Chapter
Twenty-One
Eighteenth and Nineteenth Years
of the War - Arrival of Gylippus at Syracuse - Fortificationof Decelea
- Successes of the Syracusans
After refitting their ships, Gylippus
and Pythen coasted along from Tarentum to Epizephyrian Locris. They now
received the more correct information that Syracuse was not yet completely
invested, but that it was still possible for an army arriving at Epipolae
to effect an entrance; and they consulted, accordingly, whether they should
keep Sicily on their right and risk sailing in by sea, or, leaving it on
their left, should first sail to Himera and, taking with them the Himeraeans
and any others that might agree to join them, go to Syracuse by land. Finally
they determined to sail for Himera, especially as the four Athenian ships
which Nicias had at length sent off, on hearing that they were at Locris,
had not yet arrived at Rhegium. Accordingly, before these reached their
post, the Peloponnesians crossed the strait and, after touching at Rhegium
and Messina, came to Himera. Arrived there, they persuaded the Himeraeans
to join in the war, and not only to go with them themselves but to provide
arms for the seamen from their vessels which they had drawn ashore at Himera;
and they sent and appointed a place for the Selinuntines to meet them with
all their forces. A few troops were also promised by the Geloans and some
of the Sicels, who were now ready to join them with much greater alacrity,
owing to the recent death of Archonidas, a powerful Sicel king in that
neighbourhood and friendly to Athens, and owing also to the vigour shown
by Gylippus in coming from Lacedaemon. Gylippus now took with him about
seven hundred of his sailors and marines, that number only having arms,
a thousand heavy infantry and light troops from Himera with a body of a
hundred horse, some light troops and cavalry from Selinus, a few Geloans,
and Sicels numbering a thousand in all, and set out on his march for Syracuse.
Meanwhile the Corinthian fleet from
Leucas made all haste to arrive; and one of their commanders, Gongylus,
starting last with a single ship, was the first to reach Syracuse, a little
before Gylippus. Gongylus found the Syracusans on the point of holding
an assembly to consider whether they should put an end to the war. This
he prevented,
and reassured them by telling them that more vessels were
still to arrive, and that Gylippus, son of Cleandridas, had been dispatched
by the Lacedaemonians to take the command. Upon this the Syracusans took
courage, and immediately marched out with all their forces to meet Gylippus,
who they found was now close at hand. Meanwhile Gylippus, after taking
Ietae, a fort of the Sicels, on his way, formed his army in order of battle,
and so arrived at Epipolae, and ascending by Euryelus, as the Athenians
had done at first, now advanced with the Syracusans against the Athenian
lines. His arrival chanced at a critical moment. The Athenians had already
finished a double wall of six or seven furlongs to the great harbour, with
the exception of a small portion next the sea, which they were still engaged
upon; and in the remainder of the circle towards Trogilus on the other
sea, stones had been laid ready for building for the greater part of the
distance, and some points had been left half finished, while others were
entirely completed. The danger of Syracuse had indeed been great.
Meanwhile the Athenians, recovering
from the confusion into which they had been first thrown by the sudden
approach of Gylippus and the Syracusans, formed in order of battle. Gylippus
halted at a short distance off and sent on a herald to tell them that,
if they would evacuate Sicily with bag and baggage within five days' time,
he was willing to make a truce accordingly. The Athenians treated this
proposition with contempt, and dismissed the herald without an answer.
After this both sides began to prepare for action. Gylippus, observing
that the Syracusans were in disorder and did not easily fall into line,
drew off his troops more into the open ground, while Nicias did not lead
on the Athenians but lay still by his own wall. When Gylippus saw that
they did not come on, he led off his army to the citadel of the quarter
of Apollo Temenites, and passed the night there. On the following day he
led out the main body of his army, and, drawing them up in order of battle
before the walls of the Athenians to prevent their going to the relief
of any other quarter, dispatched a strong force against Fort Labdalum,
and took it, and put all whom he found in it to the sword, the place not
being within sight of the Athenians. On the same day an Athenian galley
that lay moored off the harbour was captured by the Syracusans.
After this the Syracusans and their
allies began to carry a single wall, starting from the city, in a slanting
direction up Epipolae, in order that the Athenians, unless they could hinder
the work, might be no longer able to invest them. Meanwhile the Athenians,
having now finished their wall down to the sea, had come up to the heights;
and part of their wall being weak, Gylippus drew out his army by night
and attacked it. However, the Athenians who happened to be bivouacking
outside took the alarm and came out to meet him, upon seeing which he quickly
led his men back again. The Athenians now built their wall higher, and
in future kept guard at this point themselves, disposing their confederates
along the remainder of the works, at the stations assigned to them. Nicias
also determined to fortify Plemmyrium, a promontory over against the city,
which juts out and narrows the mouth of the Great Harbour. He thought that
the fortification of this place would make it easier to bring in supplies,
as they would be able to carry on their blockade from a less distance,
near to the port occupied by the Syracusans; instead of being obliged,
upon every movement of the enemy's navy, to put out against them from the
bottom of the great harbour. Besides this, he now began to pay more attention
to the war by sea, seeing that the coming of Gylippus had diminished their
hopes by land. Accordingly, he conveyed over his ships and some troops,
and built three forts in which he placed most of his baggage, and moored
there for the future the larger craft and men-of-war. This was the first
and chief occasion of the losses which the crews experienced. The water
which they used was scarce and had to be fetched from far, and the sailors
could not go out for firewood without being cut off by the Syracusan horse,
who were masters of the country; a third of the enemy's cavalry being stationed
at the little town of Olympieum, to prevent plundering incursions on the
part of the Athenians at Plemmyrium. Meanwhile Nicias learned that the
rest of the Corinthian fleet was approaching, and sent twenty ships to
watch for them, with orders to be on the look-out for them about Locris
and Rhegium and the approach to Sicily.
Gylippus, meanwhile, went on with
the wall across Epipolae, using the stones which the Athenians had laid
down for their own wall, and at the same time constantly led out the Syracusans
and their allies, and formed them in order of battle in front of the lines,
the Athenians forming against him. At last he thought that the moment was
come, and began the attack; and a hand-to-hand fight ensued between the
lines, where the Syracusan cavalry could be of no use; and the Syracusans
and their allies were defeated and took up their dead under truce, while
the Athenians erected a trophy. After this Gylippus called the soldiers
together, and said that the fault was not theirs but his; he had kept their
lines too much within the works, and had thus deprived them of the services
of their cavalry and darters. He would now, therefore, lead them on a second
time. He begged them to remember that in material force they would be fully
a match for their opponents, while, with respect to moral advantages, it
were intolerable if Peloponnesians and Dorians should not feel confident
of overcoming Ionians and islanders with the motley rabble that accompanied
them, and of driving them out of the country.
After this he embraced the first
opportunity that offered of again leading them against the enemy. Now Nicias
and the Athenians held the opinion that even if the Syracusans should not
wish to offer battle, it was necessary for them to prevent the building
of the cross wall, as it already almost overlapped the extreme point of
their own, and if it went any further it would from that moment make no
difference whether they fought ever so many successful actions, or never
fought at all. They accordingly came out to meet the Syracusans. Gylippus
led out his heavy infantry further from the fortifications than on the
former occasion, and so joined battle; posting his horse and darters upon
the flank of the Athenians in the open space, where the works of the two
walls terminated. During the engagement the cavalry attacked and routed
the left wing of the Athenians, which was opposed to them; and the rest
of the Athenian army was in consequence defeated by the Syracusans and
driven headlong within their lines. The night following the Syracusans
carried their wall up to the Athenian works and passed them, thus putting
it out of their power any longer to stop them, and depriving them, even
if victorious in the field, of all chance of investing the city for the
future.
After this the remaining twelve vessels
of the Corinthians, Ambraciots, and Leucadians sailed into the harbour
under the command of Erasinides, a Corinthian, having eluded the Athenian
ships on guard, and helped the Syracusans in completing the remainder of
the cross wall. Meanwhile Gylippus went into the rest of Sicily to raise
land and naval forces, and also to bring over any of the cities that either
were lukewarm in the cause or had hitherto kept out of the war altogether.
Syracusan and Corinthian envoys were also dispatched to Lacedaemon and
Corinth to get a fresh force sent over, in any way that might offer, either
in merchant vessels or transports, or in any other manner likely to prove
successful, as the Athenians too were sending for reinforcements; while
the Syracusans proceeded to man a fleet and to exercise, meaning to try
their fortune in this way also, and generally became exceedingly confident.
Nicias perceiving this, and seeing
the strength of the enemy and his own difficulties daily increasing, himself
also sent to Athens. He had before sent frequent reports of events as they
occurred, and felt it especially incumbent upon him to do so now, as he
thought that they were in a critical position, and that, unless speedily
recalled or strongly reinforced from home, they had no hope of safety.
He feared, however, that the messengers, either through inability to speak,
or through failure of memory, or from a wish to please the multitude, might
not report the truth, and so thought it best to write a letter, to ensure
that the Athenians should know his own opinion without its being lost in
transmission, and be able to decide upon the real facts of the case.
His emissaries, accordingly, departed
with the letter and the requisite verbal instructions; and he attended
to the affairs of the army, making it his aim now to keep on the defensive
and to avoid any unnecessary danger.
At the close of the same summer the
Athenian general Euetion marched in concert with Perdiccas with a large
body of Thracians against Amphipolis, and failing to take it brought some
galleys round into the Strymon, and blockaded the town from the river,
having his base at Himeraeum.
Summer was now over. The winter ensuing,
the persons sent by Nicias, reaching Athens, gave the verbal messages which
had been entrusted to them, and answered any questions that were asked
them, and delivered the letter. The clerk of the city now came forward
and read out to the Athenians the letter, which was as follows:
"Our past operations, Athenians,
have been made known to you by many other letters; it is now time for you
to become equally familiar with our present condition, and to take your
measures accordingly. We had defeated in most of our engagements with them
the Syracusans, against whom we were sent, and we had built the works which
we now occupy, when Gylippus arrived from Lacedaemon with an army obtained
from Peloponnese and from some of the cities in Sicily. In our first battle
with him we were victorious; in the battle on the following day we were
overpowered by a multitude of cavalry and darters, and compelled to retire
within our lines. We have now, therefore, been forced by the numbers of
those opposed to us to discontinue the work of circumvallation, and to
remain inactive; being unable to make use even of all the force we have,
since a large portion of our heavy infantry is absorbed in the defence
of our lines. Meanwhile the enemy have carried a single wall past our lines,
thus making it impossible for us to invest them in future, until this cross
wall be attacked by a strong force and captured. So that the besieger in
name has become, at least from the land side, the besieged in reality;
as we are prevented by their cavalry from even going for any distance into
the country.
"Besides this, an embassy has been
dispatched to Peloponnese to procure reinforcements, and Gylippus has gone
to the cities in Sicily, partly in the hope of inducing those that are
at present neutral to join him in the war, partly of bringing from his
allies additional contingents for the land forces and material for the
navy. For I understand that they contemplate a combined attack, upon our
lines with their land forces and with their fleet by sea. You must none
of you be surprised that I say by sea also. They have discovered that the
length of the time we have now been in commission has rotted our ships
and wasted our crews, and that with the entireness of our crews and the
soundness of our ships the pristine efficiency of our navy has departed.
For it is impossible for us to haul our ships ashore and careen them, because,
the enemy's vessels being as many or more than our own, we are constantly
anticipating an attack. Indeed, they may be seen exercising, and it lies
with them to take the initiative; and not having to maintain a blockade,
they have greater facilities for drying their ships.
"This we should scarcely be able
to do, even if we had plenty of ships to spare, and were freed from our
present necessity of exhausting all our strength upon the blockade. For
it is already difficult to carry in supplies past Syracuse; and were we
to relax our vigilance in the slightest degree it would become impossible.
The losses which our crews have suffered and still continue to suffer arise
from the following causes. Expeditions for fuel and for forage, and the
distance from which water has to be fetched, cause our sailors to be cut
off by the Syracusan cavalry; the loss of our previous superiority emboldens
our slaves to desert; our foreign seamen are impressed by the unexpected
appearance of a navy against us, and the strength of the enemy's resistance;
such of them as were pressed into the service take the first opportunity
of departing to their respective cities; such as were originally seduced
by the temptation of high pay, and expected little fighting and large gains,
leave us either by desertion to the enemy or by availing themselves of
one or other of the various facilities of escape which the magnitude of
Sicily affords them. Some even engage in trade themselves and prevail upon
the captains to take Hyccaric slaves on board in their place; thus they
have ruined the efficiency of our navy.
"Now I need not remind you that the
time during which a crew is in its prime is short, and that the number
of sailors who can start a ship on her way and keep the rowing in time
is small. But by far my greatest trouble is, that holding the post which
I do, I am prevented by the natural indocility of the Athenian seaman from
putting a stop to these evils; and that meanwhile we have no source from
which to recruit our crews, which the enemy can do from many quarters,
but are compelled to depend both for supplying the crews in service and
for making good our losses upon the men whom we brought with us. For our
present confederates, Naxos and Catana, are incapable of supplying us.
There is only one thing more wanting to our opponents, I mean the defection
of our Italian markets. If they were to see you neglect to relieve us from
our present condition, and were to go over to the enemy, famine would compel
us to evacuate, and Syracuse would finish the war without a blow.
"I might, it is true, have written
to you something different and more agreeable than this, but nothing certainly
more useful, if it is desirable for you to know the real state of things
here before taking your measures. Besides I know that it is your nature
to love to be told the best side of things, and then to blame the teller
if the expectations which he has raised in your minds are not answered
by the result; and I therefore thought it safest to declare to you the
truth.
"Now you are not to think that either
your generals or your soldiers have ceased to be a match for the forces
originally opposed to them. But you are to reflect that a general Sicilian
coalition is being formed against us; that a fresh army is expected from
Peloponnese, while the force we have here is unable to cope even with our
present antagonists; and you must promptly decide either to recall us or
to send out to us another fleet and army as numerous again, with a large
sum of money, and someone to succeed me, as a disease in the kidneys unfits
me for retaining my post. I have, I think, some claim on your indulgence,
as while I was in my prime I did you much good service in my commands.
But whatever you mean to do, do it at the commencement of spring and without
delay, as the enemy will obtain his Sicilian reinforcements shortly, those
from Peloponnese after a longer interval; and unless you attend to the
matter the former will be here before you, while the latter will elude
you as they have done before."
Such were the contents of Nicias's
letter. When the Athenians had heard it they refused to accept his resignation,
but chose him two colleagues, naming Menander and Euthydemus, two of the
officers at the seat of war, to fill their places until their arrival,
that Nicias might not be left alone in his sickness to bear the whole weight
of affairs. They also voted to send out another army and navy, drawn partly
from the Athenians on the muster-roll, partly from the allies. The colleagues
chosen for Nicias were Demosthenes, son of Alcisthenes, and Eurymedon,
son of Thucles. Eurymedon was sent off at once, about the time of the winter
solstice, with ten ships, a hundred and twenty talents of silver, and instructions
to tell the army that reinforcements would arrive, and that care would
be taken of them; but Demosthenes stayed behind to organize the expedition,
meaning to start as soon as it was spring, and sent for troops to the allies,
and meanwhile got together money, ships, and heavy infantry at home.
The Athenians also sent twenty vessels
round Peloponnese to prevent any one crossing over to Sicily from Corinth
or Peloponnese. For the Corinthians, filled with confidence by the favourable
alteration in Sicilian affairs which had been reported by the envoys upon
their arrival, and convinced that the fleet which they had before sent
out had not been without its use, were now preparing to dispatch a force
of heavy infantry in merchant vessels to Sicily, while the Lacedaemonians
did the like for the rest of Peloponnese. The Corinthians also manned a
fleet of twenty-five vessels, intending to try the result of a battle with
the squadron on guard at Naupactus, and meanwhile to make it less easy
for the Athenians there to hinder the departure of their merchantmen, by
obliging them to keep an eye upon the galleys thus arrayed against them.
In the meantime the Lacedaemonians
prepared for their invasion of Attica, in accordance with their own previous
resolve, and at the instigation of the Syracusans and Corinthians, who
wished for an invasion to arrest the reinforcements which they heard that
Athens was about to send to Sicily. Alcibiades also urgently advised the
fortification of Decelea, and a vigorous prosecution of the war. But the
Lacedaemonians derived most encouragement from the belief that Athens,
with two wars on her hands, against themselves and against the Siceliots,
would be more easy to subdue, and from the conviction that she had been
the first to infringe the truce. In the former war, they considered, the
offence had been more on their own side, both on account of the entrance
of the Thebans into Plataea in time of peace, and also of their own refusal
to listen to the Athenian offer of arbitration, in spite of the clause
in the former treaty that where arbitration should be offered there should
be no appeal to arms. For this reason they thought that they deserved their
misfortunes, and took to heart seriously the disaster at Pylos and whatever
else had befallen them. But when, besides the ravages from Pylos, which
went on without any intermission, the thirty Athenian ships came out from
Argos and wasted part of Epidaurus, Prasiae, and other places; when upon
every dispute that arose as to the interpretation of any doubtful point
in the treaty, their own offers of arbitration were always rejected by
the Athenians, the Lacedaemonians at length decided that Athens had now
committed the very same offence as they had before done, and had become
the guilty party; and they began to be full of ardour for the war. They
spent this winter in sending round to their allies for iron, and in getting
ready the other implements for building their fort; and meanwhile began
raising at home, and also by forced requisitions in the rest of Peloponnese,
a force to be sent out in the merchantmen to their allies in Sicily. Winter
thus ended, and with it the eighteenth year of this war of which Thucydides
is the historian.
In the first days of the spring following,
at an earlier period than usual, the Lacedaemonians and their allies invaded
Attica, under the command of Agis, son of Archidamus, king of the Lacedaemonians.
They began by devastating the parts bordering upon the plain, and next
proceeded to fortify Decelea, dividing the work among the different cities.
Decelea is about thirteen or fourteen miles from the city of Athens, and
the same distance or not much further from Boeotia; and the fort was meant
to annoy the plain and the richest parts of the country, being in sight
of Athens. While the Peloponnesians and their allies in Attica were engaged
in the work of fortification, their countrymen at home sent off, at about
the same time, the heavy infantry in the merchant vessels to Sicily; the
Lacedaemonians furnishing a picked force of Helots and Neodamodes (or freedmen),
six hundred heavy infantry in all, under the command of Eccritus, a Spartan;
and the Boeotians three hundred heavy infantry, commanded by two Thebans,
Xenon and Nicon, and by Hegesander, a Thespian. These were among the first
to put out into the open sea, starting from Taenarus in Laconia. Not long
after their departure the Corinthians sent off a force of five hundred
heavy infantry, consisting partly of men from Corinth itself, and partly
of Arcadian mercenaries, placed under the command of Alexarchus, a Corinthian.
The Sicyonians also sent off two hundred heavy infantry at same time as
the Corinthians, under the command of Sargeus, a Sicyonian. Meantime the
five-and-twenty vessels manned by Corinth during the winter lay confronting
the twenty Athenian ships at Naupactus until the heavy infantry in the
merchantmen were fairly on their way from Peloponnese; thus fulfilling
the object for which they had been manned originally, which was to divert
the attention of the Athenians from the merchantmen to the galleys.
During this time the Athenians were
not idle. Simultaneously with the fortification of Decelea, at the very
beginning of spring, they sent thirty ships round Peloponnese, under Charicles,
son of Apollodorus, with instructions to call at Argos and demand a force
of their heavy infantry for the fleet, agreeably to the alliance. At the
same time they dispatched Demosthenes to Sicily, as they had intended,
with sixty Athenian and five Chian vessels, twelve hundred Athenian heavy
infantry from the muster-roll, and as many of the islanders as could be
raised in the different quarters, drawing upon the other subject allies
for whatever they could supply that would be of use for the war. Demosthenes
was instructed first to sail round with Charicles and to operate with him
upon the coasts of Laconia, and accordingly sailed to Aegina and there
waited for the remainder of his armament, and for Charicles to fetch the
Argive troops.
In Sicily, about the same time in
this spring, Gylippus came to Syracuse with as many troops as he could
bring from the cities which he had persuaded to join. Calling the Syracusans
together, he told them that they must man as many ships as possible, and
try their hand at a sea-fight, by which he hoped to achieve an advantage
in the war not unworthy of the risk. With him Hermocrates actively joined
in trying to encourage his countrymen to attack the Athenians at sea, saying
that the latter had not inherited their naval prowess nor would they retain
it for ever; they had been landsmen even to a greater degree than the Syracusans,
and had only become a maritime power when obliged by the Mede. Besides,
to daring spirits like the Athenians, a daring adversary would seem the
most formidable; and the Athenian plan of paralysing by the boldness of
their attack a neighbour often not their inferior in strength could now
be used against them with as good effect by the Syracusans. He was convinced
also that the unlooked-for spectacle of Syracusans daring to face the Athenian
navy would cause a terror to the enemy, the advantages of which would far
outweigh any loss that Athenian science might inflict upon their inexperience.
He accordingly urged them to throw aside their fears and to try their fortune
at sea; and the Syracusans, under the influence of Gylippus and Hermocrates,
and perhaps some others, made up their minds for the sea-fight and began
to man their vessels.
When the fleet was ready, Gylippus
led out the whole army by night; his plan being to assault in person the
forts on Plemmyrium by land, while thirty-five Syracusan galleys sailed
according to appointment against the enemy from the great harbour, and
the forty-five remaining came round from the lesser harbour, where they
had their arsenal, in order to effect a junction with those inside and
simultaneously to attack Plemmyrium, and thus to distract the Athenians
by assaulting them on two sides at once. The Athenians quickly manned sixty
ships, and with twenty-five of these engaged the thirty-five of the Syracusans
in the great harbour, sending the rest to meet those sailing round from
the arsenal; and an action now ensued directly in front of the mouth of
the great harbour, maintained with equal tenacity on both sides; the one
wishing to force the passage, the other to prevent them.
In the meantime, while the Athenians
in Plemmyrium were down at the sea, attending to the engagement, Gylippus
made a sudden attack on the forts in the early morning and took the largest
first, and afterwards the two smaller, whose garrisons did not wait for
him, seeing the largest so easily taken. At the fall of the first fort,
the men from it who succeeded in taking refuge in their boats and merchantmen,
found great difficulty in reaching the camp, as the Syracusans were having
the best of it in the engagement in the great harbour, and sent a fast-sailing
galley to pursue them. But when the two others fell, the Syracusans were
now being defeated; and the fugitives from these sailed alongshore with
more ease. The Syracusan ships fighting off the mouth of the harbour forced
their way through the Athenian vessels and sailing in without any order
fell foul of one another, and transferred the victory to the Athenians;
who not only routed the squadron in question, but also that by which they
were at first being defeated in the harbour, sinking eleven of the Syracusan
vessels and killing most of the men, except the crews of three ships whom
they made prisoners. Their own loss was confined to three vessels; and
after hauling ashore the Syracusan wrecks and setting up a trophy upon
the islet in front of Plemmyrium, they retired to their own camp.
Unsuccessful at sea, the Syracusans
had nevertheless the forts in Plemmyrium, for which they set up three trophies.
One of the two last taken they razed, but put in order and garrisoned the
two others. In the capture of the forts a great many men were killed and
made prisoners, and a great quantity of property was taken in all. As the
Athenians had used them as a magazine, there was a large stock of goods
and corn of the merchants inside, and also a large stock belonging to the
captains; the masts and other furniture of forty galleys being taken, besides
three galleys which had been drawn up on shore. Indeed the first and chiefest
cause of the ruin of the Athenian army was the capture of Plemmyrium; even
the entrance of the harbour being now no longer safe for carrying in provisions,
as the Syracusan vessels were stationed there to prevent it, and nothing
could be brought in without fighting; besides the general impression of
dismay and discouragement produced upon the army.
After this the Syracusans sent out
twelve ships under the command of Agatharchus, a Syracusan. One of these
went to Peloponnese with ambassadors to describe the hopeful state of their
affairs, and to incite the Peloponnesians to prosecute the war there even
more actively than they were now doing, while the eleven others sailed
to Italy, hearing that vessels laden with stores were on their way to the
Athenians. After falling in with and destroying most of the vessels in
question, and burning in the Caulonian territory a quantity of timber for
shipbuilding, which had been got ready for the Athenians, the Syracusan
squadron went to Locri, and one of the merchantmen from Peloponnese coming
in, while they were at anchor there, carrying Thespian heavy infantry,
took these on board and sailed alongshore towards home. The Athenians were
on the look-out for them with twenty ships at Megara, but were only able
to take one vessel with its crew; the rest getting clear off to Syracuse.
There was also some skirmishing in the harbour about the piles which the
Syracusans had driven in the sea in front of the old docks, to allow their
ships to lie at anchor inside, without being hurt by the Athenians sailing
up and running them down. The Athenians brought up to them a ship of ten
thousand talents burden furnished with wooden turrets and screens, and
fastened ropes round the piles from their boats, wrenched them up and broke
them, or dived down and sawed them in two. Meanwhile the Syracusans plied
them with missiles from the docks, to which they replied from their large
vessel; until at last most of the piles were removed by the Athenians.
But the most awkward part of the stockade was the part out of sight: some
of the piles which had been driven in did not appear above water, so that
it was dangerous to sail up, for fear of running the ships upon them, just
as upon a reef, through not seeing them. However divers went down and sawed
off even these for reward; although the Syracusans drove in others. Indeed
there was no end to the contrivances to which they resorted against each
other, as might be expected between two hostile armies confronting each
other at such a short distance: and skirmishes and all kinds of other attempts
were of constant occurrence. Meanwhile the Syracusans sent embassies to
the cities, composed of Corinthians, Ambraciots, and Lacedaemonians, to
tell them of the capture of Plemmyrium, and that their defeat in the sea-fight
was due less to the strength of the enemy than to their own disorder; and
generally, to let them know that they were full of hope, and to desire
them to come to their help with ships and troops, as the Athenians were
expected with a fresh army, and if the one already there could be destroyed
before the other arrived, the war would be at an end.
While the contending parties in Sicily
were thus engaged, Demosthenes, having now got together the armament with
which he was to go to the island, put out from Aegina, and making sail
for Peloponnese, joined Charicles and the thirty ships of the Athenians.
Taking on board the heavy infantry from Argos they sailed to Laconia, and,
after first plundering part of Epidaurus Limera, landed on the coast of
Laconia, opposite Cythera, where the temple of Apollo stands, and, laying
waste part of the country, fortified a sort of isthmus, to which the Helots
of the Lacedaemonians might desert, and from whence plundering incursions
might be made as from Pylos. Demosthenes helped to occupy this place, and
then immediately sailed on to Corcyra to take up some of the allies in
that island, and so to proceed without delay to Sicily; while Charicles
waited until he had completed the fortification of the place and, leaving
a garrison there, returned home subsequently with his thirty ships and
the Argives also.
This same summer arrived at Athens
thirteen
hundred targeteers, Thracian swordsmen of the tribe of the Dii,
who were to have sailed to Sicily with Demosthenes. Since they had come
too late, the Athenians determined to send them back to Thrace, whence
they had come; to keep them for the Decelean war appearing too expensive,
as the pay of each man was a drachma a day. Indeed since Decelea had been
first fortified by the whole Peloponnesian army during this summer, and
then occupied for the annoyance of the country by the garrisons from the
cities relieving each other at stated intervals, it had been doing great
mischief to the Athenians; in fact this occupation, by the destruction
of property and loss of men which resulted from it, was one of the principal
causes of their ruin. Previously the invasions were short, and did not
prevent their enjoying their land during the rest of the time: the enemy
was now permanently fixed in Attica; at one time it was an attack in force,
at another it was the regular garrison overrunning the country and making
forays for its subsistence, and the Lacedaemonian king, Agis, was in the
field and diligently prosecuting the war; great mischief was therefore
done to the Athenians. They were deprived of their whole country: more
than twenty thousand slaves had deserted, a great part of them artisans,
and all their sheep and beasts of burden were lost; and as the cavalry
rode out daily upon excursions to Decelea and to guard the country, their
horses were either lamed by being constantly worked upon rocky ground,
or wounded by the enemy.
Besides, the transport of provisions
from Euboea, which had before been carried on so much more quickly overland
by Decelea from Oropus, was now effected at great cost by sea round Sunium;
everything the city required had to be imported from abroad, and instead
of a city it became a fortress. Summer and winter the Athenians were worn
out by having to keep guard on the fortifications, during the day by turns,
by night all together, the cavalry excepted, at the different military
posts or upon the wall. But what most oppressed them was that they had
two wars at once, and had thus reached a pitch of frenzy which no one would
have believed possible if he had heard of it before it had come to pass.
For could any one have imagined that even when besieged by the Peloponnesians
entrenched in Attica, they would still, instead of withdrawing from Sicily,
stay on there besieging in like manner Syracuse, a town (taken as a town)
in no way inferior to Athens, or would so thoroughly upset the Hellenic
estimate of their strength and audacity, as to give the spectacle of a
people which, at the beginning of the war, some thought might hold out
one year, some two, none more than three, if the Peloponnesians invaded
their country, now seventeen years after the first invasion, after having
already suffered from all the evils of war, going to Sicily and undertaking
a new war nothing inferior to that which they already had with the Peloponnesians?
These causes, the great losses from Decelea, and the other heavy charges
that fell upon them, produced their financial embarrassment; and it was
at this time that they imposed upon their subjects, instead of the tribute,
the tax of a twentieth upon all imports and exports by sea, which they
thought would bring them in more money; their expenditure being now not
the same as at first, but having grown with the war while their revenues
decayed.
Accordingly, not wishing to incur
expense in their present want of money, they sent back at once the Thracians
who came too late for Demosthenes, under the conduct of Diitrephes, who
was instructed, as they were to pass through the Euripus, to make use of
them if possible in the voyage alongshore to injure the enemy. Diitrephes
first landed them at Tanagra and hastily snatched some booty; he then sailed
across the Euripus in the evening from Chalcis in Euboea and disembarking
in Boeotia led them against Mycalessus. The night he passed unobserved
near the temple of Hermes, not quite two miles from Mycalessus, and at
daybreak assaulted and took the town, which is not a large one; the inhabitants
being off their guard and not expecting that any one would ever come up
so far from the sea to molest them, the wall too being weak, and in some
places having tumbled down, while in others it had not been built to any
height, and the gates also being left open through their feeling of security.
The Thracians bursting into Mycalessus sacked the houses and temples, and
butchered the inhabitants, sparing neither youth nor age, but killing all
they fell in with, one after the other, children and women, and even beasts
of burden, and whatever other living creatures they saw; the Thracian race,
like the bloodiest of the barbarians, being even more so when it has nothing
to fear. Everywhere confusion reigned and death in all its shapes; and
in particular they attacked a boys' school, the largest that there was
in the place, into which the children had just gone, and massacred them
all. In short, the disaster falling upon the whole town was unsurpassed
in magnitude, and unapproached by any in suddenness and in horror.
Meanwhile the Thebans heard of it
and marched to the rescue, and overtaking the Thracians before they had
gone far, recovered the plunder and drove them in panic to the Euripus
and the sea, where the vessels which brought them were lying. The greatest
slaughter took place while they were embarking, as they did not know how
to swim, and those in the vessels on seeing what was going on on on shore
moored them out of bowshot: in the rest of the retreat the Thracians made
a very respectable defence against the Theban horse, by which they were
first attacked, dashing out and closing their ranks according to the tactics
of their country, and lost only a few men in that part of the affair. A
good number who were after plunder were actually caught in the town and
put to death. Altogether the Thracians had two hundred and fifty killed
out of thirteen hundred, the Thebans and the rest who came to the rescue
about twenty, troopers and heavy infantry, with Scirphondas, one of the
Boeotarchs. The Mycalessians lost a large proportion of their population.
While Mycalessus thus experienced
a calamity for its extent as lamentable as any that happened in the war,
Demosthenes, whom we left sailing to Corcyra, after the building of the
fort in Laconia, found a merchantman lying at Phea in Elis, in which the
Corinthian heavy infantry were to cross to Sicily. The ship he destroyed,
but the men escaped, and subsequently got another in which they pursued
their voyage. After this, arriving at Zacynthus and Cephallenia, he took
a body of heavy infantry on board, and sending for some of the Messenians
from Naupactus, crossed over to the opposite coast of Acarnania, to Alyzia,
and to Anactorium which was held by the Athenians. While he was in these
parts he was met by Eurymedon returning from Sicily, where he had been
sent, as has been mentioned, during the winter, with the money for the
army, who told him the news, and also that he had heard, while at sea,
that the Syracusans had taken Plemmyrium. Here, also, Conon came to them,
the commander at Naupactus, with news that the twenty-five Corinthian ships
stationed opposite to him, far from giving over the war, were meditating
an engagement; and he therefore begged them to send him some ships, as
his own eighteen were not a match for the enemy's twenty-five. Demosthenes
and Eurymedon, accordingly, sent ten of their best sailers with Conon to
reinforce the squadron at Naupactus, and meanwhile prepared for the muster
of their forces; Eurymedon, who was now the colleague of Demosthenes, and
had turned back in consequence of his appointment, sailing to Corcyra to
tell them to man fifteen ships and to enlist heavy infantry; while Demosthenes
raised slingers and darters from the parts about Acarnania.
Meanwhile the envoys, already mentioned,
who had gone from Syracuse to the cities after the capture of Plemmyrium,
had succeeded in their mission, and were about to bring the army that they
had collected, when Nicias got scent of it, and sent to the Centoripae
and Alicyaeans and other of the friendly Sicels, who held the passes, not
to let the enemy through, but to combine to prevent their passing, there
being no other way by which they could even attempt it, as the Agrigentines
would not give them a passage through their country. Agreeably to this
request the Sicels laid a triple ambuscade for the Siceliots upon their
march, and attacking them suddenly, while off their guard, killed about
eight hundred of them and all the envoys, the Corinthian only excepted,
by whom fifteen hundred who escaped were conducted to Syracuse.
About the same time the Camarinaeans
also came to the assistance of Syracuse with five hundred heavy infantry,
three hundred darters, and as many archers, while the Geloans sent crews
for five ships, four hundred darters, and two hundred horse. Indeed almost
the whole of Sicily, except the Agrigentines, who were neutral, now ceased
merely to watch events as it had hitherto done, and actively joined Syracuse
against the Athenians.
While the Syracusans after the Sicel
disaster put off any immediate attack upon the Athenians, Demosthenes and
Eurymedon, whose forces from Corcyra and the continent were now ready,
crossed the Ionian Gulf with all their armament to the Iapygian promontory,
and starting from thence touched at the Choerades Isles lying off Iapygia,
where they took on board a hundred and fifty Iapygian darters of the Messapian
tribe, and after renewing an old friendship with Artas the chief, who had
furnished them with the darters, arrived at Metapontium in Italy. Here
they persuaded their allies the Metapontines to send with them three hundred
darters and two galleys, and with this reinforcement coasted on to Thurii,
where they found the party hostile to Athens recently expelled by a revolution,
and accordingly remained there to muster and review the whole army, to
see if any had been left behind, and to prevail upon the Thurians resolutely
to join them in their expedition, and in the circumstances in which they
found themselves to conclude a defensive and offensive alliance with the
Athenians.
About the same time the Peloponnesians
in the twenty-five ships stationed opposite to the squadron at Naupactus
to protect the passage of the transports to Sicily had got ready for engaging,
and manning some additional vessels, so as to be numerically little inferior
to the Athenians, anchored off Erineus in Achaia in the Rhypic country.
The place off which they lay being in the form of a crescent, the land
forces furnished by the Corinthians and their allies on the spot came up
and ranged themselves upon the projecting headlands on either side, while
the fleet, under the command of Polyanthes, a Corinthian, held the intervening
space and blocked up the entrance. The Athenians under Diphilus now sailed
out against them with thirty-three ships from Naupactus, and the Corinthians,
at first not moving, at length thought they saw their opportunity, raised
the signal, and advanced and engaged the Athenians. After an obstinate
struggle, the Corinthians lost three ships, and without sinking any altogether,
disabled seven of the enemy, which were struck prow to prow and had their
foreships stove in by the Corinthian vessels, whose cheeks had been strengthened
for this very purpose. After an action of this even character, in which
either party could claim the victory (although the Athenians became masters
of the wrecks through the wind driving them out to sea, the Corinthians
not putting out again to meet them), the two combatants parted. No pursuit
took place, and no prisoners were made on either side; the Corinthians
and Peloponnesians who were fighting near the shore escaping with ease,
and none of the Athenian vessels having been sunk. The Athenians now sailed
back to Naupactus, and the Corinthians immediately set up a trophy as victors,
because they had disabled a greater number of the enemy's ships. Moreover
they held that they had not been worsted, for the very same reason that
their opponent held that he had not been victorious; the Corinthians considering
that they were conquerors, if not decidedly conquered, and the Athenians
thinking themselves vanquished, because not decidedly victorious. However,
when the Peloponnesians sailed off and their land forces had dispersed,
the Athenians also set up a trophy as victors in Achaia, about two miles
and a quarter from Erineus, the Corinthian station.
This was the termination of the action
at Naupactus. To return to Demosthenes and Eurymedon: the Thurians having
now got ready to join in the expedition with seven hundred heavy infantry
and three hundred darters, the two generals ordered the ships to sail along
the coast to the Crotonian territory, and meanwhile held a review of all
the land forces upon the river Sybaris, and then led them through the Thurian
country. Arrived at the river Hylias, they here received a message from
the Crotonians, saying that they would not allow the army to pass through
their country; upon which the Athenians descended towards the shore, and
bivouacked near the sea and the mouth of the Hylias, where the fleet also
met them, and the next day embarked and sailed along the coast touching
at all the cities except Locri, until they came to Petra in the Rhegian
territory.
Meanwhile the Syracusans hearing
of their approach resolved to make a second attempt with their fleet and
their other forces on shore, which they had been collecting for this very
purpose in order to do something before their arrival. In addition to other
improvements suggested by the former sea-fight which they now adopted in
the equipment of their navy, they cut down their prows to a smaller compass
to make them more solid and made their cheeks stouter, and from these let
stays into the vessels' sides for a length of six cubits within and without,
in the same way as the Corinthians had altered their prows before engaging
the squadron at Naupactus. The Syracusans thought that they would thus
have an advantage over the Athenian vessels, which were not constructed
with equal strength, but were slight in the bows, from their being more
used to sail round and charge the enemy's side than to meet him prow to
prow, and that the battle being in the great harbour, with a great many
ships in not much room, was also a fact in their favour. Charging prow
to prow, they would stave in the enemy's bows, by striking with solid and
stout beaks against hollow and weak ones; and secondly, the Athenians for
want of room would be unable to use their favourite manoeuvre of breaking
the line or of sailing round, as the Syracusans would do their best not
to let them do the one, and want of room would prevent their doing the
other. This charging prow to prow, which had hitherto been thought want
of skill in a helmsman, would be the Syracusans' chief manoeuvre, as being
that which they should find most useful, since the Athenians, if repulsed,
would not be able to back water in any direction except towards the shore,
and that only for a little way, and in the little space in front of their
own camp. The rest of the harbour would be commanded by the Syracusans;
and the Athenians, if hard pressed, by crowding together in a small space
and all to the same point, would run foul of one another and fall into
disorder, which was, in fact, the thing that did the Athenians most harm
in all the sea-fights, they not having, like the Syracusans, the whole
harbour to retreat over. As to their sailing round into the open sea, this
would be impossible, with the Syracusans in possession of the way out and
in, especially as Plemmyrium would be hostile to them, and the mouth of
the harbour was not large.
With these contrivances to suit their
skill and ability, and now more confident after the previous sea-fight,
the Syracusans attacked by land and sea at once. The town force Gylippus
led out a little the first and brought them up to the wall of the Athenians,
where it looked towards the city, while the force from the Olympieum, that
is to say, the heavy infantry that were there with the horse and the light
troops of the Syracusans, advanced against the wall from the opposite side;
the ships of the Syracusans and allies sailing out immediately afterwards.
The Athenians at first fancied that they were to be attacked by land only,
and it was not without alarm that they saw the fleet suddenly approaching
as well; and while some were forming upon the walls and in front of them
against the advancing enemy, and some marching out in haste against the
numbers of horse and darters coming from the Olympieum and from outside,
others manned the ships or rushed down to the beach to oppose the enemy,
and when the ships were manned put out with seventy-five sail against about
eighty of the Syracusans.
After spending a great part of the
day in advancing and retreating and skirmishing with each other, without
either being able to gain any advantage worth speaking of, except that
the Syracusans sank one or two of the Athenian vessels, they parted, the
land force at the same time retiring from the lines. The next day the Syracusans
remained quiet, and gave no signs of what they were going to do; but Nicias,
seeing that the battle had been a drawn one, and expecting that they would
attack again, compelled the captains to refit any of the ships that had
suffered, and moored merchant vessels before the stockade which they had
driven into the sea in front of their ships, to serve instead of an enclosed
harbour, at about two hundred feet from each other, in order that any ship
that was hard pressed might be able to retreat in safety and sail out again
at leisure. These preparations occupied the Athenians all day until nightfall.
The next day the Syracusans began
operations at an earlier hour, but with the same plan of attack by land
and sea. A great part of the day the rivals spent as before, confronting
and skirmishing with each other; until at last Ariston, son of Pyrrhicus,
a Corinthian, the ablest helmsman in the Syracusan service, persuaded their
naval commanders to send to the officials in the city, and tell them to
move the sale market as quickly as they could down to the sea, and oblige
every one to bring whatever eatables he had and sell them there, thus enabling
the commanders to land the crews and dine at once close to the ships, and
shortly afterwards, the selfsame day, to attack the Athenians again when
they were not expecting it.
In compliance with this advice a
messenger was sent and the market got ready, upon which the Syracusans
suddenly backed water and withdrew to the town, and at once landed and
took their dinner upon the spot; while the Athenians, supposing that they
had returned to the town because they felt they were beaten, disembarked
at their leisure and set about getting their dinners and about their other
occupations, under the idea that they done with fighting for that day.
Suddenly the Syracusans had manned their ships and again sailed against
them; and the Athenians, in great confusion and most of them fasting, got
on board, and with great difficulty put out to meet them. For some time
both parties remained on the defensive without engaging, until the Athenians
at last resolved not to let themselves be worn out by waiting where they
were, but to attack without delay, and giving a cheer, went into action.
The Syracusans received them, and charging prow to prow as they had intended,
stove in a great part of the Athenian foreships by the strength of their
beaks; the darters on the decks also did great damage to the Athenians,
but still greater damage was done by the Syracusans who went about in small
boats, ran in upon the oars of the Athenian galleys, and sailed against
their sides, and discharged from thence their darts upon the sailors.
At last, fighting hard in this fashion,
the Syracusans gained the victory, and the Athenians turned and fled between
the merchantmen to their own station. The Syracusan ships pursued them
as far as the merchantmen, where they were stopped by the beams armed with
dolphins suspended from those vessels over the passage. Two of the Syracusan
vessels went too near in the excitement of victory and were destroyed,
one of them being taken with its crew. After sinking seven of the Athenian
vessels and disabling many, and taking most of the men prisoners and killing
others, the Syracusans retired and set up trophies for both the engagements,
being now confident of having a decided superiority by sea, and by no means
despairing of equal success by land.
Chapter
Twenty-Two
Nineteenth Year of the War - Arrival
of Demosthenes -
Defeat of the Athenians at Epipolae
- Folly and Obstinancy of Nicias
In the meantime, while the Syracusans
were preparing for a second attack upon both elements, Demosthenes and
Eurymedon arrived with the succours from Athens, consisting of about seventy-three
ships, including the foreigners; nearly five thousand heavy infantry, Athenian
and allied; a large number of darters, Hellenic and barbarian, and slingers
and archers and everything else upon a corresponding scale. The Syracusans
and their allies were for the moment not a little dismayed at the idea
that there was to be no term or ending to their dangers, seeing, in spite
of the fortification of Decelea, a new army arrive nearly equal to the
former, and the power of Athens proving so great in every quarter. On the
other hand, the first Athenian armament regained a certain confidence in
the midst of its misfortunes. Demosthenes, seeing how matters stood, felt
that he could not drag on and fare as Nicias had done, who by wintering
in Catana instead of at once attacking Syracuse had allowed the terror
of his first arrival to evaporate in contempt, and had given time to Gylippus
to arrive with a force from Peloponnese, which the Syracusans would never
have sent for if he had attacked immediately; for they fancied that they
were a match for him by themselves, and would not have discovered their
inferiority until they were already invested, and even if they then sent
for succours, they would no longer have been equally able to profit by
their arrival. Recollecting this, and well aware that it was now on the
first day after his arrival that he like Nicias was most formidable to
the enemy, Demosthenes determined to lose no time in drawing the utmost
profit from the consternation at the moment inspired by his army; and seeing
that the counterwall of the Syracusans, which hindered the Athenians from
investing them, was a single one, and that he who should become master
of the way up to Epipolae, and afterwards of the camp there, would find
no difficulty in taking it, as no one would even wait for his attack, made
all haste to attempt the enterprise. This he took to be the shortest way
of ending the war, as he would either succeed and take Syracuse, or would
lead back the armament instead of frittering away the lives of the Athenians
engaged in the expedition and the resources of the country at large.
First therefore the Athenians went
out and laid waste the lands of the Syracusans about the Anapus and carried
all before them as at first by land and by sea, the Syracusans not offering
to oppose them upon either element, unless it were with their cavalry and
darters from the Olympieum. Next Demosthenes resolved to attempt the counterwall
first by means of engines. As however the engines that he brought up were
burnt by the enemy fighting from the wall, and the rest of the forces repulsed
after attacking at many different points, he determined to delay no longer,
and having obtained the consent of Nicias and his fellow commanders, proceeded
to put in execution his plan of attacking Epipolae. As by day it seemed
impossible to approach and get up without being observed, he ordered provisions
for five days, took all the masons and carpenters, and other things, such
as arrows, and everything else that they could want for the work of fortification
if successful, and, after the first watch, set out with Eurymedon and Menander
and the whole army for Epipolae, Nicias being left behind in the lines.
Having come up by the hill of Euryelus (where the former army had ascended
at first) unobserved by the enemy's guards, they went up to the fort which
the Syracusans had there, and took it, and put to the sword part of the
garrison. The greater number, however, escaped at once and gave the alarm
to the camps, of which there were three upon Epipolae, defended by outworks,
one of the Syracusans, one of the other Siceliots, and one of the allies;
and also to the six hundred Syracusans forming the original garrison for
this part of Epipolae. These at once advanced against the assailants and,
falling in with Demosthenes and the Athenians, were routed by them after
a sharp resistance, the victors immediately pushing on, eager to achieve
the objects of the attack without giving time for their ardour to cool;
meanwhile others from the very beginning were taking the counterwall of
the Syracusans, which was abandoned by its garrison, and pulling down the
battlements. The Syracusans and the allies, and Gylippus with the troops
under his command, advanced to the rescue from the outworks, but engaged
in some consternation (a night attack being a piece of audacity which they
had never expected), and were at first compelled to retreat. But while
the Athenians, flushed with their victory, now advanced with less order,
wishing to make their way as quickly as possible through the whole force
of the enemy not yet engaged, without relaxing their attack or giving them
time to rally, the Boeotians made the first stand against them, attacked
them, routed them, and put them to flight.
The Athenians now fell into great
disorder and perplexity, so that it was not easy to get from one side or
the other any detailed account of the affair. By day certainly the combatants
have a clearer notion, though even then by no means of all that takes place,
no one knowing much of anything that does not go on in his own immediate
neighbourhood; but in a night engagement (and this was the only one that
occurred between great armies during the war) how could any one know anything
for certain? Although there was a bright moon they saw each other only
as men do by moonlight, that is to say, they could distinguish the form
of the body, but could not tell for certain whether it was a friend or
an enemy. Both had great numbers of heavy infantry moving about in a small
space. Some of the Athenians were already defeated, while others were coming
up yet unconquered for their first attack. A large part also of the rest
of their forces either had only just got up, or were still ascending, so
that they did not know which way to march. Owing to the rout that had taken
place all in front was now in confusion, and the noise made it difficult
to distinguish anything. The victorious Syracusans and allies were cheering
each other on with loud cries, by night the only possible means of communication,
and meanwhile receiving all who came against them; while the Athenians
were seeking for one another, taking all in front of them for enemies,
even although they might be some of their now flying friends; and by constantly
asking for the watchword, which was their only means of recognition, not
only caused great confusion among themselves by asking all at once, but
also made it known to the enemy, whose own they did not so readily discover,
as the Syracusans were victorious and not scattered, and thus less easily
mistaken. The result was that if the Athenians fell in with a party of
the enemy that was weaker than they, it escaped them through knowing their
watchword; while if they themselves failed to answer they were put to the
sword. But what hurt them as much, or indeed more than anything else, was
the singing of the paean, from the perplexity which it caused by being
nearly the same on either side; the Argives and Corcyraeans and any other
Dorian peoples in the army, struck terror into the Athenians whenever they
raised their paean, no less than did the enemy. Thus, after being once
thrown into disorder, they ended by coming into collision with each other
in many parts of the field, friends with friends, and citizens with citizens,
and not only terrified one another, but even came to blows and could only
be parted with difficulty. In the pursuit many perished by throwing themselves
down the cliffs, the way down from Epipolae being narrow; and of those
who got down safely into the plain, although many, especially those who
belonged to the first armament, escaped through their better acquaintance
with the locality, some of the newcomers lost their way and wandered over
the country, and were cut off in the morning by the Syracusan cavalry and
killed.
The next day the Syracusans set up
two trophies, one upon Epipolae where the ascent had been made, and the
other on the spot where the first check was given by the Boeotians; and
the Athenians took back their dead under truce. A great many of the Athenians
and allies were killed, although still more arms were taken than could
be accounted for by the number of the dead, as some of those who were obliged
to leap down from the cliffs without their shields escaped with their lives
and did not perish like the rest.
After this the Syracusans, recovering
their old confidence at such an unexpected stroke of good fortune, dispatched
Sicanus with fifteen ships to Agrigentum where there was a revolution,
to induce if possible the city to join them; while Gylippus again went
by land into the rest of Sicily to bring up reinforcements, being now in
hope of taking the Athenian lines by storm, after the result of the affair
on Epipolae.
In the meantime the Athenian generals
consulted upon the disaster which had happened, and upon the general weakness
of the army. They saw themselves unsuccessful in their enterprises, and
the soldiers disgusted with their stay; disease being rife among them owing
to its being the sickly season of the year, and to the marshy and unhealthy
nature of the spot in which they were encamped; and the state of their
affairs generally being thought desperate. Accordingly, Demosthenes was
of opinion that they ought not to stay any longer; but agreeably to his
original idea in risking the attempt upon Epipolae, now that this had failed,
he gave his vote for going away without further loss of time, while the
sea might yet be crossed, and their late reinforcement might give them
the superiority at all events on that element. He also said that it would
be more profitable for the state to carry on the war against those who
were building fortifications in Attica, than against the Syracusans whom
it was no longer easy to subdue; besides which it was not right to squander
large sums of money to no purpose by going on with the siege.
This was the opinion of Demosthenes.
Nicias, without denying the bad state of their affairs, was unwilling to
avow their weakness, or to have it reported to the enemy that the Athenians
in full council were openly voting for retreat; for in that case they would
be much less likely to effect it when they wanted without discovery. Moreover,
his own particular information still gave him reason to hope that the affairs
of the enemy would soon be in a worse state than their own, if the Athenians
persevered in the siege; as they would wear out the Syracusans by want
of money, especially with the more extensive command of the sea now given
them by their present navy. Besides this, there was a party in Syracuse
who wished to betray the city to the Athenians, and kept sending him messages
and telling him not to raise the siege. Accordingly, knowing this and really
waiting because he hesitated between the two courses and wished to see
his way more clearly, in his public speech on this occasion he refused
to lead off the army, saying he was sure the Athenians would never approve
of their returning without a vote of theirs. Those who would vote upon
their conduct, instead of judging the facts as eye-witnesses like themselves
and not from what they might hear from hostile critics, would simply be
guided by the calumnies of the first clever speaker; while many, indeed
most, of the soldiers on the spot, who now so loudly proclaimed the danger
of their position, when they reached Athens would proclaim just as loudly
the opposite, and would say that their generals had been bribed to betray
them and return. For himself, therefore, who knew the Athenian temper,
sooner than perish under a dishonourable charge and by an unjust sentence
at the hands of the Athenians, he would rather take his chance and die,
if die he must, a soldier's death at the hand of the enemy. Besides, after
all, the Syracusans were in a worse case than themselves. What with paying
mercenaries, spending upon fortified posts, and now for a full year maintaining
a large navy, they were already at a loss and would soon be at a standstill:
they had already spent two thousand talents and incurred heavy debts besides,
and could not lose even ever so small a fraction of their present force
through not paying it, without ruin to their cause; depending as they did
more upon mercenaries than upon soldiers obliged to serve, like their own.
He therefore said that they ought to stay and carry on the siege, and not
depart defeated in point of money, in which they were much superior.
Nicias spoke positively because he
had exact information of the financial distress at Syracuse, and also because
of the strength of the Athenian party there which kept sending him messages
not to raise the siege; besides which he had more confidence than before
in his fleet, and felt sure at least of its success. Demosthenes, however,
would not hear for a moment of continuing the siege, but said that if they
could not lead off the army without a decree from Athens, and if they were
obliged to stay on, they ought to remove to Thapsus or Catana; where their
land forces would have a wide extent of country to overrun, and could live
by plundering the enemy, and would thus do them damage; while the fleet
would have the open sea to fight in, that is to say, instead of a narrow
space which was all in the enemy's favour, a wide sea-room where their
science would be of use, and where they could retreat or advance without
being confined or circumscribed either when they put out or put in. In
any case he was altogether opposed to their staying on where they were,
and insisted on removing at once, as quickly and with as little delay as
possible; and in this judgment Eurymedon agreed. Nicias however still objecting,
a certain diffidence and hesitation came over them, with a suspicion that
Nicias might have some further information to make him so positive.
Chapter
Twenty-Three
Nineteenth Year of the War - Battles
in the Great Harbor -
Retreat and Annihilation of the
Athenian Army
While the Athenians lingered on in
this way without moving from where they were, Gylippus and Sicanus now
arrived at Syracuse. Sicanus had failed to gain Agrigentum, the party friendly
to the Syracusans having been driven out while he was still at Gela; but
Gylippus was accompanied not only by a large number of troops raised in
Sicily, but by the heavy infantry sent off in the spring from Peloponnese
in the merchantmen, who had arrived at Selinus from Libya. They had been
carried to Libya by a storm, and having obtained two galleys and pilots
from the Cyrenians, on their voyage alongshore had taken sides with the
Euesperitae and had defeated the Libyans who were besieging them, and from
thence coasting on to Neapolis, a Carthaginian mart, and the nearest point
to Sicily, from which it is only two days' and a night's voyage, there
crossed over and came to Selinus. Immediately upon their arrival the Syracusans
prepared to attack the Athenians again by land and sea at once. The Athenian
generals seeing a fresh army come to the aid of the enemy, and that their
own circumstances, far from improving, were becoming daily worse, and above
all distressed by the sickness of the soldiers, now began to repent of
not having removed before; and Nicias no longer offering the same opposition,
except by urging that there should be no open voting, they gave orders
as secretly as possible for allto be prepared to sail out from the camp
at a given signal. All was at last ready, and they were on the point of
sailing away, when an eclipse of the moon, which was then at the full,
took place. Most of the Athenians, deeply impressed by this occurrence,
now urged the generals to wait; and Nicias, who was somewhat over-addicted
to divination and practices of that kind, refused from that moment even
to take the question of departure into consideration, until they had waited
the thrice nine days prescribed by the soothsayers.
The besiegers were thus condemned
to stay in the country; and the Syracusans, getting wind of what had happened,
became more eager than ever to press the Athenians, who had now themselves
acknowledged that they were no longer their superiors either by sea or
by land, as otherwise they would never have planned to sail away. Besides
which the Syracusans did not wish them to settle in any other part of Sicily,
where they would be more difficult to deal with, but desired to force them
to fight at sea as quickly as possible, in a position favourable to themselves.
Accordingly they manned their ships and practised for as many days as they
thought sufficient. When the moment arrived they assaulted on the first
day the Athenian lines, and upon a small force of heavy infantry and horse
sallying out against them by certain gates, cut off some of the former
and routed and pursued them to the lines, where, as the entrance was narrow,
the Athenians lost seventy horses and some few of the heavy infantry.
Drawing off their troops for this
day, on the next the Syracusans went out with a fleet of seventy-six sail,
and at the same time advanced with their land forces against the lines.
The Athenians put out to meet them with eighty-six ships, came to close
quarters, and engaged. The Syracusans and their allies first defeated the
Athenian centre, and then caught Eurymedon, the commander of the right
wing, who was sailing out from the line more towards the land in order
to surround the enemy, in the hollow and recess of the harbour, and killed
him and destroyed the ships accompanying him; after which they now chased
the whole Athenian fleet before them and drove them ashore.
Gylippus seeing the enemy's fleet
defeated and carried ashore beyond their stockades and camp, ran down to
the breakwater with some of his troops, in order to cut off the men as
they landed and make it easier for the Syracusans to tow off the vessels
by the shore being friendly ground. The Tyrrhenians who guarded this point
for the Athenians, seeing them come on in disorder, advanced out against
them and attacked and routed their van, hurling it into the marsh of Lysimeleia.
Afterwards the Syracusan and allied troops arrived in greater numbers,
and the Athenians fearing for their ships came up also to the rescue and
engaged them, and defeated and pursued them to some distance and killed
a few of their heavy infantry. They succeeded in rescuing most of their
ships and brought them down by their camp; eighteen however were taken
by the Syracusans and their allies, and all the men killed. The rest the
enemy tried to burn by means of an old merchantman which they filled with
faggots and pine-wood, set onfire, and let drift down the wind which blew
full on the Athenians. The Athenians, however, alarmed for their ships,
contrived means for stopping it and putting it out, and checking the flames
and the nearer approach of the merchantman, thus escaped the danger.
After this the Syracusans set up
a trophy for the sea-fight and for the heavy infantry whom they had cut
off up at the lines, where they took the horses; and the Athenians for
the rout of the foot driven by the Tyrrhenians into the marsh, and for
their own victory with the rest of the army.
The Syracusans had now gained a decisive
victory at sea, where until now they had feared the reinforcement brought
by Demosthenes, and deep, in consequence, was the despondency of the Athenians,
and great their disappointment, and greater still their regret for having
come on the expedition. These were the only cities that they had yet encountered,
similar to their own in character, under democracies like themselves, which
had ships and horses, and were of considerable magnitude. They had been
unable to divide and bring them over by holding out the prospect of changes
in their governments, or to crush them by their great superiority in force,
but had failed in most of their attempts, and being already in perplexity,
had now been defeated at sea, where defeat could never have been expected,
and were thus plunged deeper in embarrassment than ever.
Meanwhile the Syracusans immediately
began to sail freely along the harbour, and determined to close up its
mouth, so that the Athenians might not be able to steal out in future,
even if they wished. Indeed, the Syracusans no longer thought only of saving
themselves, but also how to hinder the escape of the enemy; thinking, and
thinking rightly, that they were now much the stronger, and that to conquer
the Athenians and their allies by land and sea would win them great glory
in Hellas. The rest of the Hellenes would thus immediately be either freed
or released from apprehension, as the remaining forces of Athens would
be henceforth unable to sustain the war that would be waged against her;
while they, the Syracusans, would be regarded as the authors of this deliverance,
and would be held in high admiration, not only with all men now living
but also with posterity. Nor were these the only considerations that gave
dignity to the struggle. They would thus conquer not only the Athenians
but also their numerous allies, and conquer not alone, but with their companions
in arms, commanding side by side with the Corinthians and Lacedaemonians,
having offered their city to stand in the van of danger, and having been
in a great measure the pioneers of naval success.
Indeed, there were never so many
peoples assembled before a single city, if we except the grand total gathered
together in this war under Athens and Lacedaemon. The following were the
states on either side who came to Syracuse to fight for or against Sicily,
to help to conquer or defend the island. Right or community of blood was
not the bond of union between them, so much as interest or compulsion as
the case might be. The Athenians themselves being Ionians went against
the Dorians of Syracuse of their own free will; and the peoples still speaking
Attic and using the Athenian laws, the Lemnians, Imbrians, and Aeginetans,
that is to say the then occupants of Aegina, being their colonists, went
with them. To these must be also added the Hestiaeans dwelling at Hestiaea
in Euboea. Of the rest some joined in the expedition as subjects of the
Athenians, others as independent allies, others as mercenaries. To the
number of the subjects paying tribute belonged the Eretrians, Chalcidians,
Styrians, and Carystians from Euboea; the Ceans, Andrians, and Tenians
from the islands; and the Milesians, Samians, and Chians from Ionia. The
Chians, however, joined as independent allies, paying no tribute, but furnishing
ships. Most of these were Ionians and descended from the Athenians, except
the Carystians, who are Dryopes, and although subjects and obliged to serve,
were still Ionians fighting against Dorians. Besides these there were men
of Aeolic race, the Methymnians, subjects who provided ships, not tribute,
and the Tenedians and Aenians who paid tribute. These Aeolians fought against
their Aeolian founders, the Boeotians in the Syracusan army, because they
were obliged, while the Plataeans, the only native Boeotians opposed to
Boeotians, did so upon a just quarrel. Of the Rhodians and Cytherians,
both Dorians, the latter, Lacedaemonian colonists, fought in the Athenian
ranks against their Lacedaemonian countrymen with Gylippus; while the Rhodians,
Argives by race, were compelled to bear arms against the Dorian Syracusans
and their own colonists, the Geloans, serving with the Syracusans. Of the
islanders round Peloponnese, the Cephallenians and Zacynthians accompanied
the Athenians as independent allies, although their insular position really
left them little choice in the matter, owing to the maritime supremacy
of Athens, while the Corcyraeans, who were not only Dorians but Corinthians,
were openly serving against Corinthians and Syracusans, although colonists
of the former and of the same race as the latter, under colour of compulsion,
but really out of free will through hatred of Corinth. The Messenians,
as they are now called in Naupactus and from Pylos, then held by the Athenians,
were taken with them to the war. There were also a few Megarian exiles,
whose fate it was to be now fighting against the Megarian Selinuntines.
The engagement of the rest was more
of a voluntary nature. It was less the league than hatred of the Lacedaemonians
and the immediate private advantage of each individual that persuaded the
Dorian Argives to join the Ionian Athenians in a war against Dorians; while
the Mantineans and other Arcadian mercenaries, accustomed to go against
the enemy pointed out to them at the moment, were led by interest to regard
the Arcadians serving with the Corinthians as just as much their enemies
as any others. The Cretans and Aetolians also served for hire, and the
Cretans who had joined the Rhodians in founding Gela, thus came to consent
to fight for pay against, instead of for, their colonists. There were also
some Acarnanians paid to serve, although they came chiefly for love of
Demosthenes and out of goodwill to the Athenians whose allies they were.
These all lived on the Hellenic side of the Ionian Gulf. Of the Italiots,
there were the Thurians and Metapontines, dragged into the quarrel by the
stern necessities of a time of revolution; of the Siceliots, the Naxians
and the Catanians; and of the barbarians, the Egestaeans, who called in
the Athenians, most of the Sicels, and outside Sicily some Tyrrhenian enemies
of Syracuse and Iapygian mercenaries.
Such were the peoples serving with
the Athenians. Against these the Syracusans had the Camarinaeans their
neighbours, the Geloans who live next to them; then passing over the neutral
Agrigentines, the Selinuntines settled on the farther side of the island.
These inhabit the part of Sicily looking towards Libya; the Himeraeans
came from the side towards the Tyrrhenian Sea, being the only Hellenic
inhabitants in that quarter, and the only people that came from thence
to the aid of the Syracusans. Of the Hellenes in Sicily the above peoples
joined in the war, all Dorians and independent, and of the barbarians the
Sicels only, that is to say, such as did not go over to the Athenians.
Of the Hellenes outside Sicily there were the Lacedaemonians, who provided
a Spartan to take the command, and a force of Neodamodes or Freedmen, and
of Helots; the Corinthians, who alone joined with naval and land forces,
with their Leucadian and Ambraciot kinsmen; some mercenaries sent by Corinth
from Arcadia; some Sicyonians forced to serve, and from outside Peloponnese
the Boeotians. In comparison, however, with these foreign auxiliaries,
the great Siceliot cities furnished more in every department- numbers of
heavy infantry, ships, and horses, and an immense multitude besides having
been brought together; while in comparison, again, one may say, with all
the rest put together, more was provided by the Syracusans themselves,
both from the greatness of the city and from the fact that they were in
the greatest danger.
Such were the auxiliaries brought
together on either side, all of which had by this time joined, neither
party experiencing any subsequent accession. It was no wonder, therefore,
if the Syracusans and their allies thought that it would win them great
glory if they could follow up their recent victory in the sea-fight by
the capture of the whole Athenian armada, without letting it escape either
by sea or by land. They began at once to close up the Great Harbour by
means of boats, merchant vessels, and galleys moored broadside across its
mouth, which is nearly a mile wide, and made all their other arrangements
for the event of the Athenians again venturing to fight at sea. There was,
in fact, nothing little either in their plans or their ideas.
The Athenians, seeing them closing
up the harbour and informed of their further designs, called a council
of war. The generals and colonels assembled and discussed the difficulties
of the situation; the point which pressed most being that they no longer
had provisions for immediate use (having sent on to Catana to tell them
not to send any, in the belief that they were going away), and that they
would not have any in future unless they could command the sea. They therefore
determined to evacuate their upper lines, to enclose with a cross wall
and garrison a small space close to the ships, only just sufficient to
hold their stores and sick, and manning all the ships, seaworthy or not,
with every man that could be spared from the rest of their land forces,
to fight it out at sea, and, if victorious, to go to Catana, if not, to
burn their vessels, form in close order, and retreat by land for the nearest
friendly place they could reach, Hellenic or barbarian. This was no sooner
settled than carried into effect; they descended gradually from the upper
lines and manned all their vessels, compelling all to go on board who were
of age to be in any way of use. They thus succeeded in manning about one
hundred and ten ships in all, on board of which they embarked a number
of archers and darters taken from the Acarnanians and from the other foreigners,
making all other provisions allowed by the nature of their plan and by
the necessities which imposed it. All was now nearly ready, and Nicias,
seeing the soldiery disheartened by their unprecedented and decided defeat
at sea, and by reason of the scarcity of provisions eager to fight it out
as soon as possible, called them all together, and first addressed them,
speaking as follows:
"Soldiers of the Athenians and of
the allies, we have all an equal interest in the coming struggle, in which
life and country are at stake for us quite as much as they can be for the
enemy; since if our fleet wins the day, each can see his native city again,
wherever that city may be. You must not lose heart, or be like men without
any experience, who fail in a first essay and ever afterwards fearfully
forebode a future as disastrous. But let the Athenians among you who have
already had experience of many wars, and the allies who have joined us
in so many expeditions, remember the surprises of war, and with the hope
that fortune will not be always against us, prepare to fight again in a
manner worthy of the number which you see yourselves to be.
"Now, whatever we thought would be
of service against the crush of vessels in such a narrow harbour, and against
the force upon the decks of the enemy, from which we suffered before, has
all been considered with the helmsmen, and, as far as our means allowed,
provided. A number of archers and darters will go on board, and a multitude
that we should not have employed in an action in the open sea, where our
science would be crippled by the weight of the vessels; but in the present
land-fight that we are forced to make from shipboard all this will be useful.
We have also discovered the changes in construction that we must make to
meet theirs; and against the thickness of their cheeks, which did us the
greatest mischief, we have provided grappling-irons, which will prevent
an assailant backing water after charging, if the soldiers on deck here
do their duty; since we are absolutely compelled to fight a land battle
from the fleet, and it seems to be our interest neither to back water ourselves,
nor to let the enemy do so, especially as the shore, except so much of
it as may be held by our troops, is hostile ground.
"You must remember this and fight
on as long as you can, and must not let yourselves be driven ashore, but
once alongside must make up your minds not to part company until you have
swept the heavy infantry from the enemy's deck. I say this more for the
heavy infantry than for the seamen, as it is more the business of the men
on deck; and our land forces are even now on the whole the strongest. The
sailors I advise, and at the same time implore, not to be too much daunted
by their misfortunes, now that we have our decks better armed and greater
number of vessels. Bear in mind how well worth preserving is the pleasure
felt by those of you who through your knowledge of our language and imitation
of our manners were always considered Athenians, even though not so in
reality, and as such were honoured throughout Hellas, and had your full
share of the advantages of our empire, and more than your share in the
respect of our subjects and in protection from ill treatment. You, therefore,
with whom alone we freely share our empire, we now justly require not to
betray that empire in its extremity, and in scorn of Corinthians, whom
you have often conquered, and of Siceliots, none of whom so much as presumed
to stand against us when our navy was in its prime, we ask you to repel
them, and to show that even in sickness and disaster your skill is more
than a match for the fortune and vigour of any other.
"For the Athenians among you I add
once more this reflection: You left behind you no more such ships in your
docks as these, no more heavy infantry in their flower; if you do aught
but conquer, our enemies here will immediately sail thither, and those
that are left of us at Athens will become unable to repel their home assailants,
reinforced by these new allies. Here you will fall at once into the hands
of the Syracusans- I need not remind you of the intentions with which you
attacked them- and your countrymen at home will fall into those of the
Lacedaemonians. Since the fate of both thus hangs upon this single battle,
now, if ever, stand firm, and remember, each and all, that you who are
now going on board are the army and navy of the Athenians, and all that
is left of the state and the great name of Athens, in whose defence if
any man has any advantage in skill or courage, now is the time for him
to show it, and thus serve himself and save all."
After this address Nicias at once
gave orders to man the ships. Meanwhile Gylippus and the Syracusans could
perceive by the preparations which they saw going on that the Athenians
meant to fight at sea. They had also notice of the grappling-irons, against
which they specially provided by stretching hides over the prows and much
of the upper part of their vessels, in order that the irons when thrown
might slip off without taking hold. All being now ready, the generals and
Gylippus addressed them in the following terms:
"Syracusans and allies, the glorious
character of our past achievements and the no less glorious results at
issue in the coming battle are, we think, understood by most of you, or
you would never have thrown yourselves with such ardour into the struggle;
and if there be any one not as fully aware of the facts as he ought to
be, we will declare them to him. The Athenians came to this country first
to effect the conquest of Sicily, and after that, if successful, of Peloponnese
and the rest of Hellas, possessing already the greatest empire yet known,
of present or former times, among the Hellenes. Here for the first time
they found in you men who faced their navy which made them masters everywhere;
you have already defeated them in the previous sea-fights, and will in
all likelihood defeat them again now. When men are once checked in what
they consider their special excellence, their whole opinion of themselves
suffers more than if they had not at first believed in their superiority,
the unexpected shock to their pride causing them to give way more than
their real strength warrants; and this is probably now the case with the
Athenians.
"With us it is different. The original
estimate of ourselves which gave us courage in the days of our unskilfulness
has been strengthened, while the conviction superadded to it that we must
be the best seamen of the time, if we have conquered the best, has given
a double measure of hope to every man among us; and, for the most part,
where there is the greatest hope, there is also the greatest ardour for
action. The means to combat us which they have tried to find in copying
our armament are familiar to our warfare, and will be met by proper provisions;
while they will never be able to have a number of heavy infantry on their
decks, contrary to their custom, and a number of darters (born landsmen,
one may say, Acarnanians and others, embarked afloat, who will not know
how to discharge their weapons when they have to keep still), without hampering
their vessels and falling all into confusion among themselves through fighting
not according to their own tactics. For they will gain nothing by the number
of their ships- I say this to those of you who may be alarmed by having
to fight against odds- as a quantity of ships in a confined space will
only be slower in executing the movements required, and most exposed to
injury from our means of offence. Indeed, if you would know the plain truth,
as we are credibly informed, the excess of their sufferings and the necessities
of their present distress have made them desperate; they have no confidence
in their force, but wish to try their fortune in the only way they can,
and either to force their passage and sail out, or after this to retreat
by land, it being impossible for them to be worse off than they are.
"The fortune of our greatest enemies
having thus betrayed itself, and their disorder being what I have described,
let us engage in anger, convinced that, as between adversaries, nothing
is more legitimate than to claim to sate the whole wrath of one's soul
in punishing the aggressor, and nothing more sweet, as the proverb has
it, than the vengeance upon an enemy, which it will now be ours to take.
That enemies they are and mortal enemies you all know, since they came
here to enslave our country, and if successful had in reserve for our men
all that is most dreadful, and for our children and wives all that is most
dishonourable, and for the whole city the name which conveys the greatest
reproach. None should therefore relent or think it gain if they go away
without further danger to us. This they will do just the same, even if
they get the victory; while if we succeed, as we may expect, in chastising
them, and in handing down to all Sicily her ancient freedom strengthened
and confirmed, we shall have achieved no mean triumph. And the rarest dangers
are those in which failure brings little loss and success the greatest
advantage."
After the above address to the soldiers
on their side, the Syracusan generals and Gylippus now perceived that the
Athenians were manning their ships, and immediately proceeded to man their
own also. Meanwhile Nicias, appalled by the position of affairs, realizing
the greatness and the nearness of the danger now that they were on the
point of putting out from shore, and thinking, as men are apt to think
in great crises, that when all has been done they have still something
left to do, and when all has been said that they have not yet said enough,
again called on the captains one by one, addressing each by his father's
name and by his own, and by that of his tribe, and adjured them not to
belie their own personal renown, or to obscure the hereditary virtues for
which their ancestors were illustrious: he reminded them of their country,
the freest of the free, and of the unfettered discretion allowed in it
to all to live as they pleased; and added other arguments such as men would
use at such a crisis, and which, with little alteration, are made to serve
on all occasions alike- appeals to wives, children, and national gods-
without caring whether they are thought commonplace, but loudly invoking
them in the belief that they will be of use in the consternation of the
moment. Having thus admonished them, not, he felt, as he would, but as
he could, Nicias withdrew and led the troops to the sea, and ranged them
in as long a line as he was able, in order to aid as far as possible in
sustaining the courage of the men afloat; while Demosthenes, Menander,
and Euthydemus, who took the command on board, put out from their own camp
and sailed straight to the barrier across the mouth of the harbour and
to the passage left open, to try to force their way out.
The Syracusans and their allies had
already put out with about the same number of ships as before, a part of
which kept guard at the outlet, and the remainder all round the rest of
the harbour, in order to attack the Athenians on all sides at once; while
the land forces held themselves in readiness at the points at which the
vessels might put into the shore. The Syracusan fleet was commanded by
Sicanus and Agatharchus, who had each a wing of the whole force, with Pythen
and the Corinthians in the centre. When the rest of the Athenians came
up to the barrier, with the first shock of their charge they overpowered
the ships stationed there, and tried to undo the fastenings; after this,
as the Syracusans and allies bore down upon them from all quarters, the
action spread from the barrier over the whole harbour, and was more obstinately
disputed than any of the preceding ones. On either side the rowers showed
great zeal in bringing up their vessels at the boatswains' orders, and
the helmsmen great skill in manoeuvring, and great emulation one with another;
while the ships once alongside, the soldiers on board did their best not
to let the service on deck be outdone by the others; in short, every man
strove to prove himself the first in his particular department. And as
many ships were engaged in a small compass (for these were the largest
fleets fighting in the narrowest space ever known, being together little
short of two hundred), the regular attacks with the beak were few, there
being no opportunity of backing water or of breaking the line; while the
collisions caused by one ship chancing to run foul of another, either in
flying from or attacking a third, were more frequent. So long as a vessel
was coming up to the charge the men on the decks rained darts and arrows
and stones upon her; but once alongside, the heavy infantry tried to board
each other's vessel, fighting hand to hand. In many quarters it happened,
by reason of the narrow room, that a vessel was charging an enemy on one
side and being charged herself on another, and that two or sometimes more
ships had perforce got entangled round one, obliging the helmsmen to attend
to defence here, offence there, not to one thing at once, but to many on
all sides; while the huge din caused by the number of ships crashing together
not only spread terror, but made the orders of the boatswains inaudible.
The boatswains on either side in the discharge of their duty and in the
heat of the conflict shouted incessantly orders and appeals to their men;
the Athenians they urged to force the passage out, and now if ever to show
their mettle and lay hold of a safe return to their country; to the Syracusans
and their allies they cried that it would be glorious to prevent the escape
of the enemy, and, conquering, to exalt the countries that were theirs.
The generals, moreover, on either side, if they saw any in any part of
the battle backing ashore without being forced to do so, called out to
the captain by name and asked him- the Athenians, whether they were retreating
because they thought the thrice hostile shore more their own than that
sea which had cost them so much labour to win; the Syracusans, whether
they were flying from the flying Athenians, whom they well knew to be eager
to escape in whatever way they could.
Meanwhile the two armies on shore,
while victory hung in the balance, were a prey to the most agonizing and
conflicting emotions; the natives thirsting for more glory than they had
already won, while the invaders feared to find themselves in even worse
plight than before. The all of the Athenians being set upon their fleet,
their fear for the event was like nothing they had ever felt; while their
view of the struggle was necessarily as chequered as the battle itself.
Close to the scene of action and not all looking at the same point at once,
some saw their friends victorious and took courage and fell to calling
upon heaven not to deprive them of salvation, while others who had their
eyes turned upon the losers, wailed and cried aloud, and, although spectators,
were more overcome than the actual combatants. Others, again, were gazing
at some spot where the battle was evenly disputed; as the strife was protracted
without decision, their swaying bodies reflected the agitation of their
minds, and they suffered the worst agony of all, ever just within reach
of safety or just on the point of destruction. In short, in that one Athenian
army as long as the sea-fight remained doubtful there was every sound to
be heard at once, shrieks, cheers, "We win," "We lose," and all the other
manifold exclamations that a great host would necessarily utter in great
peril; and with the men in the fleet it was nearly the same; until at last
the Syracusans and their allies, after the battle had lasted a long while,
put the Athenians to flight, and with much shouting and cheering chased
them in open rout to the shore. The naval force, one one way, one another,
as many as were not taken afloat now ran ashore and rushed from on board
their ships to their camp; while the army, no more divided, but carried
away by one impulse, all with shrieks and groans deplored the event, and
ran down, some to help the ships, others to guard what was left of their
wall, while the remaining and most numerous part already began to consider
how they should save themselves. Indeed, the panic of the present moment
had never been surpassed. They now suffered very nearly what they had inflicted
at Pylos; as then the Lacedaemonians with the loss of their fleet lost
also the men who had crossed over to the island, so now the Athenians had
no hope of escaping by land, without the help of some extraordinary accident.
The sea-fight having been a severe
one, and many ships and lives having been lost on both sides, the victorious
Syracusans and their allies now picked up their wrecks and dead, and sailed
off to the city and set up a trophy. The Athenians, overwhelmed by their
misfortune, never even thought. of asking leave to take up their dead or
wrecks, but wished to retreat that very night. Demosthenes, however, went
to Nicias and gave it as his opinion that they should man the ships they
had left and make another effort to force their passage out next morning;
saying that they had still left more ships fit for service than the enemy,
the Athenians having about sixty remaining as against less than fifty of
their opponents. Nicias was quite of his mind; but when they wished to
man the vessels, the sailors refused to go on board, being so utterly overcome
by their defeat as no longer to believe in the possibility of success.
Accordingly they all now made up
their minds to retreat by land. Meanwhile the Syracusan Hermocrates- suspecting
their intention, and impressed by the danger of allowing a force of that
magnitude to retire by land, establish itself in some other part of Sicily,
and from thence renew the war- went and stated his views to the authorities,
and pointed out to them that they ought not to let the enemy get away by
night, but that all the Syracusans and their allies should at once march
out and block up the roads and seize and guard the passes. The authorities
were entirely of his opinion, and thought that it ought to be done, but
on the other hand felt sure that the people, who had given themselves over
to rejoicing, and were taking their ease after a great battle at sea, would
not be easily brought to obey; besides, they were celebrating a festival,
having on that day a sacrifice to Heracles, and most of them in their rapture
at the victory had fallen to drinking at the festival, and would probably
consent to anything sooner than to take up their arms and march out at
that moment. For these reasons the thing appeared impracticable to the
magistrates; and Hermocrates, finding himself unable to do anything further
with them, had now recourse to the following stratagem of his own. What
he feared was that the Athenians might quietly get the start of them by
passing the most difficult places during the night; and he therefore sent,
as soon as it was dusk, some friends of his own to the camp with some horsemen
who rode up within earshot and called out to some of the men, as though
they were well-wishers of the Athenians, and told them to tell Nicias (who
had in fact some correspondents who informed him of what went on inside
the town) not to lead off the army by night as the Syracusans were guarding
the roads, but to make his preparations at his leisure and to retreat by
day. After saying this they departed; and their hearers informed the Athenian
generals, who put off going for that night on the strength of this message,
not doubting its sincerity.
Since after all they had not set
out at once, they now determined to stay also the following day to give
time to the soldiers to pack up as well as they could the most useful articles,
and, leaving everything else behind, to start only with what was strictly
necessary for their personal subsistence. Meanwhile the Syracusans and
Gylippus marched out and blocked up the roads through the country by which
the Athenians were likely to pass, and kept guard at the fords of the streams
and rivers, posting themselves so as to receive them and stop the army
where they thought best; while their fleet sailed up to the beach and towed
off the ships of the Athenians. Some few were burned by the Athenians themselves
as they had intended; the rest the Syracusans lashed on to their own at
their leisure as they had been thrown up on shore, without any one trying
to stop them, and conveyed to the town.
After this, Nicias and Demosthenes
now thinking that enough had been done in the way of preparation, the removal
of the army took place upon the second day after the sea-fight. It was
a lamentable scene, not merely from the single circumstance that they were
retreating after having lost all their ships, their great hopes gone, and
themselves and the state in peril; but also in leaving the camp there were
things most grievous for every eye and heart to contemplate. The dead lay
unburied, and each man as he recognized a friend among them shuddered with
grief and horror; while the living whom they were leaving behind, wounded
or sick, were to the living far more shocking than the dead, and more to
be pitied than those who had perished. These fell to entreating and bewailing
until their friends knew not what to do, begging them to take them and
loudly calling to each individual comrade or relative whom they could see,
hanging upon the necks of their tent-fellows in the act of departure, and
following as far as they could, and, when their bodily strength failed
them, calling again and again upon heaven and shrieking aloud as they were
left behind. So that the whole army being filled with tears and distracted
after this fashion found it not easy to go, even from an enemy's land,
where they had already suffered evils too great for tears and in the unknown
future before them feared to suffer more. Dejection and self-condemnation
were also rife among them. Indeed they could only be compared to a starved-out
town, and that no small one, escaping; the whole multitude upon the march
being not less than forty thousand men. All carried anything they could
which might be of use, and the heavy infantry and troopers, contrary to
their wont, while under arms carried their own victuals, in some cases
for want of servants, in others through not trusting them; as they had
long been deserting and now did so in greater numbers than ever. Yet even
thus they did not carry enough, as there was no longer food in the camp.
Moreover their disgrace generally, and the universality of their sufferings,
however to a certain extent alleviated by being borne in company, were
still felt at the moment a heavy burden, especially when they contrasted
the splendour and glory of their setting out with the humiliation in which
it had ended. For this was by far the greatest reverse that ever befell
an Hellenic army. They had come to enslave others, and were departing in
fear of being enslaved themselves: they had sailed out with prayer and
paeans, and now started to go back with omens directly contrary; travelling
by land instead of by sea, and trusting not in their fleet but in their
heavy infantry. Nevertheless the greatness of the danger still impending
made all this appear tolerable.
Nicias seeing the army dejected and
greatly altered, passed along the ranks and encouraged and comforted them
as far as was possible under the circumstances, raising his voice still
higher and higher as he went from one company to another in his earnestness,
and in his anxiety that the benefit of his words might reach as many as
possible:
"Athenians and allies, even in our
present position we must still hope on, since men have ere now been saved
from worse straits than this; and you must not condemn yourselves too severely
either because of your disasters or because of your present unmerited sufferings.
I myself who am not superior to any of you in strength- indeed you see
how I am in my sickness- and who in the gifts of fortune am, I think, whether
in private life or otherwise, the equal of any, am now exposed to the same
danger as the meanest among you; and yet my life has been one of much devotion
toward the gods, and of much justice and without offence toward men. I
have, therefore, still a strong hope for the future, and our misfortunes
do not terrify me as much as they might. Indeed we may hope that they will
be lightened: our enemies have had good fortune enough; and if any of the
gods was offended at our expedition, we have been already amply punished.
Others before us have attacked their neighbours and have done what men
will do without suffering more than they could bear; and we may now justly
expect to find the gods more kind, for we have become fitter objects for
their pity than their jealousy. And then look at yourselves, mark the numbers
and efficiency of the heavy infantry marching in your ranks, and do not
give way too much to despondency, but reflect that you are yourselves at
once a city wherever you sit down, and that there is no other in Sicily
that could easily resist your attack, or expel you when once established.
The safety and order of the march is for yourselves to look to; the one
thought of each man being that the spot on which he may be forced to fight
must be conquered and held as his country and stronghold. Meanwhile we
shall hasten on our way night and day alike, as our provisions are scanty;
and if we can reach some friendly place of the Sicels, whom fear of the
Syracusans still keeps true to us, you may forthwith consider yourselves
safe. A message has been sent on to them with directions to meet us with
supplies of food. To sum up, be convinced, soldiers, that you must be brave,
as there is no place near for your cowardice to take refuge in, and that
if you now escape from the enemy, you may all see again what your hearts
desire, while those of you who are Athenians will raise up again the great
power of the state, fallen though it be. Men make the city and not walls
or ships without men in them."
As he made this address, Nicias went
along the ranks, and brought back to their place any of the troops that
he saw straggling out of the line; while Demosthenes did as much for his
part of the army, addressing them in words very similar. The army marched
in a hollow square, the division under Nicias leading, and that of Demosthenes
following, the heavy infantry being outside and the baggage-carriers and
the bulk of the army in the middle. When they arrived at the ford of the
river Anapus there they found drawn up a body of the Syracusans and allies,
and routing these, made good their passage and pushed on, harassed by the
charges of the Syracusan horse and by the missiles of their light troops.
On that day they advanced about four miles and a half, halting for the
night upon a certain hill. On the next they started early and got on about
two miles further, and descended into a place in the plain and there encamped,
in order to procure some eatables from the houses, as the place was inhabited,
and to carry on with them water from thence, as for many furlongs in front,
in the direction in which they were going, it was not plentiful. The Syracusans
meanwhile went on and fortified the pass in front, where there was a steep
hill with a rocky ravine on each side of it, called the Acraean cliff.
The next day the Athenians advancing found themselves impeded by the missiles
and charges of the horse and darters, both very numerous, of the Syracusans
and allies; and after fighting for a long while, at length retired to the
same camp, where they had no longer provisions as before, it being impossible
to leave their position by reason of the cavalry.
Early next morning they started afresh
and forced their way to the hill, which had been fortified, where they
found before them the enemy's infantry drawn up many shields deep to defend
the fortification, the pass being narrow. The Athenians assaulted the work,
but were greeted by a storm of missiles from the hill, which told with
the greater effect through its being a steep one, and unable to force the
passage, retreated again and rested. Meanwhile occurred some claps of thunder
and rain, as often happens towards autumn, which still further disheartened
the Athenians, who thought all these things to be omens of their approaching
ruin. While they were resting, Gylippus and the Syracusans sent a part
of their army to throw up works in their rear on the way by which they
had advanced; however, the Athenians immediately sent some of their men
and prevented them; after which they retreated more towards the plain and
halted for the night. When they advanced the next day the Syracusans surrounded
and attacked them on every side, and disabled many of them, falling back
if the Athenians advanced and coming on if they retired, and in particular
assaulting their rear, in the hope of routing them in detail, and thus
striking a panic into the whole army. For a long while the Athenians persevered
in this fashion, but after advancing for four or five furlongs halted to
rest in the plain, the Syracusans also withdrawing to their own camp.
During the night Nicias and Demosthenes,
seeing the wretched condition of their troops, now in want of every kind
of necessary, and numbers of them disabled in the numerous attacks of the
enemy, determined to light as many fires as possible, and to lead off the
army, no longer by the same route as they had intended, but towards the
sea in the opposite direction to that guarded by the Syracusans. The whole
of this route was leading the army not to Catana but to the other side
of Sicily, towards Camarina, Gela, and the other Hellenic and barbarian
towns in that quarter. They accordingly lit a number of fires and set out
by night. Now all armies, and the greatest most of all, are liable to fears
and alarms, especially when they are marching by night through an enemy's
country and with the enemy near; and the Athenians falling into one of
these panics, the leading division, that of Nicias, kept together and got
on a good way in front, while that of Demosthenes, comprising rather more
than half the army, got separated and marched on in some disorder. By morning,
however, they reached the sea, and getting into the Helorine road, pushed
on in order to reach the river Cacyparis, and to follow the stream up through
the interior, where they hoped to be met by the Sicels whom they had sent
for. Arrived at the river, they found there also a Syracusan party engaged
in barring the passage of the ford with a wall and a palisade, and forcing
this guard, crossed the river and went on to another called the Erineus,
according to the advice of their guides.
Meanwhile, when day came and the
Syracusans and allies found that the Athenians were gone, most of them
accused Gylippus of having let them escape on purpose, and hastily pursuing
by the road which they had no difficulty in finding that they had taken,
overtook them about dinner-time. They first came up with the troops under
Demosthenes, who were behind and marching somewhat slowly and in disorder,
owing to the night panic above referred to, and at once attacked and engaged
them, the Syracusan horse surrounding them with more ease now that they
were separated from the rest and hemming them in on one spot. The division
of Nicias was five or six miles on in front, as he led them more rapidly,
thinking that under the circumstances their safety lay not in staying and
fighting, unless obliged, but in retreating as fast as possible, and only
fighting when forced to do so. On the other hand, Demosthenes was, generally
speaking, harassed more incessantly, as his post in the rear left him the
first exposed to the attacks of the enemy; and now, finding that the Syracusans
were in pursuit, he omitted to push on, in order to form his men for battle,
and so lingered until he was surrounded by his pursuers and himself and
the Athenians with him placed in the most distressing position, being huddled
into an enclosure with a wall all round it, a road on this side and on
that, and olive-trees in great number, where missiles were showered in
upon them from every quarter. This mode of attack the Syracusans had with
good reason adopted in preference to fighting at close quarters, as to
risk a struggle with desperate men was now more for the advantage of the
Athenians than for their own; besides, their success had now become so
certain that they began to spare themselves a little in order not to be
cut off in the moment of victory, thinking too that, as it was, they would
be able in this way to subdue and capture the enemy.
In fact, after plying the Athenians
and allies all day long from every side with missiles, they at length saw
that they were worn out with their wounds and other sufferings; and Gylippus
and the Syracusans and their allies made a proclamation, offering their
liberty to any of the islanders who chose to come over to them; and some
few cities went over. Afterwards a capitulation was agreed upon for all
the rest with Demosthenes, to lay down their arms on condition that no
one was to be put to death either by violence or imprisonment or want of
the necessaries of life. Upon this they surrendered to the number of six
thousand in all, laying down all the money in their possession, which filled
the hollows of four shields, and were immediately conveyed by the Syracusans
to the town.
Meanwhile Nicias with his division
arrived that day at the river Erineus, crossed over, and posted his army
upon some high ground upon the other side. The next day the Syracusans
overtook him and told him that the troops under Demosthenes had surrendered,
and invited him to follow their example. Incredulous of the fact, Nicias
asked for a truce to send a horseman to see, and upon the return of the
messenger with the tidings that they had surrendered, sent a herald to
Gylippus and the Syracusans, saying that he was ready to agree with them
on behalf of the Athenians to repay whatever money the Syracusans had spent
upon the war if they would let his army go; and offered until the money
was paid to give Athenians as hostages, one for every talent. The Syracusans
and Gylippus rejected this proposition, and attacked this division as they
had the other, standing all round and plying them with missiles until the
evening. Food and necessaries were as miserably wanting to the troops of
Nicias as they had been to their comrades; nevertheless they watched for
the quiet of the night to resume their march. But as they were taking up
their arms the Syracusans perceived it and raised their paean, upon which
the Athenians, finding that they were discovered, laid them down again,
except about three hundred men who forced their way through the guards
and went on during the night as they were able.
As soon as it was day Nicias put
his army in motion, pressed, as before, by the Syracusans and their allies,
pelted from every side by their missiles, and struck down by their javelins.
The Athenians pushed on for the Assinarus, impelled by the attacks made
upon them from every side by a numerous cavalry and the swarm of other
arms, fancying that they should breathe more freely if once across the
river, and driven on also by their exhaustion and craving for water. Once
there they rushed in, and all order was at an end, each man wanting to
cross first, and the attacks of the enemy making it difficult to cross
at all; forced to huddle together, they fell against and trod down one
another, some dying immediately upon the javelins, others getting entangled
together and stumbling over the articles of baggage, without being able
to rise again. Meanwhile the opposite bank, which was steep, was lined
by the Syracusans, who showered missiles down upon the Athenians, most
of them drinking greedily and heaped together in disorder in the hollow
bed of the river. The Peloponnesians also came down and butchered them,
especially those in the water, which was thus immediately spoiled, but
which they went on drinking just the same, mud and all, bloody as it was,
most even fighting to have it.
At last, when many dead now lay piled
one upon another in the stream, and part of the army had been destroyed
at the river, and the few that escaped from thence cut off by the cavalry,
Nicias surrendered himself to Gylippus, whom he trusted more than he did
the Syracusans, and told him and the Lacedaemonians to do what they liked
with him, but to stop the slaughter of the soldiers. Gylippus, after this,
immediately gave orders to make prisoners; upon which the rest were brought
together alive, except a large number secreted by the soldiery, and a party
was sent in pursuit of the three hundred who had got through the guard
during the night, and who were now taken with the rest. The number of the
enemy collected as public property was not considerable; but that secreted
was very large, and all Sicily was filled with them, no convention having
been made in their case as for those taken with Demosthenes. Besides this,
a large portion were killed outright, the carnage being very great, and
not exceeded by any in this Sicilian war. In the numerous other encounters
upon the march, not a few also had fallen. Nevertheless many escaped, some
at the moment, others served as slaves, and then ran away subsequently.
These found refuge at Catana.
The Syracusans and their allies now
mustered and took up the spoils and as many prisoners as they could, and
went back to the city. The rest of their Athenian and allied captives were
deposited in the quarries, this seeming the safest way of keeping them;
but Nicias and Demosthenes were butchered, against the will of Gylippus,
who thought that it would be the crown of his triumph if he could take
the enemy's generals to Lacedaemon. One of them, as it happened, Demosthenes,
was one of her greatest enemies, on account of the affair of the island
and of Pylos; while the other, Nicias, was for the same reasons one of
her greatest friends, owing to his exertions to procure the release of
the prisoners by persuading the Athenians to make peace. For these reasons
the Lacedaemonians felt kindly towards him; and it was in this that Nicias
himself mainly confided when he surrendered to Gylippus. But some of the
Syracusans who had been in correspondence with him were afraid, it was
said, of his being put to the torture and troubling their success by his
revelations; others, especially the Corinthians, of his escaping, as he
was wealthy, by means of bribes, and living to do them further mischief;
and these persuaded the allies and put him to death. This or the like was
the cause of the death of a man who, of all the Hellenes in my time, least
deserved such a fate, seeing that the whole course of his life had been
regulated with strict attention to virtue.
The prisoners in the quarries were
at first hardly treated by the Syracusans. Crowded in a narrow hole, without
any roof to cover them, the heat of the sun and the stifling closeness
of the air tormented them during the day, and then the nights, which came
on autumnal and chilly, made them ill by the violence of the change; besides,
as they had to do everything in the same place for want of room, and the
bodies of those who died of their wounds or from the variation in the temperature,
or from similar causes, were left heaped together one upon another, intolerable
stenches arose; while hunger and thirst never ceased to afflict them, each
man during eight months having only half a pint of water and a pint of
corn given him daily. In short, no single suffering to be apprehended by
men thrust into such a place was spared them. For some seventy days they
thus lived all together, after which all, except the Athenians and any
Siceliots or Italiots who had joined in the expedition, were sold. The
total number of prisoners taken it would be difficult to state exactly,
but it could not have been less than seven thousand.
This was the greatest Hellenic achievement
of any in thig war, or, in my opinion, in Hellenic history; at once most
glorious to the victors, and most calamitous to the conquered. They were
beaten at all points and altogether; all that they suffered was great;
they were destroyed, as the saying is, with a total destruction, their
fleet, their army, everything was destroyed, and few out of many returned
home. Such were the events in Sicily. |
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