the town, joining the old wall on both sides of the mound, so that if
the besiegers should complete their mound and rush up it in assault,
they would find a new wall staring them in the face, and all their labor
lost.
This was not all that was done. Battering engines were used against the
walls to break them down. These the defenders caught by long ropes,
pulling the heads of the engines upward or sideways. They also fixed
heavy wooden beams in such a manner that when the head of an engine came
near the wall they could drop a beam suddenly upon it, and break off its
projecting beak.
In these rude ways the attack and defence went on, until three months
had passed, and Archidamus and his army found themselves where they had
begun, and the garrison still safe and defiant. The besiegers next tried
to destroy the town by fire. From the top of the mound they hurled
fagots as far as they could within the walls. They then threw in pitch
and other quick-burning material, and finally set the whole on fire. In
a brief time the flames burst out hotly, and burnt with so fierce a
conflagration that the whole town was in imminent danger of destruction.
Nothing could have saved it had the wind favored the flames. There is a
story also that a thunder-storm came up to extinguish the fire,--but
such opportune rains seem somewhat too common in ancient history. As it
was, part of the town was destroyed, but the most of it remained, and
the brave inmates continued defiant of their foes.
Archidamus was almost in despair. Was this small town, with its few
hundred men, to defy and defeat his large army? He had tried the various
ancient ways of attack in vain. The Spartans, with all their prowess in
the field, lacked skill in the assault of walled towns, and were rarely
successful in the art of siege. The Plataeans had proved more than their
match, and there only remained to be tried the wearisome and costly
process of blockade and famine.
Determined that Plataea should not escape, this plan was in the end
adopted, and a wall built round the entire city, to prevent escape or
the entrance of aid from without. In fact, two walls were built, sixteen
feet apart, and these were covered in on top, so that they looked like
one very thick wall. There were also two ditches, from which the bricks
of the wall had been dug, one on the inside, and one without to prevent
relief by a foreign force. The covered space within the walls served as
quarters for the troops left on guard, its top as a convenient place for
sentry duty. This done, the main army marched away. It needed no great
host to keep the few Plataeans within their walls until they should
consume all their food and yield to famine, a slower but more
irresistible foe than all the Lacedaemonian power.
Fortunately for the besieged, they were well provisioned, and for more
than a year remained in peace within their city, not attacked by their
foes and receiving no aid from friends. Besides the eighty Athenians
within the walls no help came to the Plataeans during the long siege. At
length provisions began to fail. It was evident that they must die like
rats in a cage, surrender to their foes, or make a desperate break for
freedom.
The last expedient was proposed by their general. It was daring, and
seemed desperate, to seek to escape over the blockading wall with its
armed guards. So desperate did it appear that half the garrison feared
to attempt it, deeming that it would end in certain death. The other
half, more than two hundred in number, decided that it was better to
dare death in the field than to meet death in the streets.
The wall was furnished with frequent battlements and occasional towers,
and its whole circuit was kept under watch day and night. But as time
went on the besiegers grew more lax in discipline, and on wet nights
sought the shelter of the towers, leaving the spaces between without
guards. This left a chance for escape which the Plataeans determined to
embrace.
By counting the layers of bricks in the blockading wall they were able
to estimate its height, and prepared ladders long enough to reach its
top. Then they waited for a suitable time. At length it came, a cold,
dark, stormy December night, with a roaring wind, and showers of rain
and sleet.
The shivering guards cowered within their sheltering towers. Out from
their gates marched the Plataeans, lightly armed, and, to avoid any
sound, with the right foot naked. The left was shod, that it might have
firmer hold on the muddy ground. Moving with the wind in their faces,
and so far apart that their arms could not strike and clatter, they
reached and crossed the ditch and lifted their ladders against the wall.
Eleven men, armed only with sword and breastplate, mounted first. Others
bearing spears followed, leaving their shields for their comrades below
to carry up and hand to them. This first company was to attack and
master the two towers right and left. This they did, surprising and
slaying the guards without the alarm having spread. Then the others
rapidly mounted the wall.
At this critical moment one of them struck a loose tile with his foot
and sent it clattering down the wall. This unlucky accident gave the
alarm. In an instant shouts came from the towers, and the garrison below
sprang to arms and hurried to the top of the wall. But they knew not
where to seek the foe, and their perplexity was increased by the
garrison within the city, which made a false attack on the other side.
Not knowing what to do or where to go, the blockaders remained at their
posts, except a body of three hundred men, who were kept in readiness to
patrol the outside of the outer ditch. Fire-signals were raised to warn
their allies in Thebes, but the garrison in the town also kindled
fire-signals so as to destroy the meaning of those of the besiegers.
Meanwhile the escaping warriors were actively engaged. Some held with
spear and javelin the towers they had captured. Others drew up the
ladders and planted them against the outer wall. Then down the ladders
they hurried, waded across the outer ditch, and reached level ground
beyond. Each man, as he gained this space, stood ready with his weapons
to repel assault from without. When all the others were down, the men
who had held the towers fled to the ladders and safely descended.
The outer ditch was nearly full of water from the rain and covered with
thin ice. Yet they scrambled through it, and when the three hundred of
the outer guard approached with torches, they suddenly found themselves
assailed with arrows and javelins from a foe invisible in the darkness.
They were thus kept back till the last Plataean had crossed the ditch,
when the bold fugitives marched speedily away, leaving but one of their
number a prisoner in the hands of the foe.
They first marched towards Thebes, while their pursuers took the
opposite direction. Then they turned, struck eastward, entered the
mountains, and finally--two hundred and twelve in number--made their way
safely to Athens, to tell their families and allies the thrilling story
of their escape.
A few who lost heart returned from the inner wall to the town, and told
those within that the whole band had perished. The truth was only
learned within the town when on the next morning a herald was sent out
to solicit a truce for burial of the dead bodies. The herald brought
back the glad tidings that there were no dead to bury, that the whole
bold band had escaped.
Happy had it been for the remaining garrison had they also fled, even at
the risk of death. With the provisions left they held out till the next
summer, when they were forced to yield. In the end, after the form of a
trial, they were all slaughtered by their foes, and the city itself was
razed to the ground by its Theban enemies, only the Heraeum, or temple of
Here, being left. Such was the fate of a city to which eternal
sacredness had been pledged.
_HOW THE LONG WALLS WENT DOWN._
The retreat of the Persians from Athens left that city without a wall or
a home. On the return of the Athenians, and the rebuilding of their
ruined homes, a new wall became a necessity, and, under the wise advice
of Themistocles, the citizens determined that the new wall should be
much larger in circuit than the old,--wide enough to hold all Attica in
case of war.
[Illustration: PIRAEUS, THE PORT OF ATHENS.]
But no sooner was this begun than a protest arose from rival states. The
Spartans in particular raised such a clamor on the subject that
Themistocles went to that city and denied that he was fortifying Athens.
If they did not believe him, they might send there and see. They did so,
and the Spartan ambassadors, on arriving there, found the walls
completed and themselves held as hostages for the safe return of
Themistocles. Not only Athens was thus fortified, but a still stronger
wall was built around Piraeus, the port, four miles away.
Years afterwards, when Athens was in a position to defy the protest of
Sparta, her famous Long Walls were built, extending from the city to the
port, and forming a great artery through which the food and products
brought in ships from distant lands could flow to the city from the sea,
in defiance of foes. These walls it was that enabled Athens to survive
and flourish when all the soil of Attica lay in the hands of the Spartan
enemy. But the time came when these walls were to fall, and Athens to
lie helpless in the hands of her mortal foe.
The Peloponnesian war was full of incident, victories and defeats,
marches and countermarches, making and breaking of truces, loss of
provinces and fleets, triumphs of one side and the other, and still the
years rolled on, and neither party became supreme. Athens had its
ill-advisers, who kept it at war when it could have won far more by
concluding peace, and who induced it to forget the advice of Pericles
and make war on land when its great strength lay in its fleet.
Its great error, however, was an attempt at foreign conquest, when it
had quite enough to occupy it at home. War broke out between Athens and
Sicily, and a strong fleet was sent to blockade and seek to capture the
city of Syracuse. This expedition fatally sapped the strength of the
Athenian empire. Ships and men were supplied in profusion to take part
in a series of military blunders, of which the last were irreparable.
The fleet, with all on board, was finally blocked up in the harbor of
Syracuse, defeated in battle, and forced to yield, while of forty
thousand Athenian troops but a miserable remnant survived to end their
lives as slaves in Syracusan quarries. It was a disaster such as Athens
in its whole career had not endured, and whose consequences were
inevitable. From that time on the supremacy of Athens was at an end.
Yet for nine years more the war continued, with much the same
succession of varying events as before. But during this period Sparta
was learning an important lesson. If she would defeat Athens, she must
learn how to win victories on sea as well as on land. After every defeat
of a fleet she built and equipped another, and gradually grew stronger
in ships, and her seamen more skilful and expert, until the old
difference between Athenian and Spartan seamen ceased to exist. Persia
also came to the aid of Sparta, supplied her with money, and enabled her
to replace her lost ships with ever new ones, while the ship-building
power of Athens declined.
In 405 B.C. the crisis came. Athens was forced to depend solely for
subsistence on her fleet. That gone, all would be gone. In the autumn of
that year she had a fleet of one hundred and eighty triremes in the
Hellespont, in the close vicinity of a Spartan fleet of about the same
force, under an able admiral named Lysander. AEgospotami, or Goat's River
(a name of fatal sound to all later Athenians), was the station of the
Athenian fleet. That of Sparta lay opposite, across the strait, nearly
two miles away.
And now an interesting scene began. Every day the Athenian fleet crossed
the strait and offered battle to the Spartans, daring them to come out
from their sheltered position. And every day, when the Spartans had
refused, it would go back to the opposite shore, where many of the men
were permitted to land. Day by day this challenge was repeated, the
Athenians growing daily more confident and more careless, and the crews
dispersing in search of food or amusement as soon as they reached the
shore. Lysander, meanwhile, fox-like, was on the watch. A scout-ship
followed the enemy daily. At length, on the fifth day, when the Athenian
ships had anchored, and the sailors had, as usual, dispersed, the
scout-ship hoisted a bright shield as a signal. In an instant the fleet
of Lysander, which was all ready, dashed out of its harbor, and rowed
with the utmost speed across the strait. The Athenian commanders,
perceiving too late their mistake, did their utmost to recall the
scattered crews, but in vain. The Spartan ships dashed in among those of
Athens, found some of them entirely deserted, others nearly so, and
wrought with such energy that of the whole fleet only twelve ships
escaped. Nearly all the men ashore were also taken, while this great
victory was won not only without the loss of a ship, but hardly of a
man. The prisoners, three or four thousand in number, in the cruel
manner of the time, were put to death.
This defeat, so disgraceful to the Athenian commanders, so complete and
thorough, was a death-blow to the dominion of Athens. That city was left
at the mercy of its foes. When news of the disaster reached the city,
such a night of wailing and woe, of fear and misery, came upon the
Athenians as few cities had ever before gone through. Their fleet gone,
all was gone. On it depended their food. Their land-supplies had long
been cut off. No corn-ships could now reach them from the Euxine Sea,
and few from other quarters. They might fight still, but the end was
sure. The victor at Salamis would soon be a prisoner within her own
walls.
Lysander was in no hurry to sail to Athens. That city could wait. He
employed himself in visiting the islands and cities in alliance with or
dependent upon Athens, and inducing them to ally themselves with Sparta.
The Athenian garrisons were sent home. Lysander shrewdly calculated that
the more men the walls of Athens held, the sooner must their food-supply
be exhausted and the end come. At length, in November of 405 B.C.,
Lysander sailed with his fleet to Piraeus and blockaded its harbor, while
the land army of the Peloponnesus marched into Attica and encamped at
the gates of Athens.
That great and proud city was now peopled with despair. The plague which
had desolated it twenty-five years before now threatened to be succeeded
by a still more fatal plague, that of famine. Yet pride and resolution
remained. The walls had been strengthened; their defenders could hold
out while any food was left; not until men actually began to die of
hunger did they ask for peace.
The envoys sent to Sparta were refused a hearing. Athens wished to
preserve her walls. Sparta sent word that there could be no peace until
the Long Walls were levelled with the earth. These terms Athens proudly
refused. Suffering and privation went on.
For three months longer the siege continued. Though famine dwelt within
every house, and numbers died of starvation, the Athenians held out with
heroic endurance, and refused to surrender on humiliating terms. But
there could be only one end. Where famine commands man must obey. Peace
must be had at any price, or death would end all, and an envoy was sent
out with power to make peace on any terms he could obtain.
It was pitiable that glorious Athens should be brought to this sad pass.
She was so cordially hated by many of the states of Greece that they
voted for her annihilation, demanding that the entire population should
be sold as slaves, and the city and the very name of Athens be utterly
swept from the earth.
At this dread moment the greatest foe of Athens became almost her only
friend. Sparta declared that she would never consent to such a fate for
the city which had been the savior of Greece in the Persian war. In the
end peace was offered on the following terms: The Long Walls and the
defences of Piraeus should be destroyed; the Athenians should give up all
foreign possessions and confine themselves to Attica; they should
surrender all their ships-of-war; they should admit all their exiles;
they should become allies of Sparta, be friends of her friends and foes
of her foes, and follow her leadership on sea and land.
When the envoy, bearing this ultimatum, returned to Athens, a pitiable
spectacle met his eyes. A despairing crowd faced him with beseeching
eyes, in terror lest he brought only a message of death or despair.
Thousands there were who could not meet him, victims of the increasing
famine. Peace at any price had become a valued boon. Nevertheless, when
the terms were read in the assembly, there were those there who would
have refused them, and who preferred death by starvation to such
disgrace. The great majority, however, voted to accept them, and word
was sent to Lysander that Athens yielded to the inevitable.
And now into the harbor of the Piraeus sailed the triumphant Lacedaemonian
fleet, just twenty-seven years after the war had begun. With them came
the Athenian exiles, some of whom had served with their city's foes. The
ships building in the dock-yards were burned and the arsenals ruined,
there being left to Athens only twelve ships-of-war. And then, amid the
joyful shouts of the conquerors, to the music of flutes played by women
and the sportive movements of dancers crowned with wreaths, the Long
Walls of Athens began to fall.
The conquerors themselves lent a hand to this work at first, but its
completion was left to the Athenians, who with sore hearts and bowed
heads for many days worked at the demolition of what so long had been
their city's strength and pride.
What followed may be briefly told. Athens had, some time before, fallen
under the power of a Committee of Four Hundred, aristocrats who
overthrew the constitution and reigned supreme until the people rose in
their might and brought their despotism to an end. Now a new oligarchy,
called "The Thirty," and mostly composed of the returned exiles, came
into despotic power, and the ancient constitution was once more ignored.
The reign of The Thirty was one of blood, confiscation, and death.
Supported by a Spartan garrison, they tyrannized at their own cruel
will, murdering, confiscating, exiling, until they converted Athens into
a prototype of Paris during the French Revolution.
At length the saturnalia of crime came to an end. Even the enemies of
Athens began to pity her sad state. Those who had been exiled by these
new tyrants returned to Attica, and war between them and The Thirty
began. In the end Sparta withdrew her support from the tyrants, those of
them who had not perished fled, and after nearly a year of terrible
anarchy the democracy of Athens was restored, and peace once more spread
its wings over that frightfully afflicted city.
We may conclude this tale with an episode that took place eleven years
after the Long Walls had fallen. As they had gone down to music, they
rose to music again. In these eleven years despotic Sparta had lost many
of her allies, and the Persians, who had become friends of Athens, now
lent a fleet and supplied money to aid in rebuilding the walls. Some
even of those who had danced for joy when the walls went down now gave
their cheerful aid to raise them up again, so greatly had Spartan
tyranny changed the tide of feeling. The completion of the walls was
celebrated by a splendid sacrifice and festival banquet, and joy came
back to Athens again. A new era had begun for the city, not one of
dominion and empire, but one marked by some share of her old dignity and
importance in Greece.
_SOCRATES AND ALCIBIADES._
During the period of the Peloponnesian war two men became strikingly
prominent in Athens, a statesman and a philosopher, as unlike each other
in character, appearance, aims, and methods as two persons could well
be, yet the most intimate of friends, and long dividing between them the
admiration of the Athenians. These were the historically famous
Alcibiades and Socrates. Alcibiades was a leader in action, Socrates a
leader in thought; thus they controlled the two great dominions of human
affairs.
Of these two, Socrates was vastly the nobler and higher, Alcibiades much
the more specious and popular. Democratic Athens was never long without
its aristocratic leader. For many years it had been Pericles. It now
became Alcibiades, a man whose career and character were much more like
those of Themistocles of old than of the sedate and patriotic Pericles.
Alcibiades was the Adonis of Athens, noted for his beauty, the charm of
his manner, his winning personality, qualities which made all men his
willing captives. He was of high birth, great wealth, and luxurious and
pleasure-loving disposition, yet with a remarkable power of
accommodating himself to circumstances, and becoming all things to all
men. While numbers of high-born Athenians admired him for his
extraordinary beauty of person, Socrates saw in him admirable qualities
of mind, and loved him with a warm affection, which Alcibiades as warmly
returned. The philosopher gained the greatest influence over his
youthful friend, taught him to despise affectation and revere virtue,
and did much to develop in him noble qualities of thought and
aspiration.
Yet nature had made Alcibiades, and nature's work is hard to undo. He
was a man of hasty impulse and violent temper, a man destitute of the
spirit of patriotism, and in very great measure it was to this brilliant
son of Athens that that city owed its lamentable fate.
No greater contrast could be imagined than was shown by these almost
inseparable friends. Alcibiades was tall, shapely, remarkably handsome,
fond of showy attire and luxurious surroundings, full of animal spirits,
rapid and animated in speech, and aristocratic in sentiment; Socrates
short, thick-set, remarkably ugly, careless in attire, destitute of all
courtly graces, democratic in the highest degree, and despising-utterly
those arts and aims, loves and luxuries, which appealed so strongly to
the soul of his ardent friend. Yet the genius, the intellectual
acuteness, the lofty aims, and wonderful conversational power of
Socrates overcame all his natural defects, attracted Alcibiades
irresistibly, and welded the two together in an intellectual sympathy
that set aside all differences of form and character.
The philosopher and the politician owed to each other their lives. They
served as soldiers together at Potidaea, lodged in the same tent, and
stood side by side in the ranks. Alcibiades was wounded in the battle,
but was defended and rescued by his friend, who afterwards persuaded the
generals to award to him the prize for valor. Later, at the battle of
Delium, Alcibiades protected and saved Socrates. These personal services
brought them into still closer relations, while their friendship was
perhaps the stronger from their almost complete diversity of character.
Unluckily for Athens, Socrates was not able to instil strong principles
of virtue into the mind of the versatile Alcibiades. This ardent
pleasure lover was moved by ambition, desire of admiration, love of
display, and fondness for luxurious living, and indulged in excesses
that it was not easy for the more frugal citizens to forgive. He sent
seven chariots to the Olympic Games, from which he carried off the
first, second, and fourth prizes. He gave splendid shows, distributed
money freely, and in spite of his wanton follies retained numbers of
friends among the Athenian people.