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

against an

attack from Athens. Yet when I went with the army which I now have to

the relief of Nisaea, the Athenians did not venture to engage me

although in greater force than I; and it is not likely they will

ever send across sea against you an army as numerous as they had at

Nisaea. And for myself, I have come here not to hurt but to free the

Hellenes, witness the solemn oaths by which I have bound my government

that the allies that I may bring over shall be independent; and

besides my object in coming is not by force or fraud to obtain your

alliance, but to offer you mine to help you against your Athenian

masters. I protest, therefore, against any suspicions of my intentions

after the guarantees which I offer, and equally so against doubts of

my ability to protect you, and I invite you to join me without

hesitation.

 

“Some of you may hang back because they have private enemies, and

fear that I may put the city into the hands of a party: none need be

more tranquil than they. I am not come here to help this party or

that; and I do not consider that I should be bringing you freedom in

any real sense, if I should disregard your constitution, and enslave

the many to the few or the few to the many. This would be heavier than

a foreign yoke; and we Lacedaemonians, instead of being thanked for

our pains, should get neither honour nor glory, but, contrariwise,

reproaches. The charges which strengthen our hands in the war

against the Athenians would on our own showing be merited by

ourselves, and more hateful in us than in those who make no

pretensions to honesty; as it is more disgraceful for persons of

character to take what they covet by fair-seeming fraud than by open

force; the one aggression having for its justification the might which

fortune gives, the other being simply a piece of clever roguery. A

matter which concerns us thus nearly we naturally look to most

jealously; and over and above the oaths that I have mentioned, what

stronger assurance can you have, when you see that our words, compared

with the actual facts, produce the necessary conviction that it is our

interest to act as we say?

 

“If to these considerations of mine you put in the plea of

inability, and claim that your friendly feeling should save you from

being hurt by your refusal; if you say that freedom, in your

opinion, is not without its dangers, and that it is right to offer

it to those who can accept it, but not to force it on any against

their will, then I shall take the gods and heroes of your country to

witness that I came for your good and was rejected, and shall do my

best to compel you by laying waste your land. I shall do so without

scruple, being justified by the necessity which constrains me,

first, to prevent the Lacedaemonians from being damaged by you,

their friends, in the event of your nonadhesion, through the moneys

that you pay to the Athenians; and secondly, to prevent the Hellenes

from being hindered by you in shaking off their servitude. Otherwise

indeed we should have no right to act as we propose; except in the

name of some public interest, what call should we Lacedaemonians

have to free those who do not wish it? Empire we do not aspire to:

it is what we are labouring to put down; and we should wrong the

greater number if we allowed you to stand in the way of the

independence that we offer to all. Endeavour, therefore, to decide

wisely, and strive to begin the work of liberation for the Hellenes,

and lay up for yourselves endless renown, while you escape private

loss, and cover your commonwealth with glory.”

 

Such were the words of Brasidas. The Acanthians, after much had been

said on both sides of the question, gave their votes in secret, and

the majority, influenced by the seductive arguments of Brasidas and by

fear for their fruit, decided to revolt from Athens; not however

admitting the army until they had taken his personal security for

the oaths sworn by his government before they sent him out, assuring

the independence of the allies whom he might bring over. Not long

after, Stagirus, a colony of the Andrians, followed their example

and revolted.

 

Such were the events of this summer. It was in the first days of the

winter following that the places in Boeotia were to be put into the

hands of the Athenian generals, Hippocrates and Demosthenes, the

latter of whom was to go with his ships to Siphae, the former to

Delium. A mistake, however, was made in the days on which they were

each to start; and Demosthenes, sailing first to Siphae, with the

Acarnanians and many of the allies from those parts on board, failed

to effect anything, through the plot having been betrayed by

Nicomachus, a Phocian from Phanotis, who told the Lacedaemonians,

and they the Boeotians. Succours accordingly flocked in from all parts

of Boeotia, Hippocrates not being yet there to make his diversion, and

Siphae and Chaeronea were promptly secured, and the conspirators,

informed of the mistake, did not venture on any movement in the towns.

 

Meanwhile Hippocrates made a levy in mass of the citizens,

resident aliens, and foreigners in Athens, and arrived at his

destination after the Boeotians had already come back from Siphae, and

encamping his army began to fortify Delium, the sanctuary of Apollo,

in the following manner. A trench was dug all round the temple and the

consecrated ground, and the earth thrown up from the excavation was

made to do duty as a wall, in which stakes were also planted, the

vines round the sanctuary being cut down and thrown in, together

with stones and bricks pulled down from the houses near; every

means, in short, being used to run up the rampart. Wooden towers

were also erected where they were wanted, and where there was no

part of the temple buildings left standing, as on the side where the

gallery once existing had fallen in. The work was begun on the third

day after leaving home, and continued during the fourth, and till

dinnertime on the fifth, when most of it being now finished the army

removed from Delium about a mile and a quarter on its way home. From

this point most of the light troops went straight on, while the

heavy infantry halted and remained where they were; Hippocrates having

stayed behind at Delium to arrange the posts, and to give directions

for the completion of such part of the outworks as had been left

unfinished.

 

During the days thus employed the Boeotians were mustering at

Tanagra, and by the time that they had come in from all the towns,

found the Athenians already on their way home. The rest of the

eleven Boeotarchs were against giving battle, as the enemy was no

longer in Boeotia, the Athenians being just over the Oropian border,

when they halted; but Pagondas, son of Aeolidas, one of the Boeotarchs

of Thebes (Arianthides, son of Lysimachidas, being the other), and

then commander-in-chief, thought it best to hazard a battle. He

accordingly called the men to him, company after company, to prevent

their all leaving their arms at once, and urged them to attack the

Athenians, and stand the issue of a battle, speaking as follows:

 

“Boeotians, the idea that we ought not to give battle to the

Athenians, unless we came up with them in Boeotia, is one which should

never have entered into the head of any of us, your generals. It was

to annoy Boeotia that they crossed the frontier and built a fort in

our country; and they are therefore, I imagine, our enemies wherever

we may come up with them, and from wheresoever they may have come to

act as enemies do. And if any one has taken up with the idea in

question for reasons of safety, it is high time for him to change

his mind. The party attacked, whose own country is in danger, can

scarcely discuss what is prudent with the calmness of men who are in

full enjoyment of what they have got, and are thinking of attacking

a neighbour in order to get more. It is your national habit, in your

country or out of it, to oppose the same resistance to a foreign

invader; and when that invader is Athenian, and lives upon your

frontier besides, it is doubly imperative to do so. As between

neighbours generally, freedom means simply a determination to hold

one’s own; and with neighbours like these, who are trying to enslave

near and far alike, there is nothing for it but to fight it out to the

last. Look at the condition of the Euboeans and of most of the rest of

Hellas, and be convinced that others have to fight with their

neighbours for this frontier or that, but that for us conquest means

one frontier for the whole country, about which no dispute can be

made, for they will simply come and take by force what we have. So

much more have we to fear from this neighbour than from another.

Besides, people who, like the Athenians in the present instance, are

tempted by pride of strength to attack their neighbours, usually march

most confidently against those who keep still, and only defend

themselves in their own country, but think twice before they grapple

with those who meet them outside their frontier and strike the first

blow if opportunity offers. The Athenians have shown us this

themselves; the defeat which we inflicted upon them at Coronea, at the

time when our quarrels had allowed them to occupy the country, has

given great security to Boeotia until the present day. Remembering

this, the old must equal their ancient exploits, and the young, the

sons of the heroes of that time, must endeavour not to disgrace

their native valour; and trusting in the help of the god whose

temple has been sacrilegiously fortified, and in the victims which

in our sacrifices have proved propitious, we must march against the

enemy, and teach him that he must go and get what he wants by

attacking someone who will not resist him, but that men whose glory it

is to be always ready to give battle for the liberty of their own

country, and never unjustly to enslave that of others, will not let

him go without a struggle.”

 

By these arguments Pagondas persuaded the Boeotians to attack the

Athenians, and quickly breaking up his camp led his army forward, it

being now late in the day. On nearing the enemy, he halted in a

position where a hill intervening prevented the two armies from seeing

each other, and then formed and prepared for action. Meanwhile

Hippocrates at Delium, informed of the approach of the Boeotians, sent

orders to his troops to throw themselves into line, and himself joined

them not long afterwards, leaving about three hundred horse behind him

at Delium, at once to guard the place in case of attack, and to

watch their opportunity and fall upon the Boeotians during the battle.

The Boeotians placed a detachment to deal with these, and when

everything was arranged to their satisfaction appeared over the

hill, and halted in the order which they had determined on, to the

number of seven thousand heavy infantry, more than ten thousand

light troops, one thousand horse, and five hundred targeteers. On

their right were the Thebans and those of their province, in the

centre the Haliartians, Coronaeans, Copaeans, and the other people

around the lake, and on the left the Thespians, Tanagraeans, and

Orchomenians, the cavalry and the light troops