Both these two points, it will be observed, are prominently marked in the dialogue set forth by Thucydidês. I have already stated that this dialogue can hardly represent what actually passed, except as to a few general points, which the historian has followed out into deductions and illustrations,[164] thus dramatizing the given situation in a powerful and characteristic manner. The language put into the mouth of the Athenian envoys is that of pirates and robbers, as Dionysius of Halikarnassus[165] long ago remarked; intimating his suspicion that Thucydidês had so set out the case for the purpose of discrediting the country which had sent him into exile. Whatever may be thought of this suspicion, we may at least affirm that the arguments which he here ascribes to Athens are not in harmony even with the defects of the Athenian character. Athenian speakers are more open to the charge of equivocal wording, multiplication of false pretences, softening down the bad points of their case, putting an amiable name upon vicious acts, employing what is properly called _sophistry_, where their purpose needs it.[166] Now the language of the envoy at Mêlos, which has been sometimes cited as illustrating the immorality of the class or profession—falsely called a school—named Sophists at Athens, is above all things remarkable for a sort of audacious frankness; a disdain not merely of sophistry, in the modern sense of the word, but even of such plausible excuse as might have been offered. It has been strangely argued, as if “_The good old plan, that they should take who have the power, and they should keep who can_,” had been first discovered and openly promulgated by Athenian sophists; whereas the true purpose and value of sophists, even in the modern and worst sense of the word—putting aside the perversion of applying that sense to the persons called sophists at Athens—is, to furnish plausible matter of deceptive justification, so that the strong man may be enabled to act upon this “good old plan” as much as he pleases, but without avowing it, and while professing fair dealing or just retaliation for some imaginary wrong. The wolf in Æsop’s fable (of the Wolf and the Lamb) speaks like a sophist; the Athenian envoy at Mêlos speaks in a manner totally unlike a sophist, either in the Athenian sense or in the modern sense of the word; we may add, unlike an Athenian at all, as Dionysius has observed. [164] Such is also the opinion of Dr. Thirlwall, Hist. Gr. vol. iii, ch. xxiv, p. 348. [165] Dionys. Hal. Judic. de Thucydid. c. 37-42, pp. 906-920, Reisk: compare the remarks in his Epistol. ad Cn. Pompeium, de Præcipuis Historicis, p. 774, Reisk. [166] Plutarch, Alkibiad. 16. τοὺς Ἀθηναίους ἀεὶ τὰ πραότατα τῶν ὀνομάτων τοῖς ἁμαρτήμασι τιθεμένους, παιδιὰς καὶ φιλανθρωπίας. To the same purpose Plutarch, Solon, c. 15.