on the day preceding.[416] [414] Thucyd. iii, 37. οἱ μὲν γὰρ τῶν τε νόμων σοφώτεροι βούλονται φαίνεσθαι, τῶν τε ἀεὶ λεγομένων ἐς τὸ κοινὸν περιγίγνεσθαι ... οἱ δ᾽ ἀπιστοῦντες τῇ ἐαυτῶν ξυνέσει ἀμαθέστεροι μὲν τῶν νόμων ἀξιοῦσιν εἶναι, ἀδυνατώτεροι δὲ τοῦ καλῶς εἰπόντος μέμψασθαι λόγον. Compare the language of Archidamus at Sparta in the congress, where he takes credit to the Spartans for being ἀμαθέστερον τῶν νόμων τῆς ὑπεροψίας παιδευόμενοι, etc. (Thucyd. i, 84)—very similar in spirit to the remarks of Kleon about the Athenians. [415] Thucyd. iii, 40. μηδὲ τρισὶ τοῖς ἀξυμφορωτάτοις τῇ ἀρχῇ, οἴκτῳ, καὶ ἡδονῇ λόγων, καὶ ἐπιεικείᾳ, ἁμαρτάνειν. [416] Thucyd. iii, 40. πειθόμενοι δὲ ἐμοὶ τά τε δίκαια ἐς Μυτιληναίους καὶ τὰ ξύμφορα ἅμα ποιήσετε· ἄλλως δὲ γνόντες τοῖς μὲν οὐ χαριεῖσθε, ὑμᾶς δὲ αὐτοὺς μᾶλλον δικαιώσεσθε. The harangue of Kleon is in many respects remarkable. If we are surprised to find a man, whose whole importance resided in his tongue, denouncing so severely the license and the undue influence of speech in the public assembly, we must recollect that Kleon had the advantage of addressing himself to the intense prevalent sentiment of the moment,—that he could, therefore, pass off the dictates of this sentiment as plain, downright, honest sense and patriotism; while the opponents, speaking against the reigning sentiment, and therefore driven to collateral argument, circumlocution, and more or less of manœuvre, might be represented as mere clever sophists, showing their talents in making the worse appear the better reason,—if not actually bribed, at least unprincipled, and without any sincere moral conviction. As this is a mode of dealing with questions both of public concern and of private morality, not less common at present than it was in the time of the Peloponnesian war,—to seize upon some strong and tolerably wide-spread sentiment among the public, to treat the dictates of that sentiment as plain common sense and obvious right, and then to shut out all rational estimate of coming good and evil as if it were unholy or immoral, or at best mere uncandid subtlety,—we may well notice a case in which Kleon employs it to support a proposition now justly regarded as barbarous.