THUCYDIDES, Peloponnesian War book 4

The History of the Peloponnesian War

By Thucydides
Written about 431 BC

Translated by Richard Crawley

London 1910.

The Fourth Book

Chapter XII

Seventh Year of the War – Occupation of Pylos – Surrender of the Spartan Army
in Sphacteria.

Next summer, about the time of the corn’s coming into ear, ten Syracusan and
as many Locrian vessels sailed to Messina, in Sicily, and occupied the town upon
the invitation of the inhabitants; and Messina revolted from the Athenians. The
Syracusans contrived this chiefly because they saw that the place afforded an approach
to Sicily, and feared that the Athenians might hereafter use it as a base for attacking
them with a larger force; the Locrians because they wished to carry on hostilities
from both sides of the strait and to reduce their enemies, the people of Rhegium.
Meanwhile, the Locrians had invaded the Rhegian territory with all their forces,
to prevent their succouring Messina, and also at the instance of some exiles from
Rhegium who were with them; the long factions by which that town had been torn rendering
it for the moment incapable of resistance, and thus furnishing an additional temptation
to the invaders. After devastating the country the Locrian land forces retired,
their ships remaining to guard Messina, while others were being manned for the same
destination to carry on the war from thence.

About the same time in the spring, before the corn was ripe, the Peloponnesians
and their allies invaded Attica under Agis, the son of Archidamus, king of the Lacedaemonians,
and sat down and laid waste the country. Meanwhile the Athenians sent off the forty
ships which they had been preparing to Sicily, with the remaining generals Eurymedon
and Sophocles; their colleague Pythodorus having already preceded them thither.
These had also instructions as they sailed by to look to the Corcyraeans in the
town, who were being plundered by the exiles in the mountain. To support these exiles
sixty Peloponnesian vessels had lately sailed, it being thought that the famine
raging in the city would make it easy for them to reduce it. Demosthenes also, who
had remained without employment since his return from Acarnania, applied and obtained
permission to use the fleet, if he wished it, upon the coast of Peloponnese.

Off Laconia they heard that the Peloponnesian ships were already at Corcyra,
upon which Eurymedon and Sophocles wished to hasten to the island, but Demosthenes
required them first to touch at Pylos and do what was wanted there, before continuing
their voyage. While they were making objections, a squall chanced to come on and
carried the fleet into Pylos. Demosthenes at once urged them to fortify the place,
it being for this that he had come on the voyage, and made them observe there was
plenty of stone and timber on the spot, and that the place was strong by nature,
and together with much of the country round unoccupied; Pylos, or Coryphasium, as
the Lacedaemonians call it, being about forty-five miles distant from Sparta, and
situated in the old country of the Messenians. The commanders told him that there
was no lack of desert headlands in Peloponnese if he wished to put the city to expense
by occupying them. He, however, thought that this place was distinguished from others
of the kind by having a harbour close by; while the Messenians, the old natives
of the country, speaking the same dialect as the Lacedaemonians, could do them the
greatest mischief by their incursions from it, and would at the same time be a trusty
garrison.

After speaking to the captains of companies on the subject, and failing to persuade
either the generals or the soldiers, he remained inactive with the rest from stress
of weather; until the soldiers themselves wanting occupation were seized with a
sudden impulse to go round and fortify the place. Accordingly they set to work in
earnest, and having no iron tools, picked up stones, and put them together as they
happened to fit, and where mortar was needed, carried it on their backs for want
of hods, stooping down to make it stay on, and clasping their hands together behind
to prevent it falling off; sparing no effort to be able to complete the most vulnerable
points before the arrival of the Lacedaemonians, most of the place being sufficiently
strong by nature without further fortifications.

Meanwhile the Lacedaemonians were celebrating a festival, and also at first made
light of the news, in the idea that whenever they chose to take the field the place
would be immediately evacuated by the enemy or easily taken by force; the absence
of their army before Athens having also something to do with their delay. The Athenians
fortified the place on the land side, and where it most required it, in six days,
and leaving Demosthenes with five ships to garrison it, with the main body of the
fleet hastened on their voyage to Corcyra and Sicily.

As soon as the Peloponnesians in Attica heard of the occupation of Pylos, they
hurried back home; the Lacedaemonians and their king Agis thinking that the matter
touched them nearly. Besides having made their invasion early in the season, and
while the corn was still green, most of their troops were short of provisions: the
weather also was unusually bad for the time of year, and greatly distressed their
army. Many reasons thus combined to hasten their departure and to make this invasion
a very short one; indeed they only stayed fifteen days in Attica.

About the same time the Athenian general Simonides getting together a few Athenians
from the garrisons, and a number of the allies in those parts, took Eion in Thrace,
a Mendaean colony and hostile to Athens, by treachery, but had no sooner done so
than the Chalcidians and Bottiaeans came up and beat him out of it, with the loss
of many of his soldiers.

On the return of the Peloponnesians from Attica, the Spartans themselves and
the nearest of the Perioeci at once set out for Pylos, the other Lacedaemonians
following more slowly, as they had just come in from another campaign. Word was
also sent round Peloponnese to come up as quickly as possible to Pylos; while the
sixty Peloponnesian ships were sent for from Corcyra, and being dragged by their
crews across the isthmus of Leucas, passed unperceived by the Athenian squadron
at Zacynthus, and reached Pylos, where the land forces had arrived before them.
Before the Peloponnesian fleet sailed in, Demosthenes found time to send out unobserved
two ships to inform Eurymedon and the Athenians on board the fleet at Zacynthus
of the danger of Pylos and to summon them to his assistance. While the ships hastened
on their voyage in obedience to the orders of Demosthenes, the Lacedaemonians prepared
to assault the fort by land and sea, hoping to capture with ease a work constructed
in haste, and held by a feeble garrison. Meanwhile, as they expected the Athenian
ships to arrive from Zacynthus, they intended, if they failed to take the place
before, to block up the entrances of the harbour to prevent their being able to
anchor inside it. For the island of Sphacteria, stretching along in a line close
in front of the harbour, at once makes it safe and narrows its entrances, leaving
a passage for two ships on the side nearest Pylos and the Athenian fortifications,
and for eight or nine on that next the rest of the mainland: for the rest, the island
was entirely covered with wood, and without paths through not being inhabited, and
about one mile and five furlongs in length. The inlets the Lacedaemonians meant
to close with a line of ships placed close together, with their prows turned towards
the sea, and, meanwhile, fearing that the enemy might make use of the island to
operate against them, carried over some heavy infantry thither, stationing others
along the coast. By this means the island and the continent would be alike hostile
to the Athenians, as they would be unable to land on either; and the shore of Pylos
itself outside the inlet towards the open sea having no harbour, and, therefore,
presenting no point which they could use as a base to relieve their countrymen,
they, the Lacedaemonians, without sea-fight or risk would in all probability become
masters of the place, occupied as it had been on the spur of the moment, and unfurnished
with provisions. This being determined, they carried over to the island the heavy
infantry, drafted by lot from all the companies. Some others had crossed over before
in relief parties, but these last who were left there were four hundred and twenty
in number, with their Helot attendants, commanded by Epitadas, son of Molobrus.

Meanwhile Demosthenes, seeing the Lacedaemonians about to attack him by sea and
land at once, himself was not idle. He drew up under the fortification and enclosed
in a stockade the galleys remaining to him of those which had been left him, arming
the sailors taken out of them with poor shields made most of them of osier, it being
impossible to procure arms in such a desert place, and even these having been obtained
from a thirty-oared Messenian privateer and a boat belonging to some Messenians
who happened to have come to them. Among these Messenians were forty heavy infantry,
whom he made use of with the rest. Posting most of his men, unarmed and armed, upon
the best fortified and strong points of the place towards the interior, with orders
to repel any attack of the land forces, he picked sixty heavy infantry and a few
archers from his whole force, and with these went outside the wall down to the sea,
where he thought that the enemy would most likely attempt to land. Although the
ground was difficult and rocky, looking towards the open sea, the fact that this
was the weakest part of the wall would, he thought, encourage their ardour, as the
Athenians, confident in their naval superiority, had here paid little attention
to their defences, and the enemy if he could force a landing might feel secure of
taking the place. At this point, accordingly, going down to the water’s edge, he
posted his heavy infantry to prevent, if possible, a landing, and encouraged them
in the following terms:

“Soldiers and comrades in this adventure, I hope that none of you in our present
strait will think to show his wit by exactly calculating all the perils that encompass
us, but that you will rather hasten to close with the enemy, without staying to
count the odds, seeing in this your best chance of safety. In emergencies like ours
calculation is out of place; the sooner the danger is faced the better. To my mind
also most of the chances are for us, if we will only stand fast and not throw away
our advantages, overawed by the numbers of the enemy. One of the points in our favour
is the awkwardness of the landing. This, however, only helps us if we stand our
ground. If we give way it will be practicable enough, in spite of its natural difficulty,
without a defender; and the enemy will instantly become more formidable from the
difficulty he will have in retreating, supposing that we succeed in repulsing him,
which we shall find it easier to do, while he is on board his ships, than after
he has landed and meets us on equal terms. As to his numbers, these need not too
much alarm you. Large as they may be he can only engage in small detachments, from
the impossibility of bringing to. Besides, the numerical superiority that we have
to meet is not that of an army on land with everything else equal, but of troops
on board ship, upon an element where many favourable accidents are required to act
with effect. I therefore consider that his difficulties may be fairly set against
our numerical deficiencies, and at the same time I charge you, as Athenians who
know by experience what landing from ships on a hostile territory means, and how
impossible it is to drive back an enemy determined enough to stand his ground and
not to be frightened away by the surf and the terrors of the ships sailing in, to
stand fast in the present emergency, beat back the enemy at the water’s edge, and
save yourselves and the place.”

Thus encouraged by Demosthenes, the Athenians felt more confident, and went down
to meet the enemy, posting themselves along the edge of the sea. The Lacedaemonians
now put themselves in movement and simultaneously assaulted the fortification with
their land forces and with their ships, forty-three in number, under their admiral,
Thrasymelidas, son of Cratesicles, a Spartan, who made his attack just where Demosthenes
expected. The Athenians had thus to defend themselves on both sides, from the land
and from the sea; the enemy rowing up in small detachments, the one relieving the
other- it being impossible for many to bring to at once- and showing great ardour
and cheering each other on, in the endeavour to force a passage and to take the
fortification. He who most distinguished himself was Brasidas. Captain of a galley,
and seeing that the captains and steersmen, impressed by the difficulty of the position,
hung back even where a landing might have seemed possible, for fear of wrecking
their vessels, he shouted out to them, that they must never allow the enemy to fortify
himself in their country for the sake of saving timber, but must shiver their vessels
and force a landing; and bade the allies, instead of hesitating in such a moment
to sacrifice their ships for Lacedaemon in return for her many benefits, to run
them boldly aground, land in one way or another, and make themselves masters of
the place and its garrison.

Not content with this exhortation, he forced his own steersman to run his ship
ashore, and stepping on to the gangway, was endeavouring to land, when he was cut
down by the Athenians, and after receiving many wounds fainted away. Falling into
the bows, his shield slipped off his arm into the sea, and being thrown ashore was
picked up by the Athenians, and afterwards used for the trophy which they set up
for this attack. The rest also did their best, but were not able to land, owing
to the difficulty of the ground and the unflinching tenacity of the Athenians. It
was a strange reversal of the order of things for Athenians to be fighting from
the land, and from Laconian land too, against Lacedaemonians coming from the sea;
while Lacedaemonians were trying to land from shipboard in their own country, now
become hostile, to attack Athenians, although the former were chiefly famous at
the time as an inland people and superior by land, the latter as a maritime people
with a navy that had no equal.

After continuing their attacks during that day and most of the next, the Peloponnesians
desisted, and the day after sent some of their ships to Asine for timber to make
engines, hoping to take by their aid, in spite of its height, the wall opposite
the harbour, where the landing was easiest. At this moment the Athenian fleet from
Zacynthus arrived, now numbering fifty sail, having been reinforced by some of the
ships on guard at Naupactus and by four Chian vessels. Seeing the coast and the
island both crowded with heavy infantry, and the hostile ships in harbour showing
no signs of sailing out, at a loss where to anchor, they sailed for the moment to
the desert island of Prote, not far off, where they passed the night. The next day
they got under way in readiness to engage in the open sea if the enemy chose to
put out to meet them, being determined in the event of his not doing so to sail
in and attack him. The Lacedaemonians did not put out to sea, and having omitted
to close the inlets as they had intended, remained quiet on shore, engaged in manning
their ships and getting ready, in the case of any one sailing in, to fight in the
harbour, which is a fairly large one.

Perceiving this, the Athenians advanced against them by each inlet, and falling
on the enemy’s fleet, most of which was by this time afloat and in line, at once
put it to flight, and giving chase as far as the short distance allowed, disabled
a good many vessels and took five, one with its crew on board; dashing in at the
rest that had taken refuge on shore, and battering some that were still being manned,
before they could put out, and lashing on to their own ships and towing off empty
others whosc crews had fled. At this sight the Lacedaemonians, maddened by a disaster
which cut off their men on the island, rushed to the rescue, and going into the
sea with their heavy armour, laid hold of the ships and tried to drag them back,
each man thinking that success depended on his individual exertions. Great was the
melee, and quite in contradiction to the naval tactics usual to the two combatants;
the Lacedaemonians in their excitement and dismay being actually engaged in a sea-fight
on land, while the victorious Athenians, in their eagerness to push their success
as far as possible, were carrying on a land-fight from their ships. After great
exertions and numerous wounds on both sides they separated, the Lacedaemonians saving
their empty ships, except those first taken; and both parties returning to their
camp, the Athenians set up a trophy, gave back the dead, secured the wrecks, and
at once began to cruise round and jealously watch the island, with its intercepted
garrison, while the Peloponnesians on the mainland, whose contingents had now all
come up, stayed where they were before Pylos.

When the news of what had happened at Pylos reached Sparta, the disaster was
thought so serious that the Lacedaemonians resolved that the authorities should
go down to the camp, and decide on the spot what was best to be done. There, seeing
that it was impossible to help their men, and not wishing to risk their being reduced
by hunger or overpowered by numbers, they determined, with the consent of the Athenian
generals, to conclude an armistice at Pylos and send envoys to Athens to obtain
a convention, and to endeavour to get back their men as quickly as possible.

The generals accepting their offers, an armistice was concluded upon the terms
following: That the Lacedaemonians should bring to Pylos and deliver up to the Athenians
the ships that had fought in the late engagement, and all in Laconia that were vessels
of war, and should make no attack on the fortification either by land or by sea.
That the Athenians should allow the Lacedaemonians on the mainland to send to the
men in the island a certain fixed quantity of corn ready kneaded, that is to say,
two quarts of barley meal, one pint of wine, and a piece of meat for each man, and
half the same quantity for a servant. That this allowance should be sent in under
the eyes of the Athenians, and that no boat should sail to the island except openly.
That the Athenians should continue to the island same as before, without however
landing upon it, and should refrain from attacking the Peloponnesian troops either
by land or by sea. That if either party should infringe any of these terms in the
slightest particular, the armistice should be at once void. That the armistice should
hold good until the return of the Lacedaemonian envoys from Athens- the Athenians
sending them thither in a galley and bringing them back again- and upon the arrival
of the envoys should be at an end, and the ships be restored by the Athenians in
the same state as they received them. Such were the terms of the armistice, and
the ships were delivered over to the number of sixty, and the envoys sent off accordingly.
Arrived at Athens they spoke as follows:

“Athenians, the Lacedaemonians sent us to try to find some way of settling the
affair of our men on the island, that shall be at once satisfactory to our interests,
and as consistent with our dignity in our misfortune as circumstances permit. We
can venture to speak at some length without any departure from the habit of our
country. Men of few words where many are not wanted, we can be less brief when there
is a matter of importance to be illustrated and an end to be served by its illustration.
Meanwhile we beg you to take what we may say, not in a hostile spirit, nor as if
we thought you ignorant and wished to lecture you, but rather as a suggestion on
the best course to be taken, addressed to intelligent judges. You can now, if you
choose, employ your present success to advantage, so as to keep what you have got
and gain honour and reputation besides, and you can avoid the mistake of those who
meet with an extraordinary piece of good fortune, and are led on by hope to grasp
continually at something further, through having already succeeded without expecting
it. While those who have known most vicissitudes of good and bad, have also justly
least faith in their prosperity; and to teach your city and ours this lesson experience
has not been wanting.

“To be convinced of this you have only to look at our present misfortune. What
power in Hellas stood higher than we did? and yet we are come to you, although we
formerly thought ourselves more able to grant what we are now here to ask. Nevertheless,
we have not been brought to this by any decay in our power, or through having our
heads turned by aggrandizement; no, our resources are what they have always been,
and our error has been an error of judgment, to which all are equally liable. Accordingly,
the prosperity which your city now enjoys, and the accession that it has lately
received, must not make you fancy that fortune will be always with you. Indeed sensible
men are prudent enough to treat their gains as precarious, just as they would also
keep a clear head in adversity, and think that war, so far from staying within the
limit to which a combatant may wish to confine it, will run the course that its
chances prescribe; and thus, not being puffed up by confidence in military success,
they are less likely to come to grief, and most ready to make peace, if they can,
while their fortune lasts. This, Athenians, you have a good opportunity to do now
with us, and thus to escape the possible disasters which may follow upon your refusal,
and the consequent imputation of having owed to accident even your present advantages,
when you might have left behind you a reputation for power and wisdom which nothing
could endanger.

“The Lacedaemonians accordingly invite you to make a treaty and to end the war,
and offer peace and alliance and the most friendly and intimate relations in every
way and on every occasion between us; and in return ask for the men on the island,
thinking it better for both parties not to stand out to the end, on the chance of
some favourable accident enabling the men to force their way out, or of their being
compelled to succumb under the pressure of blockade. Indeed if great enmities are
ever to be really settled, we think it will be, not by the system of revenge and
military success, and by forcing an opponent to swear to a treaty to his disadvantage,
but when the more fortunate combatant waives these his privileges, to be guided
by gentler feelings conquers his rival in generosity, and accords peace on more
moderate conditions than he expected. From that moment, instead of the debt of revenge
which violence must entail, his adversary owes a debt of generosity to be paid in
kind, and is inclined by honour to stand to his agreement. And men oftener act in
this manner towards their greatest enemies than where the quarrel is of less importance;
they are also by nature as glad to give way to those who first yield to them, as
they are apt to be provoked by arrogance to risks condemned by their own judgment.

“To apply this to ourselves: if peace was ever desirable for both parties, it
is surely so at the present moment, before anything irremediable befall us and force
us to hate you eternally, personally as well as politically, and you to miss the
advantages that we now offer you. While the issue is still in doubt, and you have
reputation and our friendship in prospect, and we the compromise of our misfortune
before anything fatal occur, let us be reconciled, and for ourselves choose peace
instead of war, and grant to the rest of the Hellenes a remission from their sufferings,
for which be sure they will think they have chiefly you to thank. The war that they
labour under they know not which began, but the peace that concludes it, as it depends
on your decision, will by their gratitude be laid to your door. By such a decision
you can become firm friends with the Lacedaemonians at their own invitation, which
you do not force from them, but oblige them by accepting. And from this friendship
consider the advantages that are likely to follow: when Attica and Sparta are at
one, the rest of Hellas, be sure, will remain in respectful inferiority before its
heads.”

Such were the words of the Lacedaemonians, their idea being that the Athenians,
already desirous of a truce and only kept back by their opposition, would joyfully
accept a peace freely offered, and give back the men. The Athenians, however, having
the men on the island, thought that the treaty would be ready for them whenever
they chose to make it, and grasped at something further. Foremost to encourage them
in this policy was Cleon, son of Cleaenetus, a popular leader of the time and very
powerful with the multitude, who persuaded them to answer as follows: First, the
men in the island must surrender themselves and their arms and be brought to Athens.
Next, the Lacedaemonians must restore Nisaea, Pegae, Troezen, and Achaia, all places
acquired not by arms, but by the previous convention, under which they had been
ceded by Athens herself at a moment of disaster, when a truce was more necessary
to her than at present. This done they might take back their men, and make a truce
for as long as both parties might agree.

To this answer the envoys made no reply, but asked that commissioners might be
chosen with whom they might confer on each point, and quietly talk the matter over
and try to come to some agreement. Hereupon Cleon violently assailed them, saying
that he knew from the first that they had no right intentions, and that it was clear
enough now by their refusing to speak before the people, and wanting to confer in
secret with a committee of two or three. No, if they meant anything honest let them
say it out before all. The Lacedaemonians, however, seeing that whatever concessions
they might be prepared to make in their misfortune, it was impossible for them to
speak before the multitude and lose credit with their allies for a negotiation which
might after all miscarry, and on the other hand, that the Athenians would never
grant what they asked upon moderate terms, returned from Athens without having effected
anything.

Their arrival at once put an end to the armistice at Pylos, and the Lacedaemonians
asked back their ships according to the convention. The Athenians, however, alleged
an attack on the fort in contravention of the truce, and other grievances seemingly
not worth mentioning, and refused to give them back, insisting upon the clause by
which the slightest infringement made the armistice void. The Lacedaemonians, after
denying the contravention and protesting against their bad faith in the matter of
the ships, went away and earnestly addressed themselves to the war. Hostilities
were now carried on at Pylos upon both sides with vigour. The Athenians cruised
round the island all day with two ships going different ways; and by night, except
on the seaward side in windy weather, anchored round it with their whole fleet,
which, having been reinforced by twenty ships from Athens come to aid in the blockade,
now numbered seventy sail; while the Peloponnesians remained encamped on the continent,
making attacks on the fort, and on the look-out for any opportunity which might
offer itself for the deliverance of their men.

Meanwhile the Syracusans and their allies in Sicily had brought up to the squadron
guarding Messina the reinforcement which we left them preparing, and carried on
the war from thence, incited chiefly by the Locrians from hatred of the Rhegians,
whose territory they had invaded with all their forces. The Syracusans also wished
to try their fortune at sea, seeing that the Athenians had only a few ships actually
at Rhegium, and hearing that the main fleet destined to join them was engaged in
blockading the island. A naval victory, they thought, would enable them to blockade
Rhegium by sea and land, and easily to reduce it; a success which would at once
place their affairs upon a solid basis, the promontory of Rhegium in Italy and Messina
in Sicily being so near each other that it would be impossible for the Athenians
to cruise against them and command the strait. The strait in question consists of
the sea between Rhegium and Messina, at the point where Sicily approaches nearest
to the continent, and is the Charybdis through which the story makes Ulysses sail;
and the narrowness of the passage and the strength of the current that pours in
from the vast Tyrrhenian and Sicilian mains, have rightly given it a bad reputation.

In this strait the Syracusans and their allies were compelled to fight, late
in the day, about the passage of a boat, putting out with rather more than thirty
ships against sixteen Athenian and eight Rhegian vessels. Defeated by the Athenians
they hastily set off, each for himself, to their own stations at Messina and Rhegium,
with the loss of one ship; night coming on before the battle was finished. After
this the Locrians retired from the Rhegian territory, and the ships of the Syracusans
and their allies united and came to anchor at Cape Pelorus, in the territory of
Messina, where their land forces joined them. Here the Athenians and Rhegians sailed
up, and seeing the ships unmanned, made an attack, in which they in their turn lost
one vessel, which was caught by a grappling iron, the crew saving themselves by
swimming. After this the Syracusans got on board their ships, and while they were
being towed alongshore to Messina, were again attacked by the Athenians, but suddenly
got out to sea and became the assailants, and caused them to lose another vessel.
After thus holding their own in the voyage alongshore and in the engagement as above
described, the Syracusans sailed on into the harbour of Messina.

Meanwhile the Athenians, having received warning that Camarina was about to be
betrayed to the Syracusans by Archias and his party, sailed thither; and the Messinese
took this opportunity to attack by sea and land with all their forces their Chalcidian
neighbour, Naxos. The first day they forced the Naxians to keep their walls, and
laid waste their country; the next they sailed round with their ships, and laid
waste their land on the river Akesines, while their land forces menaced the city.
Meanwhile the Sicels came down from the high country in great numbers, to aid against
the Messinese; and the Naxians, elated at the sight, and animated by a belief that
the Leontines and their other Hellenic allies were coming to their support, suddenly
sallied out from the town, and attacked and routed the Messinese, killing more than
a thousand of them; while the remainder suffered severely in their retreat home,
being attacked by the barbarians on the road, and most of them cut off. The ships
put in to Messina, and afterwards dispersed for their different homes. The Leontines
and their allies, with the Athenians, upon this at once turned their arms against
the now weakened Messina, and attacked, the Athenians with their ships on the side
of the harbour, and the land forces on that of the town. The Messinese, however,
sallying out with Demoteles and some Locrians who had been left to garrison the
city after the disaster, suddenly attacked and routed most of the Leontine army,
killing a great number; upon seeing which the Athenians landed from their ships,
and falling on the Messinese in disorder chased them back into the town, and setting
up a trophy retired to Rhegium. After this the Hellenes in Sicily continued to make
war on each other by land, without the Athenians.

Meanwhile the Athenians at Pylos were still besieging the Lacedaemonians in the
island, the Peloponnesian forces on the continent remaining where they were. The
blockade was very laborious for the Athenians from want of food and water; there
was no spring except one in the citadel of Pylos itself, and that not a large one,
and most of them were obliged to grub up the shingle on the sea beach and drink
such water as they could find. They also suffered from want of room, being encamped
in a narrow space; and as there was no anchorage for the ships, some took their
meals on shore in their turn, while the others were anchored out at sea. But their
greatest discouragement arose from the unexpectedly long time which it took to reduce
a body of men shut up in a desert island, with only brackish water to drink, a matter
which they had imagined would take them only a few days. The fact was that the Lacedaemonians
had made advertisement for volunteers to carry into the island ground corn, wine,
cheese, and any other food useful in a siege; high prices being offered, and freedom
promised to any of the Helots who should succeed in doing so. The Helots accordingly
were most forward to engage in this risky traffic, putting off from this or that
part of Peloponnese, and running in by night on the seaward side of the island.
They were best pleased, however, when they could catch a wind to carry them in.
It was more easy to elude the look-out of the galleys, when it blew from the seaward,
as it became impossible for them to anchor round the island; while the Helots had
their boats rated at their value in money, and ran them ashore, without caring how
they landed, being sure to find the soldiers waiting for them at the landing-places.
But all who risked it in fair weather were taken. Divers also swam in under water
from the harbour, dragging by a cord in skins poppyseed mixed with honey, and bruised
linseed; these at first escaped notice, but afterwards a look-out was kept for them.
In short, both sides tried every possible contrivance, the one to throw in provisions,
and the other to prevent their introduction.

At Athens, meanwhile, the news that the army was in great distress, and that
corn found its way in to the men in the island, caused no small perplexity; and
the Athenians began to fear that winter might come on and find them still engaged
in the blockade. They saw that the convoying of provisions round Peloponnese would
be then impossible. The country offered no resources in itself, and even in summer
they could not send round enough. The blockade of a place without harbours could
no longer be kept up; and the men would either escape by the siege being abandoned,
or would watch for bad weather and sail out in the boats that brought in their corn.
What caused still more alarm was the attitude of the Lacedaemonians, who must, it
was thought by the Athenians, feel themselves on strong ground not to send them
any more envoys; and they began to repent having rejected the treaty. Cleon, perceiving
the disfavour with which he was regarded for having stood in the way of the convention,
now said that their informants did not speak the truth; and upon the messengers
recommending them, if they did not believe them, to send some commissioners to see,
Cleon himself and Theagenes were chosen by the Athenians as commissioners. Aware
that he would now be obliged either to say what had been already said by the men
whom he was slandering, or be proved a liar if he said the contrary, he told the
Athenians, whom he saw to be not altogether disinclined for a fresh expedition,
that instead of sending and wasting their time and opportunities, if they believed
what was told them, they ought to sail against the men. And pointing at Nicias,
son of Niceratus, then general, whom he hated, he tauntingly said that it would
be easy, if they had men for generals, to sail with a force and take those in the
island, and that if he had himself been in command, he would have done it.

Nicias, seeing the Athenians murmuring against Cleon for not sailing now if it
seemed to him so easy, and further seeing himself the object of attack, told him
that for all that the generals cared, he might take what force he chose and make
the attempt. At first Cleon fancied that this resignation was merely a figure of
speech, and was ready to go, but finding that it was seriously meant, he drew back,
and said that Nicias, not he, was general, being now frightened, and having never
supposed that Nicias would go so far as to retire in his favour. Nicias, however,
repeated his offer, and resigned the command against Pylos, and called the Athenians
to witness that he did so. And as the multitude is wont to do, the more Cleon shrank
from the expedition and tried to back out of what he had said, the more they encouraged
Nicias to hand over his command, and clamoured at Cleon to go. At last, not knowing
how to get out of his words, he undertook the expedition, and came forward and said
that he was not afraid of the Lacedaemonians, but would sail without taking any
one from the city with him, except the Lemnians and Imbrians that were at Athens,
with some targeteers that had come up from Aenus, and four hundred archers from
other quarters. With these and the soldiers at Pylos, he would within twenty days
either bring the Lacedaemonians alive, or kill them on the spot. The Athenians could
not help laughing at his fatuity, while sensible men comforted themselves with the
reflection that they must gain in either circumstance; either they would be rid
of Cleon, which they rather hoped, or if disappointed in this expectation, would
reduce the Lacedaemonians.

After he had settled everything in the assembly, and the Athenians had voted
him the command of the expedition, he chose as his colleague Demosthenes, one of
the generals at Pylos, and pushed forward the preparations for his voyage. His choice
fell upon Demosthenes because he heard that he was contemplating a descent on the
island; the soldiers distressed by the difficulties of the position, and rather
besieged than besiegers, being eager to fight it out, while the firing of the island
had increased the confidence of the general. He had been at first afraid, because
the island having never been inhabited was almost entirely covered with wood and
without paths, thinking this to be in the enemy’s favour, as he might land with
a large force, and yet might suffer loss by an attack from an unseen position. The
mistakes and forces of the enemy the wood would in a great measure conceal from
him, while every blunder of his own troops would be at once detected, and they would
be thus able to fall upon him unexpectedly just where they pleased, the attack being
always in their power. If, on the other hand, he should force them to engage in
the thicket, the smaller number who knew the country would, he thought, have the
advantage over the larger who were ignorant of it, while his own army might be cut
off imperceptibly, in spite of its numbers, as the men would not be able to see
where to succour each other.

The Aetolian disaster, which had been mainly caused by the wood, had not a little
to do with these reflections. Meanwhile, one of the soldiers who were compelled
by want of room to land on the extremities of the island and take their dinners,
with outposts fixed to prevent a surprise, set fire to a little of the wood without
meaning to do so; and as it came on to blow soon afterwards, almost the whole was
consumed before they were aware of it. Demosthenes was now able for the first time
to see how numerous the Lacedaemonians really were, having up to this moment been
under the impression that they took in provisions for a smaller number; he also
saw that the Athenians thought success important and were anxious about it, and
that it was now easier to land on the island, and accordingly got ready for the
attempt, sent for troops from the allies in the neighbourhood, and pushed forward
his other preparations. At this moment Cleon arrived at Pylos with the troops which
he had asked for, having sent on word to say that he was coming. The first step
taken by the two generals after their meeting was to send a herald to the camp on
the mainland, to ask if they were disposed to avoid all risk and to order the men
on the island to surrender themselves and their arms, to be kept in gentle custody
until some general convention should be concluded.

On the rejection of this proposition the generals let one day pass, and the next,
embarking all their heavy infantry on board a few ships, put out by night, and a
little before dawn landed on both sides of the island from the open sea and from
the harbour, being about eight hundred strong, and advanced with a run against the
first post in the island. The enemy had distributed his force as follows: In this
first post there were about thirty heavy infantry; the centre and most level part,
where the water was, was held by the main body, and by Epitadas their commander;
while a small party guarded the very end of the island, towards Pylos, which was
precipitous on the sea-side and very difficult to attack from the land, and where
there was also a sort of old fort of stones rudely put together, which they thought
might be useful to them, in case they should be forced to retreat. Such was their
disposition.

The advanced post thus attacked by the Athenians was at once put to the sword,
the men being scarcely out of bed and still arming, the landing having taken them
by surprise, as they fancied the ships were only sailing as usual to their stations
for the night. As soon as day broke, the rest of the army landed, that is to say,
all the crews of rather more than seventy ships, except the lowest rank of oars,
with the arms they carried, eight hundred archers, and as many targeteers, the Messenian
reinforcements, and all the other troops on duty round Pylos, except the garrison
on the fort. The tactics of Demosthenes had divided them into companies of two hundred,
more or less, and made them occupy the highest points in order to paralyse the enemy
by surrounding him on every side and thus leaving him without any tangible adversary,
exposed to the cross-fire of their host; plied by those in his rear if he attacked
in front, and by those on one flank if he moved against those on the other. In short,
wherever he went he would have the assailants behind him, and these light-armed
assailants, the most awkward of all; arrows, darts, stones, and slings making them
formidable at a distance, and there being no means of getting at them at close quarters,
as they could conquer flying, and the moment their pursuer turned they were upon
him. Such was the idea that inspired Demosthenes in his conception of the descent,
and presided over its execution.

Meanwhile the main body of the troops in the island (that under Epitadas), seeing
their outpost cut off and an army advancing against them, serried their ranks and
pressed forward to close with the Athenian heavy infantry in front of them, the
light troops being upon their flanks and rear. However, they were not able to engage
or to profit by their superior skill, the light troops keeping them in check on
either side with their missiles, and the heavy infantry remaining stationary instead
of advancing to meet them; and although they routed the light troops wherever they
ran up and approached too closely, yet they retreated fighting, being lightly equipped,
and easily getting the start in their flight, from the difficult and rugged nature
of the ground, in an island hitherto desert, over which the Lacedaemonians could
not pursue them with their heavy armour.

After this skirmishing had lasted some little while, the Lacedaemonians became
unable to dash out with the same rapidity as before upon the points attacked, and
the light troops finding that they now fought with less vigour, became more confident.
They could see with their own eyes that they were many times more numerous than
the enemy; they were now more familiar with his aspect and found him less terrible,
the result not having justified the apprehensions which they had suffered, when
they first landed in slavish dismay at the idea of attacking Lacedaemonians; and
accordingly their fear changing to disdain, they now rushed all together with loud
shouts upon them, and pelted them with stones, darts, and arrows, whichever came
first to hand. The shouting accompanying their onset confounded the Lacedaemonians,
unaccustomed to this mode of fighting; dust rose from the newly burnt wood, and
it was impossible to see in front of one with the arrows and stones flying through
clouds of dust from the hands of numerous assailants. The Lacedaemonians had now
to sustain a rude conflict; their caps would not keep out the arrows, darts had
broken off in the armour of the wounded, while they themselves were helpless for
offence, being prevented from using their eyes to see what was before them, and
unable to hear the words of command for the hubbub raised by the enemy; danger encompassed
them on every side, and there was no hope of any means of defence or safety.

At last, after many had been already wounded in the confined space in which they
were fighting, they formed in close order and retired on the fort at the end of
the island, which was not far off, and to their friends who held it. The moment
they gave way, the light troops became bolder and pressed upon them, shouting louder
than ever, and killed as many as they came up with in their retreat, but most of
the Lacedaemonians made good their escape to the fort, and with the garrison in
it ranged themselves all along its whole extent to repulse the enemy wherever it
was assailable. The Athenians pursuing, unable to surround and hem them in, owing
to the strength of the ground, attacked them in front and tried to storm the position.
For a long time, indeed for most of the day, both sides held out against all the
torments of the battle, thirst, and sun, the one endeavouring to drive the enemy
from the high ground, the other to maintain himself upon it, it being now more easy
for the Lacedaemonians to defend themselves than before, as they could not be surrounded
on the flanks.

The struggle began to seem endless, when the commander of the Messenians came
to Cleon and Demosthenes, and told them that they were losing their labour: but
if they would give him some archers and light troops to go round on the enemy’s
rear by a way he would undertake to find, he thought he could force the approach.
Upon receiving what he asked for, he started from a point out of sight in order
not to be seen by the enemy, and creeping on wherever the precipices of the island
permitted, and where the Lacedaemonians, trusting to the strength of the ground,
kept no guard, succeeded after the greatest difficulty in getting round without
their seeing him, and suddenly appeared on the high ground in their rear, to the
dismay of the surprised enemy and the still greater joy of his expectant friends.
The Lacedaemonians thus placed between two fires, and in the same dilemma, to compare
small things with great, as at Thermopylae, where the defenders were cut off through
the Persians getting round by the path, being now attacked in front and behind,
began to give way, and overcome by the odds against them and exhausted from want
of food, retreated.

The Athenians were already masters of the approaches when Cleon and Demosthenes
perceiving that, if the enemy gave way a single step further, they would be destroyed
by their soldiery, put a stop to the battle and held their men back; wishing to
take the Lacedaemonians alive to Athens, and hoping that their stubbornness might
relax on hearing the offer of terms, and that they might surrender and yield to
the present overwhelming danger. Proclamation was accordingly made, to know if they
would surrender themselves and their arms to the Athenians to be dealt at their
discretion.

The Lacedaemonians hearing this offer, most of them lowered their shields and
waved their hands to show that they accepted it. Hostilities now ceased, and a parley
was held between Cleon and Demosthenes and Styphon, son of Pharax, on the other
side; since Epitadas, the first of the previous commanders, had been killed, and
Hippagretas, the next in command, left for dead among the slain, though still alive,
and thus the command had devolved upon Styphon according to the law, in case of
anything happening to his superiors. Styphon and his companions said they wished
to send a herald to the Lacedaemonians on the mainland, to know what they were to
do. The Athenians would not let any of them go, but themselves called for heralds
from the mainland, and after questions had been carried backwards and forwards two
or three times, the last man that passed over from the Lacedaemonians on the continent
brought this message: “The Lacedaemonians bid you to decide for yourselves so long
as you do nothing dishonourable”; upon which after consulting together they surrendered
themselves and their arms. The Athenians, after guarding them that day and night,
the next morning set up a trophy in the island, and got ready to sail, giving their
prisoners in batches to be guarded by the captains of the galleys; and the Lacedaemonians
sent a herald and took up their dead. The number of the killed and prisoners taken
in the island was as follows: four hundred and twenty heavy infantry had passed
over; three hundred all but eight were taken alive to Athens; the rest were killed.
About a hundred and twenty of the prisoners were Spartans. The Athenian loss was
small, the battle not having been fought at close quarters.

The blockade in all, counting from the fight at sea to the battle in the island,
had lasted seventy-two days. For twenty of these, during the absence of the envoys
sent to treat for peace, the men had provisions given them, for the rest they were
fed by the smugglers. Corn and other victual was found in the island; the commander
Epitadas having kept the men upon half rations. The Athenians and Peloponnesians
now each withdrew their forces from Pylos, and went home, and crazy as Cleon’s promise
was, he fulfilled it, by bringing the men to Athens within the twenty days as he
had pledged himself to do.

Nothing that happened in the war surprised the Hellenes so much as this. It was
the opinion that no force or famine could make the Lacedaemonians give up their
arms, but that they would fight on as they could, and die with them in their hands:
indeed people could scarcely believe that those who had surrendered were of the
same stuff as the fallen; and an Athenian ally, who some time after insultingly
asked one of the prisoners from the island if those that had fallen were men of
honour, received for answer that the atraktos- that is, the arrow- would be worth
a great deal if it could tell men of honour from the rest; in allusion to the fact
that the killed were those whom the stones and the arrows happened to hit.

Upon the arrival of the men the Athenians determined to keep them in prison until
the peace, and if the Peloponnesians invaded their country in the interval, to bring
them out and put them to death. Meanwhile the defence of Pylos was not forgotten;
the Messenians from Naupactus sent to their old country, to which Pylos formerly
belonged, some of the likeliest of their number, and began a series of incursions
into Laconia, which their common dialect rendered most destructive. The Lacedaemonians,
hitherto without experience of incursions or a warfare of the kind, finding the
Helots deserting, and fearing the march of revolution in their country, began to
be seriously uneasy, and in spite of their unwillingness to betray this to the Athenians
began to send envoys to Athens, and tried to recover Pylos and the prisoners. The
Athenians, however, kept grasping at more, and dismissed envoy after envoy without
their having effected anything. Such was the history of the affair of Pylos.

Chapter XIII

Seventh and Eighth Years of the War – End of Corcyraean Revolution – Peace of
Gela – Capture of Nisaea.

The same summer, directly after these events, the Athenians made an expedition
against the territory of Corinth with eighty ships and two thousand Athenian heavy
infantry, and two hundred cavalry on board horse transports, accompanied by the
Milesians, Andrians, and Carystians from the allies, under the command of Nicias,
son of Niceratus, with two colleagues. Putting out to sea they made land at daybreak
between Chersonese and Rheitus, at the beach of the country underneath the Solygian
hill, upon which the Dorians in old times established themselves and carried on
war against the Aeolian inhabitants of Corinth, and where a village now stands called
Solygia. The beach where the fleet came to is about a mile and a half from the village,
seven miles from Corinth, and two and a quarter from the Isthmus. The Corinthians
had heard from Argos of the coming of the Athenian armament, and had all come up
to the Isthmus long before, with the exception of those who lived beyond it, and
also of five hundred who were away in garrison in Ambracia and Leucadia; and they
were there in full force watching for the Athenians to land. These last, however,
gave them the slip by coming in the dark; and being informed by signals of the fact
the Corinthians left half their number at Cenchreae, in case the Athenians should
go against Crommyon, and marched in all haste to the rescue.

Battus, one of the two generals present at the action, went with a company to
defend the village of Solygia, which was unfortified; Lycophron remaining to give
battle with the rest. The Corinthians first attacked the right wing of the Athenians,
which had just landed in front of Chersonese, and afterwards the rest of the army.
The battle was an obstinate one, and fought throughout hand to hand. The right wing
of the Athenians and Carystians, who had been placed at the end of the line, received
and with some difficulty repulsed the Corinthians, who thereupon retreated to a
wall upon the rising ground behind, and throwing down the stones upon them, came
on again singing the paean, and being received by the Athenians, were again engaged
at close quarters. At this moment a Corinthian company having come to the relief
of the left wing, routed and pursued the Athenian right to the sea, whence they
were in their turn driven back by the Athenians and Carystians from the ships. Meanwhile
the rest of the army on either side fought on tenaciously, especially the right
wing of the Corinthians, where Lycophron sustained the attack of the Athenian left,
which it was feared might attempt the village of Solygia.

After holding on for a long while without either giving way, the Athenians aided
by their horse, of which the enemy had none, at length routed the Corinthians, who
retired to the hill and, halting, remained quiet there, without coming down again.
It was in this rout of the right wing that they had the most killed, Lycophron their
general being among the number. The rest of the army, broken and put to flight in
this way without being seriously pursued or hurried, retired to the high ground
and there took up its position. The Athenians, finding that the enemy no longer
offered to engage them, stripped his dead and took up their own and immediately
set up a trophy. Meanwhile, the half of the Corinthians left at Cenchreae to guard
against the Athenians sailing on Crommyon, although unable to see the battle for
Mount Oneion, found out what was going on by the dust, and hurried up to the rescue;
as did also the older Corinthians from the town, upon discovering what had occurred.
The Athenians seeing them all coming against them, and thinking that they were reinforcements
arriving from the neighbouring Peloponnesians, withdrew in haste to their ships
with their spoils and their own dead, except two that they left behind, not being
able to find them, and going on board crossed over to the islands opposite, and
from thence sent a herald, and took up under truce the bodies which they had left
behind. Two hundred and twelve Corinthians fell in the battle, and rather less than
fifty Athenians.

Weighing from the islands, the Athenians sailed the same day to Crommyon in the
Corinthian territory, about thirteen miles from the city, and coming to anchor laid
waste the country, and passed the night there. The next day, after first coasting
along to the territory of Epidaurus and making a descent there, they came to Methana
between Epidaurus and Troezen, and drew a wall across and fortified the isthmus
of the peninsula, and left a post there from which incursions were henceforth made
upon the country of Troezen, Haliae, and Epidaurus. After walling off this spot,
the fleet sailed off home.

While these events were going on, Eurymedon and Sophocles had put to sea with
the Athenian fleet from Pylos on their way to Sicily and, arriving at Corcyra, joined
the townsmen in an expedition against the party established on Mount Istone, who
had crossed over, as I have mentioned, after the revolution and become masters of
the country, to the great hurt of the inhabitants. Their stronghold having been
taken by an attack, the garrison took refuge in a body upon some high ground and
there capitulated, agreeing to give up their mercenary auxiliaries, lay down their
arms, and commit themselves to the discretion of the Athenian people. The generals
carried them across under truce to the island of Ptychia, to be kept in custody
until they could be sent to Athens, upon the understanding that, if any were caught
running away, all would lose the benefit of the treaty. Meanwhile the leaders of
the Corcyraean commons, afraid that the Athenians might spare the lives of the prisoners,
had recourse to the following stratagem. They gained over some few men on the island
by secretly sending friends with instructions to provide them with a boat, and to
tell them, as if for their own sakes, that they had best escape as quickly as possible,
as the Athenian generals were going to give them up to the Corcyraean people.

These representations succeeding, it was so arranged that the men were caught
sailing out in the boat that was provided, and the treaty became void accordingly,
and the whole body were given up to the Corcyraeans. For this result the Athenian
generals were in a great measure responsible; their evident disinclination to sail
for Sicily, and thus to leave to others the honour of conducting the men to Athens,
encouraged the intriguers in their design and seemed to affirm the truth of their
representations. The prisoners thus handed over were shut up by the Corcyraeans
in a large building, and afterwards taken out by twenties and led past two lines
of heavy infantry, one on each side, being bound together, and beaten and stabbed
by the men in the lines whenever any saw pass a personal enemy; while men carrying
whips went by their side and hastened on the road those that walked too slowly.

As many as sixty men were taken out and killed in this way without the knowledge
of their friends in the building, who fancied they were merely being moved from
one prison to another. At last, however, someone opened their eyes to the truth,
upon which they called upon the Athenians to kill them themselves, if such was their
pleasure, and refused any longer to go out of the building, and said they would
do all they could to prevent any one coming in. The Corcyraeans, not liking themselves
to force a passage by the doors, got up on the top of the building, and breaking
through the roof, threw down the tiles and let fly arrows at them, from which the
prisoners sheltered themselves as well as they could. Most of their number, meanwhile,
were engaged in dispatching themselves by thrusting into their throats the arrows
shot by the enemy, and hanging themselves with the cords taken from some beds that
happened to be there, and with strips made from their clothing; adopting, in short,
every possible means of self-destruction, and also falling victims to the missiles
of their enemies on the roof. Night came on while these horrors were enacting, and
most of it had passed before they were concluded. When it was day the Corcyraeans
threw them in layers upon wagons and carried them out of the city. All the women
taken in the stronghold were sold as slaves. In this way the Corcyraeans of the
mountain were destroyed by the commons; and so after terrible excesses the party
strife came to an end, at least as far as the period of this war is concerned, for
of one party there was practically nothing left. Meanwhile the Athenians sailed
off to Sicily, their primary destination, and carried on the war with their allies
there.

At the close of the summer, the Athenians at Naupactus and the Acarnanians made
an expedition against Anactorium, the Corinthian town lying at the mouth of the
Ambracian Gulf, and took it by treachery; and the Acarnanians themselves, sending
settlers from all parts of Acarnania, occupied the place.

Summer was now over. During the winter ensuing, Aristides, son of Archippus,
one of the commanders of the Athenian ships sent to collect money from the allies,
arrested at Eion, on the Strymon, Artaphernes, a Persian, on his way from the King
to Lacedaemon. He was conducted to Athens, where the Athenians got his dispatches
translated from the Assyrian character and read them. With numerous references to
other subjects, they in substance told the Lacedaemonians that the King did not
know what they wanted, as of the many ambassadors they had sent him no two ever
told the same story; if however they were prepared to speak plainly they might send
him some envoys with this Persian. The Athenians afterwards sent back Artaphernes
in a galley to Ephesus, and ambassadors with him, who heard there of the death of
King Artaxerxes, son of Xerxes, which took place about that time, and so returned
home.

The same winter the Chians pulled down their new wall at the command of the Athenians,
who suspected them of meditating an insurrection, after first however obtaining
pledges from the Athenians, and security as far as this was possible for their continuing
to treat them as before. Thus the winter ended, and with it ended the seventh year
of this war of which Thucydides is the historian.

In first days of the next summer there was an eclipse of the sun at the time
of new moon, and in the early part of the same month an earthquake. Meanwhile, the
Mitylenian and other Lesbian exiles set out, for the most part from the continent,
with mercenaries hired in Peloponnese, and others levied on the spot, and took Rhoeteum,
but restored it without injury on the receipt of two thousand Phocaean staters.
After this they marched against Antandrus and took the town by treachery, their
plan being to free Antandrus and the rest of the Actaean towns, formerly owned by
Mitylene but now held by the Athenians. Once fortified there, they would have every
facility for ship-building from the vicinity of Ida and the consequent abundance
of timber, and plenty of other supplies, and might from this base easily ravage
Lesbos, which was not far off, and make themselves masters of the Aeolian towns
on the continent.

While these were the schemes of the exiles, the Athenians in the same summer
made an expedition with sixty ships, two thousand heavy infantry, a few cavalry,
and some allied troops from Miletus and other parts, against Cythera, under the
command of Nicias, son of Niceratus, Nicostratus, son of Diotrephes, and Autocles,
son of Tolmaeus. Cythera is an island lying off Laconia, opposite Malea; the inhabitants
are Lacedaemonians of the class of the Perioeci; and an officer called the judge
of Cythera went over to the place annually from Sparta. A garrison of heavy infantry
was also regularly sent there, and great attention paid to the island, as it was
the landing-place for the merchantmen from Egypt and Libya, and at the same time
secured Laconia from the attacks of privateers from the sea, at the only point where
it is assailable, as the whole coast rises abruptly towards the Sicilian and Cretan
seas.

Coming to land here with their armament, the Athenians with ten ships and two
thousand Milesian heavy infantry took the town of Scandea, on the sea; and with
the rest of their forces landing on the side of the island looking towards Malea,
went against the lower town of Cythera, where they found all the inhabitants encamped.
A battle ensuing, the Cytherians held their ground for some little while, and then
turned and fled into the upper town, where they soon afterwards capitulated to Nicias
and his colleagues, agreeing to leave their fate to the decision of the Athenians,
their lives only being safe. A correspondence had previously been going on between
Nicias and certain of the inhabitants, which caused the surrender to be effected
more speedily, and upon terms more advantageous, present and future, for the Cytherians;
who would otherwise have been expelled by the Athenians on account of their being
Lacedaemonians and their island being so near to Laconia. After the capitulation,
the Athenians occupied the town of Scandea near the harbour, and appointing a garrison
for Cythera, sailed to Asine, Helus, and most of the places on the sea, and making
descents and passing the night on shore at such spots as were convenient, continued
ravaging the country for about seven days.

The Lacedaemonians seeing the Athenians masters of Cythera, and expecting descents
of the kind upon their coasts, nowhere opposed them in force, but sent garrisons
here and there through the country, consisting of as many heavy infantry as the
points menaced seemed to require, and generally stood very much upon the defensive.
After the severe and unexpected blow that had befallen them in the island, the occupation
of Pylos and Cythera, and the apparition on every side of a war whose rapidity defied
precaution, they lived in constant fear of internal revolution, and now took the
unusual step of raising four hundred horse and a force of archers, and became more
timid than ever in military matters, finding themselves involved in a maritime struggle,
which their organization had never contemplated, and that against Athenians, with
whom an enterprise unattempted was always looked upon as a success sacrificed. Besides
this, their late numerous reverses of fortune, coming close one upon another without
any reason, had thoroughly unnerved them, and they were always afraid of a second
disaster like that on the island, and thus scarcely dared to take the field, but
fancied that they could not stir without a blunder, for being new to the experience
of adversity they had lost all confidence in themselves.

Accordingly they now allowed the Athenians to ravage their seaboard, without
making any movement, the garrisons in whose neighbourhood the descents were made
always thinking their numbers insufficient, and sharing the general feeling. A single
garrison which ventured to resist, near Cotyrta and Aphrodisia, struck terror by
its charge into the scattered mob of light troops, but retreated, upon being received
by the heavy infantry, with the loss of a few men and some arms, for which the Athenians
set up a trophy, and then sailed off to Cythera. From thence they sailed round to
Epidaurus Limera, ravaged part of the country, and so came to Thyrea in the Cynurian
territory, upon the Argive and Laconian border. This district had been given by
its Lacedaemonian owners to the expelled Aeginetans to inhabit, in return for their
good offices at the time of the earthquake and the rising of the Helots; and also
because, although subjects of Athens, they had always sided with Lacedaemon.

While the Athenians were still at sea, the Aeginetans evacuated a fort which
they were building upon the coast, and retreated into the upper town where they
lived, rather more than a mile from the sea. One of the Lacedaemonian district garrisons
which was helping them in the work, refused to enter here with them at their entreaty,
thinking it dangerous to shut themselves up within the wall, and retiring to the
high ground remained quiet, not considering themselves a match for the enemy. Meanwhile
the Athenians landed, and instantly advanced with all their forces and took Thyrea.
The town they burnt, pillaging what was in it; the Aeginetans who were not slain
in action they took with them to Athens, with Tantalus, son of Patrocles, their
Lacedaemonian commander, who had been wounded and taken prisoner. They also took
with them a few men from Cythera whom they thought it safest to remove. These the
Athenians determined to lodge in the islands: the rest of the Cytherians were to
retain their lands and pay four talents tribute; the Aeginetans captured to be all
put to death, on account of the old inveterate feud; and Tantalus to share the imprisonment
of the Lacedaemonians taken on the island.

The same summer, the inhabitants of Camarina and Gela in Sicily first made an
armistice with each other, after which embassies from all the other Sicilian cities
assembled at Gela to try to bring about a pacification. After many expressions of
opinion on one side and the other, according to the griefs and pretensions of the
different parties complaining, Hermocrates, son of Hermon, a Syracusan, the most
influential man among them, addressed the following words to the assembly:

“If I now address you, Sicilians, it is not because my city is the least in Sicily
or the greatest sufferer by the war, but in order to state publicly what appears
to me to be the best policy for the whole island. That war is an evil is a proposition
so familiar to every one that it would be tedious to develop it. No one is forced
to engage in it by ignorance, or kept out of it by fear, if he fancies there is
anything to be gained by it. To the former the gain appears greater than the danger,
while the latter would rather stand the risk than put up with any immediate sacrifice.
But if both should happen to have chosen the wrong moment for acting in this way,
advice to make peace would not be unserviceable; and this, if we did but see it,
is just what we stand most in need of at the present juncture.

“I suppose that no one will dispute that we went to war at first in order to
serve our own several interests, that we are now, in view of the same interests,
debating how we can make peace; and that if we separate without having as we think
our rights, we shall go to war again. And yet, as men of sense, we ought to see
that our separate interests are not alone at stake in the present congress: there
is also the question whether we have still time to save Sicily, the whole of which
in my opinion is menaced by Athenian ambition; and we ought to find in the name
of that people more imperious arguments for peace than any which I can advance,
when we see the first power in Hellas watching our mistakes with the few ships that
she has at present in our waters, and under the fair name of alliance speciously
seeking to turn to account the natural hostility that exists between us. If we go
to war, and call in to help us a people that are ready enough to carry their arms
even where they are not invited; and if we injure ourselves at our own expense,
and at the same time serve as the pioneers of their dominion, we may expect, when
they see us worn out, that they will one day come with a larger armament, and seek
to bring all of us into subjection.

“And yet as sensible men, if we call in allies and court danger, it should be
in order to enrich our different countries with new acquisitions, and not to ruin
what they possess already; and we should understand that the intestine discords
which are so fatal to communities generally, will be equally so to Sicily, if we,
its inhabitants, absorbed in our local quarrels, neglect the common enemy. These
considerations should reconcile individual with individual, and city with city,
and unite us in a common effort to save the whole of Sicily. Nor should any one
imagine that the Dorians only are enemies of Athens, while the Chalcidian race is
secured by its Ionian blood; the attack in question is not inspired by hatred of
one of two nationalities, but by a desire for the good things in Sicily, the common
property of us all. This is proved by the Athenian reception of the Chalcidian invitation:
an ally who has never given them any assistance whatever, at once receives from
them almost more than the treaty entitles him to. That the Athenians should cherish
this ambition and practise this policy is very excusable; and I do not blame those
who wish to rule, but those who are over-ready to serve. It is just as much in men’s
nature to rule those who submit to them, as it is to resist those who molest them;
one is not less invariable than the other. Meanwhile all who see these dangers and
refuse to provide for them properly, or who have come here without having made up
their minds that our first duty is to unite to get rid of the common peril, are
mistaken. The quickest way to be rid of it is to make peace with each other; since
the Athenians menace us not from their own country, but from that of those who invited
them here. In this way instead of war issuing in war, peace quietly ends our quarrels;
and the guests who come hither under fair pretences for bad ends, will have good
reason for going away without having attained them.

“So far as regards the Athenians, such are the great advantages proved inherent
in a wise policy. Independently of this, in the face of the universal consent, that
peace is the first of blessings, how can we refuse to make it amongst ourselves;
or do you not think that the good which you have, and the ills that you complain
of, would be better preserved and cured by quiet than by war; that peace has its
honours and splendours of a less perilous kind, not to mention the numerous other
blessings that one might dilate on, with the not less numerous miseries of war?
These considerations should teach you not to disregard my words, but rather to look
in them every one for his own safety. If there be any here who feels certain either
by right or might to effect his object, let not this surprise be to him too severe
a disappointment. Let him remember that many before now have tried to chastise a
wrongdoer, and failing to punish their enemy have not even saved themselves; while
many who have trusted in force to gain an advantage, instead of gaining anything
more, have been doomed to lose what they had. Vengeance is not necessarily successful
because wrong has been done, or strength sure because it is confident; but the incalculable
element in the future exercises the widest influence, and is the most treacherous,
and yet in fact the most useful of all things, as it frightens us all equally, and
thus makes us consider before attacking each other.

“Let us therefore now allow the undefined fear of this unknown future, and the
immediate terror of the Athenians’ presence, to produce their natural impression,
and let us consider any failure to carry out the programmes that we may each have
sketched out for ourselves as sufficiently accounted for by these obstacles, and
send away the intruder from the country; and if everlasting peace be impossible
between us, let us at all events make a treaty for as long a term as possible, and
put off our private differences to another day. In fine, let us recognize that the
adoption of my advice will leave us each citizens of a free state, and as such arbiters
of our own destiny, able to return good or bad offices with equal effect; while
its rejection will make us dependent on others, and thus not only impotent to repel
an insult, but on the most favourable supposition, friends to our direst enemies,
and at feud with our natural friends.

“For myself, though, as I said at first, the representative of a great city,
and able to think less of defending myself than of attacking others, I am prepared
to concede something in prevision of these dangers. I am not inclined to ruin myself
for the sake of hurting my enemies, or so blinded by animosity as to think myself
equally master of my own plans and of fortune which I cannot command; but I am ready
to give up anything in reason. I call upon the rest of you to imitate my conduct
of your own free will, without being forced to do so by the enemy. There is no disgrace
in connections giving way to one another, a Dorian to a Dorian, or a Chalcidian
to his brethren; above and beyond this we are neighbours, live in the same country,
are girt by the same sea, and go by the same name of Sicilians. We shall go to war
again, I suppose, when the time comes, and again make peace among ourselves by means
of future congresses; but the foreign invader, if we are wise, will always find
us united against him, since the hurt of one is the danger of all; and we shall
never, in future, invite into the island either allies or mediators. By so acting
we shall at the present moment do for Sicily a double service, ridding her at once
of the Athenians, and of civil war, and in future shall live in freedom at home,
and be less menaced from abroad.”

Such were the words of Hermocrates. The Sicilians took his advice, and came to
an understanding among themselves to end the war, each keeping what they had- the
Camarinaeans taking Morgantina at a price fixed to be paid to the Syracusans- and
the allies of the Athenians called the officers in command, and told them that they
were going to make peace and that they would be included in the treaty. The generals
assenting, the peace was concluded, and the Athenian fleet afterwards sailed away
from Sicily. Upon their arrival at Athens, the Athenians banished Pythodorus and
Sophocles, and fined Eurymedon for having taken bribes to depart when they might
have subdued Sicily. So thoroughly had the present prosperity persuaded the citizens
that nothing could withstand them, and that they could achieve what was possible
and impracticable alike, with means ample or inadequate it mattered not. The secret
of this was their general extraordinary success, which made them confuse their strength
with their hopes.

The same summer the Megarians in the city, pressed by the hostilities of the
Athenians, who invaded their country twice every year with all their forces, and
harassed by the incursions of their own exiles at Pegae, who had been expelled in
a revolution by the popular party, began to ask each other whether it would not
be better to receive back their exiles, and free the town from one of its two scourges.
The friends of the emigrants, perceiving the agitation, now more openly than before
demanded the adoption of this proposition; and the leaders of the commons, seeing
that the sufferings of the times had tired out the constancy of their supporters,
entered in their alarm into correspondence with the Athenian generals, Hippocrates,
son of Ariphron, and Demosthenes, son of Alcisthenes, and resolved to betray the
town, thinking this less dangerous to themselves than the return of the party which
they had banished. It was accordingly arranged that the Athenians should first take
the long walls extending for nearly a mile from the city to the port of Nisaea,
to prevent the Peloponnesians coming to the rescue from that place, where they formed
the sole garrison to secure the fidelity of Megara; and that after this the attempt
should be made to put into their hands the upper town, which it was thought would
then come over with less difficulty.

The Athenians, after plans had been arranged between themselves and their correspondents
both as to words and actions, sailed by night to Minoa, the island off Megara, with
six hundred heavy infantry under the command of Hippocrates, and took post in a
quarry not far off, out of which bricks used to be taken for the walls; while Demosthenes,
the other commander, with a detachment of Plataean light troops and another of Peripoli,
placed himself in ambush in the precinct of Enyalius, which was still nearer. No
one knew of it, except those whose business it was to know that night. A little
before daybreak, the traitors in Megara began to act. Every night for a long time
back, under pretence of marauding, in order to have a means of opening the gates,
they had been used, with the consent of the officer in command, to carry by night
a sculling boat upon a cart along the ditch to the sea, and so to sail out, bringing
it back again before day upon the cart, and taking it within the wall through the
gates, in order, as they pretended, to baffle the Athenian blockade at Minoa, there
being no boat to be seen in the harbour. On the present occasion the cart was already
at the gates, which had been opened in the usual way for the boat, when the Athenians,
with whom this had been concerted, saw it, and ran at the top of their speed from
the ambush in order to reach the gates before they were shut again, and while the
cart was still there to prevent their being closed; their Megarian accomplices at
the same moment killing the guard at the gates. The first to run in was Demosthenes
with his Plataeans and Peripoli, just where the trophy now stands; and he was no
sooner within the gates than the Plataeans engaged and defeated the nearest party
of Peloponnesians who had taken the alarm and come to the rescue, and secured the
gates for the approaching Athenian heavy infantry.

After this, each of the Athenians as fast as they entered went against the wall.
A few of the Peloponnesian garrison stood their ground at first, and tried to repel
the assault, and some of them were killed; but the main body took fright and fled;
the night attack and the sight of the Megarian traitors in arms against them making
them think that all Megara had gone over to the enemy. It so happened also that
the Athenian herald of his own idea called out and invited any of the Megarians
that wished, to join the Athenian ranks; and this was no sooner heard by the garrison
than they gave way, and, convinced that they were the victims of a concerted attack,
took refuge in Nisaea. By daybreak, the walls being now taken and the Megarians
in the city in great agitation, the persons who had negotiated with the Athenians,
supported by the rest of the popular party which was privy to the plot, said that
they ought to open the gates and march out to battle. It had been concerted between
them that the Athenians should rush in, the moment that the gates were opened, while
the conspirators were to be distinguished from the rest by being anointed with oil,
and so to avoid being hurt. They could open the gates with more security, as four
thousand Athenian heavy infantry from Eleusis, and six hundred horse, had marched
all night, according to agreement, and were now close at hand. The conspirators
were all ready anointed and at their posts by the gates, when one of their accomplices
denounced the plot to the opposite party, who gathered together and came in a body,
and roundly said that they must not march out- a thing they had never yet ventured
on even when in greater force than at present- or wantonly compromise the safety
of the town, and that if what they said was not attended to, the battle would have
to be fought in Megara. For the rest, they gave no signs of their knowledge of the
intrigue, but stoutly maintained that their advice was the best, and meanwhile kept
close by and watched the gates, making it impossible for the conspirators to effect
their purpose.

The Athenian generals seeing that some obstacle had arisen, and that the capture
of the town by force was no longer practicable, at once proceeded to invest Nisaea,
thinking that, if they could take it before relief arrived, the surrender of Megara
would soon follow. Iron, stone-masons, and everything else required quickly coming
up from Athens, the Athenians started from the wall which they occupied, and from
this point built a cross wall looking towards Megara down to the sea on either side
of Nisaea; the ditch and the walls being divided among the army, stones and bricks
taken from the suburb, and the fruit-trees and timber cut down to make a palisade
wherever this seemed necessary; the houses also in the suburb with the addition
of battlements sometimes entering into the fortification. The whole of this day
the work continued, and by the afternoon of the next the wall was all but completed,
when the garrison in Nisaea, alarmed by the absolute want of provisions, which they
used to take in for the day from the upper town, not anticipating any speedy relief
from the Peloponnesians, and supposing Megara to be hostile, capitulated to the
Athenians on condition that they should give up their arms, and should each be ransomed
for a stipulated sum; their Lacedaemonian commander, and any others of his countrymen
in the place, being left to the discretion of the Athenians. On these conditions
they surrendered and came out, and the Athenians broke down the long walls at their
point of junction with Megara, took possession of Nisaea, and went on with their
other preparations.

Just at this time the Lacedaemonian Brasidas, son of Tellis, happened to be in
the neighbourhood of Sicyon and Corinth, getting ready an army for Thrace. As soon
as he heard of the capture of the walls, fearing for the Peloponnesians in Nisaea
and the safety of Megara, he sent to the Boeotians to meet him as quickly as possible
at Tripodiscus, a village so called of the Megarid, under Mount Geraneia, and went
himself, with two thousand seven hundred Corinthian heavy infantry, four hundred
Phliasians, six hundred Sicyonians, and such troops of his own as he had already
levied, expecting to find Nisaea not yet taken. Hearing of its fall (he had marched
out by night to Tripodiscus), he took three hundred picked men from the army, without
waiting till his coming should be known, and came up to Megara unobserved by the
Athenians, who were down by the sea, ostensibly, and really if possible, to attempt
Nisaea, but above all to get into Megara and secure the town. He accordingly invited
the townspeople to admit his party, saying that he had hopes of recovering Nisaea.

However, one of the Megarian factions feared that he might expel them and restore
the exiles; the other that the commons, apprehensive of this very danger, might
set upon them, and the city be thus destroyed by a battle within its gates under
the eyes of the ambushed Athenians. He was accordingly refused admittance, both
parties electing to remain quiet and await the event; each expecting a battle between
the Athenians and the relieving army, and thinking it safer to see their friends
victorious before declaring in their favour.

Unable to carry his point, Brasidas went back to the rest of the army. At daybreak
the Boeotians joined him. Having determined to relieve Megara, whose danger they
considered their own, even before hearing from Brasidas, they were already in full
force at Plataea, when his messenger arrived to add spurs to their resolution; and
they at once sent on to him two thousand two hundred heavy infantry, and six hundred
horse, returning home with the main body. The whole army thus assembled numbered
six thousand heavy infantry. The Athenian heavy infantry were drawn up by Nisaea
and the sea; but the light troops being scattered over the plain were attacked by
the Boeotian horse and driven to the sea, being taken entirely by surprise, as on
previous occasions no relief had ever come to the Megarians from any quarter. Here
the Boeotians were in their turn charged and engaged by the Athenian horse, and
a cavalry action ensued which lasted a long time, and in which both parties claimed
the victory. The Athenians killed and stripped the leader of the Boeotian horse
and some few of his comrades who had charged right up to Nisaea, and remaining masters
of the bodies gave them back under truce, and set up a trophy; but regarding the
action as a whole the forces separated without either side having gained a decisive
advantage, the Boeotians returning to their army and the Athenians to Nisaea.

After this Brasidas and the army came nearer to the sea and to Megara, and taking
up a convenient position, remained quiet in order of battle, expecting to be attacked
by the Athenians and knowing that the Megarians were waiting to see which would
be the victor. This attitude seemed to present two advantages. Without taking the
offensive or willingly provoking the hazards of a battle, they openly showed their
readiness to fight, and thus without bearing the burden of the day would fairly
reap its honours; while at the same time they effectually served their interests
at Megara. For if they had failed to show themselves they would not have had a chance,
but would have certainly been considered vanquished, and have lost the town. As
it was, the Athenians might possibly not be inclined to accept their challenge,
and their object would be attained without fighting. And so it turned out. The Athenians
formed outside the long walls and, the enemy not attacking, there remained motionless;
their generals having decided that the risk was too unequal. In fact most of their
objects had been already attained; and they would have to begin a battle against
superior numbers, and if victorious could only gain Megara, while a defeat would
destroy the flower of their heavy soldiery. For the enemy it was different; as even
the states actually represented in his army risked each only a part of its entire
force, he might well be more audacious. Accordingly, after waiting for some time
without either side attacking, the Athenians withdrew to Nisaea, and the Peloponnesians
after them to the point from which they had set out. The friends of the Megarian
exiles now threw aside their hesitation, and opened the gates to Brasidas and the
commanders from the different states- looking upon him as the victor and upon the
Athenians as having declined the battle- and receiving them into the town proceeded
to discuss matters with them; the party in correspondence with the Athenians being
paralysed by the turn things had taken.

Afterwards Brasidas let the allies go home, and himself went back to Corinth,
to prepare for his expedition to Thrace, his original destination. The Athenians
also returning home, the Megarians in the city most implicated in the Athenian negotiation,
knowing that they had been detected, presently disappeared; while the rest conferred
with the friends of the exiles, and restored the party at Pegae, after binding them
under solemn oaths to take no vengeance for the past, and only to consult the real
interests of the town. However, as soon as they were in office, they held a review
of the heavy infantry, and separating the battalions, picked out about a hundred
of their enemies, and of those who were thought to be most involved in the correspondence
with the Athenians, brought them before the people, and compelling the vote to be
given openly, had them condemned and executed, and established a close oligarchy
in the town- a revolution which lasted a very long while, although effected by a
very few partisans.

Chapter XIV.

Eighth and Ninth Years of the War – Invasion of Boeotia – Fall of Amphipolis
– Brilliant Successes of Brasidas.

THE same summer the Mitylenians were about to fortify Antandrus, as they had
intended, when Demodocus and Aristides, the commanders of the Athenian squadron
engaged in levying subsidies, heard on the Hellespont of what was being done to
the place (Lamachus their colleague having sailed with ten ships into the Pontus)
and conceived fears of its becoming a second Anaia-the place in which the Samian
exiles had established themselves to annoy Samos, helping the Peloponnesians by
sending pilots to their navy, and keeping the city in agitation and receiving all
its outlaws. They accordingly got together a force from the allies and set sail,
defeated in battle the troops that met them from Antandrus, and retook the place.
Not long after, Lamachus, who had sailed into the Pontus, lost his ships at anchor
in the river Calex, in the territory of Heraclea, rain having fallen in the interior
and the flood coming suddenly down upon them; and himself and his troops passed
by land through the Bithynian Thracians on the Asiatic side, and arrived at Chalcedon,
the Megarian colony at the mouth of the Pontus.

The same summer the Athenian general, Demosthenes, arrived at Naupactus with
forty ships immediately after the return from the Megarid. Hippocrates and himself
had had overtures made to them by certain men in the cities in Boeotia, who wished
to change the constitution and introduce a democracy as at Athens; Ptoeodorus, a
Theban exile, being the chief mover in this intrigue. The seaport town of Siphae,
in the bay of Crisae, in the Thespian territory, was to be betrayed to them by one
party; Chaeronea (a dependency of what was formerly called the Minyan, now the Boeotian,
Orchomenus) to be put into their hands by another from that town, whose exiles were
very active in the business, hiring men in Peloponnese. Some Phocians also were
in the plot, Chaeronea being the frontier town of Boeotia and close to Phanotis
in Phocia. Meanwhile the Athenians were to seize Delium, the sanctuary of Apollo,
in the territory of Tanagra looking towards Euboea; and all these events were to
take place simultaneously upon a day appointed, in order that the Boeotians might
be unable to unite to oppose them at Delium, being everywhere detained by disturbances
at home. Should the enterprise succeed, and Delium be fortified, its authors confidently
expected that even if no revolution should immediately follow in Boeotia, yet with
these places in their hands, and the country being harassed by incursions, and a
refuge in each instance near for the partisans engaged in them, things would not
remain as they were, but that the rebels being supported by the Athenians and the
forces of the oligarchs divided, it would be possible after a while to settle matters
according to their wishes.

Such was the plot in contemplation. Hippocrates with a force raised at home awaited
the proper moment to take the field against the Boeotians; while he sent on Demosthenes
with the forty ships above mentioned to Naupactus, to raise in those parts an army
of Acarnanians and of the other allies, and sail and receive Siphae from the conspirators;
a day having been agreed on for the simultaneous execution of both these operations.
Demosthenes on his arrival found Oeniadae already compelled by the united Acarnanians
to join the Athenian confederacy, and himself raising all the allies in those countries
marched against and subdued Salynthius and the Agraeans; after which he devoted
himself to the preparations necessary to enable him to be at Siphae by the time
appointed.

About the same time in the summer, Brasidas set out on his march for the Thracian
places with seventeen hundred heavy infantry, and arriving at Heraclea in Trachis,
from thence sent on a messenger to his friends at Pharsalus, to ask them to conduct
himself and his army through the country. Accordingly there came to Melitia in Achaia
Panaerus, Dorus, Hippolochidas, Torylaus, and Strophacus, the Chalcidian proxenus,
under whose escort he resumed his march, being accompanied also by other Thessalians,
among whom was Niconidas from Larissa, a friend of Perdiccas. It was never very
easy to traverse Thessaly without an escort; and throughout all Hellas for an armed
force to pass without leave through a neighbour’s country was a delicate step to
take. Besides this the Thessalian people had always sympathized with the Athenians.
Indeed if instead of the customary dose oligarchy there had been a constitutional
government in Thessaly, he would never have been able to proceed; since even as
it was, he was met on his march at the river Enipeus by certain of the opposite
party who forbade his further progress, and complained of his making the attempt
without the consent of the nation. To this his escort answered that they had no
intention of taking him through against their will; they were only friends in attendance
on an unexpected visitor. Brasidas himself added that he came as a friend to Thessaly
and its inhabitants, his arms not being directed against them but against the Athenians,
with whom he was at war, and that although he knew of no quarrel between the Thessalians
and Lacedaemonians to prevent the two nations having access to each other’s territory,
he neither would nor could proceed against their wishes; he could only beg them
not to stop him. With this answer they went away, and he took the advice of his
escort, and pushed on without halting, before a greater force might gather to prevent
him. Thus in the day that he set out from Melitia he performed the whole distance
to Pharsalus, and encamped on the river Apidanus; and so to Phacium and from thence
to Perrhaebia. Here his Thessalian escort went back, and the Perrhaebians, who are
subjects of Thessaly, set him down at Dium in the dominions of Perdiccas, a Macedonian
town under Mount Olympus, looking towards Thessaly.

In this way Brasidas hurried through Thessaly before any one could be got ready
to stop him, and reached Perdiccas and Chalcidice. The departure of the army from
Peloponnese had been procured by the Thracian towns in revolt against Athens and
by Perdiccas, alarmed at the successes of the Athenians. The Chalcidians thought
that they would be the first objects of an Athenian expedition, not that the neighbouring
towns which had not yet revolted did not also secretly join in the invitation; and
Perdiccas also had his apprehensions on account of his old quarrels with the Athenians,
although not openly at war with them, and above all wished to reduce Arrhabaeus,
king of the Lyncestians.

It had been less difficult for them to get an army to leave Peloponnese, because
of the ill fortune of the Lacedaemonians at the present moment. The attacks of the
Athenians upon Peloponnese, and in particular upon Laconia, might, it was hoped,
be diverted most effectually by annoying them in return, and by sending an army
to their allies, especially as they were willing to maintain it and asked for it
to aid them in revolting. The Lacedaemonians were also glad to have an excuse for
sending some of the Helots out of the country, for fear that the present aspect
of affairs and the occupation of Pylos might encourage them to move. Indeed fear
of their numbers and obstinacy even persuaded the Lacedaemonians to the action which
I shall now relate, their policy at all times having been governed by the necessity
of taking precautions against them. The Helots were invited by a proclamation to
pick out those of their number who claimed to have most distinguished themselves
against the enemy, in order that they might receive their freedom; the object being
to test them, as it was thought that the first to claim their freedom would be the
most high-spirited and the most apt to rebel. As many as two thousand were selected
accordingly, who crowned themselves and went round the temples, rejoicing in their
new freedom. The Spartans, however, soon afterwards did away with them, and no one
ever knew how each of them perished. The Spartans now therefore gladly sent seven
hundred as heavy infantry with Brasidas, who recruited the rest of his force by
means of money in Peloponnese.

Brasidas himself was sent out by the Lacedaemonians mainly at his own desire,
although the Chalcidians also were eager to have a man so thorough as he had shown
himself whenever there was anything to be done at Sparta, and whose after-service
abroad proved of the utmost use to his country. At the present moment his just and
moderate conduct towards the towns generally succeeded in procuring their revolt,
besides the places which he managed to take by treachery; and thus when the Lacedaemonians
desired to treat, as they ultimately did, they had places to offer in exchange,
and the burden of war meanwhile shifted from Peloponnese. Later on in the war, after
the events in Sicily, the present valour and conduct of Brasidas, known by experience
to some, by hearsay to others, was what mainly created in the allies of Athens a
feeling for the Lacedaemonians. He was the first who went out and showed himself
so good a man at all points as to leave behind him the conviction that the rest
were like him.

Meanwhile his arrival in the Thracian country no sooner became known to the Athenians
than they declared war against Perdiccas, whom they regarded as the author of the
expedition, and kept a closer watch on their allies in that quarter.

Upon the arrival of Brasidas and his army, Perdiccas immediately started with
them and with his own forces against Arrhabaeus, son of Bromerus, king of the Lyncestian
Macedonians, his neighbour, with whom he had a quarrel and whom he wished to subdue.
However, when he arrived with his army and Brasidas at the pass leading into Lyncus,
Brasidas told him that before commencing hostilities he wished to go and try to
persuade Arrhabaeus to become the ally of Lacedaemon, this latter having already
made overtures intimating his willingness to make Brasidas arbitrator between them,
and the Chalcidian envoys accompanying him having warned him not to remove the apprehensions
of Perdiccas, in order to ensure his greater zeal in their cause. Besides, the envoys
of Perdiccas had talked at Lacedaemon about his bringing many of the places round
him into alliance with them; and thus Brasidas thought he might take a larger view
of the question of Arrhabaeus. Perdiccas however retorted that he had not brought
him with him to arbitrate in their quarrel, but to put down the enemies whom he
might point out to him; and that while he, Perdiccas, maintained half his army it
was a breach of faith for Brasidas to parley with Arrhabaeus. Nevertheless Brasidas
disregarded the wishes of Perdiccas and held the parley in spite of him, and suffered
himself to be persuaded to lead off the army without invading the country of Arrhabaeus;
after which Perdiccas, holding that faith had not been kept with him, contributed
only a third instead of half of the support of the army.

The same summer, without loss of time, Brasidas marched with the Chalcidians
against Acanthus, a colony of the Andrians, a little before vintage. The inhabitants
were divided into two parties on the question of receiving him; those who had joined
the Chalcidians in inviting him, and the popular party. However, fear for their
fruit, which was still out, enabled Brasidas to persuade the multitude to admit
him alone, and to hear what he had to say before making a decision; and he was admitted
accordingly and appeared before the people, and not being a bad speaker for a Lacedaemonian,
addressed them as follows:

“Acanthians, the Lacedaemonians have sent out me and my army to make good the
reason that we gave for the war when we began it, viz., that we were going to war
with the Athenians in order to free Hellas. Our delay in coming has been caused
by mistaken expectations as to the war at home, which led us to hope, by our own
unassisted efforts and without your risking anything, to effect the speedy downfall
of the Athenians; and you must not blame us for this, as we are now come the moment
that we were able, prepared with your aid to do our best to subdue them. Meanwhile
I am astonished at finding your gates shut against me, and at not meeting with a
better welcome. We Lacedaemonians thought of you as allies eager to have us, to
whom we should come in spirit even before we were with you in body; and in this
expectation undertook all the risks of a march of many days through a strange country,
so far did our zeal carry us. It will be a terrible thing if after this you have
other intentions, and mean to stand in the way of your own and Hellenic freedom.
It is not merely that you oppose me yourselves; but wherever I may go people will
be less inclined to join me, on the score that you, to whom I first came- an important
town like Acanthus, and prudent men like the Acanthians- refused to admit me. I
shall have nothing to prove that the reason which I advance is the true one; it
will be said either that there is something unfair in the freedom which I offer,
or that I am in insufficient force and unable to protect you against an attack from
Athens. Yet when I went with the army which I now have to the relief of Nisaea,
the Athenians did not venture to engage me although in greater force than I; and
it is not likely they will ever send across sea against you an army as numerous
as they had at Nisaea.

And for myself, I have come here not to hurt but to free the Hellenes, witness
the solemn oaths by which I have bound my government that the allies that I may
bring over shall be independent; and besides my object in coming is not by force
or fraud to obtain your alliance, but to offer you mine to help you against your
Athenian masters. I protest, therefore, against any suspicions of my intentions
after the guarantees which I offer, and equally so against doubts of my ability
to protect you, and I invite you to join me without hesitation.

“Some of you may hang back because they have private enemies, and fear that I
may put the city into the hands of a party: none need be more tranquil than they.
I am not come here to help this party or that; and I do not consider that I should
be bringing you freedom in any real sense, if I should disregard your constitution,
and enslave the many to the few or the few to the many. This would be heavier than
a foreign yoke; and we Lacedaemonians, instead of being thanked for our pains, should
get neither honour nor glory, but, contrariwise, reproaches. The charges which strengthen
our hands in the war against the Athenians would on our own showing be merited by
ourselves, and more hateful in us than in those who make no pretensions to honesty;
as it is more disgraceful for persons of character to take what they covet by fair-seeming
fraud than by open force; the one aggression having for its justification the might
which fortune gives, the other being simply a piece of clever roguery.

A matter which concerns us thus nearly we naturally look to most jealously; and
over and above the oaths that I have mentioned, what stronger assurance can you
have, when you see that our words, compared with the actual facts, produce the necessary
conviction that it is our interest to act as we say?

“If to these considerations of mine you put in the plea of inability, and claim
that your friendly feeling should save you from being hurt by your refusal; if you
say that freedom, in your opinion, is not without its dangers, and that it is right
to offer it to those who can accept it, but not to force it on any against their
will, then I shall take the gods and heroes of your country to witness that I came
for your good and was rejected, and shall do my best to compel you by laying waste
your land. I shall do so without scruple, being justified by the necessity which
constrains me, first, to prevent the Lacedaemonians from being damaged by you, their
friends, in the event of your nonadhesion, through the moneys that you pay to the
Athenians; and secondly, to prevent the Hellenes from being hindered by you in shaking
off their servitude. Otherwise indeed we should have no right to act as we propose;
except in the name of some public interest, what call should we Lacedaemonians have
to free those who do not wish it? Empire we do not aspire to: it is what we are
labouring to put down; and we should wrong the greater number if we allowed you
to stand in the way of the independence that we offer to all. Endeavour, therefore,
to decide wisely, and strive to begin the work of liberation for the Hellenes, and
lay up for yourselves endless renown, while you escape private loss, and cover your
commonwealth with glory.”

Such were the words of Brasidas. The Acanthians, after much had been said on
both sides of the question, gave their votes in secret, and the majority, influenced
by the seductive arguments of Brasidas and by fear for their fruit, decided to revolt
from Athens; not however admitting the army until they had taken his personal security
for the oaths sworn by his government before they sent him out, assuring the independence
of the allies whom he might bring over. Not long after, Stagirus, a colony of the
Andrians, followed their example and revolted. Such were the events of this summer.

It was in the first days of the winter following that the places in Boeotia were
to be put into the hands of the Athenian generals, Hippocrates and Demosthenes,
the latter of whom was to go with his ships to Siphae, the former to Delium. A mistake,
however, was made in the days on which they were each to start; and Demosthenes,
sailing first to Siphae, with the Acarnanians and many of the allies from those
parts on board, failed to effect anything, through the plot having been betrayed
by Nicomachus, a Phocian from Phanotis, who told the Lacedaemonians, and they the
Boeotians. Succours accordingly flocked in from all parts of Boeotia, Hippocrates
not being yet there to make his diversion, and Siphae and Chaeronea were promptly
secured, and the conspirators, informed of the mistake, did not venture on any movement
in the towns.

Meanwhile Hippocrates made a levy in mass of the citizens, resident aliens, and
foreigners in Athens, and arrived at his destination after the Boeotians had already
come back from Siphae, and encamping his army began to fortify Delium, the sanctuary
of Apollo, in the following manner. A trench was dug all round the temple and the
consecrated ground, and the earth thrown up from the excavation was made to do duty
as a wall, in which stakes were also planted, the vines round the sanctuary being
cut down and thrown in, together with stones and bricks pulled down from the houses
near; every means, in short, being used to run up the rampart. Wooden towers were
also erected where they were wanted, and where there was no part of the temple buildings
left standing, as on the side where the gallery once existing had fallen in. The
work was begun on the third day after leaving home, and continued during the fourth,
and till dinnertime on the fifth, when most of it being now finished the army removed
from Delium about a mile and a quarter on its way home. From this point most of
the light troops went straight on, while the heavy infantry halted and remained
where they were; Hippocrates having stayed behind at Delium to arrange the posts,
and to give directions for the completion of such part of the outworks as had been
left unfinished.

During the days thus employed the Boeotians were mustering at Tanagra, and by
the time that they had come in from all the towns, found the Athenians already on
their way home. The rest of the eleven Boeotarchs were against giving battle, as
the enemy was no longer in Boeotia, the Athenians being just over the Oropian border,
when they halted; but Pagondas, son of Aeolidas, one of the Boeotarchs of Thebes
(Arianthides, son of Lysimachidas, being the other), and then commander-in-chief,
thought it best to hazard a battle. He accordingly called the men to him, company
after company, to prevent their all leaving their arms at once, and urged them to
attack the Athenians, and stand the issue of a battle, speaking as follows:

“Boeotians, the idea that we ought not to give battle to the Athenians, unless
we came up with them in Boeotia, is one which should never have entered into the
head of any of us, your generals. It was to annoy Boeotia that they crossed the
frontier and built a fort in our country; and they are therefore, I imagine, our
enemies wherever we may come up with them, and from wheresoever they may have come
to act as enemies do. And if any one has taken up with the idea in question for
reasons of safety, it is high time for him to change his mind. The party attacked,
whose own country is in danger, can scarcely discuss what is prudent with the calmness
of men who are in full enjoyment of what they have got, and are thinking of attacking
a neighbour in order to get more. It is your national habit, in your country or
out of it, to oppose the same resistance to a foreign invader; and when that invader
is Athenian, and lives upon your frontier besides, it is doubly imperative to do
so. As between neighbours generally, freedom means simply a determination to hold
one’s own; and with neighbours like these, who are trying to enslave near and far
alike, there is nothing for it but to fight it out to the last. Look at the condition
of the Euboeans and of most of the rest of Hellas, and be convinced that others
have to fight with their neighbours for this frontier or that, but that for us conquest
means one frontier for the whole country, about which no dispute can be made, for
they will simply come and take by force what we have. So much more have we to fear
from this neighbour than from another. Besides, people who, like the Athenians in
the present instance, are tempted by pride of strength to attack their neighbours,
usually march most confidently against those who keep still, and only defend themselves
in their own country, but think twice before they grapple with those who meet them
outside their frontier and strike the first blow if opportunity offers. The Athenians
have shown us this themselves; the defeat which we inflicted upon them at Coronea,
at the time when our quarrels had allowed them to occupy the country, has given
great security to Boeotia until the present day. Remembering this, the old must
equal their ancient exploits, and the young, the sons of the heroes of that time,
must endeavour not to disgrace their native valour; and trusting in the help of
the god whose temple has been sacrilegiously fortified, and in the victims which
in our sacrifices have proved propitious, we must march against the enemy, and teach
him that he must go and get what he wants by attacking someone who will not resist
him, but that men whose glory it is to be always ready to give battle for the liberty
of their own country, and never unjustly to enslave that of others, will not let
him go without a struggle.”

By these arguments Pagondas persuaded the Boeotians to attack the Athenians,
and quickly breaking up his camp led his army forward, it being now late in the
day. On nearing the enemy, he halted in a position where a hill intervening prevented
the two armies from seeing each other, and then formed and prepared for action.
Meanwhile Hippocrates at Delium, informed of the approach of the Boeotians, sent
orders to his troops to throw themselves into line, and himself joined them not
long afterwards, leaving about three hundred horse behind him at Delium, at once
to guard the place in case of attack, and to watch their opportunity and fall upon
the Boeotians during the battle. The Boeotians placed a detachment to deal with
these, and when everything was arranged to their satisfaction appeared over the
hill, and halted in the order which they had determined on, to the number of seven
thousand heavy infantry, more than ten thousand light troops, one thousand horse,
and five hundred targeteers. On their right were the Thebans and those of their
province, in the centre the Haliartians, Coronaeans, Copaeans, and the other people
around the lake, and on the left the Thespians, Tanagraeans, and Orchomenians, the
cavalry and the light troops being at the extremity of each wing. The Thebans formed
twenty-five shields deep, the rest as they pleased. Such was the strength and disposition
of the Boeotian army.

On the side of the Athenians, the heavy infantry throughout the whole army formed
eight deep, being in numbers equal to the enemy, with the cavalry upon the two wings.
Light troops regularly armed there were none in the army, nor had there ever been
any at Athens. Those who had joined in the invasion, though many times more numerous
than those of the enemy, had mostly followed unarmed, as part of the levy in mass
of the citizens and foreigners at Athens, and having started first on their way
home were not present in any number. The armies being now in line and upon the point
of engaging, Hippocrates, the general, passed along the Athenian ranks, and encouraged
them as follows:

“Athenians, I shall only say a few words to you, but brave men require no more,
and they are addressed more to your understanding than to your courage. None of
you must fancy that we are going out of our way to run this risk in the country
of another. Fought in their territory the battle will be for ours: if we conquer,
the Peloponnesians will never invade your country without the Boeotian horse, and
in one battle you will win Boeotia and in a manner free Attica. Advance to meet
them then like citizens of a country in which you all glory as the first in Hellas,
and like sons of the fathers who beat them at Oenophyta with Myronides and thus
gained possession of Boeotia.”

Hippocrates had got half through the army with his exhortation, when the Boeotians,
after a few more hasty words from Pagondas, struck up the paean, and came against
them from the hill; the Athenians advancing to meet them, and closing at a run.
The extreme wing of neither army came into action, one like the other being stopped
by the water-courses in the way; the rest engaged with the utmost obstinacy, shield
against shield. The Boeotian left, as far as the centre, was worsted by the Athenians.
The Thespians in that part of the field suffered most severely. The troops alongside
them having given way, they were surrounded in a narrow space and cut down fighting
hand to hand; some of the Athenians also fell into confusion in surrounding the
enemy and mistook and so killed each other. In this part of the field the Boeotians
were beaten, and retreated upon the troops still fighting; but the right, where
the Thebans were, got the better of the Athenians and shoved them further and further
back, though gradually at first. It so happened also that Pagondas, seeing the distress
of his left, had sent two squadrons of horse, where they could not be seen, round
the hill, and their sudden appearance struck a panic into the victorious wing of
the Athenians, who thought that it was another army coming against them. At length
in both parts of the field, disturbed by this panic, and with their line broken
by the advancing Thebans, the whole Athenian army took to flight. Some made for
Delium and the sea, some for Oropus, others for Mount Parnes, or wherever they had
hopes of safety, pursued and cut down by the Boeotians, and in particular by the
cavalry, composed partly of Boeotians and partly of Locrians, who had come up just
as the rout began. Night however coming on to interrupt the pursuit, the mass of
the fugitives escaped more easily than they would otherwise have done. The next
day the troops at Oropus and Delium returned home by sea, after leaving a garrison
in the latter place, which they continued to hold notwithstanding the defeat.

The Boeotians set up a trophy, took up their own dead, and stripped those of
the enemy, and leaving a guard over them retired to Tanagra, there to take measures
for attacking Delium. Meanwhile a herald came from the Athenians to ask for the
dead, but was met and turned back by a Boeotian herald, who told him that he would
effect nothing until the return of himself the Boeotian herald, and who then went
on to the Athenians, and told them on the part of the Boeotians that they had done
wrong in transgressing the law of the Hellenes. Of what use was the universal custom
protecting the temples in an invaded country, if the Athenians were to fortify Delium
and live there, acting exactly as if they were on unconsecrated ground, and drawing
and using for their purposes the water which they, the Boeotians, never touched
except for sacred uses? Accordingly for the god as well as for themselves, in the
name of the deities concerned, and of Apollo, the Boeotians invited them first to
evacuate the temple, if they wished to take up the dead that belonged to them.

After these words from the herald, the Athenians sent their own herald to the
Boeotians to say that they had not done any wrong to the temple, and for the future
would do it no more harm than they could help; not having occupied it originally
in any such design, but to defend themselves from it against those who were really
wronging them. The law of the Hellenes was that conquest of a country, whether more
or less extensive, carried with it possession of the temples in that country, with
the obligation to keep up the usual ceremonies, at least as far as possible. The
Boeotians and most other people who had turned out the owners of a country, and
put themselves in their places by force, now held as of right the temples which
they originally entered as usurpers. If the Athenians could have conquered more
of Boeotia this would have been the case with them: as things stood, the piece of
it which they had got they should treat as their own, and not quit unless obliged.
The water they had disturbed under the impulsion of a necessity which they had not
wantonly incurred, having been forced to use it in defending themselves against
the Boeotians who first invaded Attica. Besides, anything done under the pressure
of war and danger might reasonably claim indulgence even in the eye of the god;
or why, pray, were the altars the asylum for involuntary offences? Transgression
also was a term applied to presumptuous offenders, not to the victims of adverse
circumstances. In short, which were most impious- the Boeotians who wished to barter
dead bodies for holy places, or the Athenians who refused to give up holy places
to obtain what was theirs by right? The condition of evacuating Boeotia must therefore
be withdrawn. They were no longer in Boeotia. They stood where they stood by the
right of the sword. All that the Boeotians had to do was to tell them to take up
their dead under a truce according to the national custom.

The Boeotians replied that if they were in Boeotia, they must evacuate that country
before taking up their dead; if they were in their own territory, they could do
as they pleased: for they knew that, although the Oropid where the bodies as it
chanced were lying (the battle having been fought on the borders) was subject to
Athens, yet the Athenians could not get them without their leave. Besides, why should
they grant a truce for Athenian ground? And what could be fairer than to tell them
to evacuate Boeotia if they wished to get what they asked? The Athenian herald accordingly
returned with this answer, without having accomplished his object.

Meanwhile the Boeotians at once sent for darters and slingers from the Malian
Gulf, and with two thousand Corinthian heavy infantry who had joined them after
the battle, the Peloponnesian garrison which had evacuated Nisaea, and some Megarians
with them, marched against Delium, and attacked the fort, and after divers efforts
finally succeeded in taking it by an engine of the following description. They sawed
in two and scooped out a great beam from end to end, and fitting it nicely together
again like a pipe, hung by chains a cauldron at one extremity, with which communicated
an iron tube projecting from the beam, which was itself in great part plated with
iron. This they brought up from a distance upon carts to the part of the wall principally
composed of vines and timber, and when it was near, inserted huge bellows into their
end of the beam and blew with them. The blast passing closely confined into the
cauldron, which was filled with lighted coals, sulphur and pitch, made a great blaze,
and set fire to the wall, which soon became untenable for its defenders, who left
it and fled; and in this way the fort was taken. Of the garrison some were killed
and two hundred made prisoners; most of the rest got on board their ships and returned
home.

Soon after the fall of Delium, which took place seventeen days after the battle,
the Athenian herald, without knowing what had happened, came again for the dead,
which were now restored by the Boeotians, who no longer answered as at first. Not
quite five hundred Boeotians fell in the battle, and nearly one thousand Athenians,
including Hippocrates the general, besides a great number of light troops and camp
followers.

Soon after this battle Demosthenes, after the failure of his voyage to Siphae
and of the plot on the town, availed himself of the Acarnanian and Agraean troops
and of the four hundred Athenian heavy infantry which he had on board, to make a
descent on the Sicyonian coast. Before however all his ships had come to shore,
the Sicyonians came up and routed and chased to their ships those that had landed,
killing some and taking others prisoners; after which they set up a trophy, and
gave back the dead under truce.

About the same time with the affair of Delium took place the death of Sitalces,
king of the Odrysians, who was defeated in battle, in a campaign against the Triballi;
Seuthes, son of Sparadocus, his nephew, succeeding to the kingdom of the Odrysians,
and of the rest of Thrace ruled by Sitalces.

The same winter Brasidas, with his allies in the Thracian places, marched against
Amphipolis, the Athenian colony on the river Strymon. A settlement upon the spot
on which the city now stands was before attempted by Aristagoras, the Milesian (when
he fled from King Darius), who was however dislodged by the Edonians; and thirty-two
years later by the Athenians, who sent thither ten thousand settlers of their own
citizens, and whoever else chose to go. These were cut off at Drabescus by the Thracians.
Twenty-nine years after, the Athenians returned (Hagnon, son of Nicias, being sent
out as leader of the colony) and drove out the Edonians, and founded a town on the
spot, formerly called Ennea Hodoi or Nine Ways. The base from which they started
was Eion, their commercial seaport at the mouth of the river, not more than three
miles from the present town, which Hagnon named Amphipolis, because the Strymon
flows round it on two sides, and he built it so as to be conspicuous from the sea
and land alike, running a long wall across from river to river, to complete the
circumference.

Brasidas now marched against this town, starting from Arne in Chalcidice. Arriving
about dusk at Aulon and Bromiscus, where the lake of Bolbe runs into the sea, he
supped there, and went on during the night. The weather was stormy and it was snowing
a little, which encouraged him to hurry on, in order, if possible, to take every
one at Amphipolis by surprise, except the party who were to betray it. The plot
was carried on by some natives of Argilus, an Andrian colony, residing in Amphipolis,
where they had also other accomplices gained over by Perdiccas or the Chalcidians.
But the most active in the matter were the inhabitants of Argilus itself, which
is close by, who had always been suspected by the Athenians, and had had designs
on the place. These men now saw their opportunity arrive with Brasidas, and having
for some time been in correspondence with their countrymen in Amphipolis for the
betrayal of the town, at once received him into Argilus, and revolted from the Athenians,
and that same night took him on to the bridge over the river; where he found only
a small guard to oppose him, the town being at some distance from the passage, and
the walls not reaching down to it as at present. This guard he easily drove in,
partly through there being treason in their ranks, partly from the stormy state
of the weather and the suddenness of his attack, and so got across the bridge, and
immediately became master of all the property outside; the Amphipolitans having
houses all over the quarter.

The passage of Brasidas was a complete surprise to the people in the town; and
the capture of many of those outside, and the flight of the rest within the wall,
combined to produce great confusion among the citizens; especially as they did not
trust one another. It is even said that if Brasidas, instead of stopping to pillage,
had advanced straight against the town, he would probably have taken it. In fact,
however, he established himself where he was and overran the country outside, and
for the present remained inactive, vainly awaiting a demonstration on the part of
his friends within. Meanwhile the party opposed to the traitors proved numerous
enough to prevent the gates being immediately thrown open, and in concert with Eucles,
the general, who had come from Athens to defend the place, sent to the other commander
in Thrace, Thucydides, son of Olorus, the author of this history, who was at the
isle of Thasos, a Parian colony, half a day’s sail from Amphipolis, to tell him
to come to their relief. On receipt of this message he at once set sail with seven
ships which he had with him, in order, if possible, to reach Amphipolis in time
to prevent its capitulation, or in any case to save Eion.

Meanwhile Brasidas, afraid of succours arriving by sea from Thasos, and learning
that Thucydides possessed the right of working the gold mines in that part of Thrace,
and had thus great influence with the inhabitants of the continent, hastened to
gain the town, if possible, before the people of Amphipolis should be encouraged
by his arrival to hope that he could save them by getting together a force of allies
from the sea and from Thrace, and so refuse to surrender. He accordingly offered
moderate terms, proclaiming that any of the Amphipolitans and Athenians who chose,
might continue to enjoy their property with full rights of citizenship; while those
who did not wish to stay had five days to depart, taking their property with them.

The bulk of the inhabitants, upon hearing this, began to change their minds,
especially as only a small number of the citizens were Athenians, the majority having
come from different quarters, and many of the prisoners outside had relations within
the walls. They found the proclamation a fair one in comparison of what their fear
had suggested; the Athenians being glad to go out, as they thought they ran more
risk than the rest, and further, did not expect any speedy relief, and the multitude
generally being content at being left in possession of their civic rights, and at
such an unexpected reprieve from danger. The partisans of Brasidas now openly advocated
this course, seeing that the feeling of the people had changed, and that they no
longer gave ear to the Athenian general present; and thus the surrender was made
and Brasidas was admitted by them on the terms of his proclamation. In this way
they gave up the city, and late in the same day Thucydides and his ships entered
the harbour of Eion, Brasidas having just got hold of Amphipolis, and having been
within a night of taking Eion: had the ships been less prompt in relieving it, in
the morning it would have been his.

After this Thucydides put all in order at Eion to secure it against any present
or future attack of Brasidas, and received such as had elected to come there from
the interior according to the terms agreed on. Meanwhile Brasidas suddenly sailed
with a number of boats down the river to Eion to see if he could not seize the point
running out from the wall, and so command the entrance; at the same time he attempted
it by land, but was beaten off on both sides and had to content himself with arranging
matters at Amphipolis and in the neighbourhood. Myrcinus, an Edonian town, also
came over to him; the Edonian king Pittacus having been killed by the sons of Goaxis
and his own wife Brauro; and Galepsus and Oesime, which are Thasian colonies, not
long after followed its example. Perdiccas too came up immediately after the capture
and joined in these arrangements.

The news that Amphipolis was in the hands of the enemy caused great alarm at
Athens. Not only was the town valuable for the timber it afforded for shipbuilding,
and the money that it brought in; but also, although the escort of the Thessalias
gave the Lacedaemonians a means of reaching the allies of Athens as far as the Strymon,
yet as long as they were not masters of the bridge but were watched on the side
of Eion by the Athenian galleys, and onthe land side impeded by a large and extensive
lake formed by the waters of the river, it was impossible for them to go any further.
Now, on the contrary, the path seemed open. There was also the fear of the alies
revolting, owing to the moderation displayed by Brasidas in all his conduct, and
to the declarations which he was everywhere making that he sent out to free Hellas.
The towns subject to the Athenians, heaing of the capture of Amphipolis and of the
terms accorded to it, and of the gentleness of Brasidas, felt most strongly encouraged
to change their condition, and sent secret messages to him, begging him to come
on to them; each wishing to be the first to revlt. Indeed there seemed to be no
danger in so doing; their mistake in their estimate of the Athenian power was as
great as that power afterwards turned out to be, and their judgment was based more
upon blind wishing than upon any sound prevision; for it is a habit of mankind to
entrust to careless hope what they long for, and to use sovereign reason to thrust
aside what they do not fancy. Besides the late severe blow which the Athenians had
met with in Boeotia, joined to the seductive, though untrue, statements of Brasidas,
about the Athenians not having ventured to engage his single army at Nisaea, made
the allies confident, and caused them to believe that no Athenian force would be
sent against them. Above all the wish to do what was agreeable at the moment, and
the likelihood that they should find the Lacedaemonians full of zeal at starting,
made them eager to venture. Observing this, the Athenians sent garrisons to the
different towns, as far as was possible at such short notice and in winter; while
Brasidas sent dispatches to Lacedaemon asking for reinforcements, and himself made
preparations for building galleys in the Strymon. The Lacedaemonians however did
not send him any, partly through envy on the part of their chief men, partly because
they were more bent on recovering the prisoners of the island and ending the war.

The same winter the Megarians took and razed to the foundations the long walls
which had been occupied by the Athenians; and Brasidas after the capture of Amphipolis
marched with his allies against Acte, a promontory running out from the King’s dike
with an inward curve, and ending in Athos, a lofty mountain looking towards the
Aegean Sea. In it are various towns, Sane, an Andrian colony, close to the canal,
and facing the sea in the direction of Euboea; the others being Thyssus, Cleone,
Acrothoi, Olophyxus, and Dium, inhabited by mixed barbarian races speaking the two
languages. There is also a small Chalcidian element; but the greater number are
Tyrrheno-Pelasgians once settled in Lemnos and Athens, and Bisaltians, Crestonians,
and Edonians; the towns being all small ones. Most of these came over to Brasidas;
but Sane and Dium held out and saw their land ravaged by him and his army.

Upon their not submitting, he at once marched against Torone in Chalcidice, which
was held by an Athenian garrison, having been invited by a few persons who were
prepared to hand over the town. Arriving in the dark a little before daybreak, he
sat down with his army near the temple of the Dioscuri, rather more than a quarter
of a mile from the city. The rest of the town of Torone and the Athenians in garrison
did not perceive his approach; but his partisans knowing that he was coming (a few
of them had secretly gone out to meet him) were on the watch for his arrival, and
were no sooner aware of it than they took it to them seven light-armed men with
daggers, who alone of twenty men ordered on this service dared to enter, commanded
by Lysistratus an Olynthian. These passed through the sea wall, and without being
seen went up and put to the sword the garrison of the highest post in the town,
which stands on a hill, and broke open the postern on the side of Canastraeum.

Brasidas meanwhile came a little nearer and then halted with his main body, sending
on one hundred targeteers to be ready to rush in first, the moment that a gate should
be thrown open and the beacon lighted as agreed. After some time passed in waiting
and wondering at the delay, the targeteers by degrees got up close to the town.
The Toronaeans inside at work with the party that had entered had by this time broken
down the postern and opened the gates leading to the market-place by cutting through
the bar, and first brought some men round and let them in by the postern, in order
to strike a panic into the surprised townsmen by suddenly attacking them from behind
and on both sides at once; after which they raised the fire-signal as had been agreed,
and took in by the market gates the rest of the targeteers.

Brasidas seeing the signal told the troops to rise, and dashed forward amid the
loud hurrahs of his men, which carried dismay among the astonished townspeople.
Some burst in straight by the gate, others over some square pieces of timber placed
against the wall (which has fallen down and was being rebuilt) to draw up stones;
Brasidas and the greater number making straight uphill for the higher part of the
town, in order to take it from top to bottom, and once for all, while the rest of
the multitude spread in all directions.

The capture of the town was effected before the great body of the Toronaeans
had recovered from their surprise and confusion; but the conspirators and the citizens
of their party at once joined the invaders. About fifty of the Athenian heavy infantry
happened to be sleeping in the market-place when the alarm reached them. A few of
these were killed fighting; the rest escaped, some by land, others to the two ships
on the station, and took refuge in Lecythus, a fort garrisoned by their own men
in the corner of the town running out into the sea and cut off by a narrow isthmus;
where they were joined by the Toronaeans of their party.

Day now arrived, and the town being secured, Brasidas made a proclamation to
the Toronaeans who had taken refuge with the Athenians, to come out, as many as
chose, to their homes without fearing for their rights or persons, and sent a herald
to invite the Athenians to accept a truce, and to evacuate Lecythus with their property,
as being Chalcidian ground. The Athenians refused this offer, but asked for a truce
for a day to take up their dead. Brasidas granted it for two days, which he employed
in fortifying the houses near, and the Athenians in doing the same to their positions.
Meanwhile he called a meeting of the Toronaeans, and said very much what he had
said at Acanthus, namely, that they must not look upon those who had negotiated
with him for the capture of the town as bad men or as traitors, as they had not
acted as they had done from corrupt motives or in order to enslave the city, but
for the good and freedom of Torone; nor again must those who had not shared in the
enterprise fancy that they would not equally reap its fruits, as he had not come
to destroy either city or individual. This was the reason of his proclamation to
those that had fled for refuge to the Athenians: he thought none the worse of them
for their friendship for the Athenians; he believed that they had only to make trial
of the Lacedaemonians to like them as well, or even much better, as acting much
more justly: it was for want of such a trial that they were now afraid of them.
Meanwhile he warned all of them to prepare to be staunch allies, and for being held
responsible for all faults in future: for the past, they had not wronged the Lacedaemonians
but had been wronged by others who were too strong for them, and any opposition
that they might have offered him could be excused.

Having encouraged them with this address, as soon as the truce expired he made
his attack upon Lecythus; the Athenians defending themselves from a poor wall and
from some houses with parapets. One day they beat him off; the next the enemy were
preparing to bring up an engine against them from which they meant to throw fire
upon the wooden defences, and the troops were already coming up to the point where
they fancied they could best bring up the engine, and where place was most assailable;
meanwhile the Athenians put a wooden tower upon a house opposite, and carried up
a quantity of jars and casks of water and big stones, and a large number of men
also climbed up. The house thus laden too heavily suddenly broke down with a loud
crash; at which the men who were near and saw it were more vexed than frightened;
but those not so near, and still more those furthest off, thought that the place
was already taken at that point, and fled in haste to the sea and the ships.

Brasidas, perceiving that they were deserting the parapet, and seeing what was
going on, dashed forward with his troops, and immediately took the fort, and put
to the sword all whom he found in it. In this way the place was evacuated by the
Athenians, who went across in their boats and ships to Pallene. Now there is a temple
of Athene in Lecythus, and Brasidas had proclaimed in the moment of making the assault
that he would give thirty silver minae to the man first on the wall. Being now of
opinion that the capture was scarcely due to human means, he gave the thirty minae
to the goddess for her temple, and razed and cleared Lecythus, and made the whole
of it consecrated ground. The rest of the winter he spent in settling the places
in his hands, and in making designs upon the rest; and with the expiration of the
winter the eighth year of this war ended.

In the spring of the summer following, the Lacedaemonians and Athenians made
an armistice for a year; the Athenians thinking that they would thus have full leisure
to take their precautions before Brasidas could procure the revolt of any more of
their towns, and might also, if it suited them, conclude a general peace; the Lacedaemonians
divining the actual fears of the Athenians, and thinking that after once tasting
a respite from trouble and misery they would be more disposed to consent to a reconciliation,
and to give back the prisoners, and make a treaty for the longer period. The great
idea of the Lacedaemonians was to get back their men while Brasidas’s good fortune
lasted: further successes might make the struggle a less unequal one in Chalcidice,
but would leave them still deprived of their men, and even in Chalcidice not more
than a match for the Athenians and by no means certain of victory. An armistice
was accordingly concluded by Lacedaemon and her allies upon the terms following:

1.As to the temple and oracle of the Pythian Apollo, we are agreed that whosoever
will shall have access to it, without fraud or fear, according to the usages of
his forefathers. The Lacedaemonians and the allies present agree to this, and promise
to send heralds to the Boeotians and Phocians, and to do their best to persuade
them to agree likewise.

2. As to the treasure of the god, we agree to exert ourselves to detect all malversators,
truly and honestly following the customs of our forefathers, we and you and all
others willing to do so, all following the customs of our forefathers. As to these
points the Lacedaemonians and the other allies are agreed as has been said.

3. As to what follows, the Lacedaemonians and the other allies agree, if the
Athenians conclude a treaty, to remain, each of us in our own territory, retaining
our respective acquisitions: the garrison in Coryphasium keeping within Buphras
and Tomeus: that in Cythera attempting no communication with the Peloponnesian confederacy,
neither we with them, nor they with us: that in Nisaea and Minoa not crossing the
road leading from the gates of the temple of Nisus to that of Poseidon and from
thence straight to the bridge at Minoa: the Megarians and the allies being equally
bound not to cross this road, and the Athenians retaining the island they have taken,
without any communication on either side: as to Troezen, each side retaining what
it has, and as was arranged with the Athenians.

4. As to the use of the sea, so far as refers to their own coast and to that
of their confederacy, that the Lacedaemonians and their allies may voyage upon it
in any vessel rowed by oars and of not more than five hundred talents tonnage, not
a vessel of war.

5. That all heralds and embassies, with as many attendants as they please, for
concluding the war and adjusting claims, shall have free passage, going and coming,
to Peloponnese or Athens by land and by sea.

6. That during the truce, deserters whether bond or free shall be received neither
by you, nor by us.

7. Further, that satisfaction shall be given by you to us and by us to you according
to the public law of our several countries, all disputes being settled by law without
recourse to hostilities.

The Lacedaemonians and allies agree to these articles; but if you have anything
fairer or juster to suggest, come to Lacedaemon and let us know: whatever shall
be just will meet with no objection either from the Lacedaemonians or from the allies.
Only let those who come come with full powers, as you desire us. The truce shall
be for one year. Approved by the people.

The tribe of Acamantis had the prytany, Phoenippus was secretary, Niciades chairman.
Laches moved, in the name of the good luck of the Athenians, that they should conclude
the armistice upon the terms agreed upon by the Lacedaemonians and the allies. It
was agreed accordingly in the popular assembly that the armistice should be for
one year, beginning that very day, the fourteenth of the month of Elaphebolion;
during which time ambassadors and heralds should go and come between the two countries
to discuss the bases of a pacification. That the generals and prytanes should call
an assembly of the people, in which the Athenians should first consult on the peace,
and on the mode in which the embassy for putting an end to the war should be admitted.
That the embassy now present should at once take the engagement before the people
to keep well and truly this truce for one year.

On these terms the Lacedaemonians concluded with the Athenians and their allies
on the twelfth day of the Spartan month Gerastius; the allies also taking the oaths.
Those who concluded and poured the libation were Taurus, son of Echetimides, Athenaeus,
son of Pericleidas, and Philocharidas, son of Eryxidaidas, Lacedaemonians; Aeneas,
son of Ocytus, and Euphamidas, son of Aristonymus, Corinthians; Damotimus, son of
Naucrates, and Onasimus, son of Megacles, Sicyonians; Nicasus, son of Cecalus, and
Menecrates, son of Amphidorus, Megarians; and Amphias, son of Eupaidas, an Epidaurian;
and the Athenian generals Nicostratus, son of Diitrephes, Nicias, son of Niceratus,
and Autocles, son of Tolmaeus. Such was the armistice, and during the whole of it
conferences went on on the subject of a pacification.

In the days in which they were going backwards and forwards to these conferences,
Scione, a town in Pallene, revolted from Athens, and went over to Brasidas. The
Scionaeans say that they are Pallenians from Peloponnese, and that their first founders
on their voyage from Troy were carried in to this spot by the storm which the Achaeans
were caught in, and there settled. The Scionaeans had no sooner revolted than Brasidas
crossed over by night to Scione, with a friendly galley ahead and himself in a small
boat some way behind; his idea being that if he fell in with a vessel larger than
the boat he would have the galley to defend him, while a ship that was a match for
the galley would probably neglect the small vessel to attack the large one, and
thus leave him time to escape. His passage effected, he called a meeting of the
Scionaeans and spoke to the same effect as at Acanthus and Torone, adding that they
merited the utmost commendation, in that, in spite of Pallene within the isthmus
being cut off by the Athenian occupation of Potidaea and of their own practically
insular position, they had of their own free will gone forward to meet their liberty
instead of timorously waiting until they had been by force compelled to their own
manifest good. This was a sign that they would valiantly undergo any trial, however
great; and if he should order affairs as he intended, he should count them among
the truest and sincerest friends of the Lacedaemonians, and would in every other
way honour them.

The Scionaeans were elated by his language, and even those who had at first disapproved
of what was being done catching the general confidence, they determined on a vigorous
conduct of the war, and welcomed Brasidas with all possible honours, publicly crowning
him with a crown of gold as the liberator of Hellas; while private persons crowded
round him and decked him with garlands as though he had been an athlete. Meanwhile
Brasidas left them a small garrison for the present and crossed back again, and
not long afterwards sent over a larger force, intending with the help of the Scionaeans
to attempt Mende and Potidaea before the Athenians should arrive; Scione, he felt,
being too like an island for them not to relieve it. He had besides intelligence
in the above towns about their betrayal.

In the midst of his designs upon the towns in question, a galley arrived with
the commissioners carrying round the news of the armistice, Aristonymus for the
Athenians and Athenaeus for the Lacedaemonians. The troops now crossed back to Torone,
and the commissioners gave Brasidas notice of the convention. All the Lacedaemonian
allies in Thrace accepted what had been done; and Aristonymus made no difficulty
about the rest, but finding, on counting the days, that the Scionaeans had revolted
after the date of the convention, refused to include them in it. To this Brasidas
earnestly objected, asserting that the revolt took place before, and would not give
up the town. Upon Aristonymus reporting the case to Athens, the people at once prepared
to send an expedition to Scione. Upon this, envoys arrived from Lacedaemon, alleging
that this would be a breach of the truce, and laying claim to the town upon the
faith of the assertion of Brasidas, and meanwhile offering to submit the question
to arbitration. Arbitration, however, was what the Athenians did not choose to risk;
being determined to send troops at once to the place, and furious at the idea of
even the islanders now daring to revolt, in a vain reliance upon the power of the
Lacedaemonians by land. Besides the facts of the revolt were rather as the Athenians
contended, the Scionaeans having revolted two days after the convention. Cleon accordingly
succeeded in carrying a decree to reduce and put to death the Scionaeans; and the
Athenians employed the leisure which they now enjoyed in preparing for the expedition.

Meanwhile Mende revolted, a town in Pallene and a colony of the Eretrians, and
was received without scruple by Brasidas, in spite of its having evidently come
over during the armistice, on account of certain infringements of the truce alleged
by him against the Athenians. This audacity of Mende was partly caused by seeing
Brasidas forward in the matter and by the conclusions drawn from his refusal to
betray Scione; and besides, the conspirators in Mende were few, and, as I have already
intimated, had carried on their practices too long not to fear detection for themselves,
and not to wish to force the inclination of the multitude. This news made the Athenians
more furious than ever, and they at once prepared against both towns. Brasidas,
expecting their arrival, conveyed away to Olynthus in Chalcidice the women and children
of the Scionaeans and Mendaeans, and sent over to them five hundred Peloponnesian
heavy infantry and three hundred Chalcidian targeteers, all under the command of
Polydamidas.

Leaving these two towns to prepare together against the speedy arrival of the
Athenians, Brasidas and Perdiccas started on a second joint expedition into Lyncus
against Arrhabaeus; the latter with the forces of his Macedonian subjects, and a
corps of heavy infantry composed of Hellenes domiciled in the country; the former
with the Peloponnesians whom he still had with him and the Chalcidians, Acanthians,
and the rest in such force as they were able. In all there were about three thousand
Hellenic heavy infantry, accompanied by all the Macedonian cavalry with the Chalcidians,
near one thousand strong, besides an immense crowd of barbarians. On entering the
country of Arrhabaeus, they found the Lyncestians encamped awaiting them, and themselves
took up a position opposite. The infantry on either side were upon a hill, with
a plain between them, into which the horse of both armies first galloped down and
engaged a cavalry action. After this the Lyncestian heavy infantry advanced from
their hill to join their cavalry and offered battle; upon which Brasidas and Perdiccas
also came down to meet them, and engaged and routed them with heavy loss; the survivors
taking refuge upon the heights and there remaining inactive. The victors now set
up a trophy and waited two or three days for the Illyrian mercenaries who were to
join Perdiccas. Perdiccas then wished to go on and attack the villages of Arrhabaeus,
and to sit still no longer; but Brasidas, afraid that the Athenians might sail up
during his absence, and of something happening to Mende, and seeing besides that
the Illyrians did not appear, far from seconding this wish was anxious to return.

While they were thus disputing, the news arrived that the Illyrians had actually
betrayed Perdiccas and had joined Arrhabaeus; and the fear inspired by their warlike
character made both parties now think it best to retreat. However, owing to the
dispute, nothing had been settled as to when they should start; and night coming
on, the Macedonians and the barbarian crowd took fright in a moment in one of those
mysterious panics to which great armies are liable; and persuaded that an army many
times more numerous than that which had really arrived was advancing and all but
upon them, suddenly broke and fled in the direction of home, and thus compelled
Perdiccas, who at first did not perceive what had occurred, to depart without seeing
Brasidas, the two armies being encamped at a considerable distance from each other.
At daybreak Brasidas, perceiving that the Macedonians had gone on, and that the
Illyrians and Arrhabaeus were on the point of attacking him, formed his heavy infantry
into a square, with the light troops in the centre, and himself also prepared to
retreat. Posting his youngest soldiers to dash out wherever the enemy should attack
them, he himself with three hundred picked men in the rear intended to face about
during the retreat and beat off the most forward of their assailants, Meanwhile,
before the enemy approached, he sought to sustain the courage of his soldiers with
the following hasty exhortation:

“Peloponnesians, if I did not suspect you of being dismayed at being left alone
to sustain the attack of a numerous and barbarian enemy, I should just have said
a few words to you as usual without further explanation. As it is, in the face of
the desertion of our friends and the numbers of the enemy, I have some advice and
information to offer, which, brief as they must be, will, I hope, suffice for the
more important points. The bravery that you habitually display in war does not depend
on your having allies at your side in this or that encounter, but on your native
courage; nor have numbers any terrors for citizens of states like yours, in which
the many do not rule the few, but rather the few the many, owing their position
to nothing else than to superiority in the field. Inexperience now makes you afraid
of barbarians; and yet the trial of strength which you had with the Macedonians
among them, and my own judgment, confirmed by what I hear from others, should be
enough to satisfy you that they will not prove formidable. Where an enemy seems
strong but is really weak, a true knowledge of the facts makes his adversary the
bolder, just as a serious antagonist is encountered most confidently by those who
do not know him. Thus the present enemy might terrify an inexperienced imagination;
they are formidable in outward bulk, their loud yelling is unbearable, and the brandishing
of their weapons in the air has a threatening appearance. But when it comes to real
fighting with an opponent who stands his ground, they are not what they seemed;
they have no regular order that they should be ashamed of deserting their positions
when hard pressed; flight and attack are with them equally honourable, and afford
no test of courage; their independent mode of fighting never leaving any one who
wants to run away without a fair excuse for so doing. In short, they think frightening
you at a secure distance a surer game than meeting you hand to hand; otherwise they
would have done the one and not the other. You can thus plainly see that the terrors
with which they were at first invested are in fact trifling enough, though to the
eye and ear very prominent. Stand your ground therefore when they advance, and again
wait your opportunity to retire in good order, and you will reach a place of safety
all the sooner, and will know for ever afterwards that rabble such as these, to
those who sustain their first attack, do but show off their courage by threats of
the terrible things that they are going to do, at a distance, but with those who
give way to them are quick enough to display their heroism in pursuit when they
can do so without danger.”

With this brief address Brasidas began to lead off his army. Seeing this, the
barbarians came on with much shouting and hubbub, thinking that he was flying and
that they would overtake him and cut him off. But wherever they charged they found
the young men ready to dash out against them, while Brasidas with his picked company
sustained their onset. Thus the Peloponnesians withstood the first attack, to the
surprise of the enemy, and afterwards received and repulsed them as fast as they
came on, retiring as soon as their opponents became quiet. The main body of the
barbarians ceased therefore to molest the Hellenes with Brasidas in the open country,
and leaving behind a certain number to harass their march, the rest went on after
the flying Macedonians, slaying those with whom they came up, and so arrived in
time to occupy the narrow pass between two hills that leads into the country of
Arrhabaeus. They knew that this was the only way by which Brasidas could retreat,
and now proceeded to surround him just as he entered the most impracticable part
of the road, in order to cut him off.

Brasidas, perceiving their intention, told his three hundred to run on without
order, each as quickly as he could, to the hill which seemed easiest to take, and
to try to dislodge the barbarians already there, before they should be joined by
the main body closing round him. These attacked and overpowered the party upon the
hill, and the main army of the Hellenes now advanced with less difficulty towards
it- the barbarians being terrified at seeing their men on that side driven from
the height and no longer following the main body, who, they considered, had gained
the frontier and made good their escape. The heights once gained, Brasidas now proceeded
more securely, and the same day arrived at Arnisa, the first town in the dominions
of Perdiccas. The soldiers, enraged at the desertion of the Macedonians, vented
their rage on all their yokes of oxen which they found on the road, and on any baggage
which had tumbled off (as might easily happen in the panic of a night retreat),
by unyoking and cutting down the cattle and taking the baggage for themselves. From
this moment Perdiccas began to regard Brasidas as an enemy and to feel against the
Peloponnesians a hatred which could not be congenial to the adversary of the Athenians.
However, he departed from his natural interests and made it his endeavour to come
to terms with the latter and to get rid of the former.

On his return from Macedonia to Torone, Brasidas found the Athenians already
masters of Mende, and remained quiet where he was, thinking it now out of his power
to cross over into Pallene and assist the Mendaeans, but he kept good watch over
Torone. For about the same time as the campaign in Lyncus, the Athenians sailed
upon the expedition which we left them preparing against Mende and Scione, with
fifty ships, ten of which were Chians, one thousand Athenian heavy infantry and
six hundred archers, one hundred Thracian mercenaries and some targeteers drawn
from their allies in the neighbourhood, under the command of Nicias, son of Niceratus,
and Nicostratus, son of Diitrephes. Weighing from Potidaea, the fleet came to land
opposite the temple of Poseidon, and proceeded against Mende; the men of which town,
reinforced by three hundred Scionaeans, with their Peloponnesian auxiliaries, seven
hundred heavy infantry in all, under Polydamidas, they found encamped upon a strong
hill outside the city. These Nicias, with one hundred and twenty light-armed Methonaeans,
sixty picked men from the Athenian heavy infantry, and all the archers, tried to
reach by a path running up the hill, but received a wound and found himself unable
to force the position; while Nicostratus, with all the rest of the army, advancing
upon the hill, which was naturally difficult, by a different approach further off,
was thrown into utter disorder; and the whole Athenian army narrowly escaped being
defeated. For that day, as the Mendaeans and their allies showed no signs of yielding,
the Athenians retreated and encamped, and the Mendaeans at nightfall returned into
the town.

The next day the Athenians sailed round to the Scione side, and took the suburb,
and all day plundered the country, without any one coming out against them, partly
because of intestine disturbances in the town; and the following night the three
hundred Scionaeans returned home. On the morrow Nicias advanced with half the army
to the frontier of Scione and laid waste the country; while Nicostratus with the
remainder sat down before the town near the upper gate on the road to Potidaea.
The arms of the Mendaeans and of their Peloponnesian auxiliaries within the wall
happened to be piled in that quarter, where Polydamidas accordingly began to draw
them up for battle, encouraging the Mendaeans to make a sortie. At this moment one
of the popular party answered him factiously that they would not go out and did
not want a war, and for thus answering was dragged by the arm and knocked about
by Polydamidas. Hereupon the infuriated commons at once seized their arms and rushed
at the Peloponnesians and at their allies of the opposite faction. The troops thus
assaulted were at once routed, partly from the suddenness of the conflict and partly
through fear of the gates being opened to the Athenians, with whom they imagined
that the attack had been concerted. As many as were not killed on the spot took
refuge in the citadel, which they had held from the first; and the whole, Athenian
army, Nicias having by this time returned and being close to the city, now burst
into Mende, which had opened its gates without any convention, and sacked it just
as if they had taken it by storm, the generals even finding some difficulty in restraining
them from also massacring the inhabitants. After this the Athenians told the Mendaeans
that they might retain their civil rights, and themselves judge the supposed authors
of the revolt; and cut off the party in the citadel by a wall built down to the
sea on either side, appointing troops to maintain the blockade. Having thus secured
Mende, they proceeded against Scione.

The Scionaeans and Peloponnesians marched out against them, occupying a strong
hill in front of the town, which had to be captured by the enemy before they could
invest the place. The Athenians stormed the hill, defeated and dislodged its occupants,
and, having encamped and set up a trophy, prepared for the work of circumvallation.
Not long after they had begun their operations, the auxiliaries besieged in the
citadel of Mende forced the guard by the sea-side and arrived by night at Scione,
into which most of them succeeded in entering, passing through the besieging army.

While the investment of Scione was in progress, Perdiccas sent a herald to the
Athenian generals and made peace with the Athenians, through spite against Brasidas
for the retreat from Lyncus, from which moment indeed he had begun to negotiate.
The Lacedaemonian Ischagoras was just then upon the point of starting with an army
overland to join Brasidas; and Perdiccas, being now required by Nicias to give some
proof of the sincerity of his reconciliation to the Athenians, and being himself
no longer disposed to let the Peloponnesians into his country, put in motion his
friends in Thessaly, with whose chief men he always took care to have relations,
and so effectually stopped the army and its preparation that they did not even try
the Thessalians. Ischagoras himself, however, with Ameinias and Aristeus, succeeded
in reaching Brasidas; they had been commissioned by the Lacedaemonians to inspect
the state of affairs, and brought out from Sparta (in violation of all precedent)
some of their young men to put in command of the towns, to guard against their being
entrusted to the persons upon the spot. Brasidas accordingly placed Clearidas, son
of Cleonymus, in Amphipolis, and Pasitelidas, son of Hegesander, in Torone.

The same summer the Thebans dismantled the wall of the Thespians on the charge
of Atticism, having always wished to do so, and now finding it an easy matter, as
the flower of the Thespian youth had perished in the battle with the Athenians.
The same summer also the temple of Hera at Argos was burnt down, through Chrysis,
the priestess, placing a lighted torch near the garlands and then falling asleep,
so that they all caught fire and were in a blaze before she observed it. Chrysis
that very night fled to Phlius for fear of the Argives, who, agreeably to the law
in such a case, appointed another priestess named Phaeinis. Chrysis at the time
of her flight had been priestess for eight years of the present war and half the
ninth. At the close of the summer the investment of Scione was completed, and the
Athenians, leaving a detachment to maintain the blockade, returned with the rest
of their army.

During the winter following, the Athenians and Lacedaemonians were kept quiet
by the armistice; but the Mantineans and Tegeans, and their respective allies, fought
a battle at Laodicium, in the Oresthid. The victory remained doubtful, as each side
routed one of the wings opposed to them, and both set up trophies and sent spoils
to Delphi. After heavy loss on both sides the battle was undecided, and night interrupted
the action; yet the Tegeans passed the night on the field and set up a trophy at
once, while the Mantineans withdrew to Bucolion and set up theirs afterwards.

At the close of the same winter, in fact almost in spring, Brasidas made an attempt
upon Potidaea. He arrived by night, and succeeded in planting a ladder against the
wall without being discovered, the ladder being planted just in the interval between
the passing round of the bell and the return of the man who brought it back. Upon
the garrison, however, taking the alarm immediately afterwards, before his men came
up, he quickly led off his troops, without waiting until it was day. So ended the
winter and the ninth year of this war of which Thucydides is the historian.

End of book 4