He begins by vindicating[419] the necessity of reconsidering the resolution just passed, and insists on the mischief of deciding so important a question in haste or under strong passion; he enters a protest against the unwarrantable insinuations of corruption or self-conceit by which Kleon had sought to silence or discredit his opponents;[420] and then, taking up the question on the ground of public wisdom and prudence, he proceeds to show that the rigorous sentence decreed on the preceding day was not to be defended. That sentence would not prevent any other among the subject-allies from revolting, if they saw, or fancied that they saw, a fair chance of success: but it might perhaps drive them,[421] if once embarked in revolt, to persist even to desperation, and bury themselves under the ruins of their city. While every means ought to be employed to prevent them from revolting, by precautions beforehand, it was a mistaken reckoning to try to deter them by enormity of punishment, inflicted afterwards upon such as were reconquered. In developing this argument, the speaker gives some remarkable views on the theory of punishment generally, and on the small addition obtained in the way of preventive effect even by the greatest aggravation of the suffering inflicted upon the condemned criminal,—views which might have passed as rare and profound even down to the last century.[422] And he farther supports his argument by emphatically setting forth the impolicy of confounding the Mitylenæan Demos in the same punishment with their oligarchy: the revolt had been the act exclusively of the latter, and the former had not only taken no part in it, but, as soon as they obtained possession of arms, had surrendered the city spontaneously. In all the allied cities, it was the commons who were well-affected to Athens, and upon whom her hold chiefly depended against the doubtful fidelity of the oligarchies:[423] but this feeling could not possibly continue, if it were now seen that all the Mitylenæans indiscriminately were confounded in one common destruction. Diodotus concludes by recommending that those Mitylenæans whom Pachês had sent to Athens as chiefs of the revolt, should be put upon their trial separately; but that the remaining population should be spared.[424]