History of the Peloponnesian War, Thucydides [best free ebook reader TXT] 📗
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wide one, and it is more difficult for those who command it to
intercept others, than for those who wish to elude them to do so
safely. And should the Lacedaemonians miscarry in this, they would
fall upon your land, and upon those left of your allies whom
Brasidas did not reach; and instead of places which are not yours, you
will have to fight for your own country and your own confederacy.
Athenians. Some diversion of the kind you speak of you may one day
experience, only to learn, as others have done, that the Athenians
never once yet withdrew from a siege for fear of any. But we are
struck by the fact that, after saying you would consult for the safety
of your country, in all this discussion you have mentioned nothing
which men might trust in and think to be saved by. Your strongest
arguments depend upon hope and the future, and your actual resources
are too scanty, as compared with those arrayed against you, for you to
come out victorious. You will therefore show great blindness of
judgment, unless, after allowing us to retire, you can find some
counsel more prudent than this. You will surely not be caught by
that idea of disgrace, which in dangers that are disgraceful, and at
the same time too plain to be mistaken, proves so fatal to mankind;
since in too many cases the very men that have their eyes perfectly
open to what they are rushing into, let the thing called disgrace,
by the mere influence of a seductive name, lead them on to a point
at which they become so enslaved by the phrase as in fact to fall
wilfully into hopeless disaster, and incur disgrace more disgraceful
as the companion of error, than when it comes as the result of
misfortune. This, if you are well advised, you will guard against; and
you will not think it dishonourable to submit to the greatest city
in Hellas, when it makes you the moderate offer of becoming its
tributary ally, without ceasing to enjoy the country that belongs to
you; nor when you have the choice given you between war and
security, will you be so blinded as to choose the worse. And it is
certain that those who do not yield to their equals, who keep terms
with their superiors, and are moderate towards their inferiors, on the
whole succeed best. Think over the matter, therefore, after our
withdrawal, and reflect once and again that it is for your country
that you are consulting, that you have not more than one, and that
upon this one deliberation depends its prosperity or ruin.
The Athenians now withdrew from the conference; and the Melians,
left to themselves, came to a decision corresponding with what they
had maintained in the discussion, and answered: “Our resolution,
Athenians, is the same as it was at first. We will not in a moment
deprive of freedom a city that has been inhabited these seven
hundred years; but we put our trust in the fortune by which the gods
have preserved it until now, and in the help of men, that is, of the
Lacedaemonians; and so we will try and save ourselves. Meanwhile we
invite you to allow us to be friends to you and foes to neither party,
and to retire from our country after making such a treaty as shall
seem fit to us both.”
Such was the answer of the Melians. The Athenians now departing from
the conference said: “Well, you alone, as it seems to us, judging from
these resolutions, regard what is future as more certain than what
is before your eyes, and what is out of sight, in your eagerness, as
already coming to pass; and as you have staked most on, and trusted
most in, the Lacedaemonians, your fortune, and your hopes, so will you
be most completely deceived.”
The Athenian envoys now returned to the army; and the Melians
showing no signs of yielding, the generals at once betook themselves
to hostilities, and drew a line of circumvallation round the
Melians, dividing the work among the different states. Subsequently
the Athenians returned with most of their army, leaving behind them
a certain number of their own citizens and of the allies to keep guard
by land and sea. The force thus left stayed on and besieged the place.
About the same time the Argives invaded the territory of Phlius
and lost eighty men cut off in an ambush by the Phliasians and
Argive exiles. Meanwhile the Athenians at Pylos took so much plunder
from the Lacedaemonians that the latter, although they still refrained
from breaking off the treaty and going to war with Athens, yet
proclaimed that any of their people that chose might plunder the
Athenians. The Corinthians also commenced hostilities with the
Athenians for private quarrels of their own; but the rest of the
Peloponnesians stayed quiet. Meanwhile the Melians attacked by night
and took the part of the Athenian lines over against the market, and
killed some of the men, and brought in corn and all else that they
could find useful to them, and so returned and kept quiet, while the
Athenians took measures to keep better guard in future.
Summer was now over. The next winter the Lacedaemonians intended
to invade the Argive territory, but arriving at the frontier found the
sacrifices for crossing unfavourable, and went back again. This
intention of theirs gave the Argives suspicions of certain of their
fellow citizens, some of whom they arrested; others, however,
escaped them. About the same time the Melians again took another
part of the Athenian lines which were but feebly garrisoned.
Reinforcements afterwards arriving from Athens in consequence, under
the command of Philocrates, son of Demeas, the siege was now pressed
vigorously; and some treachery taking place inside, the Melians
surrendered at discretion to the Athenians, who put to death all the
grown men whom they took, and sold the women and children for
slaves, and subsequently sent out five hundred colonists and inhabited
the place themselves.
_Seventeenth Year of the War - The Sicilian Campaign -
Affair of the Hermae - Departure of the Expedition_
The same winter the Athenians resolved to sail again to Sicily, with
a greater armament than that under Laches and Eurymedon, and, if
possible, to conquer the island; most of them being ignorant of its
size and of the number of its inhabitants, Hellenic and barbarian, and
of the fact that they were undertaking a war not much inferior to that
against the Peloponnesians. For the voyage round Sicily in a
merchantman is not far short of eight days; and yet, large as the
island is, there are only two miles of sea to prevent its being
mainland.
It was settled originally as follows, and the peoples that
occupied it are these. The earliest inhabitants spoken of in any
part of the country are the Cyclopes and Laestrygones; but I cannot
tell of what race they were, or whence they came or whither they went,
and must leave my readers to what the poets have said of them and to
what may be generally known concerning them. The Sicanians appear to
have been the next settlers, although they pretend to have been the
first of all and aborigines; but the facts show that they were
Iberians, driven by the Ligurians from the river Sicanus in Iberia. It
was from them that the island, before called Trinacria, took its
name of Sicania, and to the present day they inhabit the west of
Sicily. On the fall of Ilium, some of the Trojans escaped from the
Achaeans, came in ships to Sicily, and settled next to the Sicanians
under the general name of Elymi; their towns being called Eryx and
Egesta. With them settled some of the Phocians carried on their way
from Troy by a storm, first to Libya, and afterwards from thence to
Sicily. The Sicels crossed over to Sicily from their first home Italy,
flying from the Opicans, as tradition says and as seems not
unlikely, upon rafts, having watched till the wind set down the strait
to effect the passage; although perhaps they may have sailed over in
some other way. Even at the present day there are still Sicels in
Italy; and the country got its name of Italy from Italus, a king of
the Sicels, so called. These went with a great host to Sicily,
defeated the Sicanians in battle and forced them to remove to the
south and west of the island, which thus came to be called Sicily
instead of Sicania, and after they crossed over continued to enjoy the
richest parts of the country for near three hundred years before any
Hellenes came to Sicily; indeed they still hold the centre and north
of the island. There were also Phoenicians living all round Sicily,
who had occupied promontories upon the sea coasts and the islets
adjacent for the purpose of trading with the Sicels. But when the
Hellenes began to arrive in considerable numbers by sea, the
Phoenicians abandoned most of their stations, and drawing together
took up their abode in Motye, Soloeis, and Panormus, near the Elymi,
partly because they confided in their alliance, and also because these
are the nearest points for the voyage between Carthage and Sicily.
These were the barbarians in Sicily, settled as I have said. Of
the Hellenes, the first to arrive were Chalcidians from Euboea with
Thucles, their founder. They founded Naxos and built the altar to
Apollo Archegetes, which now stands outside the town, and upon which
the deputies for the games sacrifice before sailing from Sicily.
Syracuse was founded the year afterwards by Archias, one of the
Heraclids from Corinth, who began by driving out the Sicels from the
island upon which the inner city now stands, though it is no longer
surrounded by water: in process of time the outer town also was
taken within the walls and became populous. Meanwhile Thucles and
the Chalcidians set out from Naxos in the fifth year after the
foundation of Syracuse, and drove out the Sicels by arms and founded
Leontini and afterwards Catana; the Catanians themselves choosing
Evarchus as their founder.
About the same time Lamis arrived in Sicily with a colony from
Megara, and after founding a place called Trotilus beyond the river
Pantacyas, and afterwards leaving it and for a short while joining the
Chalcidians at Leontini, was driven out by them and founded Thapsus.
After his death his companions were driven out of Thapsus, and founded
a place called the Hyblaean Megara; Hyblon, a Sicel king, having given
up the place and inviting them thither. Here they lived two hundred
and forty-five years; after which they were expelled from the city and
the country by the Syracusan tyrant Gelo. Before their expulsion,
however, a hundred years after they had settled there, they sent out
Pamillus and founded Selinus; he having come from their mother country
Megara to join them in its foundation. Gela was founded by
Antiphemus from Rhodes and Entimus from Crete, who joined in leading a
colony thither, in the forty-fifth year after the foundation of
Syracuse. The town took its name from the river Gelas, the place where
the citadel now stands, and which was first fortified, being called
Lindii. The institutions which they adopted were Dorian. Near one
hundred and eight years after the foundation of Gela, the Geloans
founded Acragas (Agrigentum), so called from the river of that name,
and made Aristonous and Pystilus their founders; giving their own
institutions to the colony. Zancle was originally founded by pirates
from Cuma, the Chalcidian town in the country of the Opicans:
afterwards, however, large numbers came from Chalcis and the rest of
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