Within very few years after the beginning of the Peloponnesian war, a striking change took place both in the measures and the ministers of the state. Miltiades, Aristides, Themistocles, Cimon, Pericles, were all pre–eminent in personal merit, and most of them possessed of hereditary distinction also. Nicias, a man of rank and virtue, succeeded in appearance to the high station of Pericles, but not to his talents and influence over his turbulent countrymen, who, after having been long governed by the most illustrious of Grecian statesmen, threw themselves into the arms of the worst of Grecian demagogues. After Pericles’ death, popular favour veered for a short time between Eucrates, a flax–seller, and Lysicles, a sheep–seller; until a man, low equally in origin, habits, and education, carried away the prize, and employed it, as the folly of his supporters deserved, to the ruin of the state. “The son of a tanner, and himself bred to the trade; without those generous feelings which seem inherent in high birth, and without that regard for character which it is the purpose of education to inspire, Cleon possessed those corporeal powers, which, in the eyes of a mob, often supply the place of both:—with a bulky body, a voice potent even beyond the extreme extent of value attached to such a qualification among the Greeks, with a most republican indifference to all exterior decorations of person, and a face bearing on it the marks of vulgar intemperance, Nature herself seems to have formed Cleon for a demagogue. His interior qualifications were just what his exterior promised; he being, as Mr. Mitford observes, ‘of extraordinary impudence and little courage; as slack in the field as he was forward and noisy in the assembly, and as base in practice as he was corrupt in principle.’ That such a man should ever have stood in the situation of head of a party seems to us almost incredible: but he possessed one redeeming qualification in an eminent degree; and among a nation which pardoned everything to the pleasure of indulging its ears, the coarse but ready eloquence of Cleon, exerted in those ways which were most calculated to please an Athenian audience—in boasts of his own integrity, and accusations of all the respectable men of rank—this formed a splendid addition to his character, which threw into the shade all his other defects.”[77] By this man’s persuasion that atrocious decree was passed, which condemned to death every male of the Mityleneans, and reduced to slavery their wives and children: a fate but just averted by the repentance of the Athenians, whose vengeance nevertheless was gratified by the execution of a thousand prisoners. Through his folly and presumption, the opportunity was lost of concluding an honourable and advantageous peace, when good fortune and the military talent of Demosthenes had thrown the Spartan army at Sphacteria into their power. This event, which raised Cleon’s