History of the Peloponnesian War, Thucydides [best free ebook reader TXT] 📗
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them, but oblige them by accepting. And from this friendship
consider the advantages that are likely to follow: when Attica and
Sparta are at one, the rest of Hellas, be sure, will remain in
respectful inferiority before its heads.”
Such were the words of the Lacedaemonians, their idea being that the
Athenians, already desirous of a truce and only kept back by their
opposition, would joyfully accept a peace freely offered, and give
back the men. The Athenians, however, having the men on the island,
thought that the treaty would be ready for them whenever they chose to
make it, and grasped at something further. Foremost to encourage
them in this policy was Cleon, son of Cleaenetus, a popular leader
of the time and very powerful with the multitude, who persuaded them
to answer as follows: First, the men in the island must surrender
themselves and their arms and be brought to Athens. Next, the
Lacedaemonians must restore Nisaea, Pegae, Troezen, and Achaia, all
places acquired not by arms, but by the previous convention, under
which they had been ceded by Athens herself at a moment of disaster,
when a truce was more necessary to her than at present. This done they
might take back their men, and make a truce for as long as both
parties might agree.
To this answer the envoys made no reply, but asked that
commissioners might be chosen with whom they might confer on each
point, and quietly talk the matter over and try to come to some
agreement. Hereupon Cleon violently assailed them, saying that he knew
from the first that they had no right intentions, and that it was
clear enough now by their refusing to speak before the people, and
wanting to confer in secret with a committee of two or three. No, if
they meant anything honest let them say it out before all. The
Lacedaemonians, however, seeing that whatever concessions they might
be prepared to make in their misfortune, it was impossible for them to
speak before the multitude and lose credit with their allies for a
negotiation which might after all miscarry, and on the other hand,
that the Athenians would never grant what they asked upon moderate
terms, returned from Athens without having effected anything.
Their arrival at once put an end to the armistice at Pylos, and
the Lacedaemonians asked back their ships according to the convention.
The Athenians, however, alleged an attack on the fort in contravention
of the truce, and other grievances seemingly not worth mentioning, and
refused to give them back, insisting upon the clause by which the
slightest infringement made the armistice void. The Lacedaemonians,
after denying the contravention and protesting against their bad faith
in the matter of the ships, went away and earnestly addressed
themselves to the war. Hostilities were now carried on at Pylos upon
both sides with vigour. The Athenians cruised round the island all day
with two ships going different ways; and by night, except on the
seaward side in windy weather, anchored round it with their whole
fleet, which, having been reinforced by twenty ships from Athens
come to aid in the blockade, now numbered seventy sail; while the
Peloponnesians remained encamped on the continent, making attacks on
the fort, and on the lookout for any opportunity which might offer
itself for the deliverance of their men.
Meanwhile the Syracusans and their allies in Sicily had brought up
to the squadron guarding Messina the reinforcement which we left
them preparing, and carried on the war from thence, incited chiefly by
the Locrians from hatred of the Rhegians, whose territory they had
invaded with all their forces. The Syracusans also wished to try their
fortune at sea, seeing that the Athenians had only a few ships
actually at Rhegium, and hearing that the main fleet destined to
join them was engaged in blockading the island. A naval victory,
they thought, would enable them to blockade Rhegium by sea and land,
and easily to reduce it; a success which would at once place their
affairs upon a solid basis, the promontory of Rhegium in Italy and
Messina in Sicily being so near each other that it would be impossible
for the Athenians to cruise against them and command the strait. The
strait in question consists of the sea between Rhegium and Messina, at
the point where Sicily approaches nearest to the continent, and is the
Charybdis through which the story makes Ulysses sail; and the
narrowness of the passage and the strength of the current that pours
in from the vast Tyrrhenian and Sicilian mains, have rightly given
it a bad reputation.
In this strait the Syracusans and their allies were compelled to
fight, late in the day, about the passage of a boat, putting out
with rather more than thirty ships against sixteen Athenian and
eight Rhegian vessels. Defeated by the Athenians they hastily set off,
each for himself, to their own stations at Messina and Rhegium, with
the loss of one ship; night coming on before the battle was
finished. After this the Locrians retired from the Rhegian
territory, and the ships of the Syracusans and their allies united and
came to anchor at Cape Pelorus, in the territory of Messina, where
their land forces joined them. Here the Athenians and Rhegians
sailed up, and seeing the ships unmanned, made an attack, in which
they in their turn lost one vessel, which was caught by a grappling
iron, the crew saving themselves by swimming. After this the
Syracusans got on board their ships, and while they were being towed
alongshore to Messina, were again attacked by the Athenians, but
suddenly got out to sea and became the assailants, and caused them
to lose another vessel. After thus holding their own in the voyage
alongshore and in the engagement as above described, the Syracusans
sailed on into the harbour of Messina.
Meanwhile the Athenians, having received warning that Camarina was
about to be betrayed to the Syracusans by Archias and his party,
sailed thither; and the Messinese took this opportunity to attack by
sea and land with all their forces their Chalcidian neighbour,
Naxos. The first day they forced the Naxians to keep their walls,
and laid waste their country; the next they sailed round with their
ships, and laid waste their land on the river Akesines, while their
land forces menaced the city. Meanwhile the Sicels came down from
the high country in great numbers, to aid against the Messinese; and
the Naxians, elated at the sight, and animated by a belief that the
Leontines and their other Hellenic allies were coming to their
support, suddenly sallied out from the town, and attacked and routed
the Messinese, killing more than a thousand of them; while the
remainder suffered severely in their retreat home, being attacked by
the barbarians on the road, and most of them cut off. The ships put in
to Messina, and afterwards dispersed for their different homes. The
Leontines and their allies, with the Athenians, upon this at once
turned their arms against the now weakened Messina, and attacked,
the Athenians with their ships on the side of the harbour, and the
land forces on that of the town. The Messinese, however, sallying
out with Demoteles and some Locrians who had been left to garrison the
city after the disaster, suddenly attacked and routed most of the
Leontine army, killing a great number; upon seeing which the Athenians
landed from their ships, and falling on the Messinese in disorder
chased them back into the town, and setting up a trophy retired to
Rhegium. After this the Hellenes in Sicily continued to make war on
each other by land, without the Athenians.
Meanwhile the Athenians at Pylos were still besieging the
Lacedaemonians in the island, the Peloponnesian forces on the
continent remaining where they were. The blockade was very laborious
for the Athenians from want of food and water; there was no spring
except one in the citadel of Pylos itself, and that not a large one,
and most of them were obliged to grub up the shingle on the sea
beach and drink such water as they could find. They also suffered from
want of room, being encamped in a narrow space; and as there was no
anchorage for the ships, some took their meals on shore in their turn,
while the others were anchored out at sea. But their greatest
discouragement arose from the unexpectedly long time which it took
to reduce a body of men shut up in a desert island, with only brackish
water to drink, a matter which they had imagined would take them
only a few days. The fact was that the Lacedaemonians had made
advertisement for volunteers to carry into the island ground corn,
wine, cheese, and any other food useful in a siege; high prices
being offered, and freedom promised to any of the Helots who should
succeed in doing so. The Helots accordingly were most forward to
engage in this risky traffic, putting off from this or that part of
Peloponnese, and running in by night on the seaward side of the
island. They were best pleased, however, when they could catch a
wind to carry them in. It was more easy to elude the lookout of the
galleys, when it blew from the seaward, as it became impossible for
them to anchor round the island; while the Helots had their boats
rated at their value in money, and ran them ashore, without caring how
they landed, being sure to find the soldiers waiting for them at the
landing-places. But all who risked it in fair weather were taken.
Divers also swam in under water from the harbour, dragging by a cord
in skins poppyseed mixed with honey, and bruised linseed; these at
first escaped notice, but afterwards a lookout was kept for them.
In short, both sides tried every possible contrivance, the one to
throw in provisions, and the other to prevent their introduction.
At Athens, meanwhile, the news that the army was in great
distress, and that corn found its way in to the men in the island,
caused no small perplexity; and the Athenians began to fear that
winter might come on and find them still engaged in the blockade. They
saw that the convoying of provisions round Peloponnese would be then
impossible. The country offered no resources in itself, and even in
summer they could not send round enough. The blockade of a place
without harbours could no longer be kept up; and the men would
either escape by the siege being abandoned, or would watch for bad
weather and sail out in the boats that brought in their corn. What
caused still more alarm was the attitude of the Lacedaemonians, who
must, it was thought by the Athenians, feel themselves on strong
ground not to send them any more envoys; and they began to repent
having rejected the treaty. Cleon, perceiving the disfavour with which
he was regarded for having stood in the way of the convention, now
said that their informants did not speak the truth; and upon the
messengers recommending them, if they did not believe them, to send
some commissioners to see, Cleon himself and Theagenes were chosen
by the Athenians as commissioners. Aware that he would now be
obliged either to say what had been already said by the men whom he
was slandering, or be proved a liar if he said the contrary, he told
the Athenians, whom he saw to be not altogether disinclined for a
fresh expedition, that instead of sending and wasting their time and
opportunities, if they believed what was told them, they ought to sail
against the men. And pointing at Nicias, son of Niceratus, then
general, whom he hated, he tauntingly said that it would be easy, if
they had
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