History of the Peloponnesian War, Thucydides [best free ebook reader TXT] 📗

>is because she never bent before disaster; because she has expended

more life and effort in war than any other city, and has won for

herself a power greater than any hitherto known, the memory of which

will descend to the latest posterity; even if now, in obedience to the

general law of decay, we should ever be forced to yield, still it will

be remembered that we held rule over more Hellenes than any other

Hellenic state, that we sustained the greatest wars against their

united or separate powers, and inhabited a city unrivalled by any

other in resources or magnitude. These glories may incur the censure

of the slow and unambitious; but in the breast of energy they will

awake emulation, and in those who must remain without them an

envious regret. Hatred and unpopularity at the moment have fallen to

the lot of all who have aspired to rule others; but where odium must

be incurred, true wisdom incurs it for the highest objects. Hatred

also is short-lived; but that which makes the splendour of the present

and the glory of the future remains for ever unforgotten. Make your

decision, therefore, for glory then and honour now, and attain both

objects by instant and zealous effort: do not send heralds to

Lacedaemon, and do not betray any sign of being oppressed by your

present sufferings, since they whose minds are least sensitive to

calamity, and whose hands are most quick to meet it, are the

greatest men and the greatest communities.”

 

Such were the arguments by which Pericles tried to cure the

Athenians of their anger against him and to divert their thoughts from

their immediate afflictions. As a community he succeeded in convincing

them; they not only gave up all idea of sending to Lacedaemon, but

applied themselves with increased energy to the war; still as

private individuals they could not help smarting under their

sufferings, the common people having been deprived of the little

that they were possessed, while the higher orders had lost fine

properties with costly establishments and buildings in the country,

and, worst of all, had war instead of peace. In fact, the public

feeling against him did not subside until he had been fined. Not

long afterwards, however, according to the way of the multitude,

they again elected him general and committed all their affairs to

his hands, having now become less sensitive to their private and

domestic afflictions, and understanding that he was the best man of

all for the public necessities. For as long as he was at the head of

the state during the peace, he pursued a moderate and conservative

policy; and in his time its greatness was at its height. When the

war broke out, here also he seems to have rightly gauged the power

of his country. He outlived its commencement two years and six months,

and the correctness of his previsions respecting it became better

known by his death. He told them to wait quietly, to pay attention

to their marine, to attempt no new conquests, and to expose the city

to no hazards during the war, and doing this, promised them a

favourable result. What they did was the very contrary, allowing

private ambitions and private interests, in matters apparently quite

foreign to the war, to lead them into projects unjust both to

themselves and to their allies—projects whose success would only

conduce to the honour and advantage of private persons, and whose

failure entailed certain disaster on the country in the war. The

causes of this are not far to seek. Pericles indeed, by his rank,

ability, and known integrity, was enabled to exercise an independent

control over the multitude—in short, to lead them instead of being

led by them; for as he never sought power by improper means, he was

never compelled to flatter them, but, on the contrary, enjoyed so high

an estimation that he could afford to anger them by contradiction.

Whenever he saw them unseasonably and insolently elated, he would with

a word reduce them to alarm; on the other hand, if they fell victims

to a panic, he could at once restore them to confidence. In short,

what was nominally a democracy became in his hands government by the

first citizen. With his successors it was different. More on a level

with one another, and each grasping at supremacy, they ended by

committing even the conduct of state affairs to the whims of the

multitude. This, as might have been expected in a great and

sovereign state, produced a host of blunders, and amongst them the

Sicilian expedition; though this failed not so much through a

miscalculation of the power of those against whom it was sent, as

through a fault in the senders in not taking the best measures

afterwards to assist those who had gone out, but choosing rather to

occupy themselves with private cabals for the leadership of the

commons, by which they not only paralysed operations in the field, but

also first introduced civil discord at home. Yet after losing most

of their fleet besides other forces in Sicily, and with faction

already dominant in the city, they could still for three years make

head against their original adversaries, joined not only by the

Sicilians, but also by their own allies nearly all in revolt, and at

last by the King’s son, Cyrus, who furnished the funds for the

Peloponnesian navy. Nor did they finally succumb till they fell the

victims of their own intestine disorders. So superfluously abundant

were the resources from which the genius of Pericles foresaw an easy

triumph in the war over the unaided forces of the Peloponnesians.

 

During the same summer the Lacedaemonians and their allies made an

expedition with a hundred ships against Zacynthus, an island lying off

the coast of Elis, peopled by a colony of Achaeans from Peloponnese,

and in alliance with Athens. There were a thousand Lacedaemonian heavy

infantry on board, and Cnemus, a Spartan, as admiral. They made a

descent from their ships, and ravaged most of the country; but as

the inhabitants would not submit, they sailed back home.

 

At the end of the same summer the Corinthian Aristeus, Aneristus,

Nicolaus, and Stratodemus, envoys from Lacedaemon, Timagoras, a

Tegean, and a private individual named Pollis from Argos, on their way

to Asia to persuade the King to supply funds and join in the war, came

to Sitalces, son of Teres in Thrace, with the idea of inducing him, if

possible, to forsake the alliance of Athens and to march on Potidaea

then besieged by an Athenian force, and also of getting conveyed by

his means to their destination across the Hellespont to Pharnabazus,

who was to send them up the country to the King. But there chanced

to be with Sitalces some Athenian ambassadors—Learchus, son of

Callimachus, and Ameiniades, son of Philemon—who persuaded Sitalces’

son, Sadocus, the new Athenian citizen, to put the men into their

hands and thus prevent their crossing over to the King and doing their

part to injure the country of his choice. He accordingly had them

seized, as they were travelling through Thrace to the vessel in

which they were to cross the Hellespont, by a party whom he had sent

on with Learchus and Ameiniades, and gave orders for their delivery to

the Athenian ambassadors, by whom they were brought to Athens. On

their arrival, the Athenians, afraid that Aristeus, who had been

notably the prime mover in the previous affairs of Potidaea and

their Thracian possessions, might live to do them still more

mischief if he escaped, slew them all the same day, without giving

them a trial or hearing the defence which they wished to offer, and

cast their bodies into a pit; thinking themselves justified in using

in retaliation the same mode of warfare which the Lacedaemonians had

begun, when they slew and cast into pits all the Athenian and allied

traders whom they caught on board the merchantmen round Peloponnese.

Indeed, at the outset of the war, the Lacedaemonians butchered as

enemies all whom they took on the sea, whether allies of Athens or

neutrals.

 

About the same time towards the close of the summer, the Ambraciot

forces, with a number of barbarians that they had raised, marched

against the Amphilochian Argos and the rest of that country. The

origin of their enmity against the Argives was this. This Argos and

the rest of Amphilochia were colonized by Amphilochus, son of

Amphiaraus. Dissatisfied with the state of affairs at home on his

return thither after the Trojan War, he built this city in the

Ambracian Gulf, and named it Argos after his own country. This was the

largest town in Amphilochia, and its inhabitants the most powerful.

Under the pressure of misfortune many generations afterwards, they

called in the Ambraciots, their neighbours on the Amphilochian border,

to join their colony; and it was by this union with the Ambraciots

that they learnt their present Hellenic speech, the rest of the

Amphilochians being barbarians. After a time the Ambraciots expelled

the Argives and held the city themselves. Upon this the

Amphilochians gave themselves over to the Acarnanians; and the two

together called the Athenians, who sent them Phormio as general and

thirty ships; upon whose arrival they took Argos by storm, and made

slaves of the Ambraciots; and the Amphilochians and Acarnanians

inhabited the town in common. After this began the alliance between

the Athenians and Acarnanians. The enmity of the Ambraciots against

the Argives thus commenced with the enslavement of their citizens; and

afterwards during the war they collected this armament among

themselves and the Chaonians, and other of the neighbouring

barbarians. Arrived before Argos, they became masters of the

country; but not being successful in their attacks upon the town,

returned home and dispersed among their different peoples.

 

Such were the events of the summer. The ensuing winter the Athenians

sent twenty ships round Peloponnese, under the command of Phormio, who

stationed himself at Naupactus and kept watch against any one

sailing in or out of Corinth and the Crissaean Gulf. Six others went

to Caria and Lycia under Melesander, to collect tribute in those

parts, and also to prevent the Peloponnesian privateers from taking up

their station in those waters and molesting the passage of the

merchantmen from Phaselis and Phoenicia and the adjoining continent.

However, Melesander, going up the country into Lycia with a force of

Athenians from the ships and the allies, was defeated and killed in

battle, with the loss of a number of his troops.

 

The same winter the Potidaeans at length found themselves no

longer able to hold out against their besiegers. The inroads of the

Peloponnesians into Attica had not had the desired effect of making

the Athenians raise the siege. Provisions there were none left; and so

far had distress for food gone in Potidaea that, besides a number of

other horrors, instances had even occurred of the people having

eaten one another. In this extremity they at last made proposals for

capitulating to the Athenian generals in command against

them—Xenophon, son of Euripides, Hestiodorus, son of Aristocleides,

and Phanomachus, son of Callimachus. The generals accepted their

proposals, seeing the sufferings of the army in so exposed a position;

besides which the state had already spent two thousand talents upon

the siege. The terms of the capitulation were as follows: a free

passage out for themselves, their children, wives and auxiliaries,

with one garment apiece, the women with two, and a fixed sum of

money for their journey. Under this treaty they went out to Chalcidice

and other places, according as was their power. The Athenians,

however, blamed the generals for granting terms without instructions

from home, being of opinion that the place would have had to surrender

at discretion. They afterwards sent settlers of their own to Potidaea,

and colonized it. Such were the events of