and had been subdued was no lesson to them; their own
prosperity could not dissuade them from affronting danger; but blindly
confident in the future, and full of hopes beyond their power though
not beyond their ambition, they declared war and made their decision to
prefer might to right, their attack being determined not by provocation
but by the moment which seemed propitious. The truth is that great
good fortune coming suddenly and unexpectedly tends to make a people
insolent; in most cases it is safer for mankind to have success in
reason than out of reason; and it is easier for them, one may say, to
stave off adversity than to preserve prosperity. Our mistake has been
to distinguish the Mitylenians as we have done: had they been long
ago treated like the rest, they never would have so far forgotten
themselves, human nature being as surely made arrogant by consideration
as it is awed by firmness. Let them now therefore be punished as their
crime requires, and do not, while you condemn the aristocracy, absolve
the people. This is certain, that all attacked you without distinction,
although they might have come over to us and been now again in
possession of their city. But no, they thought it safer to throw in
their lot with the aristocracy and so joined their rebellion! Consider
therefore: if you subject to the same punishment the ally who is forced
to rebel by the enemy, and him who does so by his own free choice, which
of them, think you, is there that will not rebel upon the slightest
pretext; when the reward of success is freedom, and the penalty of
failure nothing so very terrible? We meanwhile shall have to risk our
money and our lives against one state after another; and if successful,
shall receive a ruined town from which we can no longer draw the revenue
upon which our strength depends; while if unsuccessful, we shall have
an enemy the more upon our hands, and shall spend the time that might be
employed in combating our existing foes in warring with our own allies.

"No hope, therefore, that rhetoric may instil or money purchase, of the
mercy due to human infirmity must be held out to the Mitylenians. Their
offence was not involuntary, but of malice and deliberate; and mercy
is only for unwilling offenders. I therefore, now as before, persist
against your reversing your first decision, or giving way to the
three failings most fatal to empire--pity, sentiment, and indulgence.
Compassion is due to those who ca