Perceiving this, the Athenians advanced against them by each inlet, and

falling on the enemy’s fleet, most of which was by this time afloat and

in line, at once put it to flight, and giving chase as far as the short

distance allowed, disabled a good many vessels and took five, one with

its crew on board; dashing in at the rest that had taken refuge on

shore, and battering some that were still being manned, before they

could put out, and lashing on to their own ships and towing off empty

others whose crews had fled. At this sight the Lacedaemonians, maddened

by a disaster which cut off their men on the island, rushed to the

rescue, and going into the sea with their heavy armour, laid hold of

the ships and tried to drag them back, each man thinking that success

depended on his individual exertions. Great was the melee, and quite in

contradiction to the naval tactics usual to the two combatants; the

Lacedaemonians in their excitement and dismay being actually engaged in

a sea-fight on land, while the victorious Athenians, in their eagerness

to push their success as far as possible, were carrying on a land-fight

from their ships. After great exertions and numerous wounds on both

sides they separated, the Lacedaemonians saving their empty ships,

except those first taken; and both parties returning to their camp, the

Athenians set up a trophy, gave back the dead, secured the wrecks, and

at once began to cruise round and jealously watch the island, with its

intercepted garrison, while the Peloponnesians on the mainland, whose

contingents had now all come up, stayed where they were before Pylos.

When the news of what had happened at Pylos reached Sparta, the

disaster was thought so serious that the Lacedaemonians resolved that

the authorities should go down to the camp, and decide on the spot what

was best to be done. There, seeing that it was impossible to help their

men, and not wishing to risk their being reduced by hunger or

overpowered by numbers, they determined, with the consent of the

Athenian generals, to conclude an armistice at Pylos and send envoys to

Athens to obtain a convention, and to endeavour to get back their men

as quickly as possible.

The generals accepting their offers, an armistice was concluded upon

the terms following:

That the Lacedaemonians should bring to Pylos and deliver up to the

Athenians the ships that had fought in the late engagement, and all in

Laconia that were vessels of war, and should make no attack on the

fortification either by land or by sea.

That the Athenians should allow the Lacedaemonians on the mainland to

send to the men in the island a certain fixed quantity of corn ready

kneaded, that is to say, two quarts of barley meal, one pint of wine,

and a piece of meat for each man, and half the same quantity for a

servant.

That this allowance should be sent in under the eyes of the Athenians,

and that no boat should sail to the island except openly.

That the Athenians should continue to the island same as before,

without however landing upon it, and should refrain from attacking the

Peloponnesian troops either by land or by sea.

That if either party should infringe any of these terms in the

slightest particular, the armistice should be at once void.

That the armistice should hold good until the return of the

Lacedaemonian envoys from Athens—the Athenians sending them thither in

a galley and bringing them back again—and upon the arrival of the

envoys should be at an end, and the ships be restored by the Athenians

in the same state as they received them.

Such were the terms of the armistice, and the ships were delivered over

to the number of sixty, and the envoys sent off accordingly. Arrived at

Athens they spoke as follows:

“Athenians, the Lacedaemonians sent us to try to find some way of

settling the affair of our men on the island, that shall be at once

satisfactory to our interests, and as consistent with our dignity in

our misfortune as circumstances permit. We can venture to speak at some

length without any departure from the habit of our country. Men of few

words where many are not wanted, we can be less brief when there is a

matter of importance to be illustrated and an end to be served by its

illustration. Meanwhile we beg you to take what we may say, not in a

hostile spirit, nor as if we thought you ignorant and wished to lecture

you, but rather as a suggestion on the best course to be taken,

addressed to intelligent judges. You can now, if you choose, employ

your present success to advantage, so as to keep what you have got and

gain honour and reputation besides, and you can avoid the mistake of

those who meet with an extraordinary piece of good fortune, and are led

on by hope to grasp continually at something further, through having

already succeeded without expecting it. While those who have known most

vicissitudes of good and bad, have also justly least faith in their

prosperity; and to teach your city and ours this lesson experience has

not been wanting.

“To be convinced of this you have only to look at our present

misfortune. What power in Hellas stood higher than we did? and yet we

are come to you, although we formerly thought ourselves more able to

grant what we are now here to ask. Nevertheless, we have not been

brought to this by any decay in our power, or through having our heads

turned by aggrandizement; no, our resources are what they have always

been, and our error has been an error of judgment, to which all are

equally liable. Accordingly, the prosperity which your city now enjoys,

and the accession that it has lately received, must not make you fancy

that fortune will be always with you. Indeed sensible men are prudent

enough to treat their gains as precarious, just as they would also keep

a clear head in adversity, and think that war, so far from staying

within the limit to which a combatant may wish to confine it, will run

the course that its chances prescribe; and thus, not being puffed up by

confidence in military success, they are less likely to come to grief,

and most ready to make peace, if they can, while their fortune lasts.

This, Athenians, you have a good opportunity to do now with us, and

thus to escape the possible disasters which may follow upon your

refusal, and the consequent imputation of having owed to accident even

your present advantages, when you might have left behind you a

reputation for power and wisdom which nothing could endanger.

“The Lacedaemonians accordingly invite you to make a treaty and to end

the war, and offer peace and alliance and the most friendly and

intimate relations in every way and on every occasion between us; and

in return ask for the men on the island, thinking it better for both

parties not to stand out to the end, on the chance of some favourable

accident enabling the men to force their way out, or of their being

compelled to succumb under the pressure of blockade. Indeed if great

enmities are ever to be really settled, we think it will be, not by the

system of revenge and military success, and by forcing an opponent to

swear to a treaty to his disadvantage, but when the more fortunate

combatant waives these his privileges, to be guided by gentler feelings

conquers his rival in generosity, and accords peace on more moderate

conditions than he expected. From that moment, instead of the debt of

revenge which violence must entail, his adversary owes a debt of

generosity to be paid in kind, and is inclined by honour to stand to

his agreement. And men oftener act in this manner towards their

greatest enemies than where the quarrel is of less importance; they are

also by nature as glad to give way to those who first yield to them, as

they are apt to be provoked by arrogance to risks condemned by their

own judgment.

“To apply this to ourselves: if peace was ever desirable for both

parties, it is surely so at the present moment, before anything

irremediable befall us and force us to hate you eternally, personally

as well as politically, and you to miss the advantages that we now

offer you. While the issue is still in doubt, and you have reputation

and our friendship in prospect, and we the compromise of our misfortune

before anything fatal occur, let us be reconciled, and for ourselves

choose peace instead of war, and grant to the rest of the Hellenes a

remission from their sufferings, for which be sure they will think they

have chiefly you to thank. The war that they labour under they know not

which began, but the peace that concludes it, as it depends on your

decision, will by their gratitude be laid to your door. By such a

decision you can become firm friends with the Lacedaemonians at their

own invitation, which you do not force from them, but oblige them by

accepting. And from this friendship consider the advantages that are

likely to follow: when Attica and Sparta are at one, the rest of

Hellas, be sure, will remain in respectful inferiority before its

heads.”

Such were the words of the Lacedaemonians, their idea being that the

Athenians, already desirous of a truce and only kept back by their

opposition, would joyfully accept a peace freely offered, and give back

the men. The Athenians, however, having the men on the island, thought

that the treaty would be ready for them whenever they chose to make it,

and grasped at something further. Foremost to encourage them in this

policy was Cleon, son of Cleaenetus, a popular leader of the time and

very powerful with the multitude, who persuaded them to answer as

follows: First, the men in the island must surrender themselves and

their arms and be brought to Athens. Next, the Lacedaemonians must

restore Nisaea, Pegae, Troezen, and Achaia, all places acquired not by

arms, but by the previous convention, under which they had been ceded

by Athens herself at a moment of disaster, when a truce was more

necessary to her than at present. This done they might take back their

men, and make a truce for as long as both parties might agree.

To this answer the envoys made no reply, but asked that commissioners

might be chosen with whom they might confer on each point, and quietly

talk the matter over and try to come to some agreement. Hereupon Cleon

violently assailed them, saying that he knew from the first that they

had no right intentions, and that it was clear enough now by their

refusing to speak before the people, and wanting to confer in secret

with a committee of two or three. No, if they meant anything honest let

them say it out before all. The Lacedaemonians, however, seeing that

whatever concessions they might be prepared to make in their

misfortune, it was impossible for them to speak before the multitude

and lose credit with their allies for a negotiation which might after

all miscarry, and on the other hand, that the Athenians would never

grant what they asked upon moderate terms, returned from Athens without

having effected anything.

Their arrival at once put an end to the armistice at Pylos, and the

Lacedaemonians asked back their ships according to the convention. The

Athenians, however, alleged an attack on the fort in contravention of

the truce, and other grievances seemingly not worth mentioning, and

refused to give them back, insisting upon the clause by which the

slightest infringement made the armistice void. The Lacedaemonians,

after denying the contravention and protesting against their bad faith

in the matter of the ships, went away and earnestly addressed

themselves to the war. Hostilities were now carried on at Pylos upon

both sides with vigour. The Athenians cruised round the island all day

with two ships going different ways; and by night, except on the

seaward side in windy weather, anchored round it with their whole

fleet, which, having been reinforced by twenty ships from Athens come

to aid in the blockade, now numbered seventy sail; while the

Peloponnesians remained encamped on the continent, making attacks on

the fort, and on the look-out for any opportunity which might offer

itself for the deliverance of their men.

Meanwhile the Syracusans and their allies in Sicily had brought up to

the squadron guarding Messina the reinforcement which we left them

preparing, and carried on the war from thence, incited chiefly by the

Locrians from hatred of the Rhegians, whose territory they had invaded

with all their forces. The Syracusans also wished to try their fortune

at sea, seeing that the Athenians had only a few ships actually at

Rhegium, and hearing that the main fleet destined to join them was

engaged in blockading the island. A naval victory, they thought, would

enable them to blockade Rhegium by sea and land, and easily to reduce

it; a success which would at once place their affairs upon a solid

basis, the promontory of Rhegium in Italy and Messina in Sicily being

so near each other that it would be impossible for the Athenians to

cruise against them and command the strait. The strait in question

consists of the sea between Rhegium and Messina, at the point where

Sicily approaches nearest to the continent, and is the Charybdis

through which the story makes Ulysses sail; and the narrowness of the

passage and the strength of the current that pours in from the vast

Tyrrhenian and Sicilian mains, have rightly given it a bad reputation.

In this strait the Syracusans and their allies were compelled to fight,

late in the day, about the passage of a boat, putting out with rather

more than thirty ships against sixteen Athenian and eight Rhegian

vessels. Defeated by the Athenians they hastily set off, each for

himself, to their own stations at Messina and Rhegium, with the loss of

one ship; night coming on before the battle was finished. After this

the Locrians retired from the Rhegian territory, and the ships of the

Syracusans and their allies united and came to anchor at Cape Pelorus,

in the territory of Messina, where their land forces joined them. Here

the Athenians and Rhegians sailed up, and seeing the ships unmanned,

made an attack, in which they in their turn lost one vessel, which was

caught by a grappling iron, the crew saving themselves by swimming.

After this the Syracusans got on board their ships, and while they were

being towed alongshore to Messina, were again attacked by the

Athenians, but suddenly got out to sea and became the assailants, and

caused them to lose another vessel. After thus holding their own in the

voyage alongshore and in the engagement as above described, the

Syracusans sailed on into the harbour of Messina.

Meanwhile the Athenians, having received warning that Camarina was

about to be betrayed to the Syracusans by Archias and his party, sailed

thither; and the Messinese took this opportunity to attack by sea and

land with all their forces their Chalcidian neighbour, Naxos. The first

day they forced the Naxians to keep their walls, and laid waste their

country; the next they sailed round with their ships, and laid waste

their land on the river Akesines, while their land forces menaced the

city. Meanwhile the Sicels came down from the high country in great

numbers, to aid against the Messinese; and the Naxians, elated at the

sight, and animated by a belief that the Leontines and their other

Hellenic allies were coming to their support, suddenly sallied out from

the town, and attacked and routed the Messinese, killing more than a

thousand of them; while the remainder suffered severely in their

retreat home, being attacked by the barbarians on the road, and most of

them cut off. The ships put in to Messina, and afterwards dispersed for

their different homes. The Leontines and their allies, with the

Athenians, upon this at once turned their arms against the now weakened

Messina, and attacked, the Athenians with their ships on the side of

the harbour, and the land forces on that of the town. The Messinese,

however, sallying out with Demoteles and some Locrians who had been

left to garrison the city after the disaster, suddenly attacked and

routed most of the Leontine army, killing a great number; upon seeing

which the Athenians landed from their ships, and falling on the

Messinese in disorder chased them back into the town, and setting up a

trophy retired to Rhegium. After this the Hellenes in Sicily continued

to make war on each other by land, without the Athenians.

Meanwhile the Athenians at Pylos were still besieging the

Lacedaemonians in the island, the Peloponnesian forces on the continent

remaining where they were. The blockade was very laborious for the

Athenians from want of food and water; there was no spring except one

in the citadel of Pylos itself, and that not a large one, and most of

them were obliged to grub up the shingle on the sea beach and drink

such water as they could find. They also suffered from want of room,

being encamped in a narrow space; and as there was no anchorage for the

ships, some took their meals on shore in their turn, while the others

were anchored out at sea. But their greatest discouragement arose from

the unexpectedly long time which it took to reduce a body of men shut

up in a desert island, with only brackish water to drink, a matter

which they had imagined would take them only a few days. The fact was

that the Lacedaemonians had made advertisement for volunteers to carry

into the island ground corn, wine, cheese, and any other food useful in

a siege; high prices being offered, and freedom promised to any of the

Helots who should succeed in doing so. The Helots accordingly were most

forward to engage in this risky traffic, putting off from this or that

part of Peloponnese, and running in by night on the seaward side of the

island. They were best pleased, however, when they could catch a wind

to carry them in. It was more easy to elude the look-out of the

galleys, when it blew from the seaward, as it became impossible for

them to anchor round the island; while the Helots had their boats rated

at their value in money, and ran them ashore, without caring how they

landed, being sure to find the soldiers waiting for them at the

landing-places. But all who risked it in fair weather were taken.

Divers also swam in under water from the harbour, dragging by a cord in

skins poppyseed mixed with honey, and bruised linseed; these at first

escaped notice, but afterwards a look-out was kept for them. In short,

both sides tried every possible contrivance, the one to throw in

provisions, and the other to prevent their introduction.

At Athens, meanwhile, the news that the army was in great distress, and

that corn found its way in to the men in the island, caused no small

perplexity; and the Athenians began to fear that winter might come on

and find them still engaged in the blockade. They saw that the

convoying of provisions round Peloponnese would be then impossible. The

country offered no resources in itself, and even in summer they could

not send round enough. The blockade of a place without harbours could

no longer be kept up; and the men would either escape by the siege

being abandoned, or would watch for bad weather and sail out in the

boats that brought in their corn. What caused still more alarm was the

attitude of the Lacedaemonians, who must, it was thought by the

Athenians, feel themselves on strong ground not to send them any more

envoys; and they began to repent having rejected the treaty. Cleon,

perceiving the disfavour with which he was regarded for having stood in

the way of the convention, now said that their informants did not speak

the truth; and upon the messengers recommending them, if they did not

believe them, to send some commissioners to see, Cleon himself and

Theagenes were chosen by the Athenians as commissioners. Aware that he

would now be obliged either to say what had been already said by the

men whom he was slandering, or be proved a liar if he said the

contrary, he told the Athenians, whom he saw to be not altogether

disinclined for a fresh expedition, that instead of sending and wasting

their time and opportunities, if they believed what was told them, they

ought to sail against the men. And pointing at Nicias, son of

Niceratus, then general, whom he hated, he tauntingly said that it

would be easy, if they had men for generals, to sail with a force and

take those in the island, and that if he had himself been in command,

he would have done it.

Nicias, seeing the Athenians murmuring against Cleon for not sailing

now if it seemed to him so easy, and further seeing himself the object

of attack, told him that for all that the generals cared, he might take

what force he chose and make the attempt. At first Cleon fancied that

this resignation was merely a figure of speech, and was ready to go,

but finding that it was seriously meant, he drew back, and said that

Nicias, not he, was general, being now frightened, and having never

supposed that Nicias would go so far as to retire in his favour.

Nicias, however, repeated his offer, and resigned the command against

Pylos, and called the Athenians to witness that he did so. And as the

multitude is wont to do, the more Cleon shrank from the expedition and

tried to back out of what he had said, the more they encouraged Nicias

to hand over his command, and clamoured at Cleon to go. At last, not

knowing how to get out of his words, he undertook the expedition, and

came forward and said that he was not afraid of the Lacedaemonians, but

would sail without taking any one from the city with him, except the

Lemnians and Imbrians that were at Athens, with some targeteers that

had come up from Aenus, and four hundred archers from other quarters.

With these and the soldiers at Pylos, he would within twenty days

either bring the Lacedaemonians alive, or kill them on the spot. The

Athenians could not help laughing at his fatuity, while sensible men

comforted themselves with the reflection that they must gain in either

circumstance; either they would be rid of Cleon, which they rather

hoped, or if disappointed in this expectation, would reduce the

Lacedaemonians.

After he had settled everything in the assembly, and the Athenians had

voted him the command of the expedition, he chose as his colleague

Demosthenes, one of the generals at Pylos, and pushed forward the

preparations for his voyage. His choice fell upon Demosthenes because

he heard that he was contemplating a descent on the island; the

soldiers distressed by the difficulties of the position, and rather

besieged than besiegers, being eager to fight it out, while the firing

of the island had increased the confidence of the general. He had been

at first afraid, because the island having never been inhabited was

almost entirely covered with wood and without paths, thinking this to

be in the enemy’s favour, as he might land with a large force, and yet

might suffer loss by an attack from an unseen position. The mistakes

and forces of the enemy the wood would in a great measure conceal from

him, while every blunder of his own troops would be at once detected,

and they would be thus able to fall upon him unexpectedly just where

they pleased, the attack being always in their power. If, on the other

hand, he should force them to engage in the thicket, the smaller number

who knew the country would, he thought, have the advantage over the

larger who were ignorant of it, while his own army might be cut off

imperceptibly, in spite of its numbers, as the men would not be able to

see where to succour each other.

The Aetolian disaster, which had been mainly caused by the wood, had

not a little to do with these reflections. Meanwhile, one of the

soldiers who were compelled by want of room to land on the extremities

of the island and take their dinners, with outposts fixed to prevent a

surprise, set fire to a little of the wood without meaning to do so;

and as it came on to blow soon afterwards, almost the whole was

consumed before they were aware of it. Demosthenes was now able for the

first time to see how numerous the Lacedaemonians really were, having

up to this moment been under the impression that they took in

provisions for a smaller number; he also saw that the Athenians thought

success important and were anxious about it, and that it was now easier

to land on the island, and accordingly got ready for the attempt, sent

for troops from the allies in the neighbourhood, and pushed forward his

other preparations. At this moment Cleon arrived at Pylos with the

troops which he had asked for, having sent on word to say that he was

coming. The first step taken by the two generals after their meeting

was to send a herald to the camp on the mainland, to ask if they were

disposed to avoid all risk and to order the men on the island to

surrender themselves and their arms, to be kept in gentle custody until

some general convention should be concluded.

On the rejection of this proposition the generals let one day pass, and

the next, embarking all their heavy infantry on board a few ships, put

out by night, and a little before dawn landed on both sides of the

island from the open sea and from the harbour, being about eight

hundred strong, and advanced with a run against the first post in the

island.

The enemy had distributed his force as follows: In this first post

there were about thirty heavy infantry; the centre and most level part,

where the water was, was held by the main body, and by Epitadas their

commander; while a small party guarded the very end of the island,

towards Pylos, which was precipitous on the sea-side and very difficult

to attack from the land, and where there was also a sort of old fort of

stones rudely put together, which they thought might be useful to them,

in case they should be forced to retreat. Such was their disposition.

The advanced post thus attacked by the Athenians was at once put to the

sword, the men being scarcely out of bed and still arming, the landing

having taken them by surprise, as they fancied the ships were only

sailing as usual to their stations for the night. As soon as day broke,

the rest of the army landed, that is to say, all the crews of rather

more than seventy ships, except the lowest rank of oars, with the arms

they carried, eight hundred archers, and as many targeteers, the

Messenian reinforcements, and all the other troops on duty round Pylos,

except the garrison on the fort. The tactics of Demosthenes had divided

them into companies of two hundred, more or less, and made them occupy

the highest points in order to paralyse the enemy by surrounding him on

every side and thus leaving him without any tangible adversary, exposed

to the cross-fire of their host; plied by those in his rear if he

attacked in front, and by those on one flank if he moved against those

on the other. In short, wherever he went he would have the assailants

behind him, and these light-armed assailants, the most awkward of all;

arrows, darts, stones, and slings making them formidable at a distance,

and there being no means of getting at them at close quarters, as they

could conquer flying, and the moment their pursuer turned they were

upon him. Such was the idea that inspired Demosthenes in his conception

of the descent, and presided over its execution.

Meanwhile the main body of the troops in the island (that under

Epitadas), seeing their outpost cut off and an army advancing against

them, serried their ranks and pressed forward to close with the

Athenian heavy infantry in front of them, the light troops being upon

their flanks and rear. However, they were not able to engage or to

profit by their superior skill, the light troops keeping them in check

on either side with their missiles, and the heavy infantry remaining

stationary instead of advancing to meet them; and although they routed

the light troops wherever they ran up and approached too closely, yet

they retreated fighting, being lightly equipped, and easily getting the

start in their flight, from the difficult and rugged nature of the

ground, in an island hitherto desert, over which the Lacedaemonians

could not pursue them with their heavy armour.

After this skirmishing had lasted some little while, the Lacedaemonians

became unable to dash out with the same rapidity as before upon the

points attacked, and the light troops finding that they now fought with

less vigour, became more confident. They could see with their own eyes

that they were many times more numerous than the enemy; they were now

more familiar with his aspect and found him less terrible, the result

not having justified the apprehensions which they had suffered, when

they first landed in slavish dismay at the idea of attacking

Lacedaemonians; and accordingly their fear changing to disdain, they

now rushed all together with loud shouts upon them, and pelted them

with stones, darts, and arrows, whichever came first to hand. The

shouting accompanying their onset confounded the Lacedaemonians,

unaccustomed to this mode of fighting; dust rose from the newly burnt

wood, and it was impossible to see in front of one with the arrows and

stones flying through clouds of dust from the hands of numerous

assailants. The Lacedaemonians had now to sustain a rude conflict;

their caps would not keep out the arrows, darts had broken off in the

armour of the wounded, while they themselves were helpless for offence,

being prevented from using their eyes to see what was before them, and

unable to hear the words of command for the hubbub raised by the enemy;

danger encompassed them on every side, and there was no hope of any

means of defence or safety.

At last, after many had been already wounded in the confined space in

which they were fighting, they formed in close order and retired on the

fort at the end of the island, which was not far off, and to their

friends who held it. The moment they gave way, the light troops became

bolder and pressed upon them, shouting louder than ever, and killed as

many as they came up with in their retreat, but most of the

Lacedaemonians made good their escape to the fort, and with the

garrison in it ranged themselves all along its whole extent to repulse

the enemy wherever it was assailable. The Athenians pursuing, unable to

surround and hem them in, owing to the strength of the ground, attacked

them in front and tried to storm the position. For a long time, indeed

for most of the day, both sides held out against all the torments of

the battle, thirst, and sun, the one endeavouring to drive the enemy

from the high ground, the other to maintain himself upon it, it being

now more easy for the Lacedaemonians to defend themselves than before,

as they could not be surrounded on the flanks.

The struggle began to seem endless, when the commander of the

Messenians came to Cleon and Demosthenes, and told them that they were

losing their labour: but if they would give him some archers and light

troops to go round on the enemy’s rear by a way he would undertake to

find, he thought he could force the approach. Upon receiving what he

asked for, he started from a point out of sight in order not to be seen

by the enemy, and creeping on wherever the precipices of the island

permitted, and where the Lacedaemonians, trusting to the strength of

the ground, kept no guard, succeeded after the greatest difficulty in

getting round without their seeing him, and suddenly appeared on the

high ground in their rear, to the dismay of the surprised enemy and the

still greater joy of his expectant friends. The Lacedaemonians thus

placed between two fires, and in the same dilemma, to compare small

things with great, as at Thermopylae, where the defenders were cut off

through the Persians getting round by the path, being now attacked in

front and behind, began to give way, and overcome by the odds against

them and exhausted from want of food, retreated.

The Athenians were already masters of the approaches when Cleon and

Demosthenes perceiving that, if the enemy gave way a single step

further, they would be destroyed by their soldiery, put a stop to the

battle and held their men back; wishing to take the Lacedaemonians

alive to Athens, and hoping that their stubbornness might relax on

hearing the offer of terms, and that they might surrender and yield to

the present overwhelming danger. Proclamation was accordingly made, to

know if they would surrender themselves and their arms to the Athenians

to be dealt at their discretion.

The Lacedaemonians hearing this offer, most of them lowered their

shields and waved their hands to show that they accepted it.

Hostilities now ceased, and a parley was held between Cleon and

Demosthenes and Styphon, son of Pharax, on the other side; since

Epitadas, the first of the previous commanders, had been killed, and

Hippagretas, the next in command, left for dead among the slain, though

still alive, and thus the command had devolved upon Styphon according

to the law, in case of anything happening to his superiors. Styphon and

his companions said they wished to send a herald to the Lacedaemonians

on the mainland, to know what they were to do. The Athenians would not

let any of them go, but themselves called for heralds from the

mainland, and after questions had been carried backwards and forwards

two or three times, the last man that passed over from the

Lacedaemonians on the continent brought this message: “The

Lacedaemonians bid you to decide for yourselves so long as you do

nothing dishonourable”; upon which after consulting together they

surrendered themselves and their arms. The Athenians, after guarding

them that day and night, the next morning set up a trophy in the

island, and got ready to sail, giving their prisoners in batches to be

guarded by the captains of the galleys; and the Lacedaemonians sent a

herald and took up their dead. The number of the killed and prisoners

taken in the island was as follows: four hundred and twenty heavy

infantry had passed over; three hundred all but eight were taken alive

to Athens; the rest were killed. About a hundred and twenty of the

prisoners were Spartans. The Athenian loss was small, the battle not

having been fought at close quarters.

The blockade in all, counting from the fight at sea to the battle in

the island, had lasted seventy-two days. For twenty of these, during

the absence of the envoys sent to treat for peace, the men had

provisions given them, for the rest they were fed by the smugglers.

Corn and other victual was found in the island; the commander Epitadas

having kept the men upon half rations. The Athenians and Peloponnesians

now each withdrew their forces from Pylos, and went home, and crazy as

Cleon’s promise was, he fulfilled it, by bringing the men to Athens

within the twenty days as he had pledged himself to do.

Nothing that happened in the war surprised the Hellenes so much as

this. It was the opinion that no force or famine could make the

Lacedaemonians give up their arms, but that they would fight on as they

could, and die with them in their hands: indeed people could scarcely

believe that those who had surrendered were of the same stuff as the

fallen; and an Athenian ally, who some time after insultingly asked one

of the prisoners from the island if those that had fallen were men of

honour, received for answer that the atraktos—that is, the arrow—would

be worth a great deal if it could tell men of honour from the rest; in

allusion to the fact that the killed were those whom the stones and the

arrows happened to hit.

Upon the arrival of the men the Athenians determined to keep them in

prison until the peace, and if the Peloponnesians invaded their country

in the interval, to bring them out and put them to death. Meanwhile the

defence of Pylos was not forgotten; the Messenians from Naupactus sent

to their old country, to which Pylos formerly belonged, some of the

likeliest of their number, and began a series of incursions into

Laconia, which their common dialect rendered most destructive. The

Lacedaemonians, hitherto without experience of incursions or a warfare

of the kind, finding the Helots deserting, and fearing the march of

revolution in their country, began to be seriously uneasy, and in spite

of their unwillingness to betray this to the Athenians began to send

envoys to Athens, and tried to recover Pylos and the prisoners. The

Athenians, however, kept grasping at more, and dismissed envoy after

envoy without their having effected anything. Such was the history of

the affair of Pylos.

CHAPTER XIII

Seventh and Eighth Years of the War—End of Corcyraean Revolution— Peace

of Gela—Capture of Nisaea

The same summer, directly after these events, the Athenians made an

expedition against the territory of Corinth with eighty ships and two

thousand Athenian heavy infantry, and two hundred cavalry on board

horse transports, accompanied by the Milesians, Andrians, and

Carystians from the allies, under the command of Nicias, son of

Niceratus, with two colleagues. Putting out to sea they made land at

daybreak between Chersonese and Rheitus, at the beach of the country

underneath the Solygian hill, upon which the Dorians in old times

established themselves and carried on war against the Aeolian

inhabitants of Corinth, and where a village now stands called Solygia.

The beach where the fleet came to is about a mile and a half from the

village, seven miles from Corinth, and two and a quarter from the

Isthmus. The Corinthians had heard from Argos of the coming of the

Athenian armament, and had all come up to the Isthmus long before, with

the exception of those who lived beyond it, and also of five hundred

who were away in garrison in Ambracia and Leucadia; and they were there

in full force watching for the Athenians to land. These last, however,

gave them the slip by coming in the dark; and being informed by signals

of the fact the Corinthians left half their number at Cenchreae, in

case the Athenians should go against Crommyon, and marched in all haste

to the rescue.

Battus, one of the two generals present at the action, went with a

company to defend the village of Solygia, which was unfortified;

Lycophron remaining to give battle with the rest. The Corinthians first

attacked the right wing of the Athenians, which had just landed in

front of Chersonese, and afterwards the rest of the army. The battle

was an obstinate one, and fought throughout hand to hand. The right

wing of the Athenians and Carystians, who had been placed at the end of

the line, received and with some difficulty repulsed the Corinthians,

who thereupon retreated to a wall upon the rising ground behind, and

throwing down the stones upon them, came on again singing the paean,

and being received by the Athenians, were again engaged at close

quarters. At this moment a Corinthian company having come to the relief

of the left wing, routed and pursued the Athenian right to the sea,

whence they were in their turn driven back by the Athenians and

Carystians from the ships. Meanwhile the rest of the army on either

side fought on tenaciously, especially the right wing of the

Corinthians, where Lycophron sustained the attack of the Athenian left,

which it was feared might attempt the village of Solygia.

After holding on for a long while without either giving way, the

Athenians aided by their horse, of which the enemy had none, at length

routed the Corinthians, who retired to the hill and, halting, remained

quiet there, without coming down again. It was in this rout of the

right wing that they had the most killed, Lycophron their general being

among the number. The rest of the army, broken and put to flight in

this way without being seriously pursued or hurried, retired to the

high ground and there took up its position. The Athenians, finding that

the enemy no longer offered to engage them, stripped his dead and took

up their own and immediately set up a trophy. Meanwhile, the half of

the Corinthians left at Cenchreae to guard against the Athenians

sailing on Crommyon, although unable to see the battle for Mount

Oneion, found out what was going on by the dust, and hurried up to the

rescue; as did also the older Corinthians from the town, upon

discovering what had occurred. The Athenians seeing them all coming

against them, and thinking that they were reinforcements arriving from

the neighbouring Peloponnesians, withdrew in haste to their ships with

their spoils and their own dead, except two that they left behind, not

being able to find them, and going on board crossed over to the islands

opposite, and from thence sent a herald, and took up under truce the

bodies which they had left behind. Two hundred and twelve Corinthians

fell in the battle, and rather less than fifty Athenians.

Weighing from the islands, the Athenians sailed the same day to

Crommyon in the Corinthian territory, about thirteen miles from the

city, and coming to anchor laid waste the country, and passed the night

there. The next day, after first coasting along to the territory of

Epidaurus and making a descent there, they came to Methana between

Epidaurus and Troezen, and drew a wall across and fortified the isthmus

of the peninsula, and left a post there from which incursions were

henceforth made upon the country of Troezen, Haliae, and Epidaurus.

After walling off this spot, the fleet sailed off home.

While these events were going on, Eurymedon and Sophocles had put to

sea with the Athenian fleet from Pylos on their way to Sicily and,

arriving at Corcyra, joined the townsmen in an expedition against the

party established on Mount Istone, who had crossed over, as I have

mentioned, after the revolution and become masters of the country, to

the great hurt of the inhabitants. Their stronghold having been taken

by an attack, the garrison took refuge in a body upon some high ground

and there capitulated, agreeing to give up their mercenary auxiliaries,

lay down their arms, and commit themselves to the discretion of the

Athenian people. The generals carried them across under truce to the

island of Ptychia, to be kept in custody until they could be sent to

Athens, upon the understanding that, if any were caught running away,

all would lose the benefit of the treaty. Meanwhile the leaders of the

Corcyraean commons, afraid that the Athenians might spare the lives of

the prisoners, had recourse to the following stratagem. They gained

over some few men on the island by secretly sending friends with

instructions to provide them with a boat, and to tell them, as if for

their own sakes, that they had best escape as quickly as possible, as

the Athenian generals were going to give them up to the Corcyraean

people.

These representations succeeding, it was so arranged that the men were

caught sailing out in the boat that was provided, and the treaty became

void accordingly, and the whole body were given up to the Corcyraeans.

For this result the Athenian generals were in a great measure

responsible; their evident disinclination to sail for Sicily, and thus

to leave to others the honour of conducting the men to Athens,

encouraged the intriguers in their design and seemed to affirm the

truth of their representations. The prisoners thus handed over were

shut up by the Corcyraeans in a large building, and afterwards taken

out by twenties and led past two lines of heavy infantry, one on each

side, being bound together, and beaten and stabbed by the men in the

lines whenever any saw pass a personal enemy; while men carrying whips

went by their side and hastened on the road those that walked too

slowly.

As many as sixty men were taken out and killed in this way without the

knowledge of their friends in the building, who fancied they were

merely being moved from one prison to another. At last, however,

someone opened their eyes to the truth, upon which they called upon the

Athenians to kill them themselves, if such was their pleasure, and

refused any longer to go out of the building, and said they would do

all they could to prevent any one coming in. The Corcyraeans, not

liking themselves to force a passage by the doors, got up on the top of

the building, and breaking through the roof, threw down the tiles and

let fly arrows at them, from which the prisoners sheltered themselves

as well as they could. Most of their number, meanwhile, were engaged in

dispatching themselves by thrusting into their throats the arrows shot

by the enemy, and hanging themselves with the cords taken from some

beds that happened to be there, and with strips made from their

clothing; adopting, in short, every possible means of self-destruction,

and also falling victims to the missiles of their enemies on the roof.

Night came on while these horrors were enacting, and most of it had

passed before they were concluded. When it was day the Corcyraeans

threw them in layers upon wagons and carried them out of the city. All

the women taken in the stronghold were sold as slaves. In this way the

Corcyraeans of the mountain were destroyed by the commons; and so after

terrible excesses the party strife came to an end, at least as far as

the period of this war is concerned, for of one party there was

practically nothing left. Meanwhile the Athenians sailed off to Sicily,

their primary destination, and carried on the war with their allies

there.

At the close of the summer, the Athenians at Naupactus and the

Acarnanians made an expedition against Anactorium, the Corinthian town

lying at the mouth of the Ambracian Gulf, and took it by treachery; and

the Acarnanians themselves, sending settlers from all parts of

Acarnania, occupied the place.

Summer was now over. During the winter ensuing, Aristides, son of

Archippus, one of the commanders of the Athenian ships sent to collect

money from the allies, arrested at Eion, on the Strymon, Artaphernes, a

Persian, on his way from the King to Lacedaemon. He was conducted to

Athens, where the Athenians got his dispatches translated from the

Assyrian character and read them. With numerous references to other

subjects, they in substance told the Lacedaemonians that the King did

not know what they wanted, as of the many ambassadors they had sent him

no two ever told the same story; if however they were prepared to speak

plainly they might send him some envoys with this Persian. The

Athenians afterwards sent back Artaphernes in a galley to Ephesus, and

ambassadors with him, who heard there of the death of King Artaxerxes,

son of Xerxes, which took place about that time, and so returned home.

The same winter the Chians pulled down their new wall at the command of

the Athenians, who suspected them of meditating an insurrection, after

first however obtaining pledges from the Athenians, and security as far

as this was possible for their continuing to treat them as before. Thus

the winter ended, and with it ended the seventh year of this war of

which Thucydides is the historian.

In first days of the next summer there was an eclipse of the sun at the

time of new moon, and in the early part of the same month an

earthquake. Meanwhile, the Mitylenian and other Lesbian exiles set out,

for the most part from the continent, with mercenaries hired in

Peloponnese, and others levied on the spot, and took Rhoeteum, but

restored it without injury on the receipt of two thousand Phocaean

staters. After this they marched against Antandrus and took the town by

treachery, their plan being to free Antandrus and the rest of the

Actaean towns, formerly owned by Mitylene but now held by the

Athenians. Once fortified there, they would have every facility for

ship-building from the vicinity of Ida and the consequent abundance of

timber, and plenty of other supplies, and might from this base easily

ravage Lesbos, which was not far off, and make themselves masters of

the Aeolian towns on the continent.

While these were the schemes of the exiles, the Athenians in the same

summer made an expedition with sixty ships, two thousand heavy

infantry, a few cavalry, and some allied troops from Miletus and other

parts, against Cythera, under the command of Nicias, son of Niceratus,

Nicostratus, son of Diotrephes, and Autocles, son of Tolmaeus. Cythera

is an island lying off Laconia, opposite Malea; the inhabitants are

Lacedaemonians of the class of the Perioeci; and an officer called the

judge of Cythera went over to the place annually from Sparta. A

garrison of heavy infantry was also regularly sent there, and great

attention paid to the island, as it was the landing-place for the

merchantmen from Egypt and Libya, and at the same time secured Laconia

from the attacks of privateers from the sea, at the only point where it

is assailable, as the whole coast rises abruptly towards the Sicilian

and Cretan seas.

Coming to land here with their armament, the Athenians with ten ships

and two thousand Milesian heavy infantry took the town of Scandea, on

the sea; and with the rest of their forces landing on the side of the

island looking towards Malea, went against the lower town of Cythera,

where they found all the inhabitants encamped. A battle ensuing, the

Cytherians held their ground for some little while, and then turned and

fled into the upper town, where they soon afterwards capitulated to

Nicias and his colleagues, agreeing to leave their fate to the decision

of the Athenians, their lives only being safe. A correspondence had

previously been going on between Nicias and certain of the inhabitants,

which caused the surrender to be effected more speedily, and upon terms

more advantageous, present and future, for the Cytherians; who would

otherwise have been expelled by the Athenians on account of their being

Lacedaemonians and their island being so near to Laconia. After the

capitulation, the Athenians occupied the town of Scandea near the

harbour, and appointing a garrison for Cythera, sailed to Asine, Helus,

and most of the places on the sea, and making descents and passing the

night on shore at such spots as were convenient, continued ravaging the

country for about seven days.

The Lacedaemonians seeing the Athenians masters of Cythera, and

expecting descents of the kind upon their coasts, nowhere opposed them

in force, but sent garrisons here and there through the country,

consisting of as many heavy infantry as the points menaced seemed to

require, and generally stood very much upon the defensive. After the

severe and unexpected blow that had befallen them in the island, the

occupation of Pylos and Cythera, and the apparition on every side of a

war whose rapidity defied precaution, they lived in constant fear of

internal revolution, and now took the unusual step of raising four

hundred horse and a force of archers, and became more timid than ever

in military matters, finding themselves involved in a maritime

struggle, which their organization had never contemplated, and that

against Athenians, with whom an enterprise unattempted was always

looked upon as a success sacrificed. Besides this, their late numerous

reverses of fortune, coming close one upon another without any reason,

had thoroughly unnerved them, and they were always afraid of a second

disaster like that on the island, and thus scarcely dared to take the

field, but fancied that they could not stir without a blunder, for

being new to the experience of adversity they had lost all confidence

in themselves.

Accordingly they now allowed the Athenians to ravage their seaboard,

without making any movement, the garrisons in whose neighbourhood the

descents were made always thinking their numbers insufficient, and

sharing the general feeling. A single garrison which ventured to

resist, near Cotyrta and Aphrodisia, struck terror by its charge into

the scattered mob of light troops, but retreated, upon being received

by the heavy infantry, with the loss of a few men and some arms, for

which the Athenians set up a trophy, and then sailed off to Cythera.

From thence they sailed round to Epidaurus Limera, ravaged part of the

country, and so came to Thyrea in the Cynurian territory, upon the

Argive and Laconian border. This district had been given by its

Lacedaemonian owners to the expelled Aeginetans to inhabit, in return

for their good offices at the time of the earthquake and the rising of

the Helots; and also because, although subjects of Athens, they had

always sided with Lacedaemon.

While the Athenians were still at sea, the Aeginetans evacuated a fort

which they were building upon the coast, and retreated into the upper

town where they lived, rather more than a mile from the sea. One of the

Lacedaemonian district garrisons which was helping them in the work,

refused to enter here with them at their entreaty, thinking it

dangerous to shut themselves up within the wall, and retiring to the

high ground remained quiet, not considering themselves a match for the

enemy. Meanwhile the Athenians landed, and instantly advanced with all

their forces and took Thyrea. The town they burnt, pillaging what was

in it; the Aeginetans who were not slain in action they took with them

to Athens, with Tantalus, son of Patrocles, their Lacedaemonian

commander, who had been wounded and taken prisoner. They also took with

them a few men from Cythera whom they thought it safest to remove.

These the Athenians determined to lodge in the islands: the rest of the

Cytherians were to retain their lands and pay four talents tribute; the

Aeginetans captured to be all put to death, on account of the old

inveterate feud; and Tantalus to share the imprisonment of the

Lacedaemonians taken on the island.

The same summer, the inhabitants of Camarina and Gela in Sicily first

made an armistice with each other, after which embassies from all the

other Sicilian cities assembled at Gela to try to bring about a

pacification. After many expressions of opinion on one side and the

other, according to the griefs and pretensions of the different parties

complaining, Hermocrates, son of Hermon, a Syracusan, the most

influential man among them, addressed the following words to the

assembly:

“If I now address you, Sicilians, it is not because my city is the

least in Sicily or the greatest sufferer by the war, but in order to

state publicly what appears to me to be the best policy for the whole

island. That war is an evil is a proposition so familiar to every one

that it would be tedious to develop it. No one is forced to engage in

it by ignorance, or kept out of it by fear, if he fancies there is

anything to be gained by it. To the former the gain appears greater

than the danger, while the latter would rather stand the risk than put

up with any immediate sacrifice. But if both should happen to have

chosen the wrong moment for acting in this way, advice to make peace

would not be unserviceable; and this, if we did but see it, is just

what we stand most in need of at the present juncture.

“I suppose that no one will dispute that we went to war at first in

order to serve our own several interests, that we are now, in view of

the same interests, debating how we can make peace; and that if we

separate without having as we think our rights, we shall go to war

again. And yet, as men of sense, we ought to see that our separate

interests are not alone at stake in the present congress: there is also

the question whether we have still time to save Sicily, the whole of

which in my opinion is menaced by Athenian ambition; and we ought to

find in the name of that people more imperious arguments for peace than

any which I can advance, when we see the first power in Hellas watching

our mistakes with the few ships that she has at present in our waters,

and under the fair name of alliance speciously seeking to turn to

account the natural hostility that exists between us. If we go to war,

and call in to help us a people that are ready enough to carry their

arms even where they are not invited; and if we injure ourselves at our

own expense, and at the same time serve as the pioneers of their

dominion, we may expect, when they see us worn out, that they will one

day come with a larger armament, and seek to bring all of us into

subjection.

“And yet as sensible men, if we call in allies and court danger, it

should be in order to enrich our different countries with new

acquisitions, and not to ruin what they possess already; and we should

understand that the intestine discords which are so fatal to

communities generally, will be equally so to Sicily, if we, its

inhabitants, absorbed in our local quarrels, neglect the common enemy.

These considerations should reconcile individual with individual, and

city with city, and unite us in a common effort to save the whole of

Sicily. Nor should any one imagine that the Dorians only are enemies of

Athens, while the Chalcidian race is secured by its Ionian blood; the

attack in question is not inspired by hatred of one of two

nationalities, but by a desire for the good things in Sicily, the

common property of us all. This is proved by the Athenian reception of

the Chalcidian invitation: an ally who has never given them any

assistance whatever, at once receives from them almost more than the

treaty entitles him to. That the Athenians should cherish this ambition

and practise this policy is very excusable; and I do not blame those

who wish to rule, but those who are over-ready to serve. It is just as

much in men’s nature to rule those who submit to them, as it is to

resist those who molest them; one is not less invariable than the

other. Meanwhile all who see these dangers and refuse to provide for

them properly, or who have come here without having made up their minds

that our first duty is to unite to get rid of the common peril, are

mistaken. The quickest way to be rid of it is to make peace with each

other; since the Athenians menace us not from their own country, but

from that of those who invited them here. In this way instead of war

issuing in war, peace quietly ends our quarrels; and the guests who

come hither under fair pretences for bad ends, will have good reason

for going away without having attained them.

“So far as regards the Athenians, such are the great advantages proved

inherent in a wise policy. Independently of this, in the face of the

universal consent, that peace is the first of blessings, how can we

refuse to make it amongst ourselves; or do you not think that the good

which you have, and the ills that you complain of, would be better

preserved and cured by quiet than by war; that peace has its honours

and splendours of a less perilous kind, not to mention the numerous

other blessings that one might dilate on, with the not less numerous

miseries of war? These considerations should teach you not to disregard

my words, but rather to look in them every one for his own safety. If

there be any here who feels certain either by right or might to effect

his object, let not this surprise be to him too severe a

disappointment. Let him remember that many before now have tried to

chastise a wrongdoer, and failing to punish their enemy have not even

saved themselves; while many who have trusted in force to gain an

advantage, instead of gaining anything more, have been doomed to lose

what they had. Vengeance is not necessarily successful because wrong

has been done, or strength sure because it is confident; but the

incalculable element in the future exercises the widest influence, and

is the most treacherous, and yet in fact the most useful of all things,

as it frightens us all equally, and thus makes us consider before

attacking each other.

“Let us therefore now allow the undefined fear of this unknown future,

and the immediate terror of the Athenians’ presence, to produce their

natural impression, and let us consider any failure to carry out the

programmes that we may each have sketched out for ourselves as

sufficiently accounted for by these obstacles, and send away the

intruder from the country; and if everlasting peace be impossible

between us, let us at all events make a treaty for as long a term as

possible, and put off our private differences to another day. In fine,

let us recognize that the adoption of my advice will leave us each

citizens of a free state, and as such arbiters of our own destiny, able

to return good or bad offices with equal effect; while its rejection

will make us dependent on others, and thus not only impotent to repel

an insult, but on the most favourable supposition, friends to our

direst enemies, and at feud with our natural friends.

“For myself, though, as I said at first, the representative of a great

city, and able to think less of defending myself than of attacking

others, I am prepared to concede something in prevision of these

dangers. I am not inclined to ruin myself for the sake of hurting my

enemies, or so blinded by animosity as to think myself equally master

of my own plans and of fortune which I cannot command; but I am ready

to give up anything in reason. I call upon the rest of you to imitate

my conduct of your own free will, without being forced to do so by the

enemy. There is no disgrace in connections giving way to one another, a

Dorian to a Dorian, or a Chalcidian to his brethren; above and beyond

this we are neighbours, live in the same country, are girt by the same

sea, and go by the same name of Sicilians. We shall go to war again, I

suppose, when the time comes, and again make peace among ourselves by

means of future congresses; but the foreign invader, if we are wise,

will always find us united against him, since the hurt of one is the

danger of all; and we shall never, in future, invite into the island

either allies or mediators. By so acting we shall at the present moment

do for Sicily a double service, ridding her at once of the Athenians,

and of civil war, and in future shall live in freedom at home, and be

less menaced from abroad.”

Such were the words of Hermocrates. The Sicilians took his advice, and

came to an understanding among themselves to end the war, each keeping

what they had—the Camarinaeans taking Morgantina at a price fixed to be

paid to the Syracusans—and the allies of the Athenians called the

officers in command, and told them that they were going to make peace

and that they would be included in the treaty. The generals assenting,

the peace was concluded, and the Athenian fleet afterwards sailed away

from Sicily. Upon their arrival at Athens, the Athenians banished

Pythodorus and Sophocles, and fined Eurymedon for having taken bribes

to depart when they might have subdued Sicily. So thoroughly had the

present prosperity persuaded the citizens that nothing could withstand

them, and that they could achieve what was possible and impracticable

alike, with means ample or inadequate it mattered not. The secret of

this was their general extraordinary success, which made them confuse

their strength with their hopes.

The same summer the Megarians in the city, pressed by the hostilities

of the Athenians, who invaded their country twice every year with all

their forces, and harassed by the incursions of their own exiles at

Pegae, who had been expelled in a revolution by the popular party,

began to ask each other whether it would not be better to receive back

their exiles, and free the town from one of its two scourges. The

friends of the emigrants, perceiving the agitation, now more openly

than before demanded the adoption of this proposition; and the leaders

of the commons, seeing that the sufferings of the times had tired out

the constancy of their supporters, entered in their alarm into

correspondence with the Athenian generals, Hippocrates, son of

Ariphron, and Demosthenes, son of Alcisthenes, and resolved to betray

the town, thinking this less dangerous to themselves than the return of

the party which they had banished. It was accordingly arranged that the

Athenians should first take the long walls extending for nearly a mile

from the city to the port of Nisaea, to prevent the Peloponnesians

coming to the rescue from that place, where they formed the sole

garrison to secure the fidelity of Megara; and that after this the

attempt should be made to put into their hands the upper town, which it

was thought would then come over with less difficulty.

The Athenians, after plans had been arranged between themselves and

their correspondents both as to words and actions, sailed by night to

Minoa, the island off Megara, with six hundred heavy infantry under the

command of Hippocrates, and took post in a quarry not far off, out of

which bricks used to be taken for the walls; while Demosthenes, the

other commander, with a detachment of Plataean light troops and another

of Peripoli, placed himself in ambush in the precinct of Enyalius,

which was still nearer. No one knew of it, except those whose business

it was to know that night. A little before daybreak, the traitors in

Megara began to act. Every night for a long time back, under pretence

of marauding, in order to have a means of opening the gates, they had

been used, with the consent of the officer in command, to carry by

night a sculling boat upon a cart along the ditch to the sea, and so to

sail out, bringing it back again before day upon the cart, and taking

it within the wall through the gates, in order, as they pretended, to

baffle the Athenian blockade at Minoa, there being no boat to be seen

in the harbour. On the present occasion the cart was already at the

gates, which had been opened in the usual way for the boat, when the

Athenians, with whom this had been concerted, saw it, and ran at the

top of their speed from the ambush in order to reach the gates before

they were shut again, and while the cart was still there to prevent

their being closed; their Megarian accomplices at the same moment

killing the guard at the gates. The first to run in was Demosthenes

with his Plataeans and Peripoli, just where the trophy now stands; and

he was no sooner within the gates than the Plataeans engaged and

defeated the nearest party of Peloponnesians who had taken the alarm

and come to the rescue, and secured the gates for the approaching

Athenian heavy infantry.

After this, each of the Athenians as fast as they entered went against

the wall. A few of the Peloponnesian garrison stood their ground at

first, and tried to repel the assault, and some of them were killed;

but the main body took fright and fled; the night attack and the sight

of the Megarian traitors in arms against them making them think that

all Megara had gone over to the enemy. It so happened also that the

Athenian herald of his own idea called out and invited any of the

Megarians that wished, to join the Athenian ranks; and this was no

sooner heard by the garrison than they gave way, and, convinced that

they were the victims of a concerted attack, took refuge in Nisaea. By

daybreak, the walls being now taken and the Megarians in the city in

great agitation, the persons who had negotiated with the Athenians,

supported by the rest of the popular party which was privy to the plot,

said that they ought to open the gates and march out to battle. It had

been concerted between them that the Athenians should rush in, the

moment that the gates were opened, while the conspirators were to be

distinguished from the rest by being anointed with oil, and so to avoid

being hurt. They could open the gates with more security, as four

thousand Athenian heavy infantry from Eleusis, and six hundred horse,

had marched all night, according to agreement, and were now close at

hand. The conspirators were all ready anointed and at their posts by

the gates, when one of their accomplices denounced the plot to the

opposite party, who gathered together and came in a body, and roundly

said that they must not march out—a thing they had never yet ventured

on even when in greater force than at present—or wantonly compromise

the safety of the town, and that if what they said was not attended to,

the battle would have to be fought in Megara. For the rest, they gave

no signs of their knowledge of the intrigue, but stoutly maintained

that their advice was the best, and meanwhile kept close by and watched

the gates, making it impossible for the conspirators to effect their

purpose.

The Athenian generals seeing that some obstacle had arisen, and that

the capture of the town by force was no longer practicable, at once

proceeded to invest Nisaea, thinking that, if they could take it before

relief arrived, the surrender of Megara would soon follow. Iron,

stone-masons, and everything else required quickly coming up from

Athens, the Athenians started from the wall which they occupied, and

from this point built a cross wall looking towards Megara down to the

sea on either side of Nisaea; the ditch and the walls being divided

among the army, stones and bricks taken from the suburb, and the

fruit-trees and timber cut down to make a palisade wherever this seemed

necessary; the houses also in the suburb with the addition of

battlements sometimes entering into the fortification. The whole of

this day the work continued, and by the afternoon of the next the wall

was all but completed, when the garrison in Nisaea, alarmed by the

absolute want of provisions, which they used to take in for the day

from the upper town, not anticipating any speedy relief from the

Peloponnesians, and supposing Megara to be hostile, capitulated to the

Athenians on condition that they should give up their arms, and should

each be ransomed for a stipulated sum; their Lacedaemonian commander,

and any others of his countrymen in the place, being left to the

discretion of the Athenians. On these conditions they surrendered and

came out, and the Athenians broke down the long walls at their point of

junction with Megara, took possession of Nisaea, and went on with their

other preparations.

Just at this time the Lacedaemonian Brasidas, son of Tellis, happened

to be in the neighbourhood of Sicyon and Corinth, getting ready an army

for Thrace. As soon as he heard of the capture of the walls, fearing

for the Peloponnesians in Nisaea and the safety of Megara, he sent to

the Boeotians to meet him as quickly as possible at Tripodiscus, a

village so called of the Megarid, under Mount Geraneia, and went

himself, with two thousand seven hundred Corinthian heavy infantry,

four hundred Phliasians, six hundred Sicyonians, and such troops of his

own as he had already levied, expecting to find Nisaea not yet taken.

Hearing of its fall (he had marched out by night to Tripodiscus), he

took three hundred picked men from the army, without waiting till his

coming should be known, and came up to Megara unobserved by the

Athenians, who were down by the sea, ostensibly, and really if

possible, to attempt Nisaea, but above all to get into Megara and

secure the town. He accordingly invited the townspeople to admit his

party, saying that he had hopes of recovering Nisaea.

However, one of the Megarian factions feared that he might expel them

and restore the exiles; the other that the commons, apprehensive of

this very danger, might set upon them, and the city be thus destroyed

by a battle within its gates under the eyes of the ambushed Athenians.

He was accordingly refused admittance, both parties electing to remain

quiet and await the event; each expecting a battle between the

Athenians and the relieving army, and thinking it safer to see their

friends victorious before declaring in their favour.

Unable to carry his point, Brasidas went back to the rest of the army.

At daybreak the Boeotians joined him. Having determined to relieve

Megara, whose danger they considered their own, even before hearing

from Brasidas, they were already in full force at Plataea, when his

messenger arrived to add spurs to their resolution; and they at once

sent on to him two thousand two hundred heavy infantry, and six hundred

horse, returning home with the main body. The whole army thus assembled

numbered six thousand heavy infantry. The Athenian heavy infantry were

drawn up by Nisaea and the sea; but the light troops being scattered

over the plain were attacked by the Boeotian horse and driven to the

sea, being taken entirely by surprise, as on previous occasions no

relief had ever come to the Megarians from any quarter. Here the

Boeotians were in their turn charged and engaged by the Athenian horse,

and a cavalry action ensued which lasted a long time, and in which both

parties claimed the victory. The Athenians killed and stripped the

leader of the Boeotian horse and some few of his comrades who had

charged right up to Nisaea, and remaining masters of the bodies gave

them back under truce, and set up a trophy; but regarding the action as

a whole the forces separated without either side having gained a

decisive advantage, the Boeotians returning to their army and the

Athenians to Nisaea.

After this Brasidas and the army came nearer to the sea and to Megara,

and taking up a convenient position, remained quiet in order of battle,

expecting to be attacked by the Athenians and knowing that the

Megarians were waiting to see which would be the victor. This attitude

seemed to present two advantages. Without taking the offensive or

willingly provoking the hazards of a battle, they openly showed their

readiness to fight, and thus without bearing the burden of the day

would fairly reap its honours; while at the same time they effectually

served their interests at Megara. For if they had failed to show

themselves they would not have had a chance, but would have certainly

been considered vanquished, and have lost the town. As it was, the

Athenians might possibly not be inclined to accept their challenge, and

their object would be attained without fighting. And so it turned out.

The Athenians formed outside the long walls and, the enemy not

attacking, there remained motionless; their generals having decided

that the risk was too unequal. In fact most of their objects had been

already attained; and they would have to begin a battle against

superior numbers, and if victorious could only gain Megara, while a

defeat would destroy the flower of their heavy soldiery. For the enemy

it was different; as even the states actually represented in his army

risked each only a part of its entire force, he might well be more

audacious. Accordingly, after waiting for some time without either side

attacking, the Athenians withdrew to Nisaea, and the Peloponnesians

after them to the point from which they had set out. The friends of the

Megarian exiles now threw aside their hesitation, and opened the gates

to Brasidas and the commanders from the different states—looking upon

him as the victor and upon the Athenians as having declined the

battle—and receiving them into the town proceeded to discuss matters

with them; the party in correspondence with the Athenians being

paralysed by the turn things had taken.

Afterwards Brasidas let the allies go home, and himself went back to

Corinth, to prepare for his expedition to Thrace, his original

destination. The Athenians also returning home, the Megarians in the

city most implicated in the Athenian negotiation, knowing that they had

been detected, presently disappeared; while the rest conferred with the

friends of the exiles, and restored the party at Pegae, after binding

them under solemn oaths to take no vengeance for the past, and only to

consult the real interests of the town. However, as soon as they were

in office, they held a review of the heavy infantry, and separating the

battalions, picked out about a hundred of their enemies, and of those

who were thought to be most involved in the correspondence with the

Athenians, brought them before the people, and compelling the vote to

be given openly, had them condemned and executed, and established a

close oligarchy in the town—a revolution which lasted a very long

while, although effected by a very few partisans.

CHAPTER XIV

Eighth and Ninth Years of the War—Invasion of Boeotia—Fall of

Amphipolis—Brilliant Successes of Brasidas

The same summer the Mitylenians were about to fortify Antandrus, as

they had intended, when Demodocus and Aristides, the commanders of the

Athenian squadron engaged in levying subsidies, heard on the Hellespont

of what was being done to the place (Lamachus their colleague having

sailed with ten ships into the Pontus) and conceived fears of its

becoming a second Anaia-the place in which the Samian exiles had

established themselves to annoy Samos, helping the Peloponnesians by

sending pilots to their navy, and keeping the city in agitation and

receiving all its outlaws. They accordingly got together a force from

the allies and set sail, defeated in battle the troops that met them

from Antandrus, and retook the place. Not long after, Lamachus, who had

sailed into the Pontus, lost his ships at anchor in the river Calex, in

the territory of Heraclea, rain having fallen in the interior and the

flood coming suddenly down upon them; and himself and his troops passed

by land through the Bithynian Thracians on the Asiatic side, and

arrived at Chalcedon, the Megarian colony at the mouth of the Pontus.

The same summer the Athenian general, Demosthenes, arrived at Naupactus

with forty ships immediately after the return from the Megarid.

Hippocrates and himself had had overtures made to them by certain men

in the cities in Boeotia, who wished to change the constitution and

introduce a democracy as at Athens; Ptoeodorus, a Theban exile, being

the chief mover in this intrigue. The seaport town of Siphae, in the

bay of Crisae, in the Thespian territory, was to be betrayed to them by

one party; Chaeronea (a dependency of what was formerly called the

Minyan, now the Boeotian, Orchomenus) to be put into their hands by

another from that town, whose exiles were very active in the business,

hiring men in Peloponnese. Some Phocians also were in the plot,

Chaeronea being the frontier town of Boeotia and close to Phanotis in

Phocia. Meanwhile the Athenians were to seize Delium, the sanctuary of

Apollo, in the territory of Tanagra looking towards Euboea; and all

these events were to take place simultaneously upon a day appointed, in

order that the Boeotians might be unable to unite to oppose them at

Delium, being everywhere detained by disturbances at home. Should the

enterprise succeed, and Delium be fortified, its authors confidently

expected that even if no revolution should immediately follow in

Boeotia, yet with these places in their hands, and the country being

harassed by incursions, and a refuge in each instance near for the

partisans engaged in them, things would not remain as they were, but

that the rebels being supported by the Athenians and the forces of the

oligarchs divided, it would be possible after a while to settle matters

according to their wishes.

Such was the plot in contemplation. Hippocrates with a force raised at

home awaited the proper moment to take the field against the Boeotians;

while he sent on Demosthenes with the forty ships above mentioned to

Naupactus, to raise in those parts an army of Acarnanians and of the

other allies, and sail and receive Siphae from the conspirators; a day

having been agreed on for the simultaneous execution of both these

operations. Demosthenes on his arrival found Oeniadae already compelled

by the united Acarnanians to join the Athenian confederacy, and himself

raising all the allies in those countries marched against and subdued

Salynthius and the Agraeans; after which he devoted himself to the

preparations necessary to enable him to be at Siphae by the time

appointed.

About the same time in the summer, Brasidas set out on his march for

the Thracian places with seventeen hundred heavy infantry, and arriving

at Heraclea in Trachis, from thence sent on a messenger to his friends

at Pharsalus, to ask them to conduct himself and his army through the

country. Accordingly there came to Melitia in Achaia Panaerus, Dorus,

Hippolochidas, Torylaus, and Strophacus, the Chalcidian proxenus, under

whose escort he resumed his march, being accompanied also by other

Thessalians, among whom was Niconidas from Larissa, a friend of

Perdiccas. It was never very easy to traverse Thessaly without an

escort; and throughout all Hellas for an armed force to pass without

leave through a neighbour’s country was a delicate step to take.

Besides this the Thessalian people had always sympathized with the

Athenians. Indeed if instead of the customary close oligarchy there had

been a constitutional government in Thessaly, he would never have been

able to proceed; since even as it was, he was met on his march at the

river Enipeus by certain of the opposite party who forbade his further

progress, and complained of his making the attempt without the consent

of the nation. To this his escort answered that they had no intention

of taking him through against their will; they were only friends in

attendance on an unexpected visitor. Brasidas himself added that he

came as a friend to Thessaly and its inhabitants, his arms not being

directed against them but against the Athenians, with whom he was at

war, and that although he knew of no quarrel between the Thessalians

and Lacedaemonians to prevent the two nations having access to each

other’s territory, he neither would nor could proceed against their

wishes; he could only beg them not to stop him. With this answer they

went away, and he took the advice of his escort, and pushed on without

halting, before a greater force might gather to prevent him. Thus in

the day that he set out from Melitia he performed the whole distance to

Pharsalus, and encamped on the river Apidanus; and so to Phacium and

from thence to Perrhaebia. Here his Thessalian escort went back, and

the Perrhaebians, who are subjects of Thessaly, set him down at Dium in

the dominions of Perdiccas, a Macedonian town under Mount Olympus,

looking towards Thessaly.

In this way Brasidas hurried through Thessaly before any one could be

got ready to stop him, and reached Perdiccas and Chalcidice. The

departure of the army from Peloponnese had been procured by the

Thracian towns in revolt against Athens and by Perdiccas, alarmed at

the successes of the Athenians. The Chalcidians thought that they would

be the first objects of an Athenian expedition, not that the

neighbouring towns which had not yet revolted did not also secretly

join in the invitation; and Perdiccas also had his apprehensions on

account of his old quarrels with the Athenians, although not openly at

war with them, and above all wished to reduce Arrhabaeus, king of the

Lyncestians. It had been less difficult for them to get an army to

leave Peloponnese, because of the ill fortune of the Lacedaemonians at

the present moment. The attacks of the Athenians upon Peloponnese, and

in particular upon Laconia, might, it was hoped, be diverted most

effectually by annoying them in return, and by sending an army to their

allies, especially as they were willing to maintain it and asked for it

to aid them in revolting. The Lacedaemonians were also glad to have an

excuse for sending some of the Helots out of the country, for fear that

the present aspect of affairs and the occupation of Pylos might

encourage them to move. Indeed fear of their numbers and obstinacy even

persuaded the Lacedaemonians to the action which I shall now relate,

their policy at all times having been governed by the necessity of

taking precautions against them. The Helots were invited by a

proclamation to pick out those of their number who claimed to have most

distinguished themselves against the enemy, in order that they might

receive their freedom; the object being to test them, as it was thought

that the first to claim their freedom would be the most high-spirited

and the most apt to rebel. As many as two thousand were selected

accordingly, who crowned themselves and went round the temples,

rejoicing in their new freedom. The Spartans, however, soon afterwards

did away with them, and no one ever knew how each of them perished. The

Spartans now therefore gladly sent seven hundred as heavy infantry with

Brasidas, who recruited the rest of his force by means of money in

Peloponnese.

Brasidas himself was sent out by the Lacedaemonians mainly at his own

desire, although the Chalcidians also were eager to have a man so

thorough as he had shown himself whenever there was anything to be done

at Sparta, and whose after-service abroad proved of the utmost use to

his country. At the present moment his just and moderate conduct

towards the towns generally succeeded in procuring their revolt,

besides the places which he managed to take by treachery; and thus when

the Lacedaemonians desired to treat, as they ultimately did, they had

places to offer in exchange, and the burden of war meanwhile shifted

from Peloponnese. Later on in the war, after the events in Sicily, the

present valour and conduct of Brasidas, known by experience to some, by

hearsay to others, was what mainly created in the allies of Athens a

feeling for the Lacedaemonians. He was the first who went out and

showed himself so good a man at all points as to leave behind him the

conviction that the rest were like him.

Meanwhile his arrival in the Thracian country no sooner became known to

the Athenians than they declared war against Perdiccas, whom they

regarded as the author of the expedition, and kept a closer watch on

their allies in that quarter.

Upon the arrival of Brasidas and his army, Perdiccas immediately

started with them and with his own forces against Arrhabaeus, son of

Bromerus, king of the Lyncestian Macedonians, his neighbour, with whom

he had a quarrel and whom he wished to subdue. However, when he arrived

with his army and Brasidas at the pass leading into Lyncus, Brasidas

told him that before commencing hostilities he wished to go and try to

persuade Arrhabaeus to become the ally of Lacedaemon, this latter

having already made overtures intimating his willingness to make

Brasidas arbitrator between them, and the Chalcidian envoys

accompanying him having warned him not to remove the apprehensions of

Perdiccas, in order to ensure his greater zeal in their cause. Besides,

the envoys of Perdiccas had talked at Lacedaemon about his bringing

many of the places round him into alliance with them; and thus Brasidas

thought he might take a larger view of the question of Arrhabaeus.

Perdiccas however retorted that he had not brought him with him to

arbitrate in their quarrel, but to put down the enemies whom he might

point out to him; and that while he, Perdiccas, maintained half his

army it was a breach of faith for Brasidas to parley with Arrhabaeus.

Nevertheless Brasidas disregarded the wishes of Perdiccas and held the

parley in spite of him, and suffered himself to be persuaded to lead

off the army without invading the country of Arrhabaeus; after which

Perdiccas, holding that faith had not been kept with him, contributed

only a third instead of half of the support of the army.

The same summer, without loss of time, Brasidas marched with the

Chalcidians against Acanthus, a colony of the Andrians, a little before

vintage. The inhabitants were divided into two parties on the question

of receiving him; those who had joined the Chalcidians in inviting him,

and the popular party. However, fear for their fruit, which was still

out, enabled Brasidas to persuade the multitude to admit him alone, and

to hear what he had to say before making a decision; and he was

admitted accordingly and appeared before the people, and not being a

bad speaker for a Lacedaemonian, addressed them as follows:

“Acanthians, the Lacedaemonians have sent out me and my army to make

good the reason that we gave for the war when we began it, viz., that

we were going to war with the Athenians in order to free Hellas. Our

delay in coming has been caused by mistaken expectations as to the war

at home, which led us to hope, by our own unassisted efforts and

without your risking anything, to effect the speedy downfall of the

Athenians; and you must not blame us for this, as we are now come the

moment that we were able, prepared with your aid to do our best to

subdue them. Meanwhile I am astonished at finding your gates shut

against me, and at not meeting with a better welcome. We Lacedaemonians

thought of you as allies eager to have us, to whom we should come in

spirit even before we were with you in body; and in this expectation

undertook all the risks of a march of many days through a strange

country, so far did our zeal carry us. It will be a terrible thing if

after this you have other intentions, and mean to stand in the way of

your own and Hellenic freedom. It is not merely that you oppose me

yourselves; but wherever I may go people will be less inclined to join

me, on the score that you, to whom I first came—an important town like

Acanthus, and prudent men like the Acanthians—refused to admit me. I

shall have nothing to prove that the reason which I advance is the true

one; it will be said either that there is something unfair in the

freedom which I offer, or that I am in insufficient force and unable to

protect you against an attack from Athens. Yet when I went with the

army which I now have to the relief of Nisaea, the Athenians did not

venture to engage me although in greater force than I; and it is not

likely they will ever send across sea against you an army as numerous

as they had at Nisaea. And for myself, I have come here not to hurt but

to free the Hellenes, witness the solemn oaths by which I have bound my

government that the allies that I may bring over shall be independent;

and besides my object in coming is not by force or fraud to obtain your

alliance, but to offer you mine to help you against your Athenian

masters. I protest, therefore, against any suspicions of my intentions

after the guarantees which I offer, and equally so against doubts of my

ability to protect you, and I invite you to join me without hesitation.

“Some of you may hang back because they have private enemies, and fear

that I may put the city into the hands of a party: none need be more

tranquil than they. I am not come here to help this party or that; and

I do not consider that I should be bringing you freedom in any real

sense, if I should disregard your constitution, and enslave the many to

the few or the few to the many. This would be heavier than a foreign

yoke; and we Lacedaemonians, instead of being thanked for our pains,

should get neither honour nor glory, but, contrariwise, reproaches. The

charges which strengthen our hands in the war against the Athenians

would on our own showing be merited by ourselves, and more hateful in

us than in those who make no pretensions to honesty; as it is more

disgraceful for persons of character to take what they covet by

fair-seeming fraud than by open force; the one aggression having for

its justification the might which fortune gives, the other being simply

a piece of clever roguery. A matter which concerns us thus nearly we

naturally look to most jealously; and over and above the oaths that I

have mentioned, what stronger assurance can you have, when you see that

our words, compared with the actual facts, produce the necessary

conviction that it is our interest to act as we say?

“If to these considerations of mine you put in the plea of inability,

and claim that your friendly feeling should save you from being hurt by

your refusal; if you say that freedom, in your opinion, is not without

its dangers, and that it is right to offer it to those who can accept

it, but not to force it on any against their will, then I shall take

the gods and heroes of your country to witness that I came for your

good and was rejected, and shall do my best to compel you by laying

waste your land. I shall do so without scruple, being justified by the

necessity which constrains me, first, to prevent the Lacedaemonians

from being damaged by you, their friends, in the event of your

nonadhesion, through the moneys that you pay to the Athenians; and

secondly, to prevent the Hellenes from being hindered by you in shaking

off their servitude. Otherwise indeed we should have no right to act as

we propose; except in the name of some public interest, what call

should we Lacedaemonians have to free those who do not wish it? Empire

we do not aspire to: it is what we are labouring to put down; and we

should wrong the greater number if we allowed you to stand in the way

of the independence that we offer to all. Endeavour, therefore, to

decide wisely, and strive to begin the work of liberation for the

Hellenes, and lay up for yourselves endless renown, while you escape

private loss, and cover your commonwealth with glory.”

Such were the words of Brasidas. The Acanthians, after much had been

said on both sides of the question, gave their votes in secret, and the

majority, influenced by the seductive arguments of Brasidas and by fear

for their fruit, decided to revolt from Athens; not however admitting

the army until they had taken his personal security for the oaths sworn

by his government before they sent him out, assuring the independence

of the allies whom he might bring over. Not long after, Stagirus, a

colony of the Andrians, followed their example and revolted.

Such were the events of this summer. It was in the first days of the

winter following that the places in Boeotia were to be put into the

hands of the Athenian generals, Hippocrates and Demosthenes, the latter

of whom was to go with his ships to Siphae, the former to Delium. A

mistake, however, was made in the days on which they were each to

start; and Demosthenes, sailing first to Siphae, with the Acarnanians

and many of the allies from those parts on board, failed to effect

anything, through the plot having been betrayed by Nicomachus, a

Phocian from Phanotis, who told the Lacedaemonians, and they the

Boeotians. Succours accordingly flocked in from all parts of Boeotia,

Hippocrates not being yet there to make his diversion, and Siphae and

Chaeronea were promptly secured, and the conspirators, informed of the

mistake, did not venture on any movement in the towns.

Meanwhile Hippocrates made a levy in mass of the citizens, resident

aliens, and foreigners in Athens, and arrived at his destination after

the Boeotians had already come back from Siphae, and encamping his army

began to fortify Delium, the sanctuary of Apollo, in the following

manner. A trench was dug all round the temple and the consecrated

ground, and the earth thrown up from the excavation was made to do duty

as a wall, in which stakes were also planted, the vines round the

sanctuary being cut down and thrown in, together with stones and bricks

pulled down from the houses near; every means, in short, being used to

run up the rampart. Wooden towers were also erected where they were

wanted, and where there was no part of the temple buildings left

standing, as on the side where the gallery once existing had fallen in.

The work was begun on the third day after leaving home, and continued

during the fourth, and till dinnertime on the fifth, when most of it

being now finished the army removed from Delium about a mile and a

quarter on its way home. From this point most of the light troops went

straight on, while the heavy infantry halted and remained where they

were; Hippocrates having stayed behind at Delium to arrange the posts,

and to give directions for the completion of such part of the outworks

as had been left unfinished.

During the days thus employed the Boeotians were mustering at Tanagra,

and by the time that they had come in from all the towns, found the

Athenians already on their way home. The rest of the eleven Boeotarchs

were against giving battle, as the enemy was no longer in Boeotia, the

Athenians being just over the Oropian border, when they halted; but

Pagondas, son of Aeolidas, one of the Boeotarchs of Thebes

(Arianthides, son of Lysimachidas, being the other), and then

commander-in-chief, thought it best to hazard a battle. He accordingly

called the men to him, company after company, to prevent their all

leaving their arms at once, and urged them to attack the Athenians, and

stand the issue of a battle, speaking as follows:

“Boeotians, the idea that we ought not to give battle to the Athenians,

unless we came up with them in Boeotia, is one which should never have

entered into the head of any of us, your generals. It was to annoy

Boeotia that they crossed the frontier and built a fort in our country;

and they are therefore, I imagine, our enemies wherever we may come up

with them, and from wheresoever they may have come to act as enemies

do. And if any one has taken up with the idea in question for reasons

of safety, it is high time for him to change his mind. The party

attacked, whose own country is in danger, can scarcely discuss what is

prudent with the calmness of men who are in full enjoyment of what they

have got, and are thinking of attacking a neighbour in order to get

more. It is your national habit, in your country or out of it, to

oppose the same resistance to a foreign invader; and when that invader

is Athenian, and lives upon your frontier besides, it is doubly

imperative to do so. As between neighbours generally, freedom means

simply a determination to hold one’s own; and with neighbours like

these, who are trying to enslave near and far alike, there is nothing

for it but to fight it out to the last. Look at the condition of the

Euboeans and of most of the rest of Hellas, and be convinced that

others have to fight with their neighbours for this frontier or that,

but that for us conquest means one frontier for the whole country,

about which no dispute can be made, for they will simply come and take

by force what we have. So much more have we to fear from this neighbour

than from another. Besides, people who, like the Athenians in the

present instance, are tempted by pride of strength to attack their

neighbours, usually march most confidently against those who keep

still, and only defend themselves in their own country, but think twice

before they grapple with those who meet them outside their frontier and

strike the first blow if opportunity offers. The Athenians have shown

us this themselves; the defeat which we inflicted upon them at Coronea,

at the time when our quarrels had allowed them to occupy the country,

has given great security to Boeotia until the present day. Remembering

this, the old must equal their ancient exploits, and the young, the

sons of the heroes of that time, must endeavour not to disgrace their

native valour; and trusting in the help of the god whose temple has

been sacrilegiously fortified, and in the victims which in our

sacrifices have proved propitious, we must march against the enemy, and

teach him that he must go and get what he wants by attacking someone

who will not resist him, but that men whose glory it is to be always

ready to give battle for the liberty of their own country, and never

unjustly to enslave that of others, will not let him go without a

struggle.”

By these arguments Pagondas persuaded the Boeotians to attack the

Athenians, and quickly breaking up his camp led his army forward, it

being now late in the day. On nearing the enemy, he halted in a

position where a hill intervening prevented the two armies from seeing

each other, and then formed and prepared for action. Meanwhile

Hippocrates at Delium, informed of the approach of the Boeotians, sent

orders to his troops to throw themselves into line, and himself joined

them not long afterwards, leaving about three hundred horse behind him

at Delium, at once to guard the place in case of attack, and to watch

their opportunity and fall upon the Boeotians during the battle. The

Boeotians placed a detachment to deal with these, and when everything

was arranged to their satisfaction appeared over the hill, and halted

in the order which they had determined on, to the number of seven

thousand heavy infantry, more than ten thousand light troops, one

thousand horse, and five hundred targeteers. On their right were the

Thebans and those of their province, in the centre the Haliartians,

Coronaeans, Copaeans, and the other people around the lake, and on the

left the Thespians, Tanagraeans, and Orchomenians, the cavalry and the

light troops being at the extremity of each wing. The Thebans formed

twenty-five shields deep, the rest as they pleased. Such was the

strength and disposition of the Boeotian army.

On the side of the Athenians, the heavy infantry throughout the whole

army formed eight deep, being in numbers equal to the enemy, with the

cavalry upon the two wings. Light troops regularly armed there were

none in the army, nor had there ever been any at Athens. Those who had

joined in the invasion, though many times more numerous than those of

the enemy, had mostly followed unarmed, as part of the levy in mass of

the citizens and foreigners at Athens, and having started first on

their way home were not present in any number. The armies being now in

line and upon the point of engaging, Hippocrates, the general, passed

along the Athenian ranks, and encouraged them as follows:

“Athenians, I shall only say a few words to you, but brave men require

no more, and they are addressed more to your understanding than to your

courage. None of you must fancy that we are going out of our way to run

this risk in the country of another. Fought in their territory the

battle will be for ours: if we conquer, the Peloponnesians will never

invade your country without the Boeotian horse, and in one battle you

will win Boeotia and in a manner free Attica. Advance to meet them then

like citizens of a country in which you all glory as the first in

Hellas, and like sons of the fathers who beat them at Oenophyta with

Myronides and thus gained possession of Boeotia.”

Hippocrates had got half through the army with his exhortation, when

the Boeotians, after a few more hasty words from Pagondas, struck up

the paean, and came against them from the hill; the Athenians advancing

to meet them, and closing at a run. The extreme wing of neither army

came into action, one like the other being stopped by the water-courses

in the way; the rest engaged with the utmost obstinacy, shield against

shield. The Boeotian left, as far as the centre, was worsted by the

Athenians. The Thespians in that part of the field suffered most

severely. The troops alongside them having given way, they were

surrounded in a narrow space and cut down fighting hand to hand; some

of the Athenians also fell into confusion in surrounding the enemy and

mistook and so killed each other. In this part of the field the

Boeotians were beaten, and retreated upon the troops still fighting;

but the right, where the Thebans were, got the better of the Athenians

and shoved them further and further back, though gradually at first. It

so happened also that Pagondas, seeing the distress of his left, had

sent two squadrons of horse, where they could not be seen, round the

hill, and their sudden appearance struck a panic into the victorious

wing of the Athenians, who thought that it was another army coming

against them. At length in both parts of the field, disturbed by this

panic, and with their line broken by the advancing Thebans, the whole

Athenian army took to flight. Some made for Delium and the sea, some

for Oropus, others for Mount Parnes, or wherever they had hopes of

safety, pursued and cut down by the Boeotians, and in particular by the

cavalry, composed partly of Boeotians and partly of Locrians, who had

come up just as the rout began. Night however coming on to interrupt

the pursuit, the mass of the fugitives escaped more easily than they

would otherwise have done. The next day the troops at Oropus and Delium

returned home by sea, after leaving a garrison in the latter place,

which they continued to hold notwithstanding the defeat.

The Boeotians set up a trophy, took up their own dead, and stripped

those of the enemy, and leaving a guard over them retired to Tanagra,

there to take measures for attacking Delium. Meanwhile a herald came

from the Athenians to ask for the dead, but was met and turned back by

a Boeotian herald, who told him that he would effect nothing until the

return of himself the Boeotian herald, and who then went on to the

Athenians, and told them on the part of the Boeotians that they had

done wrong in transgressing the law of the Hellenes. Of what use was

the universal custom protecting the temples in an invaded country, if

the Athenians were to fortify Delium and live there, acting exactly as

if they were on unconsecrated ground, and drawing and using for their

purposes the water which they, the Boeotians, never touched except for

sacred uses? Accordingly for the god as well as for themselves, in the

name of the deities concerned, and of Apollo, the Boeotians invited

them first to evacuate the temple, if they wished to take up the dead

that belonged to them.

After these words from the herald, the Athenians sent their own herald

to the Boeotians to say that they had not done any wrong to the temple,

and for the future would do it no more harm than they could help; not

having occupied it originally in any such design, but to defend

themselves from it against those who were really wronging them. The law

of the Hellenes was that conquest of a country, whether more or less

extensive, carried with it possession of the temples in that country,

with the obligation to keep up the usual ceremonies, at least as far as

possible. The Boeotians and most other people who had turned out the

owners of a country, and put themselves in their places by force, now

held as of right the temples which they originally entered as usurpers.

If the Athenians could have conquered more of Boeotia this would have

been the case with them: as things stood, the piece of it which they

had got they should treat as their own, and not quit unless obliged.

The water they had disturbed under the impulsion of a necessity which

they had not wantonly incurred, having been forced to use it in

defending themselves against the Boeotians who first invaded Attica.

Besides, anything done under the pressure of war and danger might

reasonably claim indulgence even in the eye of the god; or why, pray,

were the altars the asylum for involuntary offences? Transgression also

was a term applied to presumptuous offenders, not to the victims of

adverse circumstances. In short, which were most impious—the Boeotians

who wished to barter dead bodies for holy places, or the Athenians who

refused to give up holy places to obtain what was theirs by right? The

condition of evacuating Boeotia must therefore be withdrawn. They were

no longer in Boeotia. They stood where they stood by the right of the

sword. All that the Boeotians had to do was to tell them to take up

their dead under a truce according to the national custom.

The Boeotians replied that if they were in Boeotia, they must evacuate

that country before taking up their dead; if they were in their own

territory, they could do as they pleased: for they knew that, although

the Oropid where the bodies as it chanced were lying (the battle having

been fought on the borders) was subject to Athens, yet the Athenians

could not get them without their leave. Besides, why should they grant

a truce for Athenian ground? And what could be fairer than to tell them

to evacuate Boeotia if they wished to get what they asked? The Athenian

herald accordingly returned with this answer, without having

accomplished his object.

Meanwhile the Boeotians at once sent for darters and slingers from the

Malian Gulf, and with two thousand Corinthian heavy infantry who had

joined them after the battle, the Peloponnesian garrison which had

evacuated Nisaea, and some Megarians with them, marched against Delium,

and attacked the fort, and after divers efforts finally succeeded in

taking it by an engine of the following description. They sawed in two

and scooped out a great beam from end to end, and fitting it nicely

together again like a pipe, hung by chains a cauldron at one extremity,

with which communicated an iron tube projecting from the beam, which

was itself in great part plated with iron. This they brought up from a

distance upon carts to the part of the wall principally composed of

vines and timber, and when it was near, inserted huge bellows into

their end of the beam and blew with them. The blast passing closely

confined into the cauldron, which was filled with lighted coals,

sulphur and pitch, made a great blaze, and set fire to the wall, which

soon became untenable for its defenders, who left it and fled; and in

this way the fort was taken. Of the garrison some were killed and two

hundred made prisoners; most of the rest got on board their ships and

returned home.

Soon after the fall of Delium, which took place seventeen days after

the battle, the Athenian herald, without knowing what had happened,

came again for the dead, which were now restored by the Boeotians, who

no longer answered as at first. Not quite five hundred Boeotians fell

in the battle, and nearly one thousand Athenians, including Hippocrates

the general, besides a great number of light troops and camp followers.

Soon after this battle Demosthenes, after the failure of his voyage to

Siphae and of the plot on the town, availed himself of the Acarnanian

and Agraean troops and of the four hundred Athenian heavy infantry

which he had on board, to make a descent on the Sicyonian coast. Before

however all his ships had come to shore, the Sicyonians came up and

routed and chased to their ships those that had landed, killing some

and taking others prisoners; after which they set up a trophy, and gave

back the dead under truce.

About the same time with the affair of Delium took place the death of

Sitalces, king of the Odrysians, who was defeated in battle, in a

campaign against the Triballi; Seuthes, son of Sparadocus, his nephew,

succeeding to the kingdom of the Odrysians, and of the rest of Thrace

ruled by Sitalces.

The same winter Brasidas, with his allies in the Thracian places,

marched against Amphipolis, the Athenian colony on the river Strymon. A

settlement upon the spot on which the city now stands was before

attempted by Aristagoras, the Milesian (when he fled from King Darius),

who was however dislodged by the Edonians; and thirty-two years later

by the Athenians, who sent thither ten thousand settlers of their own

citizens, and whoever else chose to go. These were cut off at Drabescus

by the Thracians. Twenty-nine years after, the Athenians returned

(Hagnon, son of Nicias, being sent out as leader of the colony) and

drove out the Edonians, and founded a town on the spot, formerly called

Ennea Hodoi or Nine Ways. The base from which they started was Eion,

their commercial seaport at the mouth of the river, not more than three

miles from the present town, which Hagnon named Amphipolis, because the

Strymon flows round it on two sides, and he built it so as to be

conspicuous from the sea and land alike, running a long wall across

from river to river, to complete the circumference.

Brasidas now marched against this town, starting from Arne in

Chalcidice. Arriving about dusk at Aulon and Bromiscus, where the lake

of Bolbe runs into the sea, he supped there, and went on during the

night. The weather was stormy and it was snowing a little, which

encouraged him to hurry on, in order, if possible, to take every one at

Amphipolis by surprise, except the party who were to betray it. The

plot was carried on by some natives of Argilus, an Andrian colony,

residing in Amphipolis, where they had also other accomplices gained

over by Perdiccas or the Chalcidians. But the most active in the matter

were the inhabitants of Argilus itself, which is close by, who had

always been suspected by the Athenians, and had had designs on the

place. These men now saw their opportunity arrive with Brasidas, and

having for some time been in correspondence with their countrymen in

Amphipolis for the betrayal of the town, at once received him into

Argilus, and revolted from the Athenians, and that same night took him

on to the bridge over the river; where he found only a small guard to

oppose him, the town being at some distance from the passage, and the

walls not reaching down to it as at present. This guard he easily drove

in, partly through there being treason in their ranks, partly from the

stormy state of the weather and the suddenness of his attack, and so

got across the bridge, and immediately became master of all the

property outside; the Amphipolitans having houses all over the quarter.

The passage of Brasidas was a complete surprise to the people in the

town; and the capture of many of those outside, and the flight of the

rest within the wall, combined to produce great confusion among the

citizens; especially as they did not trust one another. It is even said

that if Brasidas, instead of stopping to pillage, had advanced straight

against the town, he would probably have taken it. In fact, however, he

established himself where he was and overran the country outside, and

for the present remained inactive, vainly awaiting a demonstration on

the part of his friends within. Meanwhile the party opposed to the

traitors proved numerous enough to prevent the gates being immediately

thrown open, and in concert with Eucles, the general, who had come from

Athens to defend the place, sent to the other commander in Thrace,

Thucydides, son of Olorus, the author of this history, who was at the

isle of Thasos, a Parian colony, half a day’s sail from Amphipolis, to

tell him to come to their relief. On receipt of this message he at once

set sail with seven ships which he had with him, in order, if possible,

to reach Amphipolis in time to prevent its capitulation, or in any case

to save Eion.

Meanwhile Brasidas, afraid of succours arriving by sea from Thasos, and

learning that Thucydides possessed the right of working the gold mines

in that part of Thrace, and had thus great influence with the

inhabitants of the continent, hastened to gain the town, if possible,

before the people of Amphipolis should be encouraged by his arrival to

hope that he could save them by getting together a force of allies from

the sea and from Thrace, and so refuse to surrender. He accordingly

offered moderate terms, proclaiming that any of the Amphipolitans and

Athenians who chose, might continue to enjoy their property with full

rights of citizenship; while those who did not wish to stay had five

days to depart, taking their property with them.