Page:History of Greece Vol VIII.djvu/201

PLEA OF THE GENERALS. 179 of course foremost in the expression of such indignant emotion. The narrative of Xenophon, meagre and confused as well as unfair, presents this emotion as if it were something causeless, factitious, pumped up out of the standing irascibility of the multi- tude by the artifices of Theramenes, KallLxenus, and a few others. But whatever may have been done by these individuals to aggra- vate the public excitement, or pervert it to bad purposes, assuredly the excitement itself was spontaneous, inevitable, and amply jus- tified. The very thought that so many of the brave partners in the victory had been left to drown miserably on the sinking hulls, without any effort on the part of their generals and comrades near to rescue them, was enough to stir up all the sensibilities, public as well as private, of the most passive nature, even in citi- zens who were not related to the deceased, much more in those who were so. To expect that the Athenians would be so absorbed in the delight of the victory, and in gratitude to the generals who had commanded, as to overlook such a desertion of perishing warriors, and such an omission of sympathetic duty, is, in my judgment, altogether preposterous ; and would, if it were true, only establish one more vice in the Athenian people, besides those which they really had, and the many more with which they have been unjustly branded. The generals, in their public letter, accounted for their omission by saying that the violence of the storm was too great to allow them to move. First, was this true as matter of fact? Next, had there been time to discharge the duty, or at the least to try and discharge it, before the storm came on to be so intolerable ? These points required examination. The generals, while honored with a vote of thanks for the victory, were superseded, and di- rected to come home ; all except Konon, who having been blocked up at Mitylene, was not concerned in the question. Two new col- leagues, Philokles and Adeimantus, were named to go out and join him. 1 The generals probably received the notice of their re- 1 Xenoph. Ilcllen. i, 7, 1 ; Diodor. xiii, 101 : tirl p.ev ry viny rovf arparr) yt/i>f tnyvovv, eirl 6e ru rtepiidelv urudtovf roj)f vrrep rr/f jjye[ioviaQ I have before remarked that Diodorus makes the mistake of talking about nothing hut dead (todies, in placa of the living vavaynt spoken of b.l I'jnophon.