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

being at the

extremity of each wing. The Thebans formed twenty-five shields deep,

the rest as they pleased. Such was the strength and disposition of the

Boeotian army.

 

On the side of the Athenians, the heavy infantry throughout the

whole army formed eight deep, being in numbers equal to the enemy,

with the cavalry upon the two wings. Light troops regularly armed

there were none in the army, nor had there ever been any at Athens.

Those who had joined in the invasion, though many times more

numerous than those of the enemy, had mostly followed unarmed, as part

of the levy in mass of the citizens and foreigners at Athens, and

having started first on their way home were not present in any number.

The armies being now in line and upon the point of engaging,

Hippocrates, the general, passed along the Athenian ranks, and

encouraged them as follows:

 

“Athenians, I shall only say a few words to you, but brave men

require no more, and they are addressed more to your understanding

than to your courage. None of you must fancy that we are going out

of our way to run this risk in the country of another. Fought in their

territory the battle will be for ours: if we conquer, the

Peloponnesians will never invade your country without the Boeotian

horse, and in one battle you will win Boeotia and in a manner free

Attica. Advance to meet them then like citizens of a country in

which you all glory as the first in Hellas, and like sons of the

fathers who beat them at Oenophyta with Myronides and thus gained

possession of Boeotia.”

 

Hippocrates had got half through the army with his exhortation, when

the Boeotians, after a few more hasty words from Pagondas, struck up

the paean, and came against them from the hill; the Athenians

advancing to meet them, and closing at a run. The extreme wing of

neither army came into action, one like the other being stopped by the

water-courses in the way; the rest engaged with the utmost

obstinacy, shield against shield. The Boeotian left, as far as the

centre, was worsted by the Athenians. The Thespians in that part of

the field suffered most severely. The troops alongside them having

given way, they were surrounded in a narrow space and cut down

fighting hand to hand; some of the Athenians also fell into

confusion in surrounding the enemy and mistook and so killed each

other. In this part of the field the Boeotians were beaten, and

retreated upon the troops still fighting; but the right, where the

Thebans were, got the better of the Athenians and shoved them

further and further back, though gradually at first. It so happened

also that Pagondas, seeing the distress of his left, had sent two

squadrons of horse, where they could not be seen, round the hill,

and their sudden appearance struck a panic into the victorious wing of

the Athenians, who thought that it was another army coming against

them. At length in both parts of the field, disturbed by this panic,

and with their line broken by the advancing Thebans, the whole

Athenian army took to flight. Some made for Delium and the sea, some

for Oropus, others for Mount Parnes, or wherever they had hopes of

safety, pursued and cut down by the Boeotians, and in particular by

the cavalry, composed partly of Boeotians and partly of Locrians,

who had come up just as the rout began. Night however coming on to

interrupt the pursuit, the mass of the fugitives escaped more easily

than they would otherwise have done. The next day the troops at Oropus

and Delium returned home by sea, after leaving a garrison in the

latter place, which they continued to hold notwithstanding the defeat.

 

The Boeotians set up a trophy, took up their own dead, and

stripped those of the enemy, and leaving a guard over them retired

to Tanagra, there to take measures for attacking Delium. Meanwhile a

herald came from the Athenians to ask for the dead, but was met and

turned back by a Boeotian herald, who told him that he would effect

nothing until the return of himself the Boeotian herald, and who

then went on to the Athenians, and told them on the part of the

Boeotians that they had done wrong in transgressing the law of the

Hellenes. Of what use was the universal custom protecting the

temples in an invaded country, if the Athenians were to fortify Delium

and live there, acting exactly as if they were on unconsecrated

ground, and drawing and using for their purposes the water which they,

the Boeotians, never touched except for sacred uses? Accordingly for

the god as well as for themselves, in the name of the deities

concerned, and of Apollo, the Boeotians invited them first to evacuate

the temple, if they wished to take up the dead that belonged to them.

 

After these words from the herald, the Athenians sent their own

herald to the Boeotians to say that they had not done any wrong to the

temple, and for the future would do it no more harm than they could

help; not having occupied it originally in any such design, but to

defend themselves from it against those who were really wronging them.

The law of the Hellenes was that conquest of a country, whether more

or less extensive, carried with it possession of the temples in that

country, with the obligation to keep up the usual ceremonies, at least

as far as possible. The Boeotians and most other people who had turned

out the owners of a country, and put themselves in their places by

force, now held as of right the temples which they originally

entered as usurpers. If the Athenians could have conquered more of

Boeotia this would have been the case with them: as things stood,

the piece of it which they had got they should treat as their own, and

not quit unless obliged. The water they had disturbed under the

impulsion of a necessity which they had not wantonly incurred,

having been forced to use it in defending themselves against the

Boeotians who first invaded Attica. Besides, anything done under the

pressure of war and danger might reasonably claim indulgence even in

the eye of the god; or why, pray, were the altars the asylum for

involuntary offences? Transgression also was a term applied to

presumptuous offenders, not to the victims of adverse circumstances.

In short, which were most impious—the Boeotians who wished to barter

dead bodies for holy places, or the Athenians who refused to give up

holy places to obtain what was theirs by right? The condition of

evacuating Boeotia must therefore be withdrawn. They were no longer in

Boeotia. They stood where they stood by the right of the sword. All

that the Boeotians had to do was to tell them to take up their dead

under a truce according to the national custom.

 

The Boeotians replied that if they were in Boeotia, they must

evacuate that country before taking up their dead; if they were in

their own territory, they could do as they pleased: for they knew

that, although the Oropid where the bodies as it chanced were lying

(the battle having been fought on the borders) was subject to

Athens, yet the Athenians could not get them without their leave.

Besides, why should they grant a truce for Athenian ground? And what

could be fairer than to tell them to evacuate Boeotia if they wished

to get what they asked? The Athenian herald accordingly returned

with this answer, without having accomplished his object.

 

Meanwhile the Boeotians at once sent for darters and slingers from

the Malian Gulf, and with two thousand Corinthian heavy infantry who

had joined them after the battle, the Peloponnesian garrison which had

evacuated Nisaea, and some Megarians with them, marched against

Delium, and attacked the fort, and after divers efforts finally

succeeded in taking it by an engine of the following description. They

sawed in two and scooped out a great beam from end to end, and fitting

it nicely together again like a pipe, hung by chains a cauldron at one

extremity, with which communicated an iron tube projecting from the

beam, which was itself in great part plated with iron. This they

brought up from a distance upon carts to the part of the wall

principally composed of vines and timber, and when it was near,

inserted huge bellows into their end of the beam and blew with them.

The blast passing closely confined into the cauldron, which was filled

with lighted coals, sulphur and pitch, made a great blaze, and set

fire to the wall, which soon became untenable for its defenders, who

left it and fled; and in this way the fort was taken. Of the

garrison some were killed and two hundred made prisoners; most of

the rest got on board their ships and returned home.

 

Soon after the fall of Delium, which took place seventeen days after

the battle, the Athenian herald, without knowing what had happened,

came again for the dead, which were now restored by the Boeotians, who

no longer answered as at first. Not quite five hundred Boeotians

fell in the battle, and nearly one thousand Athenians, including

Hippocrates the general, besides a great number of light troops and

camp followers.

 

Soon after this battle Demosthenes, after the failure of his

voyage to Siphae and of the plot on the town, availed himself of the

Acarnanian and Agraean troops and of the four hundred Athenian heavy

infantry which he had on board, to make a descent on the Sicyonian

coast. Before however all his ships had come to shore, the

Sicyonians came up and routed and chased to their ships those that had

landed, killing some and taking others prisoners; after which they set

up a trophy, and gave back the dead under truce.

 

About the same time with the affair of Delium took place the death

of Sitalces, king of the Odrysians, who was defeated in battle, in a

campaign against the Triballi; Seuthes, son of Sparadocus, his nephew,

succeeding to the kingdom of the Odrysians, and of the rest of

Thrace ruled by Sitalces.

 

The same winter Brasidas, with his allies in the Thracian places,

marched against Amphipolis, the Athenian colony on the river

Strymon. A settlement upon the spot on which the city now stands was

before attempted by Aristagoras, the Milesian (when he fled from

King Darius), who was however dislodged by the Edonians; and

thirty-two years later by the Athenians, who sent thither ten thousand

settlers of their own citizens, and whoever else chose to go. These

were cut off at Drabescus by the Thracians. Twenty-nine years after,

the Athenians returned (Hagnon, son of Nicias, being sent out as

leader of the colony) and drove out the Edonians, and founded a town

on the spot, formerly called Ennea Hodoi or Nine Ways. The base from

which they started was Eion, their commercial seaport at the mouth

of the river, not more than three miles from the present town, which

Hagnon named Amphipolis, because the Strymon flows round it on two

sides, and he built it so as to be conspicuous from the sea and land

alike, running a long wall across from river to river, to complete the

circumference.

 

Brasidas now marched against this town, starting from Arne in

Chalcidice. Arriving about dusk at Aulon and Bromiscus, where the lake

of Bolbe runs into the sea, he supped there, and went on during the

night. The weather was stormy and it was snowing a little, which

encouraged him to hurry on, in order, if possible, to take every one

at Amphipolis by surprise, except the party who were to betray it. The

plot was carried on by some natives