausted their treasure; not to mention that their fleet is divided, by which means they will not be in a condition to resist you, should you invade them at the same time by sea and land; for, they either will leave us to attack you, and give us an opportunity of succouring you; or they will oppose us altogether, and then you will have but half their forces to deal with.

"For the rest, let no one imagine that you will expose yourselves to dangers for a people incapable of doing you service. Our country indeed lies at a considerable distance from you, but our aid is near at hand; for the war will be carried on, not in Attica, as is supposed, but in that country whose revenues are the support of Attica, and we are not far from it. Consider also, that in abandoning us, you will increase the power of the Athenians by the addition of ours; and that no state will then dare to take up arms against them.

But in succouring us, you will strengthen yourselves with a fleet, which you so much want; you will induce many other people, after our example, to join you; and you will take off the reproach cast upon you, of abandoning those who have recourse to your protection, which will be no inconsiderable advantage to you during the course of the war.

"We therefore implore you, in the name of Jupiter Olympius, in whose temple we now are, not to frustrate the hopes of the Greeks, nor reject suppliants, whose preservation may be highly advantageous, and whose ruin may be infinitely pernicious to you. Show yourselves such now, as the idea entertained of your generosity, and the extreme danger to which we are reduced, may demand; that is, the protectors of the afflicted, and the deliverers of Greece."

The allies, struck with these reasons, admitted them into the alliance of Peloponnesus. An incursion into the enemy's country was immediately resolved, and that the allies should rendezvous at Corinth with two thirds of their forces. The Lacedemonians arrived first, and prepared engines for transporting the ships from the gulf of Corinth into the sea of Athens, in order to invade Attica both by sea and land. The Athenians were no less active on their side; but the allies, being employed in their harvest, and beginning to grow weary of the war, were a long time before they

met.

During this interval, the Athenians, who perceived that all these preparations were made against them from a supposition that they were very weak, to unde

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ceive the world, and show that they alone were able to support a fleet without the aid of Lesbos, put to sea a fleet of one hundred sail, which they manned with citizens as well as foreigners, not exempting a single citizen, except such only as were obliged to serve on horseback, or whose revenue amounted to five hundred measures of corn. After having showed themselves before the isthmus of Corinth, the more to display their power, they made descents into whatever parts of Peloponnesus they pleased.

The world never saw a finer fleet. The Athenians guarded their own country, and the coasts of Eubea and Salamis, with a fleet of one hundred ships; they cruised round Peloponnesus with another fleet of the like number of vessels, without including their fleet before Lesbos and other places. The whole amounted to upwards of two hundred and fifty galleys. The expenses of this powerful armament entirely exhausted their treasure, which had been very much drained before by that of the siege of Potidea.

The Lacedemonians, greatly surprised at so formidable a fleet, which they no ways expected, returned with the utmost expedition to their own country, and only ordered forty galleys to be fitted out for the succour of Mitylene. The Athenians had sent a reinforcement thither, consisting of one thousand heavy armed troops, by whose assistance they made a contravallation, with forts in the most commodious places; so that it was blocked up both by sea and land in the beginning of winter. The Athenians were in such great want of money for carrying on this siege, that they were reduced to assess themselves, which they

had never done before, and by this means two hundred talents were sent to it.

The people of Mitylene being in want of all things, and having waited to no purpose for the succours which the Lacedemonians had promised them, surrendered, upon condition that no person should be put to death or imprisoned, till the ambassadors, whom they should send to Athens, were returned; and that, in the mean time, the troops should be admitted into the city. As soon as the Athenians had got possession of the city, such of the factious Mityleneans as had fled to the altars for refuge, were conveyed to Tenedos, and afterwards to Athens. There the affair of the Mity. leneans was debated. As their revolt had greatly exasperated the people, because not preceded by any treatment, and it seemed a mere effect of their hatred for the Athenians, in the first transports of their rage, they resolved to put all the citizens to death indiscriminately, and to make all the women and children slaves; and immediately they sent a galley to put the decree in execution.

ill

But night gave them leisure to make different reflections. This severity was judged too cruel, and carried farther than consisted with justice. They imaged to themselves the fate of that unhappy city entirely abandoned to slaughter, and repented their having involved the innocent with the guilty. This sudden change of the Athenians gave the Mitylenean ambassadors some little glimmerings of hope; and they prevailed so far with the magistrates, as to have the affair debated a second time. Cleon, who had

A. M. 3577. Ant. J. C. 427.

suggested the first decree, a man of a fiery temper, and who had great authority over the people, maintained his opinion with great vehemence and heat. He represented, that it was unworthy a wise government to change with every wind, and to annul in the morning what they had decreed the night before; and that it was highly important to take an exemplary vengeance of the Mityleneans, in order to awe the rest of their allies, who were every where ready to revolt.

Diodorus, who had contradicted Cleon in the first assembly, now opposed his reflections more strongly than before. After describing in a tender and pathetic manner the deplorable condition of the Mityleneans, whose minds, he said, must necessarily be on the rack, whilst they were expecting a sentence that was to determine their fate, he represented to the Athenians, that the fame of their mildness and clemency had always reflected the highest honour on them, and distinguished them gloriously from all other nations: he observed, that the citizens of Mitylene had been drawn involuntarily into the rebellion; a proof of which was their surrendering the city to them the instant it was in their power to do it: they therefore, by this decree, would murder their benefactors, and consequently be both unjust and ungrateful in punishing the innocent with the guilty. He observed farther, that supposing the Mityleneans in general were guilty, it would however be for the interest of the Athenians to dissemble, in order that the rigorous punishment they had decreed might not exasperate the rest of the allies; and that the best way to put a stop to the evil, would be to leave room for repentance, and not plunge people into

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