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

their design and seemed to

affirm the truth of their representations. The prisoners thus handed

over were shut up by the Corcyraeans in a large building, and

afterwards taken out by twenties and led past two lines of heavy

infantry, one on each side, being bound together, and beaten and

stabbed by the men in the lines whenever any saw pass a personal

enemy; while men carrying whips went by their side and hastened on the

road those that walked too slowly.

 

As many as sixty men were taken out and killed in this way without

the knowledge of their friends in the building, who fancied they

were merely being moved from one prison to another. At last,

however, someone opened their eyes to the truth, upon which they

called upon the Athenians to kill them themselves, if such was their

pleasure, and refused any longer to go out of the building, and said

they would do all they could to prevent any one coming in. The

Corcyraeans, not liking themselves to force a passage by the doors,

got up on the top of the building, and breaking through the roof,

threw down the tiles and let fly arrows at them, from which the

prisoners sheltered themselves as well as they could. Most of their

number, meanwhile, were engaged in dispatching themselves by thrusting

into their throats the arrows shot by the enemy, and hanging

themselves with the cords taken from some beds that happened to be

there, and with strips made from their clothing; adopting, in short,

every possible means of self-destruction, and also falling victims

to the missiles of their enemies on the roof. Night came on while

these horrors were enacting, and most of it had passed before they

were concluded. When it was day the Corcyraeans threw them in layers

upon wagons and carried them out of the city. All the women taken in

the stronghold were sold as slaves. In this way the Corcyraeans of the

mountain were destroyed by the commons; and so after terrible excesses

the party strife came to an end, at least as far as the period of this

war is concerned, for of one party there was practically nothing left.

Meanwhile the Athenians sailed off to Sicily, their primary

destination, and carried on the war with their allies there.

 

At the close of the summer, the Athenians at Naupactus and the

Acarnanians made an expedition against Anactorium, the Corinthian town

lying at the mouth of the Ambracian Gulf, and took it by treachery;

and the Acarnanians themselves, sending settlers from all parts of

Acarnania, occupied the place.

 

Summer was now over. During the winter ensuing, Aristides, son of

Archippus, one of the commanders of the Athenian ships sent to collect

money from the allies, arrested at Eion, on the Strymon,

Artaphernes, a Persian, on his way from the King to Lacedaemon. He was

conducted to Athens, where the Athenians got his dispatches translated

from the Assyrian character and read them. With numerous references to

other subjects, they in substance told the Lacedaemonians that the

King did not know what they wanted, as of the many ambassadors they

had sent him no two ever told the same story; if however they were

prepared to speak plainly they might send him some envoys with this

Persian. The Athenians afterwards sent back Artaphernes in a galley to

Ephesus, and ambassadors with him, who heard there of the death of

King Artaxerxes, son of Xerxes, which took place about that time,

and so returned home.

 

The same winter the Chians pulled down their new wall at the command

of the Athenians, who suspected them of meditating an insurrection,

after first however obtaining pledges from the Athenians, and security

as far as this was possible for their continuing to treat them as

before. Thus the winter ended, and with it ended the seventh year of

this war of which Thucydides is the historian.

 

In first days of the next summer there was an eclipse of the sun

at the time of new moon, and in the early part of the same month an

earthquake. Meanwhile, the Mitylenian and other Lesbian exiles set

out, for the most part from the continent, with mercenaries hired in

Peloponnese, and others levied on the spot, and took Rhoeteum, but

restored it without injury on the receipt of two thousand Phocaean

staters. After this they marched against Antandrus and took the town

by treachery, their plan being to free Antandrus and the rest of the

Actaean towns, formerly owned by Mitylene but now held by the

Athenians. Once fortified there, they would have every facility for

shipbuilding from the vicinity of Ida and the consequent abundance of

timber, and plenty of other supplies, and might from this base

easily ravage Lesbos, which was not far off, and make themselves

masters of the Aeolian towns on the continent.

 

While these were the schemes of the exiles, the Athenians in the

same summer made an expedition with sixty ships, two thousand heavy

infantry, a few cavalry, and some allied troops from Miletus and other

parts, against Cythera, under the command of Nicias, son of Niceratus,

Nicostratus, son of Diotrephes, and Autocles, son of Tolmaeus. Cythera

is an island lying off Laconia, opposite Malea; the inhabitants are

Lacedaemonians of the class of the Perioeci; and an officer called the

judge of Cythera went over to the place annually from Sparta. A

garrison of heavy infantry was also regularly sent there, and great

attention paid to the island, as it was the landing-place for the

merchantmen from Egypt and Libya, and at the same time secured Laconia

from the attacks of privateers from the sea, at the only point where

it is assailable, as the whole coast rises abruptly towards the

Sicilian and Cretan seas.

 

Coming to land here with their armament, the Athenians with ten

ships and two thousand Milesian heavy infantry took the town of

Scandea, on the sea; and with the rest of their forces landing on

the side of the island looking towards Malea, went against the lower

town of Cythera, where they found all the inhabitants encamped. A

battle ensuing, the Cytherians held their ground for some little

while, and then turned and fled into the upper town, where they soon

afterwards capitulated to Nicias and his colleagues, agreeing to leave

their fate to the decision of the Athenians, their lives only being

safe. A correspondence had previously been going on between Nicias and

certain of the inhabitants, which caused the surrender to be

effected more speedily, and upon terms more advantageous, present

and future, for the Cytherians; who would otherwise have been expelled

by the Athenians on account of their being Lacedaemonians and their

island being so near to Laconia. After the capitulation, the Athenians

occupied the town of Scandea near the harbour, and appointing a

garrison for Cythera, sailed to Asine, Helus, and most of the places

on the sea, and making descents and passing the night on shore at such

spots as were convenient, continued ravaging the country for about

seven days.

 

The Lacedaemonians seeing the Athenians masters of Cythera, and

expecting descents of the kind upon their coasts, nowhere opposed them

in force, but sent garrisons here and there through the country,

consisting of as many heavy infantry as the points menaced seemed to

require, and generally stood very much upon the defensive. After the

severe and unexpected blow that had befallen them in the island, the

occupation of Pylos and Cythera, and the apparition on every side of a

war whose rapidity defied precaution, they lived in constant fear of

internal revolution, and now took the unusual step of raising four

hundred horse and a force of archers, and became more timid than

ever in military matters, finding themselves involved in a maritime

struggle, which their organization had never contemplated, and that

against Athenians, with whom an enterprise unattempted was always

looked upon as a success sacrificed. Besides this, their late numerous

reverses of fortune, coming close one upon another without any reason,

had thoroughly unnerved them, and they were always afraid of a

second disaster like that on the island, and thus scarcely dared to

take the field, but fancied that they could not stir without a

blunder, for being new to the experience of adversity they had lost

all confidence in themselves.

 

Accordingly they now allowed the Athenians to ravage their seaboard,

without making any movement, the garrisons in whose neighbourhood

the descents were made always thinking their numbers insufficient, and

sharing the general feeling. A single garrison which ventured to

resist, near Cotyrta and Aphrodisia, struck terror by its charge

into the scattered mob of light troops, but retreated, upon being

received by the heavy infantry, with the loss of a few men and some

arms, for which the Athenians set up a trophy, and then sailed off

to Cythera. From thence they sailed round to Epidaurus Limera, ravaged

part of the country, and so came to Thyrea in the Cynurian

territory, upon the Argive and Laconian border. This district had been

given by its Lacedaemonian owners to the expelled Aeginetans to

inhabit, in return for their good offices at the time of the

earthquake and the rising of the Helots; and also because, although

subjects of Athens, they had always sided with Lacedaemon.

 

While the Athenians were still at sea, the Aeginetans evacuated a

fort which they were building upon the coast, and retreated into the

upper town where they lived, rather more than a mile from the sea. One

of the Lacedaemonian district garrisons which was helping them in

the work, refused to enter here with them at their entreaty,

thinking it dangerous to shut themselves up within the wall, and

retiring to the high ground remained quiet, not considering themselves

a match for the enemy. Meanwhile the Athenians landed, and instantly

advanced with all their forces and took Thyrea. The town they burnt,

pillaging what was in it; the Aeginetans who were not slain in

action they took with them to Athens, with Tantalus, son of Patrocles,

their Lacedaemonian commander, who had been wounded and taken

prisoner. They also took with them a few men from Cythera whom they

thought it safest to remove. These the Athenians determined to lodge

in the islands: the rest of the Cytherians were to retain their

lands and pay four talents tribute; the Aeginetans captured to be

all put to death, on account of the old inveterate feud; and

Tantalus to share the imprisonment of the Lacedaemonians taken on

the island.

 

The same summer, the inhabitants of Camarina and Gela in Sicily

first made an armistice with each other, after which embassies from

all the other Sicilian cities assembled at Gela to try to bring

about a pacification. After many expressions of opinion on one side

and the other, according to the griefs and pretensions of the

different parties complaining, Hermocrates, son of Hermon, a

Syracusan, the most influential man among them, addressed the

following words to the assembly:

 

“If I now address you, Sicilians, it is not because my city is the

least in Sicily or the greatest sufferer by the war, but in order to

state publicly what appears to me to be the best policy for the

whole island. That war is an evil is a proposition so familiar to

every one that it would be tedious to develop it. No one is forced

to engage in it by ignorance, or kept out of it by fear, if he fancies

there is anything to be gained by it. To the former the gain appears

greater than the danger, while the latter would rather stand the

risk than put up with any immediate sacrifice. But if both should

happen to have chosen the wrong moment for acting in this way,

advice to make peace would not be unserviceable;