When the fate of Mitylênê and its inhabitants was submitted to the Athenian assembly, Kleon took the lead in the discussion. There never was a theme more perfectly suited to his violent temperament and power of fierce invective. Taken collectively, the case of Mitylênê presented a revolt as inexcusable and aggravated as any revolt could be: and we have only to read the grounds of it, as set forth by the Mitylenæan speakers themselves before the Peloponnesians at Olympia, to be satisfied that such a proceeding, when looked at from the Athenian point of view, would be supposed to justify, and even to require, the very highest pitch of indignation. The Mitylenæans admit, not only that they have no ground of complaint against Athens, but that they have been well and honorably treated by her, with special privilege. But they fear that she may oppress them in future: they hate the very principle of her empire, and eagerly instigate, as well as aid, her enemies to subdue her: they select the precise moment in which she has been worn down by a fearful pestilence, invasion, and cost of war. Nothing more than this would be required to kindle the most intense wrath in the bosom of an Athenian patriot: but there was yet another point which weighed as much as the rest, if not more: the revolters had been the first to invite a Peloponnesian fleet across the Ægean, and the first to proclaim, both to Athens and her allies, the precarious tenure of her empire.[409] The violent Kleon would on this occasion find in the assembly an audience hardly less violent than himself, and would easily be able to satisfy them that anything like mercy to the Mitylenæans was treason to Athens. He proposed to apply to the captive city the penalties tolerated by the custom of war in their harshest and fullest measure: to kill the whole Mitylenæan male population of military age, probably about six thousand persons,—and to sell as slaves all the women and children.[410] The proposition, though strongly opposed by Diodotus and others, was sanctioned and passed by the assembly, and a trireme was forthwith despatched to Mitylênê, enjoining Pachês to put it in execution.[411] [409] Thucyd. iii, 36. προσξυνεβάλετο οὐκ ἐλάχιστον τῆς ὁρμῆς, etc. [410] I infer this total number from the fact that the number sent to Athens by Pachês, as foremost instigators, was rather more than one thousand (Thucyd. iii, 50). The total of ἡβῶντες, or males of military age, must have been (I imagine) six times this number. [411] Thucyd. iii, 36.