THUCYDIDES, Peloponnesian War book 3

The History of the Peloponnesian War

By Thucydides
Written about 431 BC

Translated by Richard Crawley

London 1910.

The Third Book

Chapter IX

Fourth and Fifth Years of the War – Revolt of Mitylene.

The next summer, just as the corn was getting ripe, the Peloponnesians and their
allies invaded Attica under the command of Archidamus, son of Zeuxidamus, king of
the Lacedaemonians, and sat down and ravaged the land; the Athenian horse as usual
attacking them, wherever it was practicable, and preventing the mass of the light
troops from advancing from their camp and wasting the parts near the city. After
staying the time for which they had taken provisions, the invaders retired and dispersed
to their several cities.

Immediately after the invasion of the Peloponnesians all Lesbos, except Methymna,
revolted from the Athenians. The Lesbians had wished to revolt even before the war,
but the Lacedaemonians would not receive them; and yet now when they did revolt,
they were compelled to do so sooner than they had intended. While they were waiting
until the moles for their harbours and the ships and walls that they had in building
should be finished, and for the arrival of archers and corn and other things that
they were engaged in fetching from the Pontus, the Tenedians, with whom they were
at enmity, and the Methymnians, and some factious persons in Mitylene itself, who
were proxeni of Athens, informed the Athenians that the Mitylenians were forcibly
uniting the island under their sovereignty, and that the preparations about which
they were so active, were all concerted with the Boeotians their kindred and the
Lacedaemonians with a view to a revolt, and that, unless they were immediately prevented,
Athens would lose Lesbos.

However, the Athenians, distressed by the plague, and by the war that had recently
broken out and was now raging, thought it a serious matter to add Lesbos with its
fleet and untouched resources to the list of their enemies; and at first would not
believe the charge, giving too much weight to their wish that it might not be true.
But when an embassy which they sent had failed to persuade the Mitylenians to give
up the union and preparations complained of, they became alarmed, and resolved to
strike the first blow. They accordingly suddenly sent off forty ships that had been
got ready to sail round Peloponnese, under the command of Cleippides, son of Deinias,
and two others; word having been brought them of a festival in honour of the Malean
Apollo outside the town, which is kept by the whole people of Mitylene, and at which,
if haste were made, they might hope to take them by surprise. If this plan succeeded,
well and good; if not, they were to order the Mitylenians to deliver up their ships
and to pull down their walls, and if they did not obey, to declare war. The ships
accordingly set out; the ten galleys, forming the contingent of the Mitylenians
present with the fleet according to the terms of the alliance, being detained by
the Athenians, and their crews placed in custody. However, the Mitylenians were
informed of the expedition by a man who crossed from Athens to Euboea, and going
overland to Geraestus, sailed from thence by a merchantman which he found on the
point of putting to sea, and so arrived at Mitylene the third day after leaving
Athens. The Mitylenians accordingly refrained from going out to the temple at Malea,
and moreover barricaded and kept guard round the half-finished parts of their walls
and harbours.

When the Athenians sailed in not long after and saw how things stood, the generals
delivered their orders, and upon the Mitylenians refusing to obey, commenced hostilities.
The Mitylenians, thus compelled to go to war without notice and unprepared, at first
sailed out with their fleet and made some show of fighting, a little in front of
the harbour; but being driven back by the Athenian ships, immediately offered to
treat with the commanders, wishing, if possible, to get the ships away for the present
upon any tolerable terms. The Athenian commanders accepted their offers, being themselves
fearful that they might not be able to cope with the whole of Lesbos; and an armistice
having been concluded, the Mitylenians sent to Athens one of the informers, already
repentant of his conduct, and others with him, to try to persuade the Athenians
of the innocence of their intentions and to get the fleet recalled. In the meantime,
having no great hope of a favourable answer from Athens, they also sent off a galley
with envoys to Lacedaemon, unobserved by the Athenian fleet which was anchored at
Malea to the north of the town.

While these envoys, reaching Lacedaemon after a difficult journey across the
open sea, were negotiating for succours being sent them, the ambassadors from Athens
returned without having effected anything; and hostilities were at once begun by
the Mitylenians and the rest of Lesbos, with the exception of the Methymnians, who
came to the aid of the Athenians with the Imbrians and Lemnians and some few of
the other allies. The Mitylenians made a sortie with all their forces against the
Athenian camp; and a battle ensued, in which they gained some slight advantage,
but retired notwithstanding, not feeling sufficient confidence in themselves to
spend the night upon the field. After this they kept quiet, wishing to wait for
the chance of reinforcements arriving from Peloponnese before making a second venture,
being encouraged by the arrival of Meleas, a Laconian, and Hermaeondas, a Theban,
who had been sent off before the insurrection but had been unable to reach Lesbos
before the Athenian expedition, and who now stole in in a galley after the battle,
and advised them to send another galley and envoys back with them, which the Mitylenians
accordingly did.

Meanwhile the Athenians, greatly encouraged by the inaction of the Mitylenians,
summoned allies to their aid, who came in all the quicker from seeing so little
vigour displayed by the Lesbians, and bringing round their ships to a new station
to the south of the town, fortified two camps, one on each side of the city, and
instituted a blockade of both the harbours. The sea was thus closed against the
Mitylenians, who, however, commanded the whole country, with the rest of the Lesbians
who had now joined them; the Athenians only holding a limited area round their camps,
and using Malea more as the station for their ships and their market.

While the war went on in this way at Mitylene, the Athenians, about the same
time in this summer, also sent thirty ships to Peloponnese under Asopius, son of
Phormio; the Acarnanians insisting that the commander sent should be some son or
relative of Phormio. As the ships coasted along shore they ravaged the seaboard
of Laconia; after which Asopius sent most of the fleet home, and himself went on
with twelve vessels to Naupactus, and afterwards raising the whole Acarnanian population
made an expedition against Oeniadae, the fleet sailing along the Achelous, while
the army laid waste the country. The inhabitants, however, showing no signs of submitting,
he dismissed the land forces and himself sailed to Leucas, and making a descent
upon Nericus was cut off during his retreat, and most of his troops with him, by
the people in those parts aided by some coastguards; after which the Athenians sailed
away, recovering their dead from the Leucadians under truce.

Meanwhile the envoys of the Mitylenians sent out in the first ship were told
by the Lacedaemonians to come to Olympia, in order that the rest of the allies might
hear them and decide upon their matter, and so they journeyed thither. It was the
Olympiad in which the Rhodian Dorieus gained his second victory, and the envoys
having been introduced to make their speech after the festival, spoke as follows:
“

Lacedaemonians and allies, the rule established among the Hellenes is not unknown
to us. Those who revolt in war and forsake their former confederacy are favourably
regarded by those who receive them, in so far as they are of use to them, but otherwise
are thought less well of, through being considered traitors to their former friends.
Nor is this an unfair way of judging, where the rebels and the power from whom they
secede are at one in policy and sympathy, and a match for each other in resources
and power, and where no reasonable ground exists for the rebellion. But with us
and the Athenians this was not the case; and no one need think the worse of us for
revolting from them in danger, after having been honoured by them in time of peace.
“

Justice and honesty will be the first topics of our speech, especially as we
are asking for alliance; because we know that there can never be any solid friendship
between individuals, or union between communities that is worth the name, unless
the parties be persuaded of each other’s honesty, and be generally congenial the
one to the other; since from difference in feeling springs also difference in conduct.
Between ourselves and the Athenians alliance began, when you withdrew from the Median
War and they remained to finish the business. But we did not become allies of the
Athenians for the subjugation of the Hellenes, but allies of the Hellenes for their
liberation from the Mede; and as long as the Athenians led us fairly we followed
them loyally; but when we saw them relax their hostility to the Mede, to try to
compass the subjection of the allies, then our apprehensions began. Unable, however,
to unite and defend themselves, on account of the number of confederates that had
votes, all the allies were enslaved, except ourselves and the Chians, who continued
to send our contingents as independent and nominally free. Trust in Athens as a
leader, however, we could no longer feel, judging by the examples already given;
it being unlikely that she would reduce our fellow confederates, and not do the
same by us who were left, if ever she had the power. “

Had we all been still independent, we could have had more faith in their not
attempting any change; but the greater number being their subjects, while they were
treating us as equals, they would naturally chafe under this solitary instance of
independence as contrasted with the submission of the majority; particularly as
they daily grew more powerful, and we more destitute. Now the only sure basis of
an alliance is for each party to be equally afraid of the other; he who would like
to encroach is then deterred by the reflection that he will not have odds in his
favour. Again, if we were left independent, it was only because they thought they
saw their way to empire more clearly by specious language and by the paths of policy
than by those of force. Not only were we useful as evidence that powers who had
votes, like themselves, would not, surely, join them in their expeditions, against
their will, without the party attacked being in the wrong; but the same system also
enabled them to lead the stronger states against the weaker first, and so to leave
the former to the last, stripped of their natural allies, and less capable of resistance.
But if they had begun with us, while all the states still had their resources under
their own control, and there was a centre to rally round, the work of subjugation
would have been found less easy. Besides this, our navy gave them some apprehension:
it was always possible that it might unite with you or with some other power, and
become dangerous to Athens. The court which we paid to their commons and its leaders
for the time being also helped us to maintain our independence. However, we did
not expect to be able to do so much longer, if this war had not broken out, from
the examples that we had had of their conduct to the rest.

“How then could we put our trust in such friendship or freedom as we had here?
We accepted each other against our inclination; fear made them court us in war,
and us them in peace; sympathy, the ordinary basis of confidence, had its place
supplied by terror, fear having more share than friendship in detaining us in the
alliance; and the first party that should be encouraged by the hope of impunity
was certain to break faith with the other. So that to condemn us for being the first
to break off, because they delay the blow that we dread, instead of ourselves delaying
to know for certain whether it will be dealt or not, is to take a false view of
the case. For if we were equally able with them to meet their plots and imitate
their delay, we should be their equals and should be under no necessity of being
their subjects; but the liberty of offence being always theirs, that of defence
ought clearly to be ours. “

Such, Lacedaemonians and allies, are the grounds and the reasons of our revolt;
clear enough to convince our hearers of the fairness of our conduct, and sufficient
to alarm ourselves, and to make us turn to some means of safety. This we wished
to do long ago, when we sent to you on the subject while the peace yet lasted, but
were balked by your refusing to receive us; and now, upon the Boeotians inviting
us, we at once responded to the call, and decided upon a twofold revolt, from the
Hellenes and from the Athenians, not to aid the latter in harming the former, but
to join in their liberation, and not to allow the Athenians in the end to destroy
us, but to act in time against them. Our revolt, however, has taken place prematurely
and without preparation- a fact which makes it all the more incumbent on you to
receive us into alliance and to send us speedy relief, in order to show that you
support your friends, and at the same time do harm to your enemies. You have an
opportunity such as you never had before. Disease and expenditure have wasted the
Athenians: their ships are either cruising round your coasts, or engaged in blockading
us; and it is not probable that they will have any to spare, if you invade them
a second time this summer by sea and land; but they will either offer no resistance
to your vessels, or withdraw from both our shores. Nor must it be thought that this
is a case of putting yourselves into danger for a country which is not yours. Lesbos
may appear far off, but when help is wanted she will be found near enough. It is
not in Attica that the war will be decided, as some imagine, but in the countries
by which Attica is supported; and the Athenian revenue is drawn from the allies,
and will become still larger if they reduce us; as not only will no other state
revolt, but our resources will be added to theirs, and we shall be treated worse
than those that were enslaved before. But if you will frankly support us, you will
add to your side a state that has a large navy, which is your great want; you will
smooth the way to the overthrow of the Athenians by depriving them of their allies,
who will be greatly encouraged to come over; and you will free yourselves from the
imputation made against you, of not supporting insurrection. In short, only show
yourselves as liberators, and you may count upon having the advantage in the war.
“

Respect, therefore, the hopes placed in you by the Hellenes, and that Olympian
Zeus, in whose temple we stand as very suppliants; become the allies and defenders
of the Mitylenians, and do not sacrifice us, who put our lives upon the hazard,
in a cause in which general good will result to all from our success, and still
more general harm if we fail through your refusing to help us; but be the men that
the Hellenes think you, and our fears desire.”

Such were the words of the Mitylenians. After hearing them out, the Lacedaemonians
and confederates granted what they urged, and took the Lesbians into alliance, and
deciding in favour of the invasion of Attica, told the allies present to march as
quickly as possible to the Isthmus with two-thirds of their forces; and arriving
there first themselves, got ready hauling machines to carry their ships across from
Corinth to the sea on the side of Athens, in order to make their attack by sea and
land at once. However, the zeal which they displayed was not imitated by the rest
of the confederates, who came in but slowly, being engaged in harvesting their corn
and sick of making expeditions.

Meanwhile the Athenians, aware that the preparations of the enemy were due to
his conviction of their weakness, and wishing to show him that he was mistaken,
and that they were able, without moving the Lesbian fleet, to repel with ease that
with which they were menaced from Peloponnese, manned a hundred ships by embarking
the citizens of Athens, except the knights and Pentacosiomedimni, and the resident
aliens; and putting out to the Isthmus, displayed their power, and made descents
upon Peloponnese wherever they pleased. A disappointment so signal made the Lacedaemonians
think that the Lesbians had not spoken the truth; and embarrassed by the non-appearance
of the confederates, coupled with the news that the thirty ships round Peloponnese
were ravaging the lands near Sparta, they went back home. Afterwards, however, they
got ready a fleet to send to Lesbos, and ordering a total of forty ships from the
different cities in the league, appointed Alcidas to command the expedition in his
capacity of high admiral. Meanwhile the Athenians in the hundred ships, upon seeing
the Lacedaemonians go home, went home likewise.

If, at the time that this fleet was at sea, Athens had almost the largest number
of first-rate ships in commission that she ever possessed at any one moment, she
had as many or even more when the war began. At that time one hundred guarded Attica,
Euboea, and Salamis; a hundred more were cruising round Peloponnese, besides those
employed at Potidaea and in other places; making a grand total of two hundred and
fifty vessels employed on active service in a single summer. It was this, with Potidaea,
that most exhausted her revenues- Potidaea being blockaded by a force of heavy infantry
(each drawing two drachmae a day, one for himself and another for his servant),
which amounted to three thousand at first, and was kept at this number down to the
end of the siege; besides sixteen hundred with Phormio who went away before it was
over; and the ships being all paid at the same rate. In this way her money was wasted
at first; and this was the largest number of ships ever manned by her.

About the same time that the Lacedaemonians were at the Isthmus, the Mitylenians
marched by land with their mercenaries against Methymna, which they thought to gain
by treachery. After assaulting the town, and not meeting with the success that they
anticipated, they withdrew to Antissa, Pyrrha, and Eresus; and taking measures for
the better security of these towns and strengthening their walls, hastily returned
home. After their departure the Methymnians marched against Antissa, but were defeated
in a sortie by the Antissians and their mercenaries, and retreated in haste after
losing many of their number. Word of this reaching Athens, and the Athenians learning
that the Mitylenians were masters of the country and their own soldiers unable to
hold them in check, they sent out about the beginning of autumn Paches, son of Epicurus,
to take the command, and a thousand Athenian heavy infantry; who worked their own
passage and, arriving at Mitylene, built a single wall all round it, forts being
erected at some of the strongest points. Mitylene was thus blockaded strictly on
both sides, by land and by sea; and winter now drew near.

The Athenians needing money for the siege, although they had for the first time
raised a contribution of two hundred talents from their own citizens, now sent out
twelve ships to levy subsidies from their allies, with Lysicles and four others
in command. After cruising to different places and laying them under contribution,
Lysicles went up the country from Myus, in Caria, across the plain of the Meander,
as far as the hill of Sandius; and being attacked by the Carians and the people
of Anaia, was slain with many of his soldiers.

The same winter the Plataeans, who were still being besieged by the Peloponnesians
and Boeotians, distressed by the failure of their provisions, and seeing no hope
of relief from Athens, nor any other means of safety, formed a scheme with the Athenians
besieged with them for escaping, if possible, by forcing their way over the enemy’s
walls; the attempt having been suggested by Theaenetus, son of Tolmides, a soothsayer,
and Eupompides, son of Daimachus, one of their generals. At first all were to join:
afterwards, half hung back, thinking the risk great; about two hundred and twenty,
however, voluntarily persevered in the attempt, which was carried out in the following
way. Ladders were made to match the height of the enemy’s wall, which they measured
by the layers of bricks, the side turned towards them not being thoroughly whitewashed.
These were counted by many persons at once; and though some might miss the right
calculation, most would hit upon it, particularly as they counted over and over
again, and were no great way from the wall, but could see it easily enough for their
purpose. The length required for the ladders was thus obtained, being calculated
from the breadth of the brick.

Now the wall of the Peloponnesians was constructed as follows. It consisted of
two lines drawn round the place, one against the Plataeans, the other against any
attack on the outside from Athens, about sixteen feet apart. The intermediate space
of sixteen feet was occupied by huts portioned out among the soldiers on guard,
and built in one block, so as to give the appearance of a single thick wall with
battlements on either side. At intervals of every ten battlements were towers of
considerable size, and the same breadth as the wall, reaching right across from
its inner to its outer face, with no means of passing except through the middle.
Accordingly on stormy and wet nights the battlements were deserted, and guard kept
from the towers, which were not far apart and roofed in above.

Such being the structure of the wall by which the Plataeans were blockaded, when
their preparations were completed, they waited for a stormy night of wind and rain
and without any moon, and then set out, guided by the authors of the enterprise.
Crossing first the ditch that ran round the town, they next gained the wall of the
enemy unperceived by the sentinels, who did not see them in the darkness, or hear
them, as the wind drowned with its roar the noise of their approach; besides which
they kept a good way off from each other, that they might not be betrayed by the
clash of their weapons. They were also lightly equipped, and had only the left foot
shod to preserve them from slipping in the mire. They came up to the battlements
at one of the intermediate spaces where they knew them to be unguarded: those who
carried the ladders went first and planted them; next twelve light-armed soldiers
with only a dagger and a breastplate mounted, led by Ammias, son of Coroebus, who
was the first on the wall; his followers getting up after him and going six to each
of the towers. After these came another party of light troops armed with spears,
whose shields, that they might advance the easier, were carried by men behind, who
were to hand them to them when they found themselves in presence of the enemy. After
a good many had mounted they were discovered by the sentinels in the towers, by
the noise made by a tile which was knocked down by one of the Plataeans as he was
laying hold of the battlements. The alarm was instantly given, and the troops rushed
to the wall, not knowing the nature of the danger, owing to the dark night and stormy
weather; the Plataeans in the town having also chosen that moment to make a sortie
against the wall of the Peloponnesians upon the side opposite to that on which their
men were getting over, in order to divert the attention of the besiegers. Accordingly
they remained distracted at their several posts, without any venturing to stir to
give help from his own station, and at a loss to guess what was going on. Meanwhile
the three hundred set aside for service on emergencies went outside the wall in
the direction of the alarm. Fire-signals of an attack were also raised towards Thebes;
but the Plataeans in the town at once displayed a number of others, prepared beforehand
for this very purpose, in order to render the enemy’s signals unintelligible, and
to prevent his friends getting a true idea of what was passing and coming to his
aid before their comrades who had gone out should have made good their escape and
be in safety.

Meanwhile the first of the scaling party that had got up, after carrying both
the towers and putting the sentinels to the sword, posted themselves inside to prevent
any one coming through against them; and rearing ladders from the wall, sent several
men up on the towers, and from their summit and base kept in check all of the enemy
that came up, with their missiles, while their main body planted a number of ladders
against the wall, and knocking down the battlements, passed over between the towers;
each as soon as he had got over taking up his station at the edge of the ditch,
and plying from thence with arrows and darts any who came along the wall to stop
the passage of his comrades. When all were over, the party on the towers came down,
the last of them not without difficulty, and proceeded to the ditch, just as the
three hundred came up carrying torches. The Plataeans, standing on the edge of the
ditch in the dark, had a good view of their opponents, and discharged their arrows
and darts upon the unarmed parts of their bodies, while they themselves could not
be so well seen in the obscurity for the torches; and thus even the last of them
got over the ditch, though not without effort and difficulty; as ice had formed
in it, not strong enough to walk upon, but of that watery kind which generally comes
with a wind more east than north, and the snow which this wind had caused to fall
during the night had made the water in the ditch rise, so. that they could scarcely
breast it as they crossed. However, it was mainly the violence of the storm that
enabled them to effect their escape at all.

Starting from the ditch, the Plataeans went all together along the road leading
to Thebes, keeping the chapel of the hero Androcrates upon their right; considering
that the last road which the Peloponnesians would suspect them of having taken would
be that towards their enemies’ country. Indeed they could see them pursuing with
torches upon the Athens road towards Cithaeron and Druoskephalai or Oakheads. After
going for rather more than half a mile upon the road to Thebes, the Plataeans turned
off and took that leading to the mountain, to Erythrae and Hysiae, and reaching
the hills, made good their escape to Athens, two hundred and twelve men in all;
some of their number having turned back into the town before getting over the wall,
and one archer having been taken prisoner at the outer ditch. Meanwhile the Peloponnesians
gave up the pursuit and returned to their posts; and the Plataeans in the town,
knowing nothing of what had passed, and informed by those who had turned back that
not a man had escaped, sent out a herald as soon as it was day to make a truce for
the recovery of the dead bodies, and then, learning the truth, desisted. In this
way the Plataean party got over and were saved.

Towards the close of the same winter, Salaethus, a Lacedaemonian, was sent out
in a galley from Lacedaemon to Mitylene. Going by sea to Pyrrha, and from thence
overland, he passed along the bed of a torrent, where the line of circumvallation
was passable, and thus entering unperceived into Mitylene told the magistrates that
Attica would certainly be invaded, and the forty ships destined to relieve them
arrive, and that he had been sent on to announce this and to superintend matters
generally. The Mitylenians upon this took courage, and laid aside the idea of treating
with the Athenians; and now this winter ended, and with it ended the fourth year
of the war of which Thucydides was the historian.

The next summer the Peloponnesians sent off the forty-two ships for Mitylene,
under Alcidas, their high admiral, and themselves and their allies invaded Attica,
their object being to distract the Athenians by a double movement, and thus to make
it less easy for them to act against the fleet sailing to Mitylene. The commander
in this invasion was Cleomenes, in the place of King Pausanias, son of Pleistoanax,
his nephew, who was still a minor. Not content with laying waste whatever had shot
up in the parts which they had before devastated, the invaders now extended their
ravages to lands passed over in their previous incursions; so that this invasion
was more severely felt by the Athenians than any except the second; the enemy staying
on and on until they had overrun most of the country, in the expectation of hearing
from Lesbos of something having been achieved by their fleet, which they thought
must now have got over. However, as they did not obtain any of the results expected,
and their provisions began to run short, they retreated and dispersed to their different
cities.

In the meantime the Mitylenians, finding their provisions failing, while the
fleet from Peloponnese was loitering on the way instead of appearing at Mitylene,
were compelled to come to terms with the Athenians in the following manner. Salaethus
having himself ceased to expect the fleet to arrive, now armed the commons with
heavy armour, which they had not before possessed, with the intention of making
a sortie against the Athenians. The commons, however, no sooner found themselves
possessed of arms than they refused any longer to obey their officers; and forming
in knots together, told the authorities to bring out in public the provisions and
divide them amongst them all, or they would themselves come to terms with the Athenians
and deliver up the city.

The government, aware of their inability to prevent this, and of the danger they
would be in, if left out of the capitulation, publicly agreed with Paches and the
army to surrender Mitylene at discretion and to admit the troops into the town;
upon the understanding that the Mitylenians should be allowed to send an embassy
to Athens to plead their cause, and that Paches should not imprison, make slaves
of, or put to death any of the citizens until its return. Such were the terms of
the capitulation; in spite of which the chief authors of the negotiation with Lacedaemon
were so completely overcome by terror when the army entered that they went and seated
themselves by the altars, from which they were raised up by Paches under promise
that he would do them no wrong, and lodged by him in Tenedos, until he should learn
the pleasure of the Athenians concerning them. Paches also sent some galleys and
seized Antissa, and took such other military measures as he thought advisable.

Meanwhile the Peloponnesians in the forty ships, who ought to have made all haste
to relieve Mitylene, lost time in coming round Peloponnese itself, and proceeding
leisurely on the remainder of the voyage, made Delos without having been seen by
the Athenians at Athens, and from thence arriving at Icarus and Myconus, there first
heard of the fall of Mitylene. Wishing to know the truth, they put into Embatum,
in the Erythraeid, about seven days after the capture of the town. Here they learned
the truth, and began to consider what they were to do; and Teutiaplus, an Elean,
addressed them as follows:

“Alcidas and Peloponnesians who share with me the command of this armament, my
advice is to sail just as we are to Mitylene, before we have been heard of. We may
expect to find the Athenians as much off their guard as men generally are who have
just taken a city: this will certainly be so by sea, where they have no idea of
any enemy attacking them, and where our strength, as it happens, mainly lies; while
even their land forces are probably scattered about the houses in the carelessness
of victory. If therefore we were to fall upon them suddenly and in the night, I
have hopes, with the help of the well-wishers that we may have left inside the town,
that we shall become masters of the place. Let us not shrink from the risk, but
let us remember that this is just the occasion for one of the baseless panics common
in war: and that to be able to guard against these in one’s own case, and to detect
the moment when an attack will find an enemy at this disadvantage, is what makes
a successful general.”

These words of Teutiaplus failing to move Alcidas, some of the Ionian exiles
and the Lesbians with the expedition began to urge him, since this seemed too dangerous,
to seize one of the Ionian cities or the Aeolic town of Cyme, to use as a base for
effecting the revolt of Ionia. This was by no means a hopeless enterprise, as their
coming was welcome everywhere; their object would be by this move to deprive Athens
of her chief source of revenue, and at the same time to saddle her with expense,
if she chose to blockade them; and they would probably induce Pissuthnes to join
them in the war. However, Alcidas gave this proposal as bad a reception as the other,
being eager, since he had come too late for Mitylene, to find himself back in Peloponnese
as soon as possible.

Accordingly he put out from Embatum and proceeded along shore; and touching at
the Teian town, Myonnesus, there butchered most of the prisoners that he had taken
on his passage. Upon his coming to anchor at Ephesus, envoys came to him from the
Samians at Anaia, and told him that he was not going the right way to free Hellas
in massacring men who had never raised a hand against him, and who were not enemies
of his, but allies of Athens against their will, and that if he did not stop he
would turn many more friends into enemies than enemies into friends. Alcidas agreed
to this, and let go all the Chians still in his hands and some of the others that
he had taken; the inhabitants, instead of flying at the sight of his vessels, rather
coming up to them, taking them for Athenian, having no sort of expectation that
while the Athenians commanded the sea Peloponnesian ships would venture over to
Ionia.

From Ephesus Alcidas set sail in haste and fled. He had been seen by the Salaminian
and Paralian galleys, which happened to be sailing from Athens, while still at anchor
off Clarus; and fearing pursuit he now made across the open sea, fully determined
to touch nowhere, if he could help it, until he got to Peloponnese. Meanwhile news
of him had come in to Paches from the Erythraeid, and indeed from all quarters.
As Ionia was unfortified, great fears were felt that the Peloponnesians coasting
along shore, even if they did not intend to stay, might make descents in passing
and plunder the towns; and now the Paralian and Salaminian, having seen him at Clarus,
themselves brought intelligence of the fact. Paches accordingly gave hot chase,
and continued the pursuit as far as the isle of Patmos, and then finding that Alcidas
had got on too far to be overtaken, came back again. Meanwhile he thought it fortunate
that, as he had not fallen in with them out at sea, he had not overtaken them anywhere
where they would have been forced to encamp, and so give him the trouble of blockading
them.

On his return along shore he touched, among other places, at Notium, the port
of Colophon, where the Colophonians had settled after the capture of the upper town
by Itamenes and the barbarians, who had been called in by certain individuals in
a party quarrel. The capture of the town took place about the time of the second
Peloponnesian invasion of Attica. However, the refugees, after settling at Notium,
again split up into factions, one of which called in Arcadian and barbarian mercenaries
from Pissuthnes and, entrenching these in a quarter apart, formed a new community
with the Median party of the Colophonians who joined them from the upper town. Their
opponents had retired into exile, and now called in Paches, who invited Hippias,
the commander of the Arcadians in the fortified quarter, to a parley, upon condition
that, if they could not agree, he was to be put back safe and sound in the fortification.
However, upon his coming out to him, he put him into custody, though not in chains,
and attacked suddenly and took by surprise the fortification, and putting the Arcadians
and the barbarians found in it to the sword, afterwards took Hippias into it as
he had promised, and, as soon as he was inside, seized him and shot him down. Paches
then gave up Notium to the Colophonians not of the Median party; and settlers were
afterwards sent out from Athens, and the place colonized according to Athenian laws,
after collecting all the Colophonians found in any of the cities.

Arrived at Mitylene, Paches reduced Pyrrha and Eresus; and finding the Lacedaemonian,
Salaethus, in hiding in the town, sent him off to Athens, together with the Mitylenians
that he had placed in Tenedos, and any other persons that he thought concerned in
the revolt. He also sent back the greater part of his forces, remaining with the
rest to settle Mitylene and the rest of Lesbos as he thought best.

Upon the arrival of the prisoners with Salaethus, the Athenians at once put the
latter to death, although he offered, among other things, to procure the withdrawal
of the Peloponnesians from Plataea, which was still under siege; and after deliberating
as to what they should do with the former, in the fury of the moment determined
to put to death not only the prisoners at Athens, but the whole adult male population
of Mitylene, and to make slaves of the women and children. It was remarked that
Mitylene had revolted without being, like the rest, subjected to the empire; and
what above all swelled the wrath of the Athenians was the fact of the Peloponnesian
fleet having ventured over to Ionia to her support, a fact which was held to argue
a long meditated rebellion. They accordingly sent a galley to communicate the decree
to Paches, commanding him to lose no time in dispatching the Mitylenians. The morrow
brought repentance with it and reflection on the horrid cruelty of a decree, which
condemned a whole city to the fate merited only by the guilty. This was no sooner
perceived by the Mitylenian ambassadors at Athens and their Athenian supporters,
than they moved the authorities to put the question again to the vote; which they
the more easily consented to do, as they themselves plainly saw that most of the
citizens wished some one to give them an opportunity for reconsidering the matter.
An assembly was therefore at once called, and after much expression of opinion upon
both sides, Cleon, son of Cleaenetus, the same who had carried the former motion
of putting the Mitylenians to death, the most violent man at Athens, and at that
time by far the most powerful with the commons, came forward again and spoke as
follows:

“I have often before now been convinced that a democracy is incapable of empire,
and never more so than by your present change of mind in the matter of Mitylene.
Fears or plots being unknown to you in your daily relations with each other, you
feel just the same with regard to your allies, and never reflect that the mistakes
into which you may be led by listening to their appeals, or by giving way to your
own compassion, are full of danger to yourselves, and bring you no thanks for your
weakness from your allies; entirely forgetting that your empire is a despotism and
your subjects disaffected conspirators, whose obedience is ensured not by your suicidal
concessions, but by the superiority given you by your own strength and not their
loyalty. The most alarming feature in the case is the constant change of measures
with which we appear to be threatened, and our seeming ignorance of the fact that
bad laws which are never changed are better for a city than good ones that have
no authority; that unlearned loyalty is more serviceable than quick-witted insubordination;
and that ordinary men usually manage public affairs better than their more gifted
fellows. The latter are always wanting to appear wiser than the laws, and to overrule
every proposition brought forward, thinking that they cannot show their wit in more
important matters, and by such behaviour too often ruin their country; while those
who mistrust their own cleverness are content to be less learned than the laws,
and less able to pick holes in the speech of a good speaker; and being fair judges
rather than rival athletes, generally conduct affairs successfully. These we ought
to imitate, instead of being led on by cleverness and intellectual rivalry to advise
your people against our real opinions.

“For myself, I adhere to my former opinion, and wonder at those who have proposed
to reopen the case of the Mitylenians, and who are thus causing a delay which is
all in favour of the guilty, by making the sufferer proceed against the offender
with the edge of his anger blunted; although where vengeance follows most closely
upon the wrong, it best equals it and most amply requites it. I wonder also who
will be the man who will maintain the contrary, and will pretend to show that the
crimes of the Mitylenians are of service to us, and our misfortunes injurious to
the allies. Such a man must plainly either have such confidence in his rhetoric
as to adventure to prove that what has been once for all decided is still undetermined,
or be bribed to try to delude us by elaborate sophisms. In such contests the state
gives the rewards to others, and takes the dangers for herself. The persons to blame
are you who are so foolish as to institute these contests; who go to see an oration
as you would to see a sight, take your facts on hearsay, judge of the practicability
of a project by the wit of its advocates, and trust for the truth as to past events
not to the fact which you saw more than to the clever strictures which you heard;
the easy victims of new-fangled arguments, unwilling to follow received conclusions;
slaves to every new paradox, despisers of the commonplace; the first wish of every
man being that he could speak himself, the next to rival those who can speak by
seeming to be quite up with their ideas by applauding every hit almost before it
is made, and by being as quick in catching an argument as you are slow in foreseeing
its consequences; asking, if I may so say, for something different from the conditions
under which we live, and yet comprehending inadequately those very conditions; very
slaves to the pleasure of the ear, and more like the audience of a rhetorician than
the council of a city.

“In order to keep you from this, I proceed to show that no one state has ever
injured you as much as Mitylene. I can make allowance for those who revolt because
they cannot bear our empire, or who have been forced to do so by the enemy. But
for those who possessed an island with fortifications; who could fear our enemies
only by sea, and there had their own force of galleys to protect them; who were
independent and held in the highest honour by you- to act as these have done, this
is not revolt- revolt implies oppression; it is deliberate and wanton aggression;
an attempt to ruin us by siding with our bitterest enemies; a worse offence than
a war undertaken on their own account in the acquisition of power. The fate of those
of their neighbours who had already rebelled and had been subdued was no lesson
to them; their own prosperity could not dissuade them from affronting danger; but
blindly confident in the future, and full of hopes beyond their power though not
beyond their ambition, they declared war and made their decision to prefer might
to right, their attack being determined not by provocation but by the moment which
seemed propitious. The truth is that great good fortune coming suddenly and unexpectedly
tends to make a people insolent; in most cases it is safer for mankind to have success
in reason than out of reason; and it is easier for them, one may say, to stave off
adversity than to preserve prosperity. Our mistake has been to distinguish the Mitylenians
as we have done: had they been long ago treated like the rest, they never would
have so far forgotten themselves, human nature being as surely made arrogant by
consideration as it is awed by firmness. Let them now therefore be punished as their
crime requires, and do not, while you condemn the aristocracy, absolve the people.
This is certain, that all attacked you without distinction, although they might
have come over to us and been now again in possession of their city. But no, they
thought it safer to throw in their lot with the aristocracy and so joined their
rebellion! Consider therefore: if you subject to the same punishment the ally who
is forced to rebel by the enemy, and him who does so by his own free choice, which
of them, think you, is there that will not rebel upon the slightest pretext; when
the reward of success is freedom, and the penalty of failure nothing so very terrible?
We meanwhile shall have to risk our money and our lives against one state after
another; and if successful, shall receive a ruined town from which we can no longer
draw the revenue upon which our strength depends; while if unsuccessful, we shall
have an enemy the more upon our hands, and shall spend the time that might be employed
in combating our existing foes in warring with our own allies. “

No hope, therefore, that rhetoric may instil or money purchase, of the mercy
due to human infirmity must be held out to the Mitylenians. Their offence was not
involuntary, but of malice and deliberate; and mercy is only for unwilling offenders.
I therefore, now as before, persist against your reversing your first decision,
or giving way to the three failings most fatal to empire- pity, sentiment, and indulgence.
Compassion is due to those who can reciprocate the feeling, not to those who will
never pity us in return, but are our natural and necessary foes: the orators who
charm us with sentiment may find other less important arenas for their talents,
in the place of one where the city pays a heavy penalty for a momentary pleasure,
themselves receiving fine acknowledgments for their fine phrases; while indulgence
should be shown towards those who will be our friends in future, instead of towards
men who will remain just what they were, and as much our enemies as before. To sum
up shortly, I say that if you follow my advice you will do what is just towards
the Mitylenians, and at the same time expedient; while by a different decision you
will not oblige them so much as pass sentence upon yourselves. For if they were
right in rebelling, you must be wrong in ruling. However, if, right or wrong, you
determine to rule, you must carry out your principle and punish the Mitylenians
as your interest requires; or else you must give up your empire and cultivate honesty
without danger. Make up your minds, therefore, to give them like for like; and do
not let the victims who escaped the plot be more insensible than the conspirators
who hatched it; but reflect what they would have done if victorious over you, especially
they were the aggressors. It is they who wrong their neighbour without a cause,
that pursue their victim to the death, on account of the danger which they foresee
in letting their enemy survive; since the object of a wanton wrong is more dangerous,
if he escape, than an enemy who has not this to complain of. Do not, therefore,
be traitors to yourselves, but recall as nearly as possible the moment of suffering
and the supreme importance which you then attached to their reduction; and now pay
them back in their turn, without yielding to present weakness or forgetting the
peril that once hung over you. Punish them as they deserve, and teach your other
allies by a striking example that the penalty of rebellion is death. Let them once
understand this and you will not have so often to neglect your enemies while you
are fighting with your own confederates.”

Such were the words of Cleon. After him Diodotus, son of Eucrates, who had also
in the previous assembly spoken most strongly against putting the Mitylenians to
death, came forward and spoke as follows:

“I do not blame the persons who have reopened the case of the Mitylenians, nor
do I approve the protests which we have heard against important questions being
frequently debated. I think the two things most opposed to good counsel are haste
and passion; haste usually goes hand in hand with folly, passion with coarseness
and narrowness of mind. As for the argument that speech ought not to be the exponent
of action, the man who uses it must be either senseless or interested: senseless
if he believes it possible to treat of the uncertain future through any other medium;
interested if, wishing to carry a disgraceful measure and doubting his ability to
speak well in a bad cause, he thinks to frighten opponents and hearers by well-aimed
calumny. What is still more intolerable is to accuse a speaker of making a display
in order to be paid for it. If ignorance only were imputed, an unsuccessful speaker
might retire with a reputation for honesty, if not for wisdom; while the charge
of dishonesty makes him suspected, if successful, and thought, if defeated, not
only a fool but a rogue. The city is no gainer by such a system, since fear deprives
it of its advisers; although in truth, if our speakers are to make such assertions,
it would be better for the country if they could not speak at all, as we should
then make fewer blunders. The good citizen ought to triumph not by frightening his
opponents but by beating them fairly in argument; and a wise city, without over-distinguishing
its best advisers, will nevertheless not deprive them of their due, and, far from
punishing an unlucky counsellor, will not even regard him as disgraced. In this
way successful orators would be least tempted to sacrifice their convictions to
popularity, in the hope of still higher honours, and unsuccessful speakers to resort
to the same popular arts in order to win over the multitude.

“This is not our way; and, besides, the moment that a man is suspected of giving
advice, however good, from corrupt motives, we feel such a grudge against him for
the gain which after all we are not certain he will receive, that we deprive the
city of its certain benefit. Plain good advice has thus come to be no less suspected
than bad; and the advocate of the most monstrous measures is not more obliged to
use deceit to gain the people, than the best counsellor is to lie in order to be
believed. The city and the city only, owing to these refinements, can never be served
openly and without disguise; he who does serve it openly being always suspected
of serving himself in some secret way in return. Still, considering the magnitude
of the interests involved, and the position of affairs, we orators must make it
our business to look a little farther than you who judge offhand; especially as
we, your advisers, are responsible, while you, our audience, are not so. For if
those who gave the advice, and those who took it, suffered equally, you would judge
more calmly; as it is, you visit the disasters into which the whim of the moment
may have led you upon the single person of your adviser, not upon yourselves, his
numerous companions in error.

“However, I have not come forward either to oppose or to accuse in the matter
of Mitylene; indeed, the question before us as sensible men is not their guilt,
but our interests. Though I prove them ever so guilty, I shall not, therefore, advise
their death, unless it be expedient; nor though they should have claims to indulgence,
shall I recommend it, unless it be dearly for the good of the country. I consider
that we are deliberating for the future more than for the present; and where Cleon
is so positive as to the useful deterrent effects that will follow from making rebellion
capital, I, who consider the interests of the future quite as much as he, as positively
maintain the contrary. And I require you not to reject my useful considerations
for his specious ones: his speech may have the attraction of seeming the more just
in your present temper against Mitylene; but we are not in a court of justice, but
in a political assembly; and the question is not justice, but how to make the Mitylenians
useful to Athens.

“Now of course communities have enacted the penalty of death for many offences
far lighter than this: still hope leads men to venture, and no one ever yet put
himself in peril without the inward conviction that he would succeed in his design.
Again, was there ever city rebelling that did not believe that it possessed either
in itself or in its alliances resources adequate to the enterprise? All, states
and individuals, are alike prone to err, and there is no law that will prevent them;
or why should men have exhausted the list of punishments in search of enactments
to protect them from evildoers? It is probable that in early times the penalties
for the greatest offences were less severe, and that, as these were disregarded,
the penalty of death has been by degrees in most cases arrived at, which is itself
disregarded in like manner. Either then some means of terror more terrible than
this must be discovered, or it must be owned that this restraint is useless; and
that as long as poverty gives men the courage of necessity, or plenty fills them
with the ambition which belongs to insolence and pride, and the other conditions
of life remain each under the thraldom of some fatal and master passion, so long
will the impulse never be wanting to drive men into danger. Hope also and cupidity,
the one leading and the other following, the one conceiving the attempt, the other
suggesting the facility of succeeding, cause the widest ruin, and, although invisible
agents, are far stronger than the dangers that are seen. Fortune, too, powerfully
helps the delusion and, by the unexpected aid that she sometimes lends, tempts men
to venture with inferior means; and this is especially the case with communities,
because the stakes played for are the highest, freedom or empire, and, when all
are acting together, each man irrationally magnifies his own capacity. In fine,
it is impossible to prevent, and only great simplicity can hope to prevent, human
nature doing what it has once set its mind upon, by force of law or by any other
deterrent force whatsoever.

“We must not, therefore, commit ourselves to a false policy through a belief
in the efficacy of the punishment of death, or exclude rebels from the hope of repentance
and an early atonement of their error. Consider a moment. At present, if a city
that has already revolted perceive that it cannot succeed, it will come to terms
while it is still able to refund expenses, and pay tribute afterwards. In the other
case, what city, think you, would not prepare better than is now done, and hold
out to the last against its besiegers, if it is all one whether it surrender late
or soon? And how can it be otherwise than hurtful to us to be put to the expense
of a siege, because surrender is out of the question; and if we take the city, to
receive a ruined town from which we can no longer draw the revenue which forms our
real strength against the enemy? We must not, therefore, sit as strict judges of
the offenders to our own prejudice, but rather see how by moderate chastisements
we may be enabled to benefit in future by the revenue-producing powers of our dependencies;
and we must make up our minds to look for our protection not to legal terrors but
to careful administration. At present we do exactly the opposite. When a free community,
held in subjection by force, rises, as is only natural, and asserts its independence,
it is no sooner reduced than we fancy ourselves obliged to punish it severely; although
the right course with freemen is not to chastise them rigorously when they do rise,
but rigorously to watch them before they rise, and to prevent their ever entertaining
the idea, and, the insurrection suppressed, to make as few responsible for it as
possible.

“Only consider what a blunder you would commit in doing as Cleon recommends.
As things are at present, in all the cities the people is your friend, and either
does not revolt with the oligarchy, or, if forced to do so, becomes at once the
enemy of the insurgents; so that in the war with the hostile city you have the masses
on your side. But if you butcher the people of Mitylene, who had nothing to do with
the revolt, and who, as soon as they got arms, of their own motion surrendered the
town, first you will commit the crime of killing your benefactors; and next you
will play directly into the hands of the higher classes, who when they induce their
cities to rise, will immediately have the people on their side, through your having
announced in advance the same punishment for those who are guilty and for those
who are not. On the contrary, even if they were guilty, you ought to seem not to
notice it, in order to avoid alienating the only class still friendly to us. In
short, I consider it far more useful for the preservation of our empire voluntarily
to put up with injustice, than to put to death, however justly, those whom it is
our interest to keep alive. As for Cleon’s idea that in punishment the claims of
justice and expediency can both be satisfied, facts do not confirm the possibility
of such a combination.

“Confess, therefore, that this is the wisest course, and without conceding too
much either to pity or to indulgence, by neither of which motives do I any more
than Cleon wish you to be influenced, upon the plain merits of the case before you,
be persuaded by me to try calmly those of the Mitylenians whom Paches sent off as
guilty, and to leave the rest undisturbed. This is at once best for the future,
and most terrible to your enemies at the present moment; inasmuch as good policy
against an adversary is superior to the blind attacks of brute force.”

Such were the words of Diodotus. The two opinions thus expressed were the ones
that most directly contradicted each other; and the Athenians, notwithstanding their
change of feeling, now proceeded to a division, in which the show of hands was almost
equal, although the motion of Diodotus carried the day. Another galley was at once
sent off in haste, for fear that the first might reach Lesbos in the interval, and
the city be found destroyed; the first ship having about a day and a night’s start.
Wine and barley-cakes were provided for the vessel by the Mitylenian ambassadors,
and great promises made if they arrived in time; which caused the men to use such
diligence upon the voyage that they took their meals of barley-cakes kneaded with
oil and wine as they rowed, and only slept by turns while the others were at the
oar. Luckily they met with no contrary wind, and the first ship making no haste
upon so horrid an errand, while the second pressed on in the manner described, the
first arrived so little before them, that Paches had only just had time to read
the decree, and to prepare to execute the sentence, when the second put into port
and prevented the massacre. The danger of Mitylene had indeed been great.

The other party whom Paches had sent off as the prime movers in the rebellion,
were upon Cleon’s motion put to death by the Athenians, the number being rather
more than a thousand. The Athenians also demolished the walls of the Mitylenians,
and took possession of their ships. Afterwards tribute was not imposed upon the
Lesbians; but all their land, except that of the Methymnians, was divided into three
thousand allotments, three hundred of which were reserved as sacred for the gods,
and the rest assigned by lot to Athenian shareholders, who were sent out to the
island. With these the Lesbians agreed to pay a rent of two minae a year for each
allotment, and cultivated the land themselves. The Athenians also took possession
of the towns on the continent belonging to the Mitylenians, which thus became for
the future subject to Athens. Such were the events that took place at Lesbos.

Chapter X

Fifth Year of the War – Trial and Execution of the Plataeans – Corcyraean Revolution.

During the same summer, after the reduction of Lesbos, the Athenians under Nicias,
son of Niceratus, made an expedition against the island of Minoa, which lies off
Megara and was used as a fortified post by the Megarians, who had built a tower
upon it. Nicias wished to enable the Athenians to maintain their blockade from this
nearer station instead of from Budorum and Salamis; to stop the Peloponnesian galleys
and privateers sailing out unobserved from the island, as they had been in the habit
of doing; and at the same time prevent anything from coming into Megara. Accordingly,
after taking two towers projecting on the side of Nisaea, by engines from the sea,
and clearing the entrance into the channel between the island and the shore, he
next proceeded to cut off all communication by building a wall on the mainland at
the point where a bridge across a morass enabled succours to be thrown into the
island, which was not far off from the continent. A few days sufficing to accomplish
this, he afterwards raised some works in the island also, and leaving a garrison
there, departed with his forces.

About the same time in this summer, the Plataeans, being now without provisions
and unable to support the siege, surrendered to the Peloponnesians in the following
manner. An assault had been made upon the wall, which the Plataeans were unable
to repel. The Lacedaemonian commander, perceiving their weakness, wished to avoid
taking the place by storm; his instructions from Lacedaemon having been so conceived,
in order that if at any future time peace should be made with Athens, and they should
agree each to restore the places that they had taken in the war, Plataea might be
held to have come over voluntarily, and not be included in the list. He accordingly
sent a herald to them to ask if they were willing voluntarily to surrender the town
to the Lacedaemonians, and accept them as their judges, upon the understanding that
the guilty should be punished, but no one without form of law. The Plataeans were
now in the last state of weakness, and the herald had no sooner delivered his message
than they surrendered the town. The Peloponnesians fed them for some days until
the judges from Lacedaemon, who were five in number, arrived. Upon their arrival
no charge was preferred; they simply called up the Plataeans, and asked them whether
they had done the Lacedaemonians and allies any service in the war then raging.
The Plataeans asked leave to speak at greater length, and deputed two of their number
to represent them: Astymachus, son of Asopolaus, and Lacon, son of Aeimnestus, proxenus
of the Lacedaemonians, who came forward and spoke as follows:

“Lacedaemonians, when we surrendered our city we trusted in you, and looked forward
to a trial more agreeable to the forms of law than the present, to which we had
no idea of being subjected; the judges also in whose hands we consented to place
ourselves were you, and you only (from whom we thought we were most likely to obtain
justice), and not other persons, as is now the case. As matters stand, we are afraid
that we have been doubly deceived. We have good reason to suspect, not only that
the issue to be tried is the most terrible of all, but that you will not prove impartial;
if we may argue from the fact that no accusation was first brought forward for us
to answer, but we had ourselves to ask leave to speak, and from the question being
put so shortly, that a true answer to it tells against us, while a false one can
be contradicted. In this dilemma, our safest, and indeed our only course, seems
to be to say something at all risks: placed as we are, we could scarcely be silent
without being tormented by the damning thought that speaking might have saved us.
Another difficulty that we have to encounter is the difficulty of convincing you.
Were we unknown to each other we might profit by bringing forward new matter with
which you were unacquainted: as it is, we can tell you nothing that you do not know
already, and we fear, not that you have condemned us in your own minds of having
failed in our duty towards you, and make this our crime, but that to please a third
party we have to submit to a trial the result of which is already decided. Nevertheless,
we will place before you what we can justly urge, not only on the question of the
quarrel which the Thebans have against us, but also as addressing you and the rest
of the Hellenes; and we will remind you of our good services, and endeavour to prevail
with you.

“To your short question, whether we have done the Lacedaemonians and allies any
service in this war, we say, if you ask us as enemies, that to refrain from serving
you was not to do you injury; if as friends, that you are more in fault for having
marched against us. During the peace, and against the Mede, we acted well: we have
not now been the first to break the peace, and we were the only Boeotians who then
joined in defending against the Mede the liberty of Hellas. Although an inland people,
we were present at the action at Artemisium; in the battle that took place in our
territory we fought by the side of yourselves and Pausanias; and in all the other
Hellenic exploits of the time we took a part quite out of proportion to our strength.
Besides, you, as Lacedaemonians, ought not to forget that at the time of the great
panic at Sparta, after the earthquake, caused by the secession of the Helots to
Ithome, we sent the third part of our citizens to assist you.

“On these great and historical occasions such was the part that we chose, although
afterwards we became your enemies. For this you were to blame. When we asked for
your alliance against our Theban oppressors, you rejected our petition, and told
us to go to the Athenians who were our neighbours, as you lived too far off. In
the war we never have done to you, and never should have done to you, anything unreasonable.
If we refused to desert the Athenians when you asked us, we did no wrong; they had
helped us against the Thebans when you drew back, and we could no longer give them
up with honour; especially as we had obtained their alliance and had been admitted
to their citizenship at our own request, and after receiving benefits at their hands;
but it was plainly our duty loyally to obey their orders. Besides, the faults that
either of you may commit in your supremacy must be laid, not upon the followers,
but on the chiefs that lead them astray.

“With regard to the Thebans, they have wronged us repeatedly, and their last
aggression, which has been the means of bringing us into our present position, is
within your own knowledge. In seizing our city in time of peace, and what is more
at a holy time in the month, they justly encountered our vengeance, in accordance
with the universal law which sanctions resistance to an invader; and it cannot now
be right that we should suffer on their account. By taking your own immediate interest
and their animosity as the test of justice, you will prove yourselves to be rather
waiters on expediency than judges of right; although if they seem useful to you
now, we and the rest of the Hellenes gave you much more valuable help at a time
of greater need. Now you are the assailants, and others fear you; but at the crisis
to which we allude, when the barbarian threatened all with slavery, the Thebans
were on his side. It is just, therefore, to put our patriotism then against our
error now, if error there has been; and you will find the merit outweighing the
fault, and displayed at a juncture when there were few Hellenes who would set their
valour against the strength of Xerxes, and when greater praise was theirs who preferred
the dangerous path of honour to the safe course of consulting their own interest
with respect to the invasion. To these few we belonged, and highly were we honoured
for it; and yet we now fear to perish by having again acted on the same principles,
and chosen to act well with Athens sooner than wisely with Sparta. Yet in justice
the same cases should be decided in the same way, and policy should not mean anything
else than lasting gratitude for the service of good ally combined with a proper
attention to one’s own immediate interest.

“Consider also that at present the Hellenes generally regard you as a pattern
of worth and honour; and if you pass an unjust sentence upon us in this which is
no obscure cause, but one in which you, the judges, are as illustrious as we, the
prisoners, are blameless, take care that displeasure be not felt at an unworthy
decision in the matter of honourable men made by men yet more honourable than they,
and at the consecration in the national temples of spoils taken from the Plataeans,
the benefactors of Hellas. Shocking indeed will it seem for Lacedaemonians to destroy
Plataea, and for the city whose name your fathers inscribed upon the tripod at Delphi
for its good service, to be by you blotted out from the map of Hellas, to please
the Thebans. To such a depth of misfortune have we fallen that, while the Medes’
success had been our ruin, Thebans now supplant us in your once fond regards; and
we have been subjected to two dangers, the greatest of any- that of dying of starvation
then, if we had not surrendered our town, and now of being tried for our lives.
So that we Plataeans, after exertions beyond our power in the cause of the Hellenes,
are rejected by all, forsaken and unassisted; helped by none of our allies, and
reduced to doubt the stability of our only hope, yourselves.

“Still, in the name of the gods who once presided over our confederacy, and of
our own good service in the Hellenic cause, we adjure you to relent; to recall the
decision which we fear that the Thebans may have obtained from you; to ask back
the gift that you have given them, that they disgrace not you by slaying us; to
gain a pure instead of a guilty gratitude, and not to gratify others to be yourselves
rewarded with shame. Our lives may be quickly taken, but it will be a heavy task
to wipe away the infamy of the deed; as we are no enemies whom you might justly
punish, but friends forced into taking arms against you. To grant us our lives would
be, therefore, a righteous judgment; if you consider also that we are prisoners
who surrendered of their own accord, stretching out our hands for quarter, whose
slaughter Hellenic law forbids, and who besides were always your benefactors. Look
at the sepulchres of your fathers, slain by the Medes and buried in our country,
whom year by year we honoured with garments and all other dues, and the first-fruits
of all that our land produced in their season, as friends from a friendly country
and allies to our old companions in arms. Should you not decide aright, your conduct
would be the very opposite to ours. Consider only: Pausanias buried them thinking
that he was laying them in friendly ground and among men as friendly; but you, if
you kill us and make the Plataean territory Theban, will leave your fathers and
kinsmen in a hostile soil and among their murderers, deprived of the honours which
they now enjoy. What is more, you will enslave the land in which the freedom of
the Hellenes was won, make desolate the temples of the gods to whom they prayed
before they overcame the Medes, and take away your ancestral sacrifices from those
who founded and instituted them.

“It were not to your glory, Lacedaemonians, either to offend in this way against
the common law of the Hellenes and against your own ancestors, or to kill us your
benefactors to gratify another’s hatred without having been wronged yourselves:
it were more so to spare us and to yield to the impressions of a reasonable compassion;
reflecting not merely on the awful fate in store for us, but also on the character
of the sufferers, and on the impossibility of predicting how soon misfortune may
fall even upon those who deserve it not. We, as we have a right to do and as our
need impels us, entreat you, calling aloud upon the gods at whose common altar all
the Hellenes worship, to hear our request, to be not unmindful of the oaths which
your fathers swore, and which we now plead- we supplicate you by the tombs of your
fathers, and appeal to those that are gone to save us from falling into the hands
of the Thebans and their dearest friends from being given up to their most detested
foes. We also remind you of that day on which we did the most glorious deeds, by
your fathers’ sides, we who now on this are like to suffer the most dreadful fate.
Finally, to do what is necessary and yet most difficult for men in our situation-
that is, to make an end of speaking, since with that ending the peril of our lives
draws near- in conclusion we say that we did not surrender our city to the Thebans
(to that we would have preferred inglorious starvation), but trusted in and capitulated
to you; and it would be just, if we fail to persuade you, to put us back in the
same position and let us take the chance that falls to us. And at the same time
we adjure you not to give us up- your suppliants, Lacedaemonians, out of your hands
and faith, Plataeans foremost of the Hellenic patriots, to Thebans, our most hated
enemies- but to be our saviours, and not, while you free the rest of the Hellenes,
to bring us to destruction.”

Such were the words of the Plataeans. The Thebans, afraid that the Lacedaemonians
might be moved by what they had heard, came forward and said that they too desired
to address them, since the Plataeans had, against their wish, been allowed to speak
at length instead of being confined to a simple answer to the question. Leave being
granted, the Thebans spoke as follows:

“We should never have asked to make this speech if the Plataeans on their side
had contented themselves with shortly answering the question, and had not turned
round and made charges against us, coupled with a long defence of themselves upon
matters outside the present inquiry and not even the subject of accusation, and
with praise of what no one finds fault with. However, since they have done so, we
must answer their charges and refute their self-praise, in order that neither our
bad name nor their good may help them, but that you may hear the real truth on both
points, and so decide.

“The origin of our quarrel was this. We settled Plataea some time after the rest
of Boeotia, together with other places out of which we had driven the mixed population.
The Plataeans not choosing to recognize our supremacy, as had been first arranged,
but separating themselves from the rest of the Boeotians, and proving traitors to
their nationality, we used compulsion; upon which they went over to the Athenians,
and with them did as much harm, for which we retaliated.

“Next, when the barbarian invaded Hellas, they say that they were the only Boeotians
who did not Medize; and this is where they most glorify themselves and abuse us.
We say that if they did not Medize, it was because the Athenians did not do so either;
just as afterwards when the Athenians attacked the Hellenes they, the Plataeans,
were again the only Boeotians who Atticized. And yet consider the forms of our respective
governments when we so acted. Our city at that juncture had neither an oligarchical
constitution in which all the nobles enjoyed equal rights, nor a democracy, but
that which is most opposed to law and good government and nearest a tyranny- the
rule of a close cabal. These, hoping to strengthen their individual power by the
success of the Mede, kept down by force the people, and brought him into the town.
The city as a whole was not its own mistress when it so acted, and ought not to
be reproached for the errors that it committed while deprived of its constitution.
Examine only how we acted after the departure of the Mede and the recovery of the
constitution; when the Athenians attacked the rest of Hellas and endeavoured to
subjugate our country, of the greater part of which faction had already made them
masters. Did not we fight and conquer at Coronea and liberate Boeotia, and do we
not now actively contribute to the liberation of the rest, providing horses to the
cause and a force unequalled by that of any other state in the confederacy?

“Let this suffice to excuse us for our Medism. We will now endeavour to show
that you have injured the Hellenes more than we, and are more deserving of condign
punishment. It was in defence against us, say you, that you became allies and citizens
of Athens. If so, you ought only to have called in the Athenians against us, instead
of joining them in attacking others: it was open to you to do this if you ever felt
that they were leading you where you did not wish to follow, as Lacedaemon was already
your ally against the Mede, as you so much insist; and this was surely sufficient
to keep us off, and above all to allow you to deliberate in security. Nevertheless,
of your own choice and without compulsion you chose to throw your lot in with Athens.
And you say that it had been base for you to betray your benefactors; but it was
surely far baser and more iniquitous to sacrifice the whole body of the Hellenes,
your fellow confederates, who were liberating Hellas, than the Athenians only, who
were enslaving it. The return that you made them was therefore neither equal nor
honourable, since you called them in, as you say, because you were being oppressed
yourselves, and then became their accomplices in oppressing others; although baseness
rather consists in not returning like for like than in not returning what is justly
due but must be unjustly paid.

“Meanwhile, after thus plainly showing that it was not for the sake of the Hellenes
that you alone then did not Medize, but because the Athenians did not do so either,
and you wished to side with them and to be against the rest; you now claim the benefit
of good deeds done to please your neighbours. This cannot be admitted: you chose
the Athenians, and with them you must stand or fall. Nor can you plead the league
then made and claim that it should now protect you. You abandoned that league, and
offended against it by helping instead of hindering the subjugation of the Aeginetans
and others of its members, and that not under compulsion, but while in enjoyment
of the same institutions that you enjoy to the present hour, and no one forcing
you as in our case. Lastly, an invitation was addressed to you before you were blockaded
to be neutral and join neither party: this you did not accept. Who then merit the
detestation of the Hellenes more justly than you, you who sought their ruin under
the mask of honour? The former virtues that you allege you now show not to be proper
to your character; the real bent of your nature has been at length damningly proved:
when the Athenians took the path of injustice you followed them.

“Of our unwilling Medism and your wilful Atticizing this then is our explanation.
The last wrong wrong of which you complain consists in our having, as you say, lawlessly
invaded your town in time of peace and festival. Here again we cannot think that
we were more in fault than yourselves. If of our own proper motion we made an armed
attack upon your city and ravaged your territory, we are guilty; but if the first
men among you in estate and family, wishing to put an end to the foreign connection
and to restore you to the common Boeotian country, of their own free will invited
us, wherein is our crime? Where wrong is done, those who lead, as you say, are more
to blame than those who follow. Not that, in our judgment, wrong was done either
by them or by us. Citizens like yourselves, and with more at stake than you, they
opened their own walls and introduced us into their own city, not as foes but as
friends, to prevent the bad among you from becoming worse; to give honest men their
due; to reform principles without attacking persons, since you were not to be banished
from your city, but brought home to your kindred, nor to be made enemies to any,
but friends alike to all.

“That our intention was not hostile is proved by our behaviour. We did no harm
to any one, but publicly invited those who wished to live under a national, Boeotian
government to come over to us; which as first you gladly did, and made an agreement
with us and remained tranquil, until you became aware of the smallness of our numbers.
Now it is possible that there may have been something not quite fair in our entering
without the consent of your commons. At any rate you did not repay us in kind. Instead
of refraining, as we had done, from violence, and inducing us to retire by negotiation,
you fell upon us in violation of your agreement, and slew some of us in fight, of
which we do not so much complain, for in that there was a certain justice; but others
who held out their hands and received quarter, and whose lives you subsequently
promised us, you lawlessly butchered. If this was not abominable, what is? And after
these three crimes committed one after the other- the violation of your agreement,
the murder of the men afterwards, and the lying breach of your promise not to kill
them, if we refrained from injuring your property in the country- you still affirm
that we are the criminals and yourselves pretend to escape justice. Not so, if these
your judges decide aright, but you will be punished for all together.

“Such, Lacedaemonians, are the facts. We have gone into them at some length both
on your account and on our own, that you may fed that you will justly condemn the
prisoners, and we, that we have given an additional sanction to our vengeance. We
would also prevent you from being melted by hearing of their past virtues, if any
such they had: these may be fairly appealed to by the victims of injustice, but
only aggravate the guilt of criminals, since they offend against their better nature.
Nor let them gain anything by crying and wailing, by calling upon your fathers’
tombs and their own desolate condition. Against this we point to the far more dreadful
fate of our youth, butchered at their hands; the fathers of whom either fell at
Coronea, bringing Boeotia over to you, or seated, forlorn old men by desolate hearths,
with far more reason implore your justice upon the prisoners. The pity which they
appeal to is rather due to men who suffer unworthily; those who suffer justly as
they do are on the contrary subjects for triumph. For their present desolate condition
they have themselves to blame, since they wilfully rejected the better alliance.
Their lawless act was not provoked by any action of ours: hate, not justice, inspired
their decision; and even now the satisfaction which they afford us is not adequate;
they will suffer by a legal sentence, not as they pretend as suppliants asking for
quarter in battle, but as prisoners who have surrendered upon agreement to take
their trial. Vindicate, therefore, Lacedaemonians, the Hellenic law which they have
broken; and to us, the victims of its violation, grant the reward merited by our
zeal. Nor let us be supplanted in your favour by their harangues, but offer an example
to the Hellenes, that the contests to which you invite them are of deeds, not words:
good deeds can be shortly stated, but where wrong is done a wealth of language is
needed to veil its deformity. However, if leading powers were to do what you are
now doing, and putting one short question to all alike were to decide accordingly,
men would be less tempted to seek fine phrases to cover bad actions.”

Such were the words of the Thebans. The Lacedaemonian judges decided that the
question whether they had received any service from the Plataeans in the war, was
a fair one for them to put; as they had always invited them to be neutral, agreeably
to the original covenant of Pausanias after the defeat of the Mede, and had again
definitely offered them the same conditions before the blockade. This offer having
been refused, they were now, they conceived, by the loyalty of their intention released
from their covenant; and having, as they considered, suffered evil at the hands
of the Plataeans, they brought them in again one by one and asked each of them the
same question, that is to say, whether they had done the Lacedaemonians and allies
any service in the war; and upon their saying that they had not, took them out and
slew them, all without exception. The number of Plataeans thus massacred was not
less than two hundred, with twenty-five Athenians who had shared in the siege. The
women were taken as slaves. The city the Thebans gave for about a year to some political
emigrants from Megara and to the surviving Plataeans of their own party to inhabit,
and afterwards razed it to the ground from the very foundations, and built on to
the precinct of Hera an inn two hundred feet square, with rooms all round above
and below, making use for this purpose of the roofs and doors of the Plataeans:
of the rest of the materials in the wall, the brass and the iron, they made couches
which they dedicated to Hera, for whom they also built a stone chapel of a hundred
feet square. The land they confiscated and let out on a ten years’ lease to Theban
occupiers. The adverse attitude of the Lacedaemonians in the whole Plataean affair
was mainly adopted to please the Thebans, who were thought to be useful in the war
at that moment raging. Such was the end of Plataea, in the ninety-third year after
she became the ally of Athens.

Meanwhile, the forty ships of the Peloponnesians that had gone to the relief
of the Lesbians, and which we left flying across the open sea, pursued by the Athenians,
were caught in a storm off Crete, and scattering from thence made their way to Peloponnese,
where they found at Cyllene thirteen Leucadian and Ambraciot galleys, with Brasidas,
son of Tellis, lately arrived as counsellor to Alcidas; the Lacedaemonians, upon
the failure of the Lesbian expedition, having resolved to strengthen their fleet
and sail to Corcyra, where a revolution had broken out, so as to arrive there before
the twelve Athenian ships at Naupactus could be reinforced from Athens. Brasidas
and Alcidas began to prepare accordingly.

The Corcyraean revolution began with the return of the prisoners taken in the
sea-fights off Epidamnus. These the Corinthians had released, nominally upon the
security of eight hundred talents given by their proxeni, but in reality upon their
engagement to bring over Corcyra to Corinth. These men proceeded to canvass each
of the citizens, and to intrigue with the view of detaching the city from Athens.
Upon the arrival of an Athenian and a Corinthian vessel, with envoys on board, a
conference was held in which the Corcyraeans voted to remain allies of the Athenians
according to their agreement, but to be friends of the Peloponnesians as they had
been formerly. Meanwhile, the returned prisoners brought Peithias, a volunteer proxenus
of the Athenians and leader of the commons, to trial, upon the charge of enslaving
Corcyra to Athens. He, being acquitted, retorted by accusing five of the richest
of their number of cutting stakes in the ground sacred to Zeus and Alcinous; the
legal penalty being a stater for each stake. Upon their conviction, the amount of
the penalty being very large, they seated themselves as suppliants in the temples
to be allowed to pay it by instalments; but Peithias, who was one of the senate,
prevailed upon that body to enforce the law; upon which the accused, rendered desperate
by the law, and also learning that Peithias had the intention, while still a member
of the senate, to persuade the people to conclude a defensive and offensive alliance
with Athens, banded together armed with daggers, and suddenly bursting into the
senate killed Peithias and sixty others, senators and private persons; some few
only of the party of Peithias taking refuge in the Athenian galley, which had not
yet departed.

After this outrage, the conspirators summoned the Corcyraeans to an assembly,
and said that this would turn out for the best, and would save them from being enslaved
by Athens: for the future, they moved to receive neither party unless they came
peacefully in a single ship, treating any larger number as enemies. This motion
made, they compelled it to be adopted, and instantly sent off envoys to Athens to
justify what had been done and to dissuade the refugees there from any hostile proceedings
which might lead to a reaction.

Upon the arrival of the embassy, the Athenians arrested the envoys and all who
listened to them, as revolutionists, and lodged them in Aegina. Meanwhile a Corinthian
galley arriving in the island with Lacedaemonian envoys, the dominant Corcyraean
party attacked the commons and defeated them in battle. Night coming on, the commons
took refuge in the Acropolis and the higher parts of the city, and concentrated
themselves there, having also possession of the Hyllaic harbour; their adversaries
occupying the market-place, where most of them lived, and the harbour adjoining,
looking towards the mainland.

The next day passed in skirmishes of little importance, each party sending into
the country to offer freedom to the slaves and to invite them to join them. The
mass of the slaves answered the appeal of the commons; their antagonists being reinforced
by eight hundred mercenaries from the continent. After a day’s interval hostilities
recommenced, victory remaining with the commons, who had the advantage in numbers
and position, the women also valiantly assisting them, pelting with tiles from the
houses, and supporting the melee with a fortitude beyond their sex. Towards dusk,
the oligarchs in full rout, fearing that the victorious commons might assault and
carry the arsenal and put them to the sword, fired the houses round the marketplace
and the lodging-houses, in order to bar their advance; sparing neither their own,
nor those of their neighbours; by which much stuff of the merchants was consumed
and the city risked total destruction, if a wind had come to help the flame by blowing
on it. Hostilities now ceasing, both sides kept quiet, passing the night on guard,
while the Corinthian ship stole out to sea upon the victory of the commons, and
most of the mercenaries passed over secretly to the continent.

The next day the Athenian general, Nicostratus, son of Diitrephes, came up from
Naupactus with twelve ships and five hundred Messenian heavy infantry. He at once
endeavoured to bring about a settlement, and persuaded the two parties to agree
together to bring to trial ten of the ringleaders, who presently fled, while the
rest were to live in peace, making terms with each other, and entering into a defensive
and offensive alliance with the Athenians. This arranged, he was about to sail away,
when the leaders of the commons induced him to leave them five of his ships to make
their adversaries less disposed to move, while they manned and sent with him an
equal number of their own. He had no sooner consented, than they began to enroll
their enemies for the ships; and these, fearing that they might be sent off to Athens,
seated themselves as suppliants in the temple of the Dioscuri. An attempt on the
part of Nicostratus to reassure them and to persuade them to rise proving unsuccessful,
the commons armed upon this pretext, alleging the refusal of their adversaries to
sail with them as a proof of the hollowness of their intentions, and took their
arms out of their houses, and would have dispatched some whom they fell in with,
if Nicostratus had not prevented it. The rest of the party, seeing what was going
on, seated themselves as suppliants in the temple of Hera, being not less than four
hundred in number; until the commons, fearing that they might adopt some desperate
resolution, induced them to rise, and conveyed them over to the island in front
of the temple, where provisions were sent across to them.

At this stage in the revolution, on the fourth or fifth day after the removal
of the men to the island, the Peloponnesian ships arrived from Cyllene where they
had been stationed since their return from Ionia, fifty-three in number, still under
the command of Alcidas, but with Brasidas also on board as his adviser; and dropping
anchor at Sybota, a harbour on the mainland, at daybreak made sail for Corcyra.

The Corcyraeans in great confusion and alarm at the state of things in the city
and at the approach of the invader, at once proceeded to equip sixty vessels, which
they sent out, as fast as they were manned, against the enemy, in spite of the Athenians
recommending them to let them sail out first, and to follow themselves afterwards
with all their ships to. gether. Upon their vessels coming up to the enemy in this
straggling fashion, two immediately deserted: in others the crews were fighting
among themselves, and there was no order in anything that was done; so that the
Peloponnesians, seeing their confusion, placed twenty ships to oppose the Corcyraeans,
and ranged the rest against the twelve Athenian ships, amongst which were the two
vessels Salaminia and Paralus.

While the Corcyraeans, attacking without judgment and in small detachments, were
already crippled by their own misconduct, the Athenians, afraid of the numbers of
the enemy and of being surrounded, did not venture to attack the main body or even
the centre of the division opposed to them, but fell upon its wing and sank one
vessel; after which the Peloponnesians formed in a circle, and the Athenians rowed
round them and tried to throw them into disorder. Perceiving this, the division
opposed to the Corcyraeans, fearing a repetition of the disaster of Naupactus, came
to support their friends, and the whole fleet now bore down, united, upon the Athenians,
who retired before it, backing water, retiring as leisurely as possible in order
to give the Corcyraeans time to escape, while the enemy was thus kept occupied.
Such was the character of this sea-fight, which lasted until sunset.

The Corcyraeans now feared that the enemy would follow up their victory and sail
against the town and rescue the men in the island, or strike some other blow equally
decisive, and accordingly carried the men over again to the temple of Hera, and
kept guard over the city. The Peloponnesians, however, although victorious in the
sea-fight, did not venture to attack the town, but took the thirteen Corcyraean
vessels which they had captured, and with them sailed back to the continent from
whence they had put out. The next day equally they refrained from attacking the
city, although the disorder and panic were at their height, and though Brasidas,
it is said, urged Alcidas, his superior officer, to do so, but they landed upon
the promontory of Leukimme and laid waste the country.

Meanwhile the commons in Corcyra, being still in great fear of the fleet attacking
them, came to a parley with the suppliants and their friends, in order to save the
town; and prevailed upon some of them to go on board the ships, of which they still
manned thirty, against the expected attack. But the Peloponnesians after ravaging
the country until midday sailed away, and towards nightfall were informed by beacon
signals of the approach of sixty Athenian vessels from Leucas, under the command
of Eurymedon, son of Thucles; which had been sent off by the Athenians upon the
news of the revolution and of the fleet with Alcidas being about to sail for Corcyra.

The Peloponnesians accordingly at once set off in haste by night for home, coasting
along shore; and hauling their ships across the Isthmus of Leucas, in order not
to be seen doubling it, so departed. The Corcyraeans, made aware of the approach
of the Athenian fleet and of the departure of the enemy, brought the Messenians
from outside the walls into the town, and ordered the fleet which they had manned
to sail round into the Hyllaic harbour; and while it was so doing, slew such of
their enemies as they laid hands on, dispatching afterwards, as they landed them,
those whom they had persuaded to go on board the ships. Next they went to the sanctuary
of Hera and persuaded about fifty men to take their trial, and condemned them all
to death. The mass of the suppliants who had refused to do so, on seeing what was
taking place, slew each other there in the consecrated ground; while some hanged
themselves upon the trees, and others destroyed themselves as they were severally
able. During seven days that Eurymedon stayed with his sixty ships, the Corcyraeans
were engaged in butchering those of their fellow citizens whom they regarded as
their enemies: and although the crime imputed was that of attempting to put down
the democracy, some were slain also for private hatred, others by their debtors
because of the moneys owed to them. Death thus raged in every shape; and, as usually
happens at such times, there was no length to which violence did not go; sons were
killed by their fathers, and suppliants dragged from the altar or slain upon it;
while some were even walled up in the temple of Dionysus and died there.

So bloody was the march of the revolution, and the impression which it made was
the greater as it was one of the first to occur. Later on, one may say, the whole
Hellenic world was convulsed; struggles being every, where made by the popular chiefs
to bring in the Athenians, and by the oligarchs to introduce the Lacedaemonians.
In peace there would have been neither the pretext nor the wish to make such an
invitation; but in war, with an alliance always at the command of either faction
for the hurt of their adversaries and their own corresponding advantage, opportunities
for bringing in the foreigner were never wanting to the revolutionary parties. The
sufferings which revolution entailed upon the cities were many and terrible, such
as have occurred and always will occur, as long as the nature of mankind remains
the same; though in a severer or milder form, and varying in their symptoms, according
to the variety of the particular cases. In peace and prosperity, states and individuals
have better sentiments, because they do not find themselves suddenly confronted
with imperious necessities; but war takes away the easy supply of daily wants, and
so proves a rough master, that brings most men’s characters to a level with their
fortunes. Revolution thus ran its course from city to city, and the places which
it arrived at last, from having heard what had been done before, carried to a still
greater excess the refinement of their inventions, as manifested in the cunning
of their enterprises and the atrocity of their reprisals. Words had to change their
ordinary meaning and to take that which was now given them. Reckless audacity came
to be considered the courage of a loyal ally; prudent hesitation, specious cowardice;
moderation was held to be a cloak for unmanliness; ability to see all sides of a
question, inaptness to act on any. Frantic violence became the attribute of manliness;
cautious plotting, a justifiable means of self-defence. The advocate of extreme
measures was always trustworthy; his opponent a man to be suspected. To succeed
in a plot was to have a shrewd head, to divine a plot a still shrewder; but to try
to provide against having to do either was to break up your party and to be afraid
of your adversaries. In fine, to forestall an intending criminal, or to suggest
the idea of a crime where it was wanting, was equally commended until even blood
became a weaker tie than party, from the superior readiness of those united by the
latter to dare everything without reserve; for such associations had not in view
the blessings derivable from established institutions but were formed by ambition
for their overthrow; and the confidence of their members in each other rested less
on any religious sanction than upon complicity in crime. The fair proposals of an
adversary were met with jealous precautions by the stronger of the two, and not
with a generous confidence. Revenge also was held of more account than self-preservation.
Oaths of reconciliation, being only proffered on either side to meet an immediate
difficulty, only held good so long as no other weapon was at hand; but when opportunity
offered, he who first ventured to seize it and to take his enemy off his guard,
thought this perfidious vengeance sweeter than an open one, since, considerations
of safety apart, success by treachery won him the palm of superior intelligence.
Indeed it is generally the case that men are readier to call rogues clever than
simpletons honest, and are as ashamed of being the second as they are proud of being
the first. The cause of all these evils was the lust for power arising from greed
and ambition; and from these passions proceeded the violence of parties once engaged
in contention. The leaders in the cities, each provided with the fairest professions,
on the one side with the cry of political equality of the people, on the other of
a moderate aristocracy, sought prizes for themselves in those public interests which
they pretended to cherish, and, recoiling from no means in their struggles for ascendancy
engaged in the direst excesses; in their acts of vengeance they went to even greater
lengths, not stopping at what justice or the good of the state demanded, but making
the party caprice of the moment their only standard, and invoking with equal readiness
the condemnation of an unjust verdict or the authority of the strong arm to glut
the animosities of the hour. Thus religion was in honour with neither party; but
the use of fair phrases to arrive at guilty ends was in high reputation. Meanwhile
the moderate part of the citizens perished between the two, either for not joining
in the quarrel, or because envy would not suffer them to escape.

Thus every form of iniquity took root in the Hellenic countries by reason of
the troubles. The ancient simplicity into which honour so largely entered was laughed
down and disappeared; and society became divided into camps in which no man trusted
his fellow. To put an end to this, there was neither promise to be depended upon,
nor oath that could command respect; but all parties dwelling rather in their calculation
upon the hopelessness of a permanent state of things, were more intent upon self-defence
than capable of confidence. In this contest the blunter wits were most successful.
Apprehensive of their own deficiencies and of the cleverness of their antagonists,
they feared to be worsted in debate and to be surprised by the combinations of their
more versatile opponents, and so at once boldly had recourse to action: while their
adversaries, arrogantly thinking that they should know in time, and that it was
unnecessary to secure by action what policy afforded, often fell victims to their
want of precaution.

Meanwhile Corcyra gave the first example of most of the crimes alluded to; of
the reprisals exacted by the governed who had never experienced equitable treatment
or indeed aught but insolence from their rulers- when their hour came; of the iniquitous
resolves of those who desired to get rid of their accustomed poverty, and ardently
coveted their neighbours’ goods; and lastly, of the savage and pitiless excesses
into which men who had begun the struggle, not in a class but in a party spirit,
were hurried by their ungovernable passions. In the confusion into which life was
now thrown in the cities, human nature, always rebelling against the law and now
its master, gladly showed itself ungoverned in passion, above respect for justice,
and the enemy of all superiority; since revenge would not have been set above religion,
and gain above justice, had it not been for the fatal power of envy. Indeed men
too often take upon themselves in the prosecution of their revenge to set the example
of doing away with those general laws to which all alike can look for salvation
in adversity, instead of allowing them to subsist against the day of danger when
their aid may be required.

While the revolutionary passions thus for the first time displayed themselves
in the factions of Corcyra, Eurymedon and the Athenian fleet sailed away; after
which some five hundred Corcyraean exiles who had succeeded in escaping, took some
forts on the mainland, and becoming masters of the Corcyraean territory over the
water, made this their base to Plunder their countrymen in the island, and did so
much damage as to cause a severe famine in the town. They also sent envoys to Lacedaemon
and Corinth to negotiate their restoration; but meeting with no success, afterwards
got together boats and mercenaries and crossed over to the island, being about six
hundred in all; and burning their boats so as to have no hope except in becoming
masters of the country, went up to Mount Istone, and fortifying themselves there,
began to annoy those in the city and obtained command of the country.

At the close of the same summer the Athenians sent twenty ships under the command
of Laches, son of Melanopus, and Charoeades, son of Euphiletus, to Sicily, where
the Syracusans and Leontines were at war. The Syracusans had for allies all the
Dorian cities except Camarina- these had been included in the Lacedaemonian confederacy
from the commencement of the war, though they had not taken any active part in it-
the Leontines had Camarina and the Chalcidian cities. In Italy the Locrians were
for the Syracusans, the Rhegians for their Leontine kinsmen. The allies of the Leontines
now sent to Athens and appealed to their ancient alliance and to their Ionian origin,
to persuade the Athenians to send them a fleet, as the Syracusans were blockading
them by land and sea. The Athenians sent it upon the plea of their common descent,
but in reality to prevent the exportation of Sicilian corn to Peloponnese and to
test the possibility of bringing Sicily into subjection. Accordingly they established
themselves at Rhegium in Italy, and from thence carried on the war in concert with
their allies.

CHAPTER XI.

Year of the War – Campaigns of Demosthenes in Western Greece – Ruin of Ambracia.

SUMMER was now over. The winter following, the plague a second time attacked
the Athenians; for although it had never entirely left them, still there had been
a notable abatement in its ravages. The second visit lasted no less than a year,
the first having lasted two; and nothing distressed the Athenians and reduced their
power more than this. No less than four thousand four hundred heavy infantry in
the ranks died of it and three hundred cavalry, besides a number of the multitude
that was never ascertained. At the same time took place the numerous earthquakes
in Athens, Euboea, and Boeotia, particularly at Orchomenus in the last-named country.

The same winter the Athenians in Sicily and the Rhegians, with thirty ships,
made an expedition against the islands of Aeolus; it being impossible to invade
them in summer, owing to the want of water. These islands are occupied by the Liparaeans,
a Cnidian colony, who live in one of them of no great size called Lipara; and from
this as their headquarters cultivate the rest, Didyme, Strongyle, and Hiera. In
Hiera the people in those parts believe that Hephaestus has his forge, from the
quantity of flame which they see it send out by night, and of smoke by day. These
islands lie off the coast of the Sicels and Messinese, and were allies of the Syracusans.
The Athenians laid waste their land, and as the inhabitants did not submit, sailed
back to Rhegium. Thus the winter ended, and with it ended the fifth year of this
war, of which Thucydides was the historian.

The next summer the Peloponnesians and their allies set out to invade Attica
under the command of Agis, son of Archidamus, and went as far as the Isthmus, but
numerous earthquakes occurring, turned back again without the invasion taking place.
About the same time that these earthquakes were so common, the sea at Orobiae, in
Euboea, retiring from the then line of coast, returned in a huge wave and invaded
a great part of the town, and retreated leaving some of it still under water; so
that what was once land is now sea; such of the inhabitants perishing as could not
run up to the higher ground in time. A similar inundation also occurred at Atalanta,
the island off the Opuntian Locrian coast, carrying away part of the Athenian fort
and wrecking one of two ships which were drawn up on the beach. At Peparethus also
the sea retreated a little, without however any inundation following; and an earthquake
threw down part of the wall, the town hall, and a few other buildings. The cause,
in my opinion, of this phenomenon must be sought in the earthquake. At the point
where its shock has been the most violent, the sea is driven back and, suddenly
recoiling with redoubled force, causes the inundation. Without an earthquake I do
not see how such an accident could happen.

During the same summer different operations were carried on by the different
beligerents in Sicily; by the Siceliots themselves against each other, and by the
Athenians and their allies: I shall however confine myself to the actions in which
the Athenians took part, choosing the most important. The death of the Athenian
general Charoeades, killed by the Syracusans in battle, left Laches in the sole
command of the fleet, which he now directed in concert with the allies against Mylae,
a place belonging to the Messinese. Two Messinese battalions in garrison at Mylae
laid an ambush for the party landing from the ships, but were routed with great
slaughter by the Athenians and their allies, who thereupon assaulted the fortification
and compelled them to surrender the Acropolis and to march with them upon Messina.
This town afterwards also submitted upon the approach of the Athenians and their
allies, and gave hostages and all other securities required.

The same summer the Athenians sent thirty ships round Peloponnese under Demosthenes,
son of Alcisthenes, and Procles, son of Theodorus, and sixty others, with two thousand
heavy infantry, against Melos, under Nicias, son of Niceratus; wishing to reduce
the Melians, who, although islanders, refused to be subjects of Athens or even to
join her confederacy. The devastation of their land not procuring their submission,
the fleet, weighing from Melos, sailed to Oropus in the territory of Graea, and
landing at nightfall, the heavy infantry started at once from the ships by land
for Tanagra in Boeotia, where they were met by the whole levy from Athens, agreeably
to a concerted signal, under the command of Hipponicus, son of Callias, and Eurymedon,
son of Thucles. They encamped, and passing that day in ravaging the Tanagraean territory,
remained there for the night; and next day, after defeating those of the Tanagraeans
who sailed out against them and some Thebans who had come up to help the Tanagraeans,
took some arms, set up a trophy, and retired, the troops to the city and the others
to the ships. Nicias with his sixty ships coasted alongshore and ravaged the Locrian
seaboard, and so returned home.

About this time the Lacedaemonians founded their colony of Heraclea in Trachis,
their object being the following: the Malians form in all three tribes, the Paralians,
the Hiereans, and the Trachinians. The last of these having suffered severely in
a war with their neighbours the Oetaeans, at first intended to give themselves up
to Athens; but afterwards fearing not to find in her the security that they sought,
sent to Lacedaemon, having chosen Tisamenus for their ambassador. In this embassy
joined also the Dorians from the mother country of the Lacedaemonians, with the
same request, as they themselves also suffered from the same enemy. After hearing
them, the Lacedaemonians determined to send out the colony, wishing to assist the
Trachinians and Dorians, and also because they thought that the proposed town would
lie conveniently for the purposes of the war against the Athenians. A fleet might
be got ready there against Euboea, with the advantage of a short passage to the
island; and the town would also be useful as a station on the road to Thrace. In
short, everything made the Lacedaemonians eager to found the place. After first
consulting the god at Delphi and receiving a favourable answer, they sent off the
colonists, Spartans, and Perioeci, inviting also any of the rest of the Hellenes
who might wish to accompany them, except Ionians, Achaeans, and certain other nationalities;
three Lacedaemonians leading as founders of the colony, Leon, Alcidas, and Damagon.
The settlement effected, they fortified anew the city, now called Heraclea, distant
about four miles and a half from Thermopylae and two miles and a quarter from the
sea, and commenced building docks, closing the side towards Thermopylae just by
the pass itself, in order that they might be easily defended.

The foundation of this town, evidently meant to annoy Euboea (the passage across
to Cenaeum in that island being a short one), at first caused some alarm at Athens,
which the event however did nothing to justify, the town never giving them any trouble.
The reason of this was as follows. The Thessalians, who were sovereign in those
parts, and whose territory was menaced by its foundation, were afraid that it might
prove a very powerful neighbour, and accordingly continually harassed and made war
upon the new settlers, until they at last wore them out in spite of their originally
considerable numbers, people flocking from all quarters to a place founded by the
Lacedaemonians, and thus thought secure of prosperity. On the other hand the Lacedaemonians
themselves, in the persons of their governors, did their full share towards ruining
its prosperity and reducing its population, as they frightened away the greater
part of the inhabitants by governing harshly and in some cases not fairly, and thus
made it easier for their neighbours to prevail against them.

The same summer, about the same time that the Athenians were detained at Melos,
their fellow citizens in the thirty ships cruising round Peloponnese, after cutting
off some guards in an ambush at Ellomenus in Leucadia, subsequently went against
Leucas itself with a large armament, having been reinforced by the whole levy of
the Acarnanians except Oeniadae, and by the Zacynthians and Cephallenians and fifteen
ships from Corcyra. While the Leucadians witnessed the devastation of their land,
without and within the isthmus upon which the town of Leucas and the temple of Apollo
stand, without making any movement on account of the overwhelming numbers of the
enemy, the Acarnanians urged Demosthenes, the Athenian general, to build a wall
so as to cut off the town from the continent, a measure which they were convinced
would secure its capture and rid them once and for all of a most troublesome enemy.

Demosthenes however had in the meanwhile been persuaded by the Messenians that
it was a fine opportunity for him, having so large an army assembled, to attack
the Aetolians, who were not only the enemies of Naupactus, but whose reduction would
further make it easy to gain the rest of that part of the continent for the Athenians.
The Aetolian nation, although numerous and warlike, yet dwelt in unwalled villages
scattered far apart, and had nothing but light armour, and might, according to the
Messenians, be subdued without much difficulty before succours could arrive. The
plan which they recommended was to attack first the Apodotians, next the Ophionians,
and after these the Eurytanians, who are the largest tribe in Aetolia, and speak,
as is said, a language exceedingly difficult to understand, and eat their flesh
raw. These once subdued, the rest would easily come in.

To this plan Demosthenes consented, not only to please the Messenians, but also
in the belief that by adding the Aetolians to his other continental allies he would
be able, without aid from home, to march against the Boeotians by way of Ozolian
Locris to Kytinium in Doris, keeping Parnassus on his right until he descended to
the Phocians, whom he could force to join him if their ancient friendship for Athens
did not, as he anticipated, at once decide them to do so. Arrived in Phocis he was
already upon the frontier of Boeotia. He accordingly weighed from Leucas, against
the wish of the Acarnanians, and with his whole armament sailed along the coast
to Sollium, where he communicated to them his intention; and upon their refusing
to agree to it on account of the non-investment of Leucas, himself with the rest
of the forces, the Cephallenians, the Messenians, and Zacynthians, and three hundred
Athenian marines from his own ships (the fifteen Corcyraean vessels having departed),
started on his expedition against the Aetolians. His base he established at Oeneon
in Locris, as the Ozolian Locrians were allies of Athens and were to meet him with
all their forces in the interior. Being neighbours of the Aetolians and armed in
the same way, it was thought that they would be of great service upon the expedition,
from their acquaintance with the localities and the warfare of the inhabitants.

After bivouacking with the army in the precinct of Nemean Zeus, in which the
poet Hesiod is said to have been killed by the people of the country, according
to an oracle which had foretold that he should die in Nemea, Demosthenes set out
at daybreak to invade Aetolia. The first day he took Potidania, the next Krokyle,
and the third Tichium, where he halted and sent back the booty to Eupalium in Locris,
having determined to pursue his conquests as far as the Ophionians, and, in the
event of their refusing to submit, to return to Naupactus and make them the objects
of a second expedition. Meanwhile the Aetolians had been aware of his design from
the moment of its formation, and as soon as the army invaded their country came
up in great force with all their tribes; even the most remote Ophionians, the Bomiensians,
and Calliensians, who extend towards the Malian Gulf, being among the number.

The Messenians, however, adhered to their original advice. Assuring Demosthenes
that the Aetolians were an easy conquest, they urged him to push on as rapidly as
possible, and to try to take the villages as fast as he came up to them, without
waiting until the whole nation should be in arms against him. Led on by his advisers
and trusting in his fortune, as he had met with no opposition, without waiting for
his Locrian reinforcements, who were to have supplied him with the light-armed darters
in which he was most deficient, he advanced and stormed Aegitium, the inhabitants
flying before him and posting themselves upon the hills above the town, which stood
on high ground about nine miles from the sea. Meanwhile the Aetolians had gathered
to the rescue, and now attacked the Athenians and their allies, running down from
the hills on every side and darting their javelins, falling back when the Athenian
army advanced, and coming on as it retired; and for a long while the battle was
of this character, alternate advance and retreat, in both which operations the Athenians
had the worst.

Still as long as their archers had arrows left and were able to use them, they
held out, the light-armed Aetolians retiring before the arrows; but after the captain
of the archers had been killed and his men scattered, the soldiers, wearied out
with the constant repetition of the same exertions and hard pressed by the Aetolians
with their javelins, at last turned and fled, and falling into pathless gullies
and places that they were unacquainted with, thus perished, the Messenian Chromon,
their guide, having also unfortunately been killed. A great many were overtaken
in the pursuit by the swift-footed and light-armed Aetolians, and fell beneath their
javelins; the greater number however missed their road and rushed into the wood,
which had no ways out, and which was soon fired and burnt round them by the enemy.
Indeed the Athenian army fell victims to death in every form, and suffered all the
vicissitudes of flight; the survivors escaped with difficulty to the sea and Oeneon
in Locris, whence they had set out. Many of the allies were killed, and about one
hundred and twenty Athenian heavy infantry, not a man less, and all in the prime
of life. These were by far the best men in the city of Athens that fell during this
war. Among the slain was also Procles, the colleague of Demosthenes. Meanwhile the
Athenians took up their dead under truce from the Aetolians, and retired to Naupactus,
and from thence went in their ships to Athens; Demosthenes staying behind in Naupactus
and in the neighbourhood, being afraid to face the Athenians after the disaster.

About the same time the Athenians on the coast of Sicily sailed to Locris, and
in a descent which they made from the ships defeated the Locrians who came against
them, and took a fort upon the river Halex.

The same summer the Aetolians, who before the Athenian expedition had sent an
embassy to Corinth and Lacedaemon, composed of Tolophus, an Ophionian, Boriades,
an Eurytanian, and Tisander, an Apodotian, obtained that an army should be sent
them against Naupactus, which had invited the Athenian invasion. The Lacedaemonians
accordingly sent off towards autumn three thousand heavy infantry of the allies,
five hundred of whom were from Heraclea, the newly founded city in Trachis, under
the command of Eurylochus, a Spartan, accompanied by Macarius and Menedaius, also
Spartans.

The army having assembled at Delphi, Eurylochus sent a herald to the Ozolian
Locrians; the road to Naupactus lying through their territory, and he having besides
conceived the idea of detaching them from Athens. His chief abettors in Locris were
the Amphissians, who were alarmed at the hostility of the Phocians. These first
gave hostages themselves, and induced the rest to do the same for fear of the invading
army; first, their neighbours the Myonians, who held the most difficult of the passes,
and after them the Ipnians, Messapians, Tritaeans, Chalaeans, Tolophonians, Hessians,
and Oeanthians, all of whom joined in the expedition; the Olpaeans contenting themselves
with giving hostages, without accompanying the invasion; and the Hyaeans refusing
to do either, until the capture of Polis, one of their villages.

His preparations completed, Eurylochus lodged the hostages in Kytinium, in Doris,
and advanced upon Naupactus through the country of the Locrians, taking upon his
way Oeneon and Eupalium, two of their towns that refused to join him. Arrived in
the Naupactian territory, and having been now joined by the Aetolians, the army
laid waste the land and took the suburb of the town, which was unfortified; and
after this Molycrium also, a Corinthian colony subject to Athens. Meanwhile the
Athenian Demosthenes, who since the affair in Aetolia had remained near Naupactus,
having had notice of the army and fearing for the town, went and persuaded the Acarnanians,
although not without difficulty because of his departure from Leucas, to go to the
relief of Naupactus. They accordingly sent with him on board his ships a thousand
heavy infantry, who threw themselves into the place and saved it; the extent of
its wall and the small number of its defenders otherwise placing it in the greatest
danger. Meanwhile Eurylochus and his companions, finding that this force had entered
and that it was impossible to storm the town, withdrew, not to Peloponnese, but
to the country once called Aeolis, and now Calydon and Pleuron, and to the places
in that neighbourhood, and Proschium in Aetolia; the Ambraciots having come and
urged them to combine with them in attacking Amphilochian Argos and the rest of
Amphilochia and Acarnania; affirming that the conquest of these countries would
bring all the continent into alliance with Lacedaemon. To this Eurylochus consented,
and dismissing the Aetolians, now remained quiet with his army in those parts, until
the time should come for the Ambraciots to take the field, and for him to join them
before Argos.

Summer was now over. The winter ensuing, the Athenians in Sicily with their Hellenic
allies, and such of the Sicel subjects or allies of Syracuse as had revolted from
her and joined their army, marched against the Sicel town Inessa, the acropolis
of which was held by the Syracusans, and after attacking it without being able to
take it, retired. In the retreat, the allies retreating after the Athenians were
attacked by the Syracusans from the fort, and a large part of their army routed
with great slaughter. After this, Laches and the Athenians from the ships made some
descents in Locris, and defeating the Locrians, who came against them with Proxenus,
son of Capaton, upon the river Caicinus, took some arms and departed.

The same winter the Athenians purified Delos, in compliance, it appears, with
a certain oracle. It had been purified before by Pisistratus the tyrant; not indeed
the whole island, but as much of it as could be seen from the temple. All of it
was, however, now purified in the following way. All the sepulchres of those that
had died in Delos were taken up, and for the future it was commanded that no one
should be allowed either to die or to give birth to a child in the island; but that
they should be carried over to Rhenea, which is so near to Delos that Polycrates,
tyrant of Samos, having added Rhenea to his other island conquests during his period
of naval ascendancy, dedicated it to the Delian Apollo by binding it to Delos with
a chain.

The Athenians, after the purification, celebrated, for the first time, the quinquennial
festival of the Delian games. Once upon a time, indeed, there was a great assemblage
of the Ionians and the neighbouring islanders at Delos, who used to come to the
festival, as the Ionians now do to that of Ephesus, and athletic and poetical contests
took place there, and the cities brought choirs of dancers. Nothing can be clearer
on this point than the following verses of Homer, taken from a hymn to Apollo:

Phoebus, wherever thou strayest, far or near,

Delos was still of all thy haunts most dear.

Thither the robed Ionians take their way

With wife and child to keep thy holiday,

Invoke thy favour on each manly game,

And dance and sing in honour of thy name.

That there was also a poetical contest in which the Ionians went to contend,
again is shown by the following, taken from the same hymn. After celebrating the
Delian dance of the women, he ends his song of praise with these verses, in which
he also alludes to himself:

Well, may Apollo keep you all! and so,

Sweethearts, good-bye- yet tell me not I go

Out from your hearts; and if in after hours

Some other wanderer in this world of ours

Touch at your shores, and ask your maidens here

Who sings the songs the sweetest to your ear,

Think of me then, and answer with a smile,

‘A blind old man of Scio’s rocky isle.’

Homer thus attests that there was anciently a great assembly and festival at
Delos. In later times, although the islanders and the Athenians continued to send
the choirs of dancers with sacrifices, the contests and most of the ceremonies were
abolished, probably through adversity, until the Athenians celebrated the games
upon this occasion with the novelty of horse-races.

The same winter the Ambraciots, as they had promised Eurylochus when they retained
his army, marched out against Amphilochian Argos with three thousand heavy infantry,
and invading the Argive territory occupied Olpae, a stronghold on a hill near the
sea, which had been formerly fortified by the Acarnanians and used as the place
of assizes for their nation, and which is about two miles and three-quarters from
the city of Argos upon the sea-coast. Meanwhile the Acarnanians went with a part
of their forces to the relief of Argos, and with the rest encamped in Amphilochia
at the place called Crenae, or the Wells, to watch for Eurylochus and his Peloponnesians,
and to prevent their passing through and effecting their junction with the Ambraciots;
while they also sent for Demosthenes, the commander of the Aetolian expedition,
to be their leader, and for the twenty Athenian ships that were cruising off Peloponnese
under the command of Aristotle, son of Timocrates, and Hierophon, son of Antimnestus.
On their part, the Ambraciots at Olpae sent a messenger to their own city, to beg
them to come with their whole levy to their assistance, fearing that the army of
Eurylochus might not be able to pass through the Acarnanians, and that they might
themselves be obliged to fight single-handed, or be unable to retreat, if they wished
it, without danger.

Meanwhile Eurylochus and his Peloponnesians, learning that the Ambraciots at
Olpae had arrived, set out from Proschium with all haste to join them, and crossing
the Achelous advanced through Acarnania, which they found deserted by its population,
who had gone to the relief of Argos; keeping on their right the city of the Stratians
and its garrison, and on their left the rest of Acarnania. Traversing the territory
of the Stratians, they advanced through Phytia, next, skirting Medeon, through Limnaea;
after which they left Acarnania behind them and entered a friendly country, that
of the Agraeans. From thence they reached and crossed Mount Thymaus, which belongs
to the Agraeans, and descended into the Argive territory after nightfall, and passing
between the city of Argos and the Acarnanian posts at Crenae, joined the Ambraciots
at Olpae.

Uniting here at daybreak, they sat down at the place called Metropolis, and encamped.
Not long afterwards the Athenians in the twenty ships came into the Ambracian Gulf
to support the Argives, with Demosthenes and two hundred Messenian heavy infantry,
and sixty Athenian archers. While the fleet off Olpae blockaded the hill from the
sea, the Acarnanians and a few of the Amphilochians, most of whom were kept back
by force by the Ambraciots, had already arrived at Argos, and were preparing to
give battle to the enemy, having chosen Demosthenes to command the whole of the
allied army in concert with their own generals. Demosthenes led them near to Olpae
and encamped, a great ravine separating the two armies. During five days they remained
inactive; on the sixth both sides formed in order of battle. The army of the Peloponnesians
was the largest and outflanked their opponents; and Demosthenes fearing that his
right might be surrounded, placed in ambush in a hollow way overgrown with bushes
some four hundred heavy infantry and light troops, who were to rise up at the moment
of the onset behind the projecting left wing of the enemy, and to take them in the
rear. When both sides were ready they joined battle; Demosthenes being on the right
wing with the Messenians and a few Athenians, while the rest of the line was made
up of the different divisions of the Acarnanians, and of the Amphilochian carters.
The Peloponnesians and Ambraciots were drawn up pell-mell together, with the exception
of the Mantineans, who were massed on the left, without however reaching to the
extremity of the wing, where Eurylochus and his men confronted the Messenians and
Demosthenes.

The Peloponnesians were now well engaged and with their outflanking wing were
upon the point of turning their enemy’s right; when the Acarnanians from the ambuscade
set upon them from behind, and broke them at the first attack, without their staying
to resist; while the panic into which they fell caused the flight of most of their
army, terrified beyond measure at seeing the division of Eurylochus and their best
troops cut to pieces. Most of the work was done by Demosthenes and his Messenians,
who were posted in this part of the field. Meanwhile the Ambraciots (who are the
best soldiers in those countries) and the troops upon the right wing, defeated the
division opposed to them and pursued it to Argos. Returning from the pursuit, they
found their main body defeated; and hard pressed by the Acarnanians, with difficulty
made good their passage to Olpae, suffering heavy loss on the way, as they dashed
on without discipline or order, the Mantineans excepted, who kept their ranks best
of any in the army during the retreat. The battle did not end until the evening.

The next day Menedaius, who on the death of Eurylochus and Macarius had succeeded
to the sole command, being at a loss after so signal a defeat how to stay and sustain
a siege, cut off as he was by land and by the Athenian fleet by sea, and equally
so how to retreat in safety, opened a parley with Demosthenes and the Acarnanian
generals for a truce and permission to retreat, and at the same time for the recovery
of the dead. The dead they gave back to him, and setting up a trophy took up their
own also to the number of about three hundred. The retreat demanded they refused
publicly to the army; but permission to depart without delay was secretly granted
to the Mantineans and to Menedaius and the other commanders and principal men of
the Peloponnesians by Demosthenes and his Acarnanian colleagues; who desired to
strip the Ambraciots and the mercenary host of foreigners of their supporters; and,
above all, to discredit the Lacedaemonians and Peloponnesians with the Hellenes
in those parts, as traitors and self-seekers.

While the enemy was taking up his dead and hastily burying them as he could,
and those who obtained permission were secretly planning their retreat, word was
brought to Demosthenes and the Acarnanians that the Ambraciots from the city, in
compliance with the first message from Olpae, were on the march with their whole
levy through Amphilochia to join their countrymen at Olpae, knowing nothing of what
had occurred. Demosthenes prepared to march with his army against them, and meanwhile
sent on at once a strong division to beset the roads and occupy the strong positions.

In the meantime the Mantineans and others included in the agreement went out
under the pretence of gathering herbs and firewood, and stole off by twos and threes,
picking on the way the things which they professed to have come out for, until they
had gone some distance from Olpae, when they quickened their pace. The Ambraciots
and such of the rest as had accompanied them in larger parties, seeing them going
on, pushed on in their turn, and began running in order to catch them up. The Acarnanians
at first thought that all alike were departing without permission, and began to
pursue the Peloponnesians; and believing that they were being betrayed, even threw
a dart or two at some of their generals who tried to stop them and told them that
leave had been given. Eventually, however, they let pass the Mantineans and Peloponnesians,
and slew only the Ambraciots, there being much dispute and difficulty in distinguishing
whether a man was an Ambraciot or a Peloponnesian. The number thus slain was about
two hundred; the rest escaped into the bordering territory of Agraea, and found
refuge with Salynthius, the friendly king of the Agraeans.

Meanwhile the Ambraciots from the city arrived at Idomene. Idomene consists of
two lofty hills, the higher of which the troops sent on by Demosthenes succeeded
in occupying after nightfall, unobserved by the Ambraciots, who had meanwhile ascended
the smaller and bivouacked under it. After supper Demosthenes set out with the rest
of the army, as soon as it was evening; himself with half his force making for the
pass, and the remainder going by the Amphilochian hills. At dawn he fell upon the
Ambraciots while they were still abed, ignorant of what had passed, and fully thinking
that it was their own countrymen- Demosthenes having purposely put the Messenians
in front with orders to address them in the Doric dialect, and thus to inspire confidence
in the sentinels, who would not be able to see them as it was still night. In this
way he routed their army as soon as he attacked it, slaying most of them where they
were, the rest breaking away in flight over the hills. The roads, however, were
already occupied, and while the Amphilochians knew their own country, the Ambraciots
were ignorant of it and could not tell which way to turn, and had also heavy armour
as against a light-armed enemy, and so fell into ravines and into the ambushes which
had been set for them, and perished there. In their manifold efforts to escape some
even turned to the sea, which was not far off, and seeing the Athenian ships coasting
alongshore just while the action was going on, swam off to them, thinking it better
in the panic they were in, to perish, if perish they must, by the hands of the Athenians,
than by those of the barbarous and detested Amphilochians. Of the large Ambraciot
force destroyed in this manner, a few only reached the city in safety; while the
Acarnanians, after stripping the dead and setting up a trophy, returned to Argos.

The next day arrived a herald from the Ambraciots who had fled from Olpae to
the Agraeans, to ask leave to take up the dead that had fallen after the first engagement,
when they left the camp with the Mantineans and their companions, without, like
them, having had permission to do so. At the sight of the arms of the Ambraciots
from the city, the herald was astonished at their number, knowing nothing of the
disaster and fancying that they were those of their own party. Some one asked him
what he was so astonished at, and how many of them had been killed, fancying in
his turn that this was the herald from the troops at Idomene. He replied: “About
two hundred”; upon which his interrogator took him up, saying: “Why, the arms you
see here are of more than a thousand.” The herald replied: “Then they are not the
arms of those who fought with us?” The other answered: “Yes, they are, if at least
you fought at Idomene yesterday.” “But we fought with no one yesterday; but the
day before in the retreat.” “However that may be, we fought yesterday with those
who came to reinforce you from the city of the Ambraciots.” When the herald heard
this and knew that the reinforcement from the city had been destroyed, he broke
into wailing and, stunned at the magnitude of the present evils, went away at once
without having performed his errand, or again asking for the dead bodies. Indeed,
this was by far the greatest disaster that befell any one Hellenic city in an equal
number of days during this war; and I have not set down the number of the dead,
because the amount stated seems so out of proportion to the size of the city as
to be incredible. In any case I know that if the Acarnanians and Amphilochians had
wished to take Ambracia as the Athenians and Demosthenes advised, they would have
done so without a blow; as it was, they feared that if the Athenians had it they
would be worse neighbours to them than the present.

After this the Acarnanians allotted a third of the spoils to the Athenians, and
divided the rest among their own different towns. The share of the Athenians was
captured on the voyage home; the arms now deposited in the Attic temples are three
hundred panoplies, which the Acarnanians set apart for Demosthenes, and which he
brought to Athens in person, his return to his country after the Aetolian disaster
being rendered less hazardous by this exploit. The Athenians in the twenty ships
also went off to Naupactus. The Acarnanians and Amphilochians, after the departure
of Demosthenes and the Athenians, granted the Ambraciots and Peloponnesians who
had taken refuge with Salynthius and the Agraeans a free retreat from Oeniadae,
to which place they had removed from the country of Salynthius, and for the future
concluded with the Ambraciots a treaty and alliance for one hundred years, upon
the terms following. It was to be a defensive, not an offensive alliance; the Ambraciots
could not be required to march with the Acarnanians against the Peloponnesians,
nor the Acarnanians with the Ambraciots against the Athenians; for the rest the
Ambraciots were to give up the places and hostages that they held of the Amphilochians,
and not to give help to Anactorium, which was at enmity with the Acarnanians. With
this arrangement they put an end to the war. After this the Corinthians sent a garrison
of their own citizens to Ambracia, composed of three hundred heavy infantry, under
the command of Xenocleides, son of Euthycles, who reached their destination after
a difficult journey across the continent. Such was the history of the affair of
Ambracia.

The same winter the Athenians in Sicily made a descent from their ships upon
the territory of Himera, in concert with the Sicels, who had invaded its borders
from the interior, and also sailed to the islands of Aeolus. Upon their return to
Rhegium they found the Athenian general, Pythodorus, son of Isolochus, come to supersede
Laches in the command of the fleet. The allies in Sicily had sailed to Athens and
induced the Athenians to send out more vessels to their assistance, pointing out
that the Syracusans who already commanded their land were making efforts to get
together a navy, to avoid being any longer excluded from the sea by a few vessels.
The Athenians proceeded to man forty ships to send to them, thinking that the war
in Sicily would thus be the sooner ended, and also wishing to exercise their navy.
One of the generals, Pythodorus, was accordingly sent out with a few ships; Sophocles,
son of Sostratides, and Eurymedon, son of Thucles, being destined to follow with
the main body. Meanwhile Pythodorus had taken the command of Laches’ ships, and
towards the end of winter sailed against the Locrian fort, which Laches had formerly
taken, and returned after being defeated in battle by the Locrians.

In the first days of this spring, the stream of fire issued from Etna, as on
former occasions, and destroyed some land of the Catanians, who live upon Mount
Etna, which is the largest mountain in Sicily. Fifty years, it is said, had elapsed
since the last eruption, there having been three in all since the Hellenes have
inhabited Sicily. Such were the events of this winter; and with it ended the sixth
year of this war, of which Thucydides was the historian.

End of book 3