"The Romans knew not, and could not know, how deeply the
greatness of their own posterity, and the fate of the whole
Western world, were involved in the destruction of the fleet of
Athens in the harbour of Syracuse. Had that great expedition
proved victorious, the energies of Greece during the next
eventful century would have found their field in the West no less
than in the East; Greece, and not Rome, might have conquered
Carthage; Greek instead of Latin might have been at this day the
principal element of the language of Spain, of France, and of
Italy; and the laws of Athens, rather than of Rome, might be the
foundation of the law of the civilized world."--ARNOLD.
"The great expedition to Sicily, one of the most decisive events in
the history of the world."--NIEBUHR.
Few cities have undergone more memorable sieges during ancient and
mediaeval times, than has the city of Syracuse. Athenian, Carthaginian,
Roman, Vandal, Byzantine, Saracen, and Norman, have in turns beleaguered
her walls; and the resistance which she successfully opposed to some
of her early assailants was of the deepest importance, not only to the
fortunes of the generations then in being, but to all the subsequent
current of human events. To adopt the eloquent expressions of Arnold
respecting the check which she gave to the Carthaginian arms, "Syracuse
was a breakwater, which God's providence raised up to protect the yet
immature strength of Rome." And her triumphant repulse of the great
Athenian expedition against her was of even more wide-spread and
enduring importance. It forms a decisive epoch in the strife
for universal empire, in which all the great states of antiquity
successively engaged and failed.
The present city of Syracuse is a place of little or no military
strength, as the fire of artillery from the neighbouring heights would
almost completely command it. But in ancient warfare its position, and
the care bestowed on its walls, rendered it formidably strong against
the means of offence which then were employed by besieging armies.
The ancient city, in the time of the Peloponnesian war, was chiefly
built on the knob of land which projects into the sea on the eastern
coast of Sicily, between two bays; one of which, to the north, was
called the bay of Thapsus, while the southern one formed the great
harbour of the city of Syracuse itself. A small island, or peninsula
(for such it soon was rendered), lies at the south-eastern extremity of
this knob of land, stretching almost entirely across the mouth of
the great harbour, and rendering it nearly land-locked. This island
comprised the original settlement of the first Greek colonists from
Corinth, who founded Syracuse two thousand five hundred years ago; and
the modern city has shrunk again into these primary limits. But, in the
fifth century before our era, the growing wealth and population of the
Syracusans had led them to occupy and include within their city walls
portion after portion of the mainland lying next to the little isle; so
that at the time of the Athenian expedition the seaward part of the land
between the two bays already spoken of was built over, and fortified
from bay to bay; constituting the larger part of Syracuse.
The landward wall, therefore, of the city traversed this knob of land,
which continues to slope upwards from the sea, and which to the west of
the old fortifications (that is, towards the interior of Sicily)
rises rapidly for a mile or two, but diminishes in width, and finally
terminates in a long narrow ridge, between which and Mount Hybla a
succession of chasms and uneven low ground extend. On each flank of
this ridge the descent is steep and precipitous from its summits to
the strips of level land that lie immediately below it, both to the
south-west and north-west.
The usual mode of assailing fortified towns in the time of the
Peloponnesian war, was to build a double wall round them, sufficiently
strong to check any sally of the garrison from within, or any attack of
a relieving force from without. The interval within the two walls of
the circumvallation was roofed over, and formed barracks, in which
the besiegers posted themselves, and awaited the effects of want or
treachery among the besieged in producing a surrender. And, in every
Greek city of those days, as in every Italian republic of the middle
ages, the rage of domestic sedition between aristocrats and democrats
ran high. Rancorous refugees swarmed in the camp of every invading
enemy; and every blockaded city was sure to contain within its walls
a body of intriguing malcontents, who were eager to purchase a
party-triumph at the expense of a national disaster. Famine and faction
were the allies on whom besiegers relied. The generals of that time
trusted to the operation of these sure confederates as soon as they
could establish a complete blockade. They rarely ventured on the attempt
to storm any fortified post. For the military engines of antiquity were
feeble in breaching masonry, before the improvements which the first
Dionysius effected in the mechanics of destruction; and the lives of
spearmen the boldest and most highly-trained would, of course, have been
idly spent in charges against unshattered walls.
A city built, close to the sea, like Syracuse, was impregnable, save
by the combined operations of a superior hostile fleet and a superior
hostile army. And Syracuse, from her size, her population, and her
military and naval resources, not unnaturally thought herself secure
from finding in another Greek city a foe capable of sending a sufficient
armament to menace her with capture and subjection. But in the spring of
414 B.C. the Athenian navy was mistress of her harbour and the adjacent
seas; an Athenian army had defeated her troops, and cooped them within
the town; and from bay to bay a blockading wall was being rapidly
carried across the strips of level ground and the high ridge outside
the city (then termed Epipolae), which, if completed, would have cut the
Syracusans off from all succour from the interior of Sicily, and have
left them at the mercy of the Athenian generals. The besiegers' works
were, indeed, unfinished; but every day the unfortified interval in
their lines grew narrower, and with it diminished all apparent hope of
safety for the beleaguered town.
Athens was now staking the flower of her forces, and the accumulated
fruits of seventy years of glory, on one bold throw for the dominion of
the Western world. As Napoleon from Mount Coeur de Lion pointed to St.
Jean d'Acre, and told his staff that the capture of that town would
decide his destiny, and would change the face of the world; so the
Athenian officers, from the heights of Epipolae, must have looked on
Syracuse, and felt that with its fall all the known powers of the
earth would fall beneath them. They must have felt also that Athens, if
repulsed there, must pause for ever in her career of conquest, and sink
from an imperial republic into a ruined and subservient community.
At Marathon, the first in date of the Great Battles of the World, we
beheld Athens struggling for self-preservation against the invading
armies of the East. At Syracuse she appears as the ambitious and
oppressive invader of others. In her, as in other republics of old
and of modern times, the same energy that had inspired the most heroic
efforts in defence of the national independence, soon learned to employ
itself in daring and unscrupulous schemes of self-aggrandizement at the
expense of neighbouring nations. In the interval between the Persian and
Peloponnesian wars she had rapidly grown into a conquering and dominant
state, the chief of a thousand tributary cities, and the mistress of the
largest and best-manned navy that the Mediterranean had yet beheld.
The occupations of her territory by Xerxes and Mardonius, in the second
Persian war, had forced her whole population to become mariners; and the
glorious results of that struggle confirmed them in their zeal for their
country's service at sea. The voluntary suffrage of the Greek cities of
the coasts and islands of the AEgean first placed Athens at the head of
the confederation formed for the further prosecution of the war against
Persia. But this titular ascendancy was soon converted by her into
practical and arbitrary dominion. She protected them from piracy and
the Persian power, which soon fell into decrepitude and decay; but
she exacted in return implicit obedience to herself. She claimed and
enforced a prerogative of taxing them at her discretion; and proudly
refused to be accountable for her mode of expending their supplies.
Remonstrance against her assessments was treated as factious disloyalty;
and refusal to pay was promptly punished as revolt. Permitting and
encouraging her subject allies to furnish all their contingents in
money, instead of part consisting of ships and men, the sovereign
republic gained the double object of training her own citizens by
constant and well-paid service in her fleets, and of seeing her
confederates lose their skill and discipline by inaction, and become
more and more passive and powerless under her yoke. Their towns were
generally dismantled; while the imperial city herself was fortified with
the greatest care and sumptuousness: the accumulated revenues from her
tributaries serving to strengthen and adorn to the utmost her havens,
her docks, her arsenals, her theatres, and her shrines; and to array
her in that plenitude of architectural magnificence, the ruins of which
still attest the intellectual grandeur of the age and people, which
produced a Pericles to plan and a Phidias to execute.
All republics that acquire supremacy over other nations, rule them
selfishly and oppressively. There is no exception to this in either
ancient or modern times. Carthage, Rome, Venice, Genoa, Florence, Pisa,
Holland, and Republican France, all tyrannized over every province
and subject state where they gained authority. But none of them openly
avowed their system of doing so upon principle, with the candour which
the Athenian republicans displayed, when any remonstrance was made
against the severe exactions which they imposed upon their vassal
allies. They avowed that their empire was a tyranny, and frankly stated
that they solely trusted to force and terror to uphold it. They appealed
to what they called "the eternal law of nature, that the weak should be
coerced by the strong." [THUC. i. 77.] Sometimes they stated, and not
without some truth, that the unjust hatred of Sparta against themselves
forced them to be unjust to others in self-defence. To be safe they
must be powerful; and to be powerful they must plunder and coerce their
neighbours. They never dreamed of communicating any franchise, or share
in office, to their dependents; but jealously monopolized every post of
command, and all political and judicial power; exposing themselves to
every risk with unflinching gallantry; enduring cheerfully the laborious
training and severe discipline which their sea-service required;
venturing readily on every ambitious scheme; and never suffering
difficulty or disaster to shake their tenacity of purpose. Their hope
was to acquire unbounded empire for their country, and the means
of maintaining each of the thirty thousand citizens who made up the
sovereign republic, in exclusive devotion to military occupations, and
to those brilliant sciences and arts in which Athens already had reached
the meridian of intellectual splendour.
Her great political, dramatist speaks of the Athenian empire as
comprehending a thousand states. The language of the stage must not be
taken too literally; but the number of the dependencies of Athens,
at the time when the Peloponnesian confederacy attacked her, was
undoubtedly very great. With a few trifling exceptions, all the islands
of the AEgean, and all the Greek cities, which in that age fringed the
coasts of Asia Minor, the Hellespont, and Thrace paid tribute to Athens,
and implicitly obeyed her orders. The AEgean Sea was an Attic lake.
Westward of Greece, her influence though strong, was not equally
predominant. She had colonies and allies among the wealthy and populous
Greek settlements in Sicily and South Italy, but she had no organized
system of confederates in those regions; and her galleys brought her no
tribute from the western seas. The extension of her empire over Sicily
was the favourite project of her ambitious orators and generals. While
her great statesman Pericles lived, his commanding genius kept his
countrymen under control and forbade them to risk the fortunes of Athens
in distant enterprises, while they had unsubdued and powerful enemies at
their own doors. He taught Athens this maxim; but he also taught her
to know and to use her own strength, and when Pericles had departed the
bold spirit which he had fostered overleaped the salutary limits which
he had prescribed. When her bitter enemies, the Corinthians, succeeded,
in 431 B.C., in inducing Sparta to attack her, and a confederacy was
formed of five-sixths of the continental Greeks, all animated by anxious
jealousy and bitter hatred of Athens; when armies far superior in
numbers and equipment to those which had marched against the Persians
were poured into the Athenian territory, and laid it waste to the city
walls; the general opinion was that Athens would, in two or three
years at the farthest, be reduced to submit to the requisitions of
her invaders. But her strong fortifications, by which she was girt and
linked to her principal haven, gave her, in those ages, almost all the
advantages of an insular position. Pericles had made her trust to her
empire of the seas. Every Athenian in those days was a practised seaman.
A state indeed whose members, of an age fit for service, at no time
exceeded thirty thousand, and whose territorial extent did not equal
half Sussex, could only have acquired such a naval dominion as Athens
once held, by devoting, and zealously training, all its sons to service
in its fleets. In order to man the numerous galleys which she sent out,
she necessarily employed also large numbers of hired mariners and slaves
at the oar; but the staple of her crews was Athenian, and all posts of
command were held by native citizens. It was by reminding them of this,
of their long practice in seamanship, and the certain superiority which
their discipline gave them over the enemy's marine, that their great
minister mainly encouraged them to resist the combined power of
Lacedaemon and her allies. He taught them that Athens might thus reap
the fruit of her zealous devotion to maritime affairs ever since the
invasion of the Medes; "she had not, indeed, perfected herself; but
the reward of her superior training was the rule of the sea--a mighty
dominion, for it gave her the rule of much fair land beyond its waves,
safe from the idle ravages with which the Lacedaemonians might harass
Attica, but never could subdue Athens." [THUC. lib. i. sec. 144.]
Athens accepted the war with which her enemies threatened her, rather
than descend from her pride of place. And though the awful visitation of
the Plague came upon her, and swept away more of her citizens than the
Dorian spear laid low, she held her own gallantly against her foes. If
the Peloponnesian armies in irresistible strength wasted every spring
her corn lands, her vineyards, and her olive groves with fire and sword,
she retaliated on their coasts with her fleets; which, if resisted,
were only resisted to display the pre-eminent skill and bravery of her
seamen. Some of her subject-allies revolted, but the revolts were in
general sternly and promptly quelled. The genius of one enemy had,
indeed, inflicted blows on her power in Thrace which she was unable to
remedy; but he fell in battle in the tenth year of the war; and with the
loss of Brasidas the Lacedaemonians seemed to have lost all energy and
judgment. Both sides at length grew weary of the war; and in 421 B.C. a
truce of fifty years was concluded, which, though ill kept, and
though many of the confederates of Sparta refused to recognise it,
and hostilities still continued in many parts of Greece, protected the
Athenian territory from the ravages of enemies, and enabled Athens to
accumulate large sums out of the proceeds of her annual revenues. So
also, as a few years passed by, the havoc which the pestilence and the
sword had made in her population was repaired; and in 415 B.C. Athens
was full of bold and restless spirits, who longed for some field
of distant enterprise, wherein they might signalize themselves, and
aggrandize the state; and who looked on the alarm of Spartan hostility
as a mere old woman's tale. When Sparta had wasted their territory she
had done her worst; and the fact of its always being in her power to
do so, seemed a strong reason for seeking to increase the transmarine
dominion of Athens.
The West was now the quarter towards which the thoughts of every
aspiring Athenian were directed. From the very beginning of the war
Athens had kept up an interest in Sicily; and her squadrons had from
time to time appeared on its coasts and taken part in the dissensions
in which the Sicilian Greeks were universally engaged one against the
other. There were plausible grounds for a direct quarrel, and an open
attack by the Athenians upon Syracuse.
With the capture of Syracuse all Sicily, it was hoped, would be secured.
Carthage and Italy were next to be assailed. With large levies of
Iberian mercenaries she then meant to overwhelm her Peloponnesian
enemies. The Persian monarchy lay in hopeless imbecility, inviting Greek
invasion; nor did the known world contain the power that seemed capable
of checking the growing might of Athens, if Syracuse once could be hers.
The national historian of Rome has left us, as an episode of his great
work, a disquisition on the probable effects that would have followed,
if Alexander the Great had invaded Italy. Posterity has generally
regarded that disquisition as proving Livy's patriotism more
strongly than his impartiality or acuteness. Yet, right or wrong, the
speculations of the Roman writer were directed to the consideration of
a very remote possibility. To whatever age Alexander's life might have
been prolonged, the East would have furnished full occupation for his
martial ambition, as well as for those schemes of commercial grandeur
and imperial amalgamation of nations, in which the truly great
qualities of his mind loved to display themselves. With his death the
dismemberment of his empire among his generals was certain, even as the
dismemberment of Napoleon's empire among his marshals would certainly
have ensued, if he had been cut off in the zenith of his power. Rome,
also, was far weaker when the Athenians were in Sicily, than she was a
century afterwards, in Alexander's time. There can be little doubt but
that Rome would have been blotted out from the independent powers of the
West, had she been attacked at the end of the fifth century B.C., by an
Athenian army, largely aided by Spanish mercenaries, and flushed with
triumphs over Sicily and Africa; instead of the collision between
her and Greece having been deferred until the latter had sunk into
decrepitude, and the Roman Mars had grown into full vigour.
The armament which the Athenians equipped against Syracuse was in every
way worthy of the state which formed such projects of universal empire;
and it has been truly termed "the noblest that ever yet had been sent
forth by a free and civilized commonwealth." [Arnold's History of Rome.]
The fleet consisted of one hundred and thirty-four war galleys, with
a multitude of store ships. A powerful force of the best heavy-armed
infantry that Athens and her allies could furnish was sent on board,
together with a smaller number of slingers and bowmen. The quality
of the forces was even more remarkable than the number. The zeal of
individuals vied with that of the republic in giving every galley the
best possible crew, and every troop the most perfect accoutrements. And
with private as well as public wealth eagerly lavished on all that could
give splendour as well as efficiency to the expedition, the fated fleet
began its voyage for the Sicilian shores in the summer of 415 B.C.
The Syracusans themselves, at the time of the Peloponnesian war, were a
bold and turbulent democracy, tyrannizing over the weaker Greek
cities in Sicily, and trying to gain in that island the same arbitrary
supremacy which Athens maintained along the eastern coast of the
Mediterranean. In numbers and in spirit they were fully equal to the
Athenians, but far inferior to them in military and naval discipline.
When the probability of an Athenian invasion was first publicly
discussed at Syracuse, and efforts were made by some of the wiser
citizens to improve the state of the national defences, and prepare for
the impending danger, the rumours of coming war and the proposals for
preparation were received by the mass of the Syracusans with scornful
incredulity. The speech of one of their popular orators is preserved to
us in Thucydides, [Lib. vi. sec. 36 et seq., Arnold's edition. I have
almost literally transcribed some of the marginal epitomes of the
original speech.] and many of its topics might, by a slight alteration
of names and details, serve admirably for the party among ourselves at
present which opposes the augmentation of our forces, and derides
the idea of our being in any peril from the sudden attack of a French
expedition. The Syracusan orator told his countrymen to dismiss
with scorn the visionary terrors which a set of designing men among
themselves strove to excite, in order to get power and influence thrown
into their own hands. He told them that Athens knew her own interest
too well to think of wantonly provoking their hostility:--"EVEN IF THE
ENEMIES WERE TO COME," said he, "SO DISTANT FROM THEIR RESOURCES, AND
OPPOSED TO SUCH A POWER AS OURS, THEIR DESTRUCTION WOULD BE EASY AND
INEVITABLE. THEIR SHIPS WILL HAVE ENOUGH TO DO TO GET TO OUR ISLAND
AT ALL, AND TO CARRY SUCH STORES OF ALL SORTS AS WILL BE NEEDED. THEY
CANNOT THEREFORE CARRY, BESIDES, AN ARMY LARGE ENOUGH TO COPE WITH SUCH
A POPULATION AS OURS. THEY WILL HAVE NO FORTIFIED PLACE FROM WHICH TO
COMMENCE THEIR OPERATIONS; BUT MUST REST THEM ON NO BETTER BASE THAN A
SET OF WRETCHED TENTS, AND SUCH MEANS AS THE NECESSITIES OF THE MOMENT
WILL ALLOW THEM. BUT IN TRUTH I DO NOT BELIEVE THAT THEY WOULD EVEN BE
ABLE TO EFFECT A DISEMBARKATION. LET US, THEREFORE, SET AT NOUGHT THESE
REPORTS AS ALTOGETHER OF HOME MANUFACTURE; AND BE SURE THAT IF ANY ENEMY
DOES COME, THE STATE WILL KNOW HOW TO DEFEND ITSELF IN A MANNER WORTHY
OF THE NATIONAL HONOUR."
Such assertions pleased the Syracusan assembly; and their counterparts
find favour now among some portion of the English public. But the
invaders of Syracuse came; made good their landing in Sicily; and, if
they had promptly attacked the city itself, instead of wasting nearly
a year in desultory operations in other parts of the island, the
Syracusans must have paid the penalty of their self-sufficient
carelessness in submission to the Athenian yoke. But, of the three
generals who led the Athenian expedition, two only were men of ability,
and one was most weak and incompetent. Fortunately for Syracuse,
Alcibiades, the most skilful of the three, was soon deposed from his
command by a factious and fanatic vote of his fellow-countrymen, and
the other competent one, Lamachus, fell early in a skirmish: while, more
fortunately still for her, the feeble and vacillating Nicias remained
unrecalled and unhurt, to assume the undivided leadership of the
Athenian army and fleet, and to mar, by alternate over-caution and
over-carelessness, every chance of success which the early part of the
operations offered. Still, even under him, the Athenians nearly won the
town. They defeated the raw levies of the Syracusans, cooped them
within the walls, and, as before mentioned, almost effected a continuous
fortification from bay to bay over Epipolae, the completion of which
would certainly have been followed by capitulation.
Alcibiades, the most complete example of genius without principle that
history produces, the Bolingbroke of antiquity, but with high military
talents superadded to diplomatic and oratorical powers, on being
summoned home from his command in Sicily to take his trial before the
Athenian tribunal had escaped to Sparta; and he exerted himself there
with all the selfish rancour of a renegade to renew the war with Athens,
and to send instant assistance to Syracuse.
When we read his words in the pages of Thucydides (who was himself an
exile from Athens at this period, and may probably have been at Sparta,
and heard Alcibiades speak), we are at loss whether most to admire or
abhor his subtile and traitorous counsels. After an artful exordium,
in which he tried to disarm the suspicions which he felt must be
entertained of him, and to point out to the Spartans how completely his
interests and theirs were identified, through hatred of the Athenian
democracy, he thus proceeded:--"Hear me, at any rate, on the matters
which require your grave attention, and which I, from the personal
knowledge that I have of them, can and ought to bring before you. We
Athenians sailed to Sicily with the design of subduing, first the Greek
cities there, and next those in Italy. Then we intended to make an
attempt on the dominions of Carthage, and on Carthage itself. [Arnold,
in his notes on this passage, well reminds the reader that Agathocles,
with a Greek force far inferior to that of the Athenians at this period,
did, a century afterwards, very nearly conquer Carthage.] If all
these projects succeeded (nor did we limit ourselves to them in these
quarters), we intended to increase our fleet with the inexhaustible
supplies of ship timber which Italy affords, to put in requisition the
whole military force of the conquered Greek states, and also to hire
large armies of the barbarians; of the Iberians, and others in those
regions, who are allowed to make the best possible soldiers. [It will
be remembered that Spanish infantry were the staple of the Carthaginian
armies. Doubtless Alcibiades and other leading Athenians had made
themselves acquainted with the Carthaginian system of carrying on war,
and meant to adopt it. With the marvellous powers which Alcibiades
possessed of ingratiating himself with men of every class and every
nation, and his high military genius, he would have been as formidable a
chief of an army of CONDOTTIERI as Hannibal afterwards was.] Then,
when we had done all this, we intended to assail Peloponnesus with our
collected force. Our fleets would blockade you by sea, and desolate your
coasts; our armies would be landed at different points, and assail your
cities. Some of these we expected to storm and others we meant to take
by surrounding them with fortified lines. [Alcibiades here alluded to
Sparta itself, which was unfortified. His Spartan hearers must have
glanced round them at these words, with mixed alarm and indignation.] We
thought that it would thus be an easy matter thoroughly to war you down;
and then we should become the masters of the whole Greek race. As for
expense, we reckoned that each conquered state would give us supplies of
money and provisions sufficient to pay for its own conquest, and furnish
the means for the conquest of its neighbours.
"Such are the designs of the present Athenian expedition to Sicily, and
you have heard them from the lips of the man who, of all men living, is
most accurately acquainted with them. The other Athenian generals, who
remain with the expedition, will endeavour to carry out these plans.
And be sure that without your speedy interference they will all be
accomplished. The Sicilian Greeks are deficient in military training;
but still if they could be at once brought to combine in an organised
resistance to Athens, they might even now be saved. But as for the
Syracusans resisting Athens by themselves, they have already with the
whole strength of their population fought a battle and been beaten; they
cannot face the Athenians at sea; and it is quite impossible for them
to hold out against the force of their invaders. And if this city falls
into the hands of the Athenians, all Sicily is theirs, and presently
Italy also: and the danger which I warned you of from that quarter will
soon fall upon yourselves. You must, therefore, in Sicily fight for the
safety of Peloponnesus. Send some galleys thither instantly. Put men on
board who can work their own way over, and who, as soon as they land,
can do duty as regular troops. But above all, let one of yourselves, let
a man of Sparta, go over to take the chief command, to bring into order
and effective discipline the forces that are in Syracuse, and urge
those, who at present hang back to come forward and aid the Syracusans.
The presence of a Spartan general at this crisis will do more to save
the city than a whole army." [THUC., lib. vi sec. 90,91.] The renegade
then proceeded to urge on them the necessity of encouraging their
friends in Sicily, by showing that they themselves were earnest in
hostility to Athens. He exhorted them not only to march their armies
into Attica again, but to take up a permanent fortified position in
the country: and he gave them in detail information of all that the
Athenians most dreaded, and how his country might receive the most
distressing and enduring injury at their hands.
The Spartans resolved to act on his advice, and appointed Gylippus to
the Sicilian command. Gylippus was a man who, to the national bravery
and military skill of a Spartan, united political sagacity that was
worthy of his great fellow-countryman Brasidas; but his merits were
debased by mean and sordid vice; and his is one of the cases in which
history has been austerely just, and where little or no fame has been
accorded to the successful but venal soldier. But for the purpose for
which he was required in Sicily, an abler man could not have been found
in Lacedaemon. His country gave him neither men nor money, but she gave
him her authority; and the influence of her name and of his own talents
was speedily seen in the zeal with which the Corinthians and other
Peloponnesian Greeks began to equip a squadron to act under him for the
rescue of Sicily. As soon as four galleys were ready, he hurried over
with them to the southern coast of Italy; and there, though he received
such evil tidings of the state of Syracuse that he abandoned all hope of
saving that city, he determined to remain on the coast, and do what he
could in preserving the Italian cities from the Athenians.
So nearly, indeed, had Nicias completed his beleaguering lines, and so
utterly desperate had the state of Syracuse seemingly become, that
an assembly of the Syracusans was actually convened, and they were
discussing the terms on which they should offer to capitulate, when
a galley was seen dashing into the great harbour, and making her way
towards the town with all the speed that her rowers could supply. From
her shunning the part of the harbour where the Athenian fleet lay, and
making straight for the Syracusan side, it was clear that she was a
friend; the enemy's cruisers, careless through confidence of success,
made no attempt to cut her off; she touched the beach, and a Corinthian
captain springing on shore from her, was eagerly conducted to the
assembly of the Syracusan people, just in time to prevent the fatal vote
being put for a surrender.
Providentially for Syracuse, Gongylus, the commander of the galley, had
been prevented by an Athenian squadron from following Gylippus to South
Italy, and he had been obliged to push direct for Syracuse from Greece.
The sight of actual succour, and the promise of more, revived the
drooping spirits of the Syracusans. They felt that they were not left
desolate to perish; and the tidings that a Spartan was coming to command
them confirmed their resolution to continue their resistance. Gylippus
was already near the city. He had learned at Locri that the first report
which had reached him of the state of Syracuse was exaggerated; and that
there was an unfinished space in the besiegers' lines through which it
was barely possible to introduce reinforcements into the town. Crossing
the straits of Messina, which the culpable negligence of Nicias had left
unguarded, Gylippus landed on the northern coast of Sicily, and there
began to collect from the Greek cities an army, of which the regular
troops that he brought from Peloponnesus formed the nucleus. Such was
the influence of the name of Sparta, [The effect of the presence of a
Spartan officer on the troops of the other Greeks, seems to have been
like the effect of the presence of an English officer upon native Indian
troops.] and such were his own abilities and activity, that he succeeded
in raising a force of about two thousand fully armed infantry, with a
larger number of irregular troops. Nicias, as if infatuated, made no
attempt to counteract his operations; nor, when Gylippus marched his
little army towards Syracuse, did the Athenian commander endeavour
to check him. The Syracusans marched out to meet him: and while the
Athenians were solely intent on completing their fortifications on the
southern side towards the harbour, Gylippus turned their position by
occupying the high ground in the extreme rear of Epipolae. He then
marched through the unfortified interval of Nicias's lines into the
besieged town; and, joining his troops with the Syracusan forces, after
some engagements with varying success, gained the mastery over
Nicias, drove the Athenians from Epipolae, and hemmed them into a
disadvantageous position in the low grounds near the great harbour.
The attention of all Greece was now fixed on Syracuse; and every enemy
of Athens felt the importance of the opportunity now offered of checking
her ambition, and, perhaps, of striking a deadly blow at her power.
Large reinforcements from Corinth, Thebes, and other cities, now reached
the Syracusans; while the baffled and dispirited Athenian general
earnestly besought his countrymen to recall him, and represented the
further prosecution of the siege as hopeless.
But Athens had made it a maxim never to let difficulty or disaster drive
her back from any enterprise once undertaken, so long as she
possessed the means of making any effort, however desperate, for its
accomplishment. With indomitable pertinacity she now decreed, instead of
recalling her first armament from before Syracuse, to send out a second,
though her enemies near home had now renewed open warfare against
her, and by occupying a permanent fortification in her territory, had
severely distressed her population, and were pressing her with almost
all the hardships of an actual siege. She still was mistress of the sea,
and she sent forth another fleet of seventy galleys, and another army,
which seemed to drain the very last reserves of her military population,
to try if Syracuse could not yet be won, and the honour of the Athenian
arms be preserved from the stigma of a retreat. Hers was, indeed, a
spirit that might be broken, but never would bend. At the head of this
second expedition she wisely placed her best general Demosthenes, one
of the most distinguished officers whom the long Peloponnesian war had
produced, and who, if he had originally held the Sicilian command, would
soon have brought Syracuse to submission.
The fame of Demosthenes the general, has been dimmed by the superior
lustre of his great countryman, Demosthenes the orator. When the name of
Demosthenes is mentioned, it is the latter alone that is thought of. The
soldier has found no biographer. Yet out of the long list of the great
men of the Athenian republic, there are few that deserve to stand higher
than this brave, though finally unsuccessful, leader of her fleets and
armies in the first half of the Peloponnesian war. In his first campaign
in AEtolia he had shown some of the rashness of youth, and had received
a lesson of caution, by which he profited throughout the rest of his
career, but without losing any of his natural energy in enterprise or
in execution. He had performed the eminent service of rescuing Naupactus
from a powerful hostile armament in the seventh year of the war; he had
then, at the request of the Acarnanian republics, taken on himself the
office of commander-in-chief of all their forces, and at their head
he had gained some important advantages over the enemies of Athens in
Western Greece. His most celebrated exploits had been the occupation
of Pylos on the Messenian coast, the successful defence of that place
against the fleet and armies of Lacedaemon, and the subsequent capture
of the Spartan forces on the isle of Sphacteria; which was the severest
blow dealt to Sparta throughout the war, and which had mainly caused
her to humble herself to make the truce with Athens. Demosthenes was
as honourably unknown in the war of party politics at Athens, as he was
eminent in the war against the foreign enemy. We read of no intrigues of
his on either the aristocratic or democratic side. He was neither in the
interest of Nicias, nor of Cleon. His private character was free from
any of the stains which polluted that of Alcibiades. On all these points
the silence of the comic dramatist is decisive evidence in his favour.
He had also the moral courage, not always combined with physical of
seeking to do his duty to his country, irrespectively of any odium that
he himself might incur, and unhampered by any petty jealousy of those
who were associated with him in command. There are few men named in
ancient history, of whom posterity would gladly know more, or whom we
sympathise with more deeply in the calamities that befel them, than
Demosthenes, the son of Alcisthenes, who, in the spring of the year 413
B.C., left Piraeus at the head of the second Athenian expedition against
Sicily.
His arrival was critically timed; for Gylippus had encouraged the
Syracusans to attack the Athenians under Nicias by sea as well as by
land, and by an able stratagem of Ariston, one of the admirals of the
Corinthian auxiliary squadron, the Syracusans and their confederates had
inflicted on the fleet of Nicias the first defeat that the Athenian
navy had ever sustained from a numerically inferior foe. Gylippus was
preparing to follow up his advantage by fresh attacks on the Athenians
on both elements, when the arrival of Demosthenes completely changed the
aspect of affairs, and restored the superiority to the invaders. With
seventy-three war-galleys in the highest state of efficiency, and
brilliantly equipped, with a force of five thousand picked men of the
regular infantry of Athens and her allies, and a still larger number of
bowmen, javelin-men, and slingers on board, Demosthenes rowed round the
great harbour with loud cheers and martial music, as if in defiance of
the Syracusans and their confederates. His arrival had indeed changed
their newly-born hopes into the deepest consternation. The resources of
Athens seemed inexhaustible, and resistance to her hopeless. They had
been told that she was reduced to the last extremities, and that her
territory was occupied by an enemy; and yet, here they saw her, as if in
prodigality of power, sending forth, to make foreign conquests, a second
armament, not inferior to that with which Nicias had first landed on the
Sicilian shores.
With the intuitive decision of a great commander, Demosthenes at once
saw that the possession of Epipolae was the key to the possession of
Syracuse, and he resolved to make a prompt and vigorous attempt
to recover that position, while his force was unimpaired, and the
consternation which its arrival had produced among the besieged remained
unabated. The Syracusans and their allies had run out an outwork along
Epipolae from the city walls, intersecting the fortified lines of
circumvallation which Nicias had commenced, but from which they had been
driven by Gylippus. Could Demosthenes succeed in storming this outwork,
and in re-establishing the Athenian troops on the high ground, he might
fairly hope to be able to resume the circumvallation of the city, and
become the conqueror of Syracuse: for, when once the besiegers' lines
were completed, the number of the troops with which Gylippus had
garrisoned the place would only tend to exhaust the stores of
provisions, and accelerate its downfall.
An easily-repelled attack was first made on the outwork in the day-time,
probably more with the view of blinding the besieged to the nature of
the main operations than with any expectation of succeeding in an open
assault, with every disadvantage of the ground to contend against. But,
when the darkness had set in, Demosthenes formed his men in columns,
each soldier taking with him five days' provisions, and the engineers
and workmen of the camp following the troops with their tools, and
all portable implements of fortification, so as at once to secure
any advantage of ground that the army might gain. Thus equipped and
prepared, he led his men along by the foot of the southern flank of
Epipolae, in a direction towards the interior of the island, till he
came immediately below the narrow ridge that forms the extremity of the
high ground looking westward. He then wheeled his vanguard to the right,
sent them rapidly up the paths that wind along the face of the cliff,
and succeeded in completely surprising the Syracusan outposts, and in
placing his troops fairly on the extreme summit of the all-important
Epipolae. Thence the Athenians marched eagerly down the slope towards
the town, routing some Syracusan detachments that were quartered in
their way, and vigorously assailing the unprotected part of the outwork.
All at first favoured them. The outwork was abandoned by its garrison,
and the Athenian engineers began to dismantle it. In vain Gylippus
brought up fresh troops to check the assault: the Athenians broke and
drove them back, and continued to press hotly forward, in the full
confidence of victory. But, amid the general consternation of the
Syracusans and their confederates, one body of infantry stood firm. This
was a brigade of their Boeotian allies, which was posted low down the
slope of Epipolae, outside the city walls. Coolly and steadily the
Boeotian infantry formed their line, and, undismayed by the current of
flight around them, advanced against the advancing Athenians. This was
the crisis of the battle. But the Athenian van was disorganized by its
own previous successes; and, yielding to the unexpected charge thus made
on it by troops in perfect order, and of the most obstinate courage, it
was driven back in confusion upon the other divisions of the army that
still continued to press forward. When once the tide was thus turned,
the Syracusans passed rapidly from the extreme of panic to the extreme
of vengeful daring, and with all their forces they now fiercely assailed
the embarrassed and receding Athenians. In vain did the officers of the
latter strive to re-form their line. Amid the din and the shouting
of the fight, and the confusion inseparable upon a night engagement,
especially one where many thousand combatants were pent and whirled
together in a narrow and uneven area, the necessary manoeuvres were
impracticable; and though many companies still fought on desperately,
wherever the moonlight showed them the semblance of a foe, [THUC. vii.
44. Compare Tacitus's description of the night engagement in the civil
war between Vespasian and Vitellius: "Neutro inclinaverat fortuna, donec
adulta nocte, LUNA OSTENDERET ACIES, FALERESQUE."--Hist. Lib. iii. sec.
23.] they fought without concert or subordination; and not unfrequently,
amid the deadly chaos, Athenian troops assailed each other. Keeping
their ranks close, the Syracusans and their allies pressed on against
the disorganized masses of the besiegers; and at length drove them, with
heavy slaughter, over the cliffs, which, scarce an hour before, they had
scaled full of hope, and apparently certain of success.
This defeat was decisive of the event of the siege. The Athenians
afterwards struggled only to protect themselves from the vengeance which
the Syracusans sought to wreak in the complete destruction of their
invaders. Never, however, was vengeance more complete and terrible.
A series of sea-fights followed, in which the Athenian galleys were
utterly destroyed or captured. The mariners and soldiers who escaped
death in disastrous engagements, and in a vain: attempt to force a
retreat into the interior of the island, became prisoners of war. Nicias
and Demosthenes were put to death in cold blood; and their men either
perished miserably in the Syracusan dungeons, or were sold into slavery
to the very persons whom, in their pride of power, they had crossed the
seas to enslave.
All danger from Athens to the independent nations of the West was now
for ever at an end. She, indeed, continued to struggle against her
combined enemies and revolted allies with unparalleled gallantry; and
many more years of varying warfare passed away before she surrendered
to their arms. But no success in subsequent conquests could ever have
restored her to the pre-eminence in enterprise, resources, and maritime
skill which she had acquired before her fatal reverses in Sicily. Nor
among the rival Greek republics, whom her own rashness aided to crush
her, was there any capable of reorganizing her empire, or resuming her
schemes of conquest. The dominion of Western Europe was left for Rome
and Carthage to dispute two centuries later, in conflicts still more
terrible, and with even higher displays of military daring and genius,
than Athens had witnessed either in her rise, her meridian, or her fall.
SYNOPSIS OF THE EVENTS BETWEEN THE DEFEAT OF THE ATHENIANS AT SYRACUSE,
AND THE BATTLE OF ARBELA.
412 B.C. Many of the subject allies of Athens revolt from her, on her
disasters before Syracuse being known; the seat of war is transferred to
the Hellespont and eastern side of the AEgean.
410. The Carthaginians attempt to make conquests in Sicily.
407. Cyrus the Younger is sent by the king of Persia to take the
government of all the maritime parts of Asia Minor, and with orders to
help the Lacedaemonian fleet against the Athenian.
406. Agrigentum taken by the Carthaginians.
405. The last Athenian fleet destroyed by Lysander at AEgospotamos.
Athens closely besieged. Rise of the power of Dionysius at Syracuse.
404. Athens surrenders. End of the Peloponnesian war. The ascendancy of
Sparta complete throughout Greece.
403. Thrasybulus, aided by the Thebans and with the connivance of one
of the Spartan kings, liberates Athens from the Thirty Tyrants, and
restores the democracy.
401. Cyrus the Younger commences his expedition into Upper Asia to
dethrone his brother Artaxerxes Mnemon. He takes with him an auxiliary
force of ten thousand Greeks. He in killed in battle at Cunaxa; and
the ten thousand, led by Xenophon, effect their retreat in spite of the
Persian armies and the natural obstacles of their march.
399. In this, and the five following years, the Lacedaemonians under
Agesilaus and other commanders, carry on war against the Persian satraps
in Asia Minor.
396. Syracuse is besieged by the Carthaginians, and successfully
defended by Dionysius.
394. Rome makes her first great stride in the career of conquest by the
capture of Veii.
393. The Athenian admiral Conon, in conjunction with the Persian satrap
Pharnabazus, defeats the Lacedaemonian fleet off Cnidus, and restores
the fortifications of Athens. Several of the former allies of Sparta in
Greece carry on hostilities against her.
388. The nations of Northern Europe now first appear in authentic
history. The Gauls overrun great part of Italy, and burn Rome. Rome
recovers from the blow, but her old enemies, the AEquians and Volscians,
are left completely crushed by the Gallic invaders.
387. The peace of Antalcidas is concluded among the Greeks by the
mediation, and under the sanction, of the Persian king.
378 to 361. Fresh wars in Greece. Epaminondas raises Thebes to be the
leading state of Greece, and the supremacy of Sparta is destroyed at
the battle of Leuctra. Epaminondas is killed in gaining the victory of
Mantinea, and the power of Thebes falls with him. The Athenians attempt
a balancing system between Sparta and Thebes.
359. Philip becomes king of Macedon.
357. The Social War breaks out in Greece, and lasts three years. Its
result checks the attempt of Athens to regain her old maritime empire.
356. Alexander the Great is born.
343. Rome begins her wars with the Samnites: they extend over a period
of fifty years. The result of this obstinate contest is to secure for
her the dominion of Italy.
340. Fresh attempts of the Carthaginians upon Syracuse. Timoleon defeats
them with great slaughter.
338. Philip defeats the confederate armies of Athens and Thebes
at Chaeronea, and the Macedonian supremacy over Greece is firmly
established.
336. Philip is assassinated, and Alexander the Great becomes king of
Macedon. He gains several victories over the northern barbarians who
had attacked Macedonia, and destroys Thebes, which, in conjunction with
Athens, had taken up arms against the Macedonians.
334. Alexander passes the Hellespont.