ABSTRACT
This chapter proposes to take up the narrative where the authors left it after the occupation of Pylos. It then focuses on the point where Cleon comes into the story. It presents the circumstances of his entrance, and brings together the other episodes in which Thucydides allows him to appear before them. The hypothesis of 'malignity' would not account for the peculiarities in the earlier narrative where Cleon was not concerned; but it is not finally disposed of as an explanation of the story of Sphacteria, where Cleon is very much concerned. To represent it as a stroke of mere luck might be a means of detracting at the expense, by the way, of Demosthenes' reputation from the glory of Athens. The Athenians in a rage carried a resolution for the destruction of Skione and the massacre of its inhabitants. Another act of force and fury, once more the entrance-cue for 'the most violent of the citizens'.
