'Weakness Is Dangerous'

Modern populists echo themes developed by an ancient demagogue called Cleon

"PETRA. LESBOS. GREEK ISLAND." by ronsaunders47 is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.

Ted Gioia is one of the most interesting writers on Substack. He is best known as the author of a series of excellent books of music history, but his work is much wider than this. For example, he was one of the earliest voices to say that generative artificial intelligence was being over-hyped; and a recent article contained a convincing theory about why the music industry is so badly run.

Several of Gioia’s readers have asked him to provide them with a reading list of the humanities. He said it would be too wide. Instead, he shared a list of 11 books and one film on human stupidity, starting with Thucydides’ history of the Peloponnesian War between Athens and Sparta, which was written around 400 BCE. In Gioia’s words:

This book is absolutely the place to start—and it marks an important moment in human culture. For the first time in the Western world, a historian turned to his own society and said: “This is stupid.”

I decided to work through the list. One passage in History of the Pelaponnesian War jumped out and punched me right in the nose. It features a demagogue (a leader who relies on emotions and prejudices instead of rational arguments) called Cleon. He gleefully expressed many of the sloppy arguments that we have discussed week in and week out on Sharpen Your Axe, showing that there is nothing new under the sun, in the words of the King James Bible.

Before we look at Cleon’s worldview, let’s go over the background first. Mytiline is an ancient city in the Aegean Sea in the Mediterranean. It was originally built on a small island next to Lesbos, which ended up being joined to the larger island thousands of years ago. It became a member of the Athens-led Delian League, which united Greek-speaking communities against Persia. Members of the league were eventually reduced to tributary status to Athens.

When war between Sparta and Athens broke out, the Mytileneans revolted against Athens, but failed to win their independence. In 427 BCE, the Athenians decided to execute all the city’s men and enslave all the women and children, but agreed to reconsider a day later as the mood in the city-state changed.

Thucydides covers the second debate in great detail. Cleon, the son of Cleaenetus, had been responsible for the original motion to put the Mytilenean men to death. He spoke again to defend the idea. A conspiracy theorist, his harsh measures were pitched as a counter-conspiracy.

Because fear and conspiracy play no part in your daily relations with each other, you imagine that the same thing is true of your allies, and you fail to see that when you allow them to persuade you to make a mistaken decision and when you give way to your own feelings of compassion you are being guilty of a kind of weakness which is dangerous to you and will not make them love you any more. What you do not realize is that your empire is a tyranny exercised over subjects who do not like it and who are always plotting against you; you will not make them obey you by injuring your own interests in order to do them a favour; your leadership depends on superior strength and not on any goodwill of theirs.

We can see the conspiracy mindset and “dividing people like insects” here, thousands of years before the internet. We can also see a dark, transactional approach to foreign affairs that assumes that might is right, which is also common in conspiratorial circles. Research also shows that conspiracy theorists are more likely to be interested in participating in plots than those of us who think critically about this speculation.

Cleon goes on to say that “a city is better off with bad laws, as long as they remain fixed, than with good laws that are constantly being altered.” He combines his authoritarian stance with a large serving of anti-intellectualism, which we have also seen with modern populists and conspiracy theorists, saying that “lack of learning combined with sound common sense is more helpful than the kind of cleverness that gets out of hand.” He says that cities are better governed by “the man in the street” than by intellectuals.

As his speech goes on, Cleon says that the Mytilenean revolt hadn’t really been a revolt at all, as the inhabitants of the city hadn’t been badly treated by Athens. He described the revolt as a “calculated aggression” and an “unprovoked attack,” which was driven by arrogance. He said that the city should serve as an example to Athens’ other allies, concluding that to spare the city would be to surrender the empire.

The opposing case was made by Diodotus, the son of Eucrates. He began by discussing the dangers of taking hasty decisions while angry (a theme of this blog). He also made a subtle argument that the death penalty would be counter-productive as it would make future rebels more desperate.

Consider this now: at the moment, if a city has revolted and realizes that the revolt cannot succeed, it will come to terms while it is still capable of paying an indemnity and continuing to pay tribute afterwards. But if Cleon’s method is adopted, can you not see that every city will not only make much more careful preparations for revolt, but will also hold out against siege to the very end, since to surrender early or late means just the same thing?

Diodotus concluded his case with a call to take care of free people within Athens’ sphere of influence to make revolt less attractive. He won the subsequent vote. The Athenians sent a trireme to overtake the first one that had been sent 24 hours beforehand with the result of the first vote; and the Mytilenean ambassadors promised rewards to the crew if they arrived on time.

The crew of the second ship rowed continuously, taking turns to sleep, while the first ship had been travelling slowly. The first ship arrived first, but not by much. The death sentence had been read out to the population but not yet carried out when the second ship arrived in the nick of time.

Cleon appears later in the story too. The Athenians were besieging the Spartans at Pylos in the Peloponnese peninsula. However, the Athenian army was running of supplies just as winter was coming. Many regretted not accepting a truce, which Cleon had argued against. Realising he was becoming unpopular, he pulled the classic conspiracy theorist card and declared that the messengers from Pylos were lying.

The Athenians then called Cleon’s bluff by suggesting that he go to Pylos himself. He realised his position was untenable and tried to change the subject, by saying that the Athenian general wasn’t manly enough. The general, who was at the debate, offered Cleon command of the force. Cleon started to back out of the commitment, but the crowd was intransigent. He made rash promises of victory as the mood turned. However, he turned out to be lucky (in Thucydides’ telling, at least). “Cleon had kept his promise, however mad he may have been to make it.”

The demagogue was later sent to Amphipolis in Northern Greece, where the Athenian army would be routed due to superior tactics by the Spartans. Thucydides says: “For some time Cleon made no move, but finally he was forced to do what [Spartan general] Brasidas had expected… He was in the same frame of mind that he had been in at Pylos, where his success had convinced him of his intelligence.” Brasidas threw the Athenians off guard with an audacious attack, exploiting Cleon’s lack of organisation. Cleon fled but was killed; and the whole Athenian army fled afterwards.

Thucydides’ dramatic account of an ancient war still jumps off the page thousands of years later. We can see that demagogues (who emphasise emotionally charged solutions to difficult problems) and conspiracy theorists (who deny the truth of news stories that are inconvenient to their simplified narratives) have a long history. The explosion of populism throughout the West in the 21st century has deep roots. The comments are open. See you next week!

Previously on Sharpen Your Axe

Conspiracy mindset and generalisations

Anti-intellectualism

Further Reading

History of the Peloponnesian War by Thucydides

This essay is released with a CC BY-NY-ND license. Please link to sharpenyouraxe.substack.com if you re-use this material.

Sharpen Your Axe is a project to develop a community who want to think critically about the media, conspiracy theories and current affairs without getting conned by gurus selling fringe views. Please subscribe to get this content in your inbox every week. Shares on social media are appreciated!

If this is the first post you have seen, I recommend starting with the third anniversary post. You can also find an ultra-cheap Kindle book here. If you want to read the book on your phone, tablet or computer, you can download the Kindle software for Android, Apple or Windows for free.

Opinions expressed on Substack and Substack Notes, as well as on Bluesky, Mastodon and X (formerly Twitte) are those of Rupert Cocke as an individual and do not reflect the opinions or views of the organization where he works or its subsidiaries.