704 Miscellaneous Observations. and countries far removed from each other. Such indications of a common nature connect one generation with another, and bring home to the mind a more lively conception of the past. The parallel about to l)e drawn fetches one of its subjects from the same period of Grecian history, so fertile in remarkable men and striking; incidents. If in Mr Mitford'^s case the points of difference be thought to outweigh those of resem- blance, it may perhaps be said that in the following comparison the preponderance is exactly reversed. To the reader of Thucydides it will be needless to relate in detail the singular chance of war, which, in the seventh year of the Peloponnesian struggle, threw almost into the hands of the Athenians a considerable body of Lacedaemonian hoplites, with their attendant Helots, on the barren and deso- late island, Sphacteria^. As our parallel refers not to the mode of their unlucky insulation from the main army in Messenia, but to the chief actor in their final capture alone, we need give but just so much narrative as is required to illustrate this part of the disaster. These brave men, then, — cut off from all intercourse with the main land, and strictly blockaded by the Athenian cruisers, which commanded the sea ; without even provisions, except such as could be smug- gled into the island at a desperate risk by adventurers tempted with a large bounty, — had already held out nearly seventy days, and still cheated the Athenians of their prey. There was no sign of speedy surrender. Meanwhile the^ blowing season was coming on apace ; the constant look out was wearisome and dangerous to the Athenian navy, and might soon become impossible. The citizens at home com- plained of the inaction of the blockading squadron, and dis- content was loud in the streets of Athens and in the ecclesia. In this temper of the people, Cleon, the popular leader of the day, a sharp thorn in the side of the procrastinating Nicias, and a ready and shrewd debater — (whom Aristophanes has made the scapegoat of all the evils of democracy, as Socrates is made to bear all the sins of all the sophists) — Cleon, being now under a passing cloud in consequence of the slow pro- gress of the affair from which he had promised so much, comes 2 Thuc. IV. 14. 3 Ibid. 27.
