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

and this, if we did

but see it, is just what we stand most in need of at the present

juncture.

 

“I suppose that no one will dispute that we went to war at first

in order to serve our own several interests, that we are now, in

view of the same interests, debating how we can make peace; and that

if we separate without having as we think our rights, we shall go to

war again. And yet, as men of sense, we ought to see that our separate

interests are not alone at stake in the present congress: there is

also the question whether we have still time to save Sicily, the whole

of which in my opinion is menaced by Athenian ambition; and we ought

to find in the name of that people more imperious arguments for

peace than any which I can advance, when we see the first power in

Hellas watching our mistakes with the few ships that she has at

present in our waters, and under the fair name of alliance

speciously seeking to turn to account the natural hostility that

exists between us. If we go to war, and call in to help us a people

that are ready enough to carry their arms even where they are not

invited; and if we injure ourselves at our own expense, and at the

same time serve as the pioneers of their dominion, we may expect, when

they see us worn out, that they will one day come with a larger

armament, and seek to bring all of us into subjection.

 

“And yet as sensible men, if we call in allies and court danger,

it should be in order to enrich our different countries with new

acquisitions, and not to ruin what they possess already; and we should

understand that the intestine discords which are so fatal to

communities generally, will be equally so to Sicily, if we, its

inhabitants, absorbed in our local quarrels, neglect the common enemy.

These considerations should reconcile individual with individual,

and city with city, and unite us in a common effort to save the

whole of Sicily. Nor should any one imagine that the Dorians only

are enemies of Athens, while the Chalcidian race is secured by its

Ionian blood; the attack in question is not inspired by hatred of

one of two nationalities, but by a desire for the good things in

Sicily, the common property of us all. This is proved by the

Athenian reception of the Chalcidian invitation: an ally who has never

given them any assistance whatever, at once receives from them

almost more than the treaty entitles him to. That the Athenians should

cherish this ambition and practise this policy is very excusable;

and I do not blame those who wish to rule, but those who are

over-ready to serve. It is just as much in men’s nature to rule

those who submit to them, as it is to resist those who molest them;

one is not less invariable than the other. Meanwhile all who see these

dangers and refuse to provide for them properly, or who have come here

without having made up their minds that our first duty is to unite

to get rid of the common peril, are mistaken. The quickest way to be

rid of it is to make peace with each other; since the Athenians menace

us not from their own country, but from that of those who invited them

here. In this way instead of war issuing in war, peace quietly ends

our quarrels; and the guests who come hither under fair pretences

for bad ends, will have good reason for going away without having

attained them.

 

“So far as regards the Athenians, such are the great advantages

proved inherent in a wise policy. Independently of this, in the face

of the universal consent, that peace is the first of blessings, how

can we refuse to make it amongst ourselves; or do you not think that

the good which you have, and the ills that you complain of, would be

better preserved and cured by quiet than by war; that peace has its

honours and splendours of a less perilous kind, not to mention the

numerous other blessings that one might dilate on, with the not less

numerous miseries of war? These considerations should teach you not to

disregard my words, but rather to look in them every one for his own

safety. If there be any here who feels certain either by right or

might to effect his object, let not this surprise be to him too severe

a disappointment. Let him remember that many before now have tried

to chastise a wrongdoer, and failing to punish their enemy have not

even saved themselves; while many who have trusted in force to gain an

advantage, instead of gaining anything more, have been doomed to

lose what they had. Vengeance is not necessarily successful because

wrong has been done, or strength sure because it is confident; but the

incalculable element in the future exercises the widest influence, and

is the most treacherous, and yet in fact the most useful of all

things, as it frightens us all equally, and thus makes us consider

before attacking each other.

 

“Let us therefore now allow the undefined fear of this unknown

future, and the immediate terror of the Athenians’ presence, to

produce their natural impression, and let us consider any failure to

carry out the programmes that we may each have sketched out for

ourselves as sufficiently accounted for by these obstacles, and send

away the intruder from the country; and if everlasting peace be

impossible between us, let us at all events make a treaty for as

long a term as possible, and put off our private differences to

another day. In fine, let us recognize that the adoption of my

advice will leave us each citizens of a free state, and as such

arbiters of our own destiny, able to return good or bad offices with

equal effect; while its rejection will make us dependent on others,

and thus not only impotent to repel an insult, but on the most

favourable supposition, friends to our direst enemies, and at feud

with our natural friends.

 

“For myself, though, as I said at first, the representative of a

great city, and able to think less of defending myself than of

attacking others, I am prepared to concede something in prevision of

these dangers. I am not inclined to ruin myself for the sake of

hurting my enemies, or so blinded by animosity as to think myself

equally master of my own plans and of fortune which I cannot

command; but I am ready to give up anything in reason. I call upon the

rest of you to imitate my conduct of your own free will, without being

forced to do so by the enemy. There is no disgrace in connections

giving way to one another, a Dorian to a Dorian, or a Chalcidian to

his brethren; above and beyond this we are neighbours, live in the

same country, are girt by the same sea, and go by the same name of

Sicilians. We shall go to war again, I suppose, when the time comes,

and again make peace among ourselves by means of future congresses;

but the foreign invader, if we are wise, will always find us united

against him, since the hurt of one is the danger of all; and we

shall never, in future, invite into the island either allies or

mediators. By so acting we shall at the present moment do for Sicily a

double service, ridding her at once of the Athenians, and of civil

war, and in future shall live in freedom at home, and be less

menaced from abroad.”

 

Such were the words of Hermocrates. The Sicilians took his advice,

and came to an understanding among themselves to end the war, each

keeping what they had—the Camarinaeans taking Morgantina at a price

fixed to be paid to the Syracusans—and the allies of the Athenians

called the officers in command, and told them that they were going

to make peace and that they would be included in the treaty. The

generals assenting, the peace was concluded, and the Athenian fleet

afterwards sailed away from Sicily. Upon their arrival at Athens,

the Athenians banished Pythodorus and Sophocles, and fined Eurymedon

for having taken bribes to depart when they might have subdued Sicily.

So thoroughly had the present prosperity persuaded the citizens that

nothing could withstand them, and that they could achieve what was

possible and impracticable alike, with means ample or inadequate it

mattered not. The secret of this was their general extraordinary

success, which made them confuse their strength with their hopes.

 

The same summer the Megarians in the city, pressed by the

hostilities of the Athenians, who invaded their country twice every

year with all their forces, and harassed by the incursions of their

own exiles at Pegae, who had been expelled in a revolution by the

popular party, began to ask each other whether it would not be

better to receive back their exiles, and free the town from one of its

two scourges. The friends of the emigrants, perceiving the

agitation, now more openly than before demanded the adoption of this

proposition; and the leaders of the commons, seeing that the

sufferings of the times had tired out the constancy of their

supporters, entered in their alarm into correspondence with the

Athenian generals, Hippocrates, son of Ariphron, and Demosthenes,

son of Alcisthenes, and resolved to betray the town, thinking this

less dangerous to themselves than the return of the party which they

had banished. It was accordingly arranged that the Athenians should

first take the long walls extending for nearly a mile from the city to

the port of Nisaea, to prevent the Peloponnesians coming to the rescue

from that place, where they formed the sole garrison to secure the

fidelity of Megara; and that after this the attempt should be made

to put into their hands the upper town, which it was thought would

then come over with less difficulty.

 

The Athenians, after plans had been arranged between themselves

and their correspondents both as to words and actions, sailed by night

to Minoa, the island off Megara, with six hundred heavy infantry under

the command of Hippocrates, and took post in a quarry not far off, out

of which bricks used to be taken for the walls; while Demosthenes, the

other commander, with a detachment of Plataean light troops and

another of Peripoli, placed himself in ambush in the precinct of

Enyalius, which was still nearer. No one knew of it, except those

whose business it was to know that night. A little before daybreak,

the traitors in Megara began to act. Every night for a long time back,

under pretence of marauding, in order to have a means of opening the

gates, they had been used, with the consent of the officer in command,

to carry by night a sculling boat upon a cart along the ditch to the

sea, and so to sail out, bringing it back again before day upon the

cart, and taking it within the wall through the gates, in order, as

they pretended, to baffle the Athenian blockade at Minoa, there

being no boat to be seen in the harbour. On the present occasion the

cart was already at the gates, which had been opened in the usual

way for the boat, when the Athenians, with whom this had been

concerted, saw it, and ran at the top of their speed from the ambush

in order to reach the gates before they were shut again, and while the

cart was still there to prevent their being closed; their Megarian

accomplices at the same moment killing the guard at the gates. The

first to run in was Demosthenes with