History of the Peloponnesian War

"And do you consider, too, how great a mistake you would make in another point also by following Cleon's advice.

At the present time the populace of all the cities is well disposed to you, and either does not join with the aristocrats in revolting, or, if forced to do so, is hostile from the beginning to those who stirred up the revolt; and so, when you go to war, you have the populace of the rebellious city as your allies.

If, however, you destroy the populace in Mytilene, which took no part in the revolt, and which voluntarily put the city into your hands as soon as it got hold of arms, in the first place you will be guilty of killing your benefactors, and, in the second place, you will bring about what the influential men most wish: the next time they instigate a revolt among our allies they will at once have the populace on their side, because you will have published it abroad that the same punishment is ordained for the innocent and for the guilty.

Why, even if they were guilty, you should pretend not to know it, to the end that the only class that is still friendly to us may not become hostile.

And it is, I think, far more conducive to the maintenance of our dominion, that we should willingly submit to be wronged, than that we should destroy, however justly, those whom we ought not to destroy. And whereas Cleon claims[*](cf. 3.40.4.) that this punishment combines justice and expediency, it appears that in such a policy the two cannot be combined.