History of the Peloponnesian War, Thucydides [best free ebook reader TXT] 📗
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dilemma, to compare small things with great, as at Thermopylae,
where the defenders were cut off through the Persians getting round by
the path, being now attacked in front and behind, began to give way,
and overcome by the odds against them and exhausted from want of food,
retreated.
The Athenians were already masters of the approaches when Cleon
and Demosthenes perceiving that, if the enemy gave way a single step
further, they would be destroyed by their soldiery, put a stop to
the battle and held their men back; wishing to take the Lacedaemonians
alive to Athens, and hoping that their stubbornness might relax on
hearing the offer of terms, and that they might surrender and yield to
the present overwhelming danger. Proclamation was accordingly made, to
know if they would surrender themselves and their arms to the
Athenians to be dealt at their discretion.
The Lacedaemonians hearing this offer, most of them lowered their
shields and waved their hands to show that they accepted it.
Hostilities now ceased, and a parley was held between Cleon and
Demosthenes and Styphon, son of Pharax, on the other side; since
Epitadas, the first of the previous commanders, had been killed, and
Hippagretas, the next in command, left for dead among the slain,
though still alive, and thus the command had devolved upon Styphon
according to the law, in case of anything happening to his
superiors. Styphon and his companions said they wished to send a
herald to the Lacedaemonians on the mainland, to know what they were
to do. The Athenians would not let any of them go, but themselves
called for heralds from the mainland, and after questions had been
carried backwards and forwards two or three times, the last man that
passed over from the Lacedaemonians on the continent brought this
message: “The Lacedaemonians bid you to decide for yourselves so
long as you do nothing dishonourable”; upon which after consulting
together they surrendered themselves and their arms. The Athenians,
after guarding them that day and night, the next morning set up a
trophy in the island, and got ready to sail, giving their prisoners in
batches to be guarded by the captains of the galleys; and the
Lacedaemonians sent a herald and took up their dead. The number of the
killed and prisoners taken in the island was as follows: four
hundred and twenty heavy infantry had passed over; three hundred all
but eight were taken alive to Athens; the rest were killed. About a
hundred and twenty of the prisoners were Spartans. The Athenian loss
was small, the battle not having been fought at close quarters.
The blockade in all, counting from the fight at sea to the battle in
the island, had lasted seventy-two days. For twenty of these, during
the absence of the envoys sent to treat for peace, the men had
provisions given them, for the rest they were fed by the smugglers.
Corn and other victual was found in the island; the commander Epitadas
having kept the men upon half rations. The Athenians and
Peloponnesians now each withdrew their forces from Pylos, and went
home, and crazy as Cleon’s promise was, he fulfilled it, by bringing
the men to Athens within the twenty days as he had pledged himself
to do.
Nothing that happened in the war surprised the Hellenes so much as
this. It was the opinion that no force or famine could make the
Lacedaemonians give up their arms, but that they would fight on as
they could, and die with them in their hands: indeed people could
scarcely believe that those who had surrendered were of the same stuff
as the fallen; and an Athenian ally, who some time after insultingly
asked one of the prisoners from the island if those that had fallen
were men of honour, received for answer that the atraktos—that is,
the arrow—would be worth a great deal if it could tell men of honour
from the rest; in allusion to the fact that the killed were those whom
the stones and the arrows happened to hit.
Upon the arrival of the men the Athenians determined to keep them in
prison until the peace, and if the Peloponnesians invaded their
country in the interval, to bring them out and put them to death.
Meanwhile the defence of Pylos was not forgotten; the Messenians
from Naupactus sent to their old country, to which Pylos formerly
belonged, some of the likeliest of their number, and began a series of
incursions into Laconia, which their common dialect rendered most
destructive. The Lacedaemonians, hitherto without experience of
incursions or a warfare of the kind, finding the Helots deserting, and
fearing the march of revolution in their country, began to be
seriously uneasy, and in spite of their unwillingness to betray this
to the Athenians began to send envoys to Athens, and tried to
recover Pylos and the prisoners. The Athenians, however, kept grasping
at more, and dismissed envoy after envoy without their having effected
anything. Such was the history of the affair of Pylos.
_Seventh and Eighth Years of the War - End of Corcyraean Revolution -
Peace of Gela - Capture of Nisaea_
The same summer, directly after these events, the Athenians made
an expedition against the territory of Corinth with eighty ships and
two thousand Athenian heavy infantry, and two hundred cavalry on board
horse transports, accompanied by the Milesians, Andrians, and
Carystians from the allies, under the command of Nicias, son of
Niceratus, with two colleagues. Putting out to sea they made land at
daybreak between Chersonese and Rheitus, at the beach of the country
underneath the Solygian hill, upon which the Dorians in old times
established themselves and carried on war against the Aeolian
inhabitants of Corinth, and where a village now stands called Solygia.
The beach where the fleet came to is about a mile and a half from
the village, seven miles from Corinth, and two and a quarter from
the Isthmus. The Corinthians had heard from Argos of the coming of the
Athenian armament, and had all come up to the Isthmus long before,
with the exception of those who lived beyond it, and also of five
hundred who were away in garrison in Ambracia and Leucadia; and they
were there in full force watching for the Athenians to land. These
last, however, gave them the slip by coming in the dark; and being
informed by signals of the fact the Corinthians left half their number
at Cenchreae, in case the Athenians should go against Crommyon, and
marched in all haste to the rescue.
Battus, one of the two generals present at the action, went with a
company to defend the village of Solygia, which was unfortified;
Lycophron remaining to give battle with the rest. The Corinthians
first attacked the right wing of the Athenians, which had just
landed in front of Chersonese, and afterwards the rest of the army.
The battle was an obstinate one, and fought throughout hand to hand.
The right wing of the Athenians and Carystians, who had been placed at
the end of the line, received and with some difficulty repulsed the
Corinthians, who thereupon retreated to a wall upon the rising
ground behind, and throwing down the stones upon them, came on again
singing the paean, and being received by the Athenians, were again
engaged at close quarters. At this moment a Corinthian company
having come to the relief of the left wing, routed and pursued the
Athenian right to the sea, whence they were in their turn driven
back by the Athenians and Carystians from the ships. Meanwhile the
rest of the army on either side fought on tenaciously, especially
the right wing of the Corinthians, where Lycophron sustained the
attack of the Athenian left, which it was feared might attempt the
village of Solygia.
After holding on for a long while without either giving way, the
Athenians aided by their horse, of which the enemy had none, at
length routed the Corinthians, who retired to the hill and, halting,
remained quiet there, without coming down again. It was in this rout
of the right wing that they had the most killed, Lycophron their
general being among the number. The rest of the army, broken and put
to flight in this way without being seriously pursued or hurried,
retired to the high ground and there took up its position. The
Athenians, finding that the enemy no longer offered to engage them,
stripped his dead and took up their own and immediately set up a
trophy. Meanwhile, the half of the Corinthians left at Cenchreae to
guard against the Athenians sailing on Crommyon, although unable to
see the battle for Mount Oneion, found out what was going on by the
dust, and hurried up to the rescue; as did also the older Corinthians
from the town, upon discovering what had occurred. The Athenians
seeing them all coming against them, and thinking that they were
reinforcements arriving from the neighbouring Peloponnesians,
withdrew in haste to their ships with their spoils and their own
dead, except two that they left behind, not being able to find them,
and going on board crossed over to the islands opposite, and from
thence sent a herald, and took up under truce the bodies which they
had left behind. Two hundred and twelve Corinthians fell in the
battle, and rather less than fifty Athenians.
Weighing from the islands, the Athenians sailed the same day to
Crommyon in the Corinthian territory, about thirteen miles from the
city, and coming to anchor laid waste the country, and passed the
night there. The next day, after first coasting along to the territory
of Epidaurus and making a descent there, they came to Methana
between Epidaurus and Troezen, and drew a wall across and fortified
the isthmus of the peninsula, and left a post there from which
incursions were henceforth made upon the country of Troezen, Haliae,
and Epidaurus. After walling off this spot, the fleet sailed off home.
While these events were going on, Eurymedon and Sophocles had put to
sea with the Athenian fleet from Pylos on their way to Sicily and,
arriving at Corcyra, joined the townsmen in an expedition against
the party established on Mount Istone, who had crossed over, as I have
mentioned, after the revolution and become masters of the country,
to the great hurt of the inhabitants. Their stronghold having been
taken by an attack, the garrison took refuge in a body upon some
high ground and there capitulated, agreeing to give up their mercenary
auxiliaries, lay down their arms, and commit themselves to the
discretion of the Athenian people. The generals carried them across
under truce to the island of Ptychia, to be kept in custody until they
could be sent to Athens, upon the understanding that, if any were
caught running away, all would lose the benefit of the treaty.
Meanwhile the leaders of the Corcyraean commons, afraid that the
Athenians might spare the lives of the prisoners, had recourse to
the following stratagem. They gained over some few men on the island
by secretly sending friends with instructions to provide them with a
boat, and to tell them, as if for their own sakes, that they had
best escape as quickly as possible, as the Athenian generals were
going to give them up to the Corcyraean people.
These representations succeeding, it was so arranged that the men
were caught sailing out in the boat that was provided, and the
treaty became void accordingly, and the whole body were given up to
the Corcyraeans. For this result the Athenian generals were in a great
measure responsible; their evident disinclination to sail for
Sicily, and thus to leave to others the honour of conducting the men
to Athens, encouraged the intriguers in
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