History of the Peloponnesian War, Thucydides [best free ebook reader TXT] 📗
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assembly of the Lacedaemonians. He said that he could not determine
which was the loudest acclamation (their mode of decision is by
acclamation not by voting); the fact being that he wished to make them
declare their opinion openly and thus to increase their ardour for
war. Accordingly he said: “All Lacedaemonians who are of opinion
that the treaty has been broken, and that Athens is guilty, leave your
seats and go there,” pointing out a certain place; “all who are of the
opposite opinion, there.” They accordingly stood up and divided; and
those who held that the treaty had been broken were in a decided
majority. Summoning the allies, they told them that their opinion
was that Athens had been guilty of injustice, but that they wished
to convoke all the allies and put it to the vote; in order that they
might make war, if they decided to do so, on a common resolution.
Having thus gained their point, the delegates returned home at once;
the Athenian envoys a little later, when they had dispatched the
objects of their mission. This decision of the assembly, judging
that the treaty had been broken, was made in the fourteenth year of
the thirty years’ truce, which was entered into after the affair of
Euboea.
The Lacedaemonians voted that the treaty had been broken, and that
the war must be declared, not so much because they were persuaded by
the arguments of the allies, as because they feared the growth of
the power of the Athenians, seeing most of Hellas already subject to
them.
_From the end of the Persian to the beginning of the
Peloponnesian War - The Progress from Supremacy to Empire_
The way in which Athens came to be placed in the circumstances
under which her power grew was this. After the Medes had returned
from Europe, defeated by sea and land by the Hellenes, and after
those of them who had fled with their ships to Mycale had been
destroyed, Leotychides, king of the Lacedaemonians, the commander of
the Hellenes at Mycale, departed home with the allies from
Peloponnese. But the Athenians and the allies from Ionia and
Hellespont, who had now revolted from the King, remained and laid
siege to Sestos, which was still held by the Medes. After wintering
before it, they became masters of the place on its evacuation by the
barbarians; and after this they sailed away from Hellespont to their
respective cities. Meanwhile the Athenian people, after the departure
of the barbarian from their country, at once proceeded to carry over
their children and wives, and such property as they had left, from
the places where they had deposited them, and prepared to rebuild
their city and their walls. For only isolated portions of the
circumference had been left standing, and most of the houses were in
ruins; though a few remained, in which the Persian grandees had taken
up their quarters.
Perceiving what they were going to do, the Lacedaemonians sent an
embassy to Athens. They would have themselves preferred to see neither
her nor any other city in possession of a wall; though here they acted
principally at the instigation of their allies, who were alarmed at
the strength of her newly acquired navy and the valour which she had
displayed in the war with the Medes. They begged her not only to
abstain from building walls for herself, but also to join them in
throwing down the walls that still held together of the
ultra-Peloponnesian cities. The real meaning of their advice, the
suspicion that it contained against the Athenians, was not proclaimed;
it was urged that so the barbarian, in the event of a third
invasion, would not have any strong place, such as he now had in
Thebes, for his base of operations; and that Peloponnese would suffice
for all as a base both for retreat and offence. After the
Lacedaemonians had thus spoken, they were, on the advice of
Themistocles, immediately dismissed by the Athenians, with the
answer that ambassadors should be sent to Sparta to discuss the
question. Themistocles told the Athenians to send him off with all
speed to Lacedaemon, but not to dispatch his colleagues as soon as
they had selected them, but to wait until they had raised their wall
to the height from which defence was possible. Meanwhile the whole
population in the city was to labour at the wall, the Athenians, their
wives, and their children, sparing no edifice, private or public,
which might be of any use to the work, but throwing all down. After
giving these instructions, and adding that he would be responsible for
all other matters there, he departed. Arrived at Lacedaemon he did not
seek an audience with the authorities, but tried to gain time and made
excuses. When any of the government asked him why he did not appear in
the assembly, he would say that he was waiting for his colleagues, who
had been detained in Athens by some engagement; however, that he
expected their speedy arrival, and wondered that they were not yet
there. At first the Lacedaemonians trusted the words of
Themistocles, through their friendship for him; but when others
arrived, all distinctly declaring that the work was going on and
already attaining some elevation, they did not know how to
disbelieve it. Aware of this, he told them that rumours are deceptive,
and should not be trusted; they should send some reputable persons
from Sparta to inspect, whose report might be trusted. They dispatched
them accordingly. Concerning these Themistocles secretly sent word
to the Athenians to detain them as far as possible without putting
them under open constraint, and not to let them go until they had
themselves returned. For his colleagues had now joined him,
Abronichus, son of Lysicles, and Aristides, son of Lysimachus, with
the news that the wall was sufficiently advanced; and he feared that
when the Lacedaemonians heard the facts, they might refuse to let them
go. So the Athenians detained the envoys according to his message, and
Themistocles had an audience with the Lacedaemonians, and at last
openly told them that Athens was now fortified sufficiently to protect
its inhabitants; that any embassy which the Lacedaemonians or their
allies might wish to send to them should in future proceed on the
assumption that the people to whom they were going was able to
distinguish both its own and the general interests. That when the
Athenians thought fit to abandon their city and to embark in their
ships, they ventured on that perilous step without consulting them;
and that on the other hand, wherever they had deliberated with the
Lacedaemonians, they had proved themselves to be in judgment second to
none. That they now thought it fit that their city should have a wall,
and that this would be more for the advantage of both the citizens
of Athens and the Hellenic confederacy; for without equal military
strength it was impossible to contribute equal or fair counsel to
the common interest. It followed, he observed, either that all the
members of the confederacy should be without walls, or that the
present step should be considered a right one.
The Lacedaemonians did not betray any open signs of anger against
the Athenians at what they heard. The embassy, it seems, was
prompted not by a desire to obstruct, but to guide the counsels of
their government: besides, Spartan feeling was at that time very
friendly towards Athens on account of the patriotism which she had
displayed in the struggle with the Mede. Still the defeat of their
wishes could not but cause them secret annoyance. The envoys of each
state departed home without complaint.
In this way the Athenians walled their city in a little while. To
this day the building shows signs of the haste of its execution; the
foundations are laid of stones of all kinds, and in some places not
wrought or fitted, but placed just in the order in which they were
brought by the different hands; and many columns, too, from tombs, and
sculptured stones were put in with the rest. For the bounds of the
city were extended at every point of the circumference; and so they
laid hands on everything without exception in their haste.
Themistocles also persuaded them to finish the walls of Piraeus, which
had been begun before, in his year of office as archon; being
influenced alike by the fineness of a locality that has three
natural harbours, and by the great start which the Athenians would
gain in the acquisition of power by becoming a naval people. For he
first ventured to tell them to stick to the sea and forthwith began to
lay the foundations of the empire. It was by his advice, too, that
they built the walls of that thickness which can still be discerned
round Piraeus, the stones being brought up by two wagons meeting
each other. Between the walls thus formed there was neither rubble nor
mortar, but great stones hewn square and fitted together, cramped to
each other on the outside with iron and lead. About half the height
that he intended was finished. His idea was by their size and
thickness to keep off the attacks of an enemy; he thought that they
might be adequately defended by a small garrison of invalids, and
the rest be freed for service in the fleet. For the fleet claimed most
of his attention. He saw, as I think, that the approach by sea was
easier for the king’s army than that by land: he also thought
Piraeus more valuable than the upper city; indeed, he was always
advising the Athenians, if a day should come when they were hard
pressed by land, to go down into Piraeus, and defy the world with
their fleet. Thus, therefore, the Athenians completed their wall,
and commenced their other buildings immediately after the retreat of
the Mede.
Meanwhile Pausanias, son of Cleombrotus, was sent out from
Lacedaemon as commander-in-chief of the Hellenes, with twenty ships
from Peloponnese. With him sailed the Athenians with thirty ships, and
a number of the other allies. They made an expedition against Cyprus
and subdued most of the island, and afterwards against Byzantium,
which was in the hands of the Medes, and compelled it to surrender.
This event took place while the Spartans were still supreme. But the
violence of Pausanias had already begun to be disagreeable to the
Hellenes, particularly to the Ionians and the newly liberated
populations. These resorted to the Athenians and requested them as
their kinsmen to become their leaders, and to stop any attempt at
violence on the part of Pausanias. The Athenians accepted their
overtures, and determined to put down any attempt of the kind and to
settle everything else as their interests might seem to demand. In the
meantime the Lacedaemonians recalled Pausanias for an investigation of
the reports which had reached them. Manifold and grave accusations had
been brought against him by Hellenes arriving in Sparta; and, to all
appearance, there had been in him more of the mimicry of a despot than
of the attitude of a general. As it happened, his recall came just
at the time when the hatred which he had inspired had induced the
allies to desert him, the soldiers from Peloponnese excepted, and to
range themselves by the side of the Athenians. On his arrival at
Lacedaemon, he was censured for his private acts of oppression, but
was acquitted on the heaviest counts and pronounced not guilty; it
must be known that the charge of Medism formed one of the principal,
and to all appearance one of the best founded, articles against him.
The Lacedaemonians did not, however, restore him to his command, but
sent out Dorkis and certain others with a small force; who found the
allies no
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