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But they would have others to send. The Cretan Sea is a

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.

BOOK VI CHAPTER XVIII

_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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