It
was he, and not his opponents, who was diverting attention from facts,
and involving a plain issue in a cloud of wordy rhetoric. He has no
arguments, worthy of the name, but tries to carry his case by playing
on the passions of the people, and blowing up the flames of their
anger, which was beginning to cool. But though the more discerning
among his audience must have seen through his sophistries, to a large
proportion of his hearers his speech no doubt seemed a masterpiece of
eloquence. The Athenians, who, like all people 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.
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