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

formerly almost all communication between the

Hellenes within and without Peloponnese was carried on overland, and

the Corinthian territory was the highway through which it travelled.

She had consequently great money resources, as is shown by the epithet

“wealthy” bestowed by the old poets on the place, and this enabled

her, when traffic by sea became more common, to procure her navy and

put down piracy; and as she could offer a mart for both branches of

the trade, she acquired for herself all the power which a large

revenue affords. Subsequently the Ionians attained to great naval

strength in the reign of Cyrus, the first king of the Persians, and of

his son Cambyses, and while they were at war with the former commanded

for a while the Ionian sea. Polycrates also, the tyrant of Samos,

had a powerful navy in the reign of Cambyses, with which he reduced

many of the islands, and among them Rhenea, which he consecrated to

the Delian Apollo. About this time also the Phocaeans, while they were

founding Marseilles, defeated the Carthaginians in a sea-fight.

These were the most powerful navies. And even these, although so

many generations had elapsed since the Trojan war, seem to have been

principally composed of the old fifty-oars and long-boats, and to have

counted few galleys among their ranks. Indeed it was only shortly

the Persian war, and the death of Darius the successor of Cambyses,

that the Sicilian tyrants and the Corcyraeans acquired any large

number of galleys. For after these there were no navies of any account

in Hellas till the expedition of Xerxes; Aegina, Athens, and others

may have possessed a few vessels, but they were principally

fifty-oars. It was quite at the end of this period that the war with

Aegina and the prospect of the barbarian invasion enabled Themistocles

to persuade the Athenians to build the fleet with which they fought at

Salamis; and even these vessels had not complete decks.

 

The navies, then, of the Hellenes during the period we have

traversed were what I have described. All their insignificance did not

prevent their being an element of the greatest power to those who

cultivated them, alike in revenue and in dominion. They were the means

by which the islands were reached and reduced, those of the smallest

area falling the easiest prey. Wars by land there were none, none at

least by which power was acquired; we have the usual border

contests, but of distant expeditions with conquest for object we

hear nothing among the Hellenes. There was no union of subject

cities round a great state, no spontaneous combination of equals for

confederate expeditions; what fighting there was consisted merely of

local warfare between rival neighbours. The nearest approach to a

coalition took place in the old war between Chalcis and Eretria;

this was a quarrel in which the rest of the Hellenic name did to

some extent take sides.

 

Various, too, were the obstacles which the national growth

encountered in various localities. The power of the Ionians was

advancing with rapid strides, when it came into collision with Persia,

under King Cyrus, who, after having dethroned Croesus and overrun

everything between the Halys and the sea, stopped not till he had

reduced the cities of the coast; the islands being only left to be

subdued by Darius and the Phoenician navy.

 

Again, wherever there were tyrants, their habit of providing

simply for themselves, of looking solely to their personal comfort and

family aggrandizement, made safety the great aim of their policy,

and prevented anything great proceeding from them; though they would

each have their affairs with their immediate neighbours. All this is

only true of the mother country, for in Sicily they attained to very

great power. Thus for a long time everywhere in Hellas do we find

causes which make the states alike incapable of combination for

great and national ends, or of any vigorous action of their own.

 

But at last a time came when the tyrants of Athens and the far older

tyrannies of the rest of Hellas were, with the exception of those in

Sicily, once and for all put down by Lacedaemon; for this city, though

after the settlement of the Dorians, its present inhabitants, it

suffered from factions for an unparalleled length of time, still at

a very early period obtained good laws, and enjoyed a freedom from

tyrants which was unbroken; it has possessed the same form of

government for more than four hundred years, reckoning to the end of

the late war, and has thus been in a position to arrange the affairs

of the other states. Not many years after the deposition of the

tyrants, the battle of Marathon was fought between the Medes and the

Athenians. Ten years afterwards, the barbarian returned with the

armada for the subjugation of Hellas. In the face of this great

danger, the command of the confederate Hellenes was assumed by the

Lacedaemonians in virtue of their superior power; and the Athenians,

having made up their minds to abandon their city, broke up their

homes, threw themselves into their ships, and became a naval people.

This coalition, after repulsing the barbarian, soon afterwards split

into two sections, which included the Hellenes who had revolted from

the King, as well as those who had aided him in the war. At the end of

the one stood Athens, at the head of the other Lacedaemon, one the

first naval, the other the first military power in Hellas. For a short

time the league held together, till the Lacedaemonians and Athenians

quarrelled and made war upon each other with their allies, a duel into

which all the Hellenes sooner or later were drawn, though some might

at first remain neutral. So that the whole period from the Median

war to this, with some peaceful intervals, was spent by each power

in war, either with its rival, or with its own revolted allies, and

consequently afforded them constant practice in military matters,

and that experience which is learnt in the school of danger.

 

The policy of Lacedaemon was not to exact tribute from her allies,

but merely to secure their subservience to her interests by

establishing oligarchies among them; Athens, on the contrary, had by

degrees deprived hers of their ships, and imposed instead

contributions in money on all except Chios and Lesbos. Both found

their resources for this war separately to exceed the sum of their

strength when the alliance flourished intact.

 

Having now given the result of my inquiries into early times, I

grant that there will be a difficulty in believing every particular

detail. The way that most men deal with traditions, even traditions of

their own country, is to receive them all alike as they are delivered,

without applying any critical test whatever. The general Athenian

public fancy that Hipparchus was tyrant when he fell by the hands of

Harmodius and Aristogiton, not knowing that Hippias, the eldest of the

sons of Pisistratus, was really supreme, and that Hipparchus and

Thessalus were his brothers; and that Harmodius and Aristogiton

suspecting, on the very day, nay at the very moment fixed on for the

deed, that information had been conveyed to Hippias by their

accomplices, concluded that he had been warned, and did not attack

him, yet, not liking to be apprehended and risk their lives for

nothing, fell upon Hipparchus near the temple of the daughters of

Leos, and slew him as he was arranging the Panathenaic procession.

 

There are many other unfounded ideas current among the rest of the

Hellenes, even on matters of contemporary history, which have not been

obscured by time. For instance, there is the notion that the

Lacedaemonian kings have two votes each, the fact being that they have

only one; and that there is a company of Pitane, there being simply no

such thing. So little pains do the vulgar take in the investigation of

truth, accepting readily the first story that comes to hand. On the

whole, however, the conclusions I have drawn from the proofs quoted

may, I believe, safely be relied on. Assuredly they will not be

disturbed either by the lays of a poet displaying the exaggeration

of his craft, or by the compositions of the chroniclers that are

attractive at truth’s expense; the subjects they treat of being out of

the reach of evidence, and time having robbed most of them of

historical value by enthroning them in the region of legend. Turning

from these, we can rest satisfied with having proceeded upon the

clearest data, and having arrived at conclusions as exact as can be

expected in matters of such antiquity. To come to this war: despite

the known disposition of the actors in a struggle to overrate its

importance, and when it is over to return to their admiration of

earlier events, yet an examination of the facts will show that it

was much greater than the wars which preceded it.

 

With reference to the speeches in this history, some were

delivered before the war began, others while it was going on; some I

heard myself, others I got from various quarters; it was in all

cases difficult to carry them word for word in one’s memory, so my

habit has been to make the speakers say what was in my opinion

demanded of them by the various occasions, of course adhering as

closely as possible to the general sense of what they really said. And

with reference to the narrative of events, far from permitting

myself to derive it from the first source that came to hand, I did not

even trust my own impressions, but it rests partly on what I saw

myself, partly on what others saw for me, the accuracy of the report

being always tried by the most severe and detailed tests possible.

My conclusions have cost me some labour from the want of coincidence

between accounts of the same occurrences by different eye-witnesses,

arising sometimes from imperfect memory, sometimes from undue

partiality for one side or the other. The absence of romance in my

history will, I fear, detract somewhat from its interest; but if it be

judged useful by those inquirers who desire an exact knowledge of

the past as an aid to the interpretation of the future, which in the

course of human things must resemble if it does not reflect it, I

shall be content. In fine, I have written my work, not as an essay

which is to win the applause of the moment, but as a possession for

all time.

 

The Median War, the greatest achievement of past times, yet found

a speedy decision in two actions by sea and two by land. The

Peloponnesian War was prolonged to an immense length, and, long as

it was, it was short without parallel for the misfortunes that it

brought upon Hellas. Never had so many cities been taken and laid

desolate, here by the barbarians, here by the parties contending

(the old inhabitants being sometimes removed to make room for others);

never was there so much banishing and blood-shedding, now on the field

of battle, now in the strife of faction. Old stories of occurrences

handed down by tradition, but scantily confirmed by experience,

suddenly ceased to be incredible; there were earthquakes of

unparalleled extent and violence; eclipses of the sun occurred with

a frequency unrecorded in previous history; there were great

droughts in sundry places and consequent famines, and that most

calamitous and awfully fatal visitation, the plague. All this came

upon them with the late war, which was begun by the Athenians and

Peloponnesians by the dissolution of the thirty years’ truce made

after the conquest of Euboea. To the question why they broke the

treaty, I answer by placing first an account of their grounds of

complaint and points of difference, that no one may ever have to