History of the Peloponnesian War

For the Corinthians, after the ambassadors came to them, and brought a more favourable report of affairs in Sicily, thinking that they had not been unseasonable in sending their former squadron, were now much more encouraged, and prepared, on their part, to despatch heavy-armed troops for Sicily in vessels of burden, as the Lacedaemonians did likewise from the rest of the Peloponnese.

The Corinthians manned also five and twenty triremes, to try the result of a battle with the squadron keeping watch at Naupactus, and that the Athenians there might be less able to prevent their transports from putting out, having to keep an eye upon the Corinthian line of triremes drawn up against them.

The Lacedaemonians prepared, too, for their invasion of Attica, both in accordance with their own previous resolution, and at the instigation of the Syracusans and Corinthians, since they had heard of the reinforcements about to be sent from Athens to Sicily; that they might be stopped by an incursion being made into the country. Alcibiades also kept urgently advising them to fortify Decelea, and not to let the war rest.

But most of all had they gained confidence, because they thought that the Athenians, being engaged in a two-fold war with both themselves and the Siceliots, would be more easily subdued; and also because they considered them to have first broken the truce. For in the former course of hostilities they thought the guilt lay more on their own side, both because the Thebans had entered Plataea during a time of truce; and because, when it had been specified in the former treaty, that none should take up arms against others, if they were willing to submit to a judicial decision, they themselves had not listened to the Athenians when appealing to such a decision. On which account they considered that they were justly unsuccessful, and made both their misfortune at Pylus, and whatever other might have befallen them, a subject of serious reflection.

But when the Athenians had set out from Argos with those thirty ships, and ravaged a part of Epidaurus, Prasiae, and some other places, at the same time that they were also spreading devastation from Pylus; and when they refused to intrust the matter to arbitration, though the Lacedaemonians. as often as differences had arisen concerning any of the debatable points in the treaty, appealed to a judicial decision; then, indeed, the Lacedaemonians thought that the violation of the law, which in the former instance had been committed by themselves, had now, again, come in the same way to attach to the Athenians, and they were, therefore, eager for hostilities.

Accordingly, during this winter they sent round to their allies orders for iron, and were getting all the tools ready for building their fort. At the same time they were themselves raising supplies, and compelling the rest of the Peloponnesians to do so, with a view to despatching in the merchantmen succours to those in Sicily. And so the winter ended, and the eighteenth year of this war, of which Thucydides wrote the history.

The following spring, at its very commencement, the Lacedaemonians and their allies made a very early incursion into Attica, under the command of Agis son of Archidamus, king of the Lacedaemonians. In the first place, then, they ravaged the parts of the country about the plain, and then proceeded to fortify Decelea, dividing the work amongst the contingents of the different states.

The place is distant from the city of Athens about a hundred and twenty stades, and about the same, or not much more, from Boeotia. Now the fortress was raised for the annoyance of the plain and the richest parts of the country, being visible as far as Athens.

Thus, then, the Peloponnesians in Attica, and their allies, were engaged with their building. Those in the Peloponnese, about the same time, were sending off their heavy-armed troops to Sicily in the merchantmen, the Lacedaemonians having picked for the purpose the best of the Helots and Neodamodes, amounting both together to seven hundred, with Eccritus, a Spartan, in command of them, and the Boeotians, three hundred heavy-armed, under the command of Xeno and Nico. Thebans, and Hegesander, a Thespian.

These started amongst the first from Taenarus, in Laconia, and put out into the open sea. Not long after them, the Corinthians despatched five hundred heavy-armed, some from Corinth itself, and some hired from Arcadia besides, having appointed Alexarchus, a Corinthian, to the command of them. The Sicyonians also sent off, at the same time with the Corinthians, two hundred heavy-armed under the command of Sargeus, a Sicyonian.

In the mean time the five and twenty ships of the Corinthians, which had been manned in the winter, were stationed in opposition to the twenty Athenian vessels at Naupactus, till they had got these heavy-armed on board the merchantmen out to sea: for which purpose, indeed, they had been originally manned, that the Athenians might not attend to the merchantmen so much as to the triremes.

Meanwhile the Athenians, at the time of the fortifica tion of Decelea, and at the very commencement of the spring, sent thirty ships to cruise round the Peloponnese, under the command of Charicles son of Apollodorus, who was ordered to go to Argos also, and call for a contingent of their heavy-armed to go on board, according to the terms of their alliance.

Demosthenes, too, they despatched to Sicily, as they had intended, with sixty Athenian ships, and five Chian, twelve hundred Athenian heavy-armed from the muster-roll, and as many islanders as they could possibly raise from the several places; while they also supplied themselves from the other subject allies with whatever they could get in any quarter that would be of service for the war. Moreover, he was instructed, as he sailed round, to join Charicles first in his military measures on the coast of Laconia.

So Demosthenes, after sailing to aegina, waited for any part of the armament that might have been left behind, as well as for Charicles to fetch the Argive troops.

In Sicily, about the same period of this spring, Gylippus came to Syracuse, bringing from the cities which he had persuaded to join him as large a number of troops as he respectively could.

And now, having called the Syracusans together, he said that they ought to man as many ships as possible, and try the experiment of a sea-fight; for that he hoped to produce thereby a result worth the risk, towards the issue of the war.

Hermocrates, too, most earnestly joined him in trying to persuade them, in order that they might not rant courage for attacking the Athenians by sea; observing, that that people had no more than themselves enjoyed an hereditary and perpetual experience at sea, but had become a naval power after being, even more than the Syracusans, an inland one; and only because they were compelled to do so by the Medes. And to men of a daring character, like the Athenians, those who were daring in opposition to them would appear most formidable: for the terror with which that people paralysed their enemies, not, in some cases, by being superior to them in power, but by attacking them with confidence, they, too, would in the same way strike into their opponents.

And he was well assured, he said, that the Syracusans, by unexpectedly daring to offer resistance to the navy of the Athenians, would in a greater degree gain advantage from the surprise of the enemy on that account, than the Athenians by their skill would harm the unskilful Syracusans.

He urged them therefore to proceed to the trial with their fleet, and not to shrink from it. Accordingly the Syracusans, at the persuasion of Gylippus, Hermocrates, and whoever else joined them, resolved on the sea-fight, and proceeded to man their ships.

When Gylippus had prepared the fleet for action, he took the whole army under cover of the night, and himself intended to assault by land the forts on Plemyrium, while at the same time, according to agreement, thirty-five of the Syracusan triremes sailed to the attack from the great harbour, and forty-five sailed round from the lesser, where their arsenal was situated; wishing to effect a junction with those within, and at the same time to sail against Plemyrium, in order that the enemy might be disconcerted by an attack on both sides.

The Athenians, on the other hand, having with all speed manned sixty ships to oppose them, with five and twenty of them engaged the five and thirty of the Syracusans that were in the great harbour, and with the remainder went to meet those that were sailing round from the arsenal. Thus they immediately entered into action before the mouth of the great harbour, and for a long time resisted each other, the one side wishing to force an entrance, the other being anxious to prevent them.

In the mean time Gylippus, when the Athenians in Plemyrium had gone down to the sea, and were paying attention to the naval engagement, surprised them by suddenly at daybreak assaulting the forts, of which he took the largest first, and then the other two; their garrisons not having awaited his attack, when they saw the largest easily carried.

From the first that was taken the men escaped with difficulty to their camp, as many of them as took refuge in their boats and merchantmen; for as the Syracusans were getting the better in the engagement with their ships in the great harbour, the fugitives were chased by one trireme, and that a fast sailer; but when the other two forts were taken, at that time the Syracusans, in their turn, were now being beaten, and so those who were flying out of the forts sailed along shore with greater ease.

For the Syracusan ships that were fighting before the mouth of the harbour, having forced their way through those of the Athenians, sailed in without any order, and being entangled with one another, transferred the victory to the Athenians; who routed both these, and those by which they were at first being defeated in the harbour.

They also sank eleven of the Syracusan ships, killing most of the men on board of them, excepting those whom they took prisoners from three vessels; while on their own side three ships were lost. After hauling up the wrecks of the Syracusans, and erecting a trophy on the small island in front of Plemyrium, they withdrew to their own encampment.

But although the Syracusans had thus fared with regard to the sea-fight, they were still in possession of the three forts on Plemyrium, and erected three trophies for them. One of the two forts last taken they razed, but the other two they repaired, and held with garrisons.

In the capture of the forts many men were killed, and many made prisoners, and a large amount of property in all was taken: for inasmuch as the Athenians used them as a magazine, there was in them much property and corn belonging to merchants, and much also belonging to trierarchs, since there were taken in them, besides other things, masts for forty triremes, with the rest of their equipments, and also three triremes which had been drawn up on shore.

Indeed, what most and principally ruined the army of the Athenians was the taking of Plemyrium; since even the entrance into the harbour was no longer secure for carrying in provisions; (for the Syracusans, blockading them at that point with their vessels, prevented it, and their getting them in was now always effected by battle;) and in other respects it struck consternation and dismay into their forces.

After this, the Syracusans sent out twelve ships, with Agatharchus, a Syracusan, on board of them as commander One of these went to the Peloponnese, carrying ambassadors, both to tell of their own affairs, "of the hopes they were fill of, and to excite them to the still more vigorous prosecution of the war in those parts. The other eleven ships sailed to Italy, hearing that some vessels laden with treasure were on their way to the Athenians.

Having fallen in with these vessels, they destroyed most of their contents, and burnt a quantity of timber in the Caulonian territory, which had been got ready for the Athenians.

After this they came to Locri, and while lying at anchor there, one of the merchantmen from the Peloponnese put in to shore, carrying a heavy-armed band of Thespians. Having taken these on board their ships, the Syracusans coasted on homewards.

The Athenians, with their twenty vessels at Megara, being on the look-out for them, took one ship with its crew; the rest they could not overtake, but they escaped from them 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, in order that their ships might he at anchor within them, and the Athenians might not sail against them, and injure them by their charge. For the Athenians having brought up to them a ship of ten thousand talents burden, carrying wooden towers and screens, from their boats fastened ropes round the piles, and raised them with windlasses, and tore them up, or, diving down, sawed them in two.

The Syracusans plied their missiles on them from the docks, and the men on the ship of burden discharged theirs in return; and at last the Athenians removed the greater part of the piles. But the most dangerous part of the stockade was that out of sight:

for there were some of the piles which they drove that did not rise above the surface of the sea, so that it was dangerous to approach, lest any one, through not seeing them beforehand, might strike his ship on them, as on a sunken rock. But even in the case of these divers went down and sawed them off for a reward; but the Syracusans made, notwithstanding, a fresh stockade.

Many other also were the contrivances which they employed against one another, as was natural with the armaments lying near, and opposed to, each other; and they were engaged in skirmishes, and attempts of every kind.

The Syracusans also sent to the cities embassies composed of Corinthians, Ambraciots, and Lacedaemonians, with tidings of the capture of Plemyriunm, and to state, with regard to the sea-fight, that it was not so much by the power of the enemy as by their own confusion that they had been beaten; while, in other respects, they were to inform them that they were in good hope, and to call upon them to come to their aid, both with ships and troops; as the Athenians also were expected with a fresh force, and if they could but destroy their present armament before it came, there would be an end to the war. The parties in Sicily, then, were thus engaged.

Demosthenes, on the other hand, when the armament had been collected by him with which he was to sail to Sicily to the aid of the force there, having put to sea from Aegina and sailed to the Peloponnese, joined Charicles and the thirty ships of the Athenians.

After receiving the heavy-armed troops of the Argives on board their ships, they sailed to Laconia, and in the first place ravaged a part of Epidaurus Limera. Then, landing on the coast of Laconia opposite Cythera, where stands the temple of Apollo, they fortified a certain place in the form of an isthmus, in order that the Lacedaemonian helots might desert to them there, and at the same time foraging parties might make incursions from it, as from Pylus.

And now, immediately after assisting to occupy this spot, Demosthenes sailed on for Corcyra, that he might take up some of the allies there also, and proceed as quickly as possible on his voyage to Sicily. Charicles, on the other hand, waited until he had entirely fortified the place; when, having left a garrison there, he, too, afterwards returned home with his thirty ships, and the Argives at the same time.

There came also to Athens this same summer, to serve as targeteers, a body of Thracians who carry swords, of the tribe of the Dii, thirteen hundred in number, who were to have sailed to Sicily with Demosthenes;

but as they had come too late, the Athenians determined to send them back again to Thrace, the country they had come from, as it seemed too expensive to keep them for the war carried on from Decelea. since each of them received a drachma a day.

For since Decelea had been first fortified by the whole Peloponnesian army during this summer, and afterwards was occupied for the annoyance of the country by garrisons coming from the states at successive periods, it greatly injured the Athenians, and was amongst the principal things that ruined their interests, both by the destruction of property and the loss of men.

For previously the invasions were but of brief duration, and did not prevent their enjoying their territory at other times; but then, when the enemy were continually stationed there for their annoyance, and sometimes attacked them with a more numerous force, while at other times the regular garrison of necessity made incursions on the land, and forayed it, Agis the Lacedaemonian king being also present, (who made no by work of the war,) the Athenians suffered severely in consequence;

for they were deprived of their whole country, and more than twenty thousand slaves had deserted, a great part of them being artisans; and all their sheep and beasts of burden were lost. Their horses also, as the cavalry were daily on the move, making excursions to Decelea and keeping guard in the country, were either lamed by being worked on rocky ground, and that continually, or were disabled by wounds.

The conveyance also of provisions from Euboea, which was before effected more quickly by land from Oropus, through Decelea, was now carried on with great expense by sea, round Sunium. Indeed the city required every thing alike to be imported; and instead of being a city, it was reduced to a garrison.

For the Athenians were harassed by keeping guard on the fortifications, in succession by day, and all of them (excepting the cavalry) by night—some being on duty where the arms were piled, and others on the walls—both summer and winter alike. But what pressed hardest on them was, that they were engaged in two wars at once, and had arrived at such a pitch of obstinate animosity as no one would have believed, if he had heard it before it actually occurred.

For that even when besieged by the Peloponnesians from the fortress in their country, they should not even then have withdrawn from Sicily, but have proceeded, in their turn, to besiege Syracuse in the same manner, a city not less than Athens, considered by itself; and that they should have exhibited to the Greeks so unexpected a display of power and daring, that whereas, in the beginning of the war, some of them thought they might hold out one year, some two, some even three, but no one longer, if the Peloponnesians should invade their country, they now, in the seventeenth year after the first invasion, went to Sicily, when distressed by hostilities in every way, and entered upon another war besides, not less important than that which they already had with the Peloponnese, [who, I say, would have believed this before it actually took place?] It was owing to these things, then, to the great injury which Decelea inflicted on them, and the other great expenses which befell them, that they were reduced to straits for want of money;

and it was at this time that they imposed on their subjects the tax of the twentieth on all sea-borne commodities, instead of the tribute, thinking that thus a larger amount of money would be raised by them. For their expenses were not on the same scale as before, but much greater; inasmuch as the war also was greater, while their revenues were being destroyed.

These Thracians, then, who came too late for Demosthenes, as they did not, in consequence of their present want of money, wish to incur expense, they immediately sent back, having commissioned Diitrephes to convey them, and instructed him at the same time to inflict by their means whatever harm he could on the enemy during the voyage along shore, (for they were to pass through the Euripus.)

Accordingly he landed them at Tanagra, and carried off some plunder in a hurried manner; and then in the evening sailed across the Euripus from Chalcis in Euboea, and landing them in Boeotia, led them against Mycalessus.

During the night he bivouacked unobserved near the temple of Mercury, distant from Mycalessus about sixteen stades, and at day-break assaulted the town, which was not a large one, and took it; having fallen on the inhabitants whilst off their guard, and not expecting that any one would ever march up the country so far from the sea to attack them; their wall, too, being weak, and in some parts even fallen down, while in other parts it was built but low; and the gates, moreover, being open through their feeling of security.

The Thracians, then, having burst into Mycalessus, plundered both private houses and temples, and butchered the inhabitants, sparing neither old age nor youth, but killing one after another all they met with, both children and women, nay, further, even cattle and beasts of burden, and whatever other living things they saw. For the Thracian race, like the most blood-thirsty of the barbarians, is most so when secure from resistance. And thus on that occasion there was no little confusion in other respects, and every form of butchery was exhibited.

And, in particular, they attacked a boys' school, the largest there was in the place, (which the children had just entered,) and cut them all to pieces. And this disaster, which fell on the whole town, was inferior to none in extent, while it was more unexpected and shocking than any other.

When the Thebans were aware of it, they marched to the rescue; and having overtaken the Thracians when they had not at present advanced any great distance, they both recovered their plundered property, and having struck them with panic pursued them down to the sea, where their boats which conveyed them were lying at anchor.

And they slew the greatest part of them during their embarkation, as they could not swim, and as those on board the boats, on seeing what was going on ashore, moored them out of bow-shot. For in the rest of the retreat the Thracians advanced in no contemptible manner to meet the Theban horse, which first fell upon them; and closing their ranks, according to their native tactics, defended themselves against them; and thus only a few were killed in that part of the affair. Some portion of them also were surprised in the city, through their eagerness in plundering, and perished. Altogether, there fell of the Thracians two hundred and fifty out of thirteen hundred;