verbal parallelisms, there is a pointed contrast of spirit. As Pericles describes the good side of the intellectual Athenian nature, Cleon brings out its weak side. As Pericles insists on the Athenian combination of intelligence with courage, Cleon declares that this intelligence leads men to despise the laws, and prefers ignorance combined with moderation[1]. Pericles is gone: Cleon echoes the words of the statesman as whose successor he poses, at the very moment when he is contradicting his principles. It may be observed that when Thucydides reports the speech of the Syracusan demagogue Athenagoras, he marks his manner by a certain violence of expression[2]. Cleon, whom Thucydides calls "most violent," has no violence of expression. Probably this abstention from vehemence of the
- ↑ Cleon, iii. 37 § 3, ἀμαθία τε μετὰ σωφροσύνης ὠφελιμώτερον ἢ δεξιότης μετὰ ἀκολασίας, κ.τ.λ., contrasted with Pericles, ii. 40 § 2, οὐ τοὺς λόγους τοῖς ἔργοις βλάβην ἡγούμενοι, κ.τ.λ., and ii. 62 § 5, τὴν τόλμαν . . . ἡ ξύνεσις . . . ἐχυρωτέραν παρέχεται.
- ↑ E.g. vi. 40, ἀλλ' ἔτι καὶ νῦν, ὦ πάντων ἀξυνετώτατοι, εἰ μὴ μανθάνετε κακὰ σπεύδοντες, ἢ ἀμαθέστατοί ἐστε ὧν ἐγὼ οἶδα Ἑλλήνων, ἢ ἀδικώτατοι, εἰ εἰδότες τολμᾶτε.
In a Mémoire sur Thucydide, by M. Meierotto (in the Memoirs of the Berlin Academy for 1790–91, p. 530), the writer observes, with reference to the discrimination of character in the speeches: "Cléon et Athénagore parlent ordinairement d'un ton dur, offensant et grossier, dont pourtant ils s'écartent quelquefois." We have only one speech of Cleon and one of Athenagoras; so far as these go, however, the striking thing, it seems to me, is not the resemblance, but the contrast.
