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

in which Hermocrates, son of Hermon, a man who with a

general ability of the first order had given proofs of military

capacity and brilliant courage in the war, came forward and encouraged

them, and told them not to let what had occurred make them give way,

since their spirit had not been conquered, but their want of

discipline had done the mischief. Still they had not been beaten by so

much as might have been expected, especially as they were, one might

say, novices in the art of war, an army of artisans opposed to the

most practised soldiers in Hellas. What had also done great mischief

was the number of the generals (there were fifteen of them) and the

quantity of orders given, combined with the disorder and

insubordination of the troops. But if they were to have a few

skilful generals, and used this winter in preparing their heavy

infantry, finding arms for such as had not got any, so as to make them

as numerous as possible, and forcing them to attend to their

training generally, they would have every chance of beating their

adversaries, courage being already theirs and discipline in the

field having thus been added to it. Indeed, both these qualities would

improve, since danger would exercise them in discipline, while their

courage would be led to surpass itself by the confidence which skill

inspires. The generals should be few and elected with full powers, and

an oath should be taken to leave them entire discretion in their

command: if they adopted this plan, their secrets would be better

kept, all preparations would be properly made, and there would be no

room for excuses.

 

The Syracusans heard him, and voted everything as he advised, and

elected three generals, Hermocrates himself, Heraclides, son of

Lysimachus, and Sicanus, son of Execestes. They also sent envoys to

Corinth and Lacedaemon to procure a force of allies to join them,

and to induce the Lacedaemonians for their sakes openly to address

themselves in real earnest to the war against the Athenians, that they

might either have to leave Sicily or be less able to send

reinforcements to their army there.

 

The Athenian forces at Catana now at once sailed against Messina, in

the expectation of its being betrayed to them. The intrigue,

however, after all came to nothing: Alcibiades, who was in the secret,

when he left his command upon the summons from home, foreseeing that

he would be outlawed, gave information of the plot to the friends of

the Syracusans in Messina, who had at once put to death its authors,

and now rose in arms against the opposite faction with those of

their way of thinking, and succeeded in preventing the admission of

the Athenians. The latter waited for thirteen days, and then, as

they were exposed to the weather and without provisions, and met

with no success, went back to Naxos, where they made places for

their ships to lie in, erected a palisade round their camp, and

retired into winter quarters; meanwhile they sent a galley to Athens

for money and cavalry to join them in the spring. During the winter

the Syracusans built a wall on to the city, so as to take in the

statue of Apollo Temenites, all along the side looking towards

Epipolae, to make the task of circumvallation longer and more

difficult, in case of their being defeated, and also erected a fort at

Megara and another in the Olympieum, and stuck palisades along the sea

wherever there was a landing Place. Meanwhile, as they knew that the

Athenians were wintering at Naxos, they marched with all their

people to Catana, and ravaged the land and set fire to the tents and

encampment of the Athenians, and so returned home. Learning also

that the Athenians were sending an embassy to Camarina, on the

strength of the alliance concluded in the time of Laches, to gain,

if possible, that city, they sent another from Syracuse to oppose

them. They had a shrewd suspicion that the Camarinaeans had not sent

what they did send for the first battle very willingly; and they now

feared that they would refuse to assist them at all in future, after

seeing the success of the Athenians in the action, and would join

the latter on the strength of their old friendship. Hermocrates,

with some others, accordingly arrived at Camarina from Syracuse, and

Euphemus and others from the Athenians; and an assembly of the

Camarinaeans having been convened, Hermocrates spoke as follows, in

the hope of prejudicing them against the Athenians:

 

“Camarinaeans, we did not come on this embassy because we were

afraid of your being frightened by the actual forces of the Athenians,

but rather of your being gained by what they would say to you before

you heard anything from us. They are come to Sicily with the pretext

that you know, and the intention which we all suspect, in my opinion

less to restore the Leontines to their homes than to oust us from

ours; as it is out of all reason that they should restore in Sicily

the cities that they lay waste in Hellas, or should cherish the

Leontine Chalcidians because of their Ionian blood and keep in

servitude the Euboean Chalcidians, of whom the Leontines are a colony.

No; but the same policy which has proved so successful in Hellas is

now being tried in Sicily. After being chosen as the leaders of the

Ionians and of the other allies of Athenian origin, to punish the

Mede, the Athenians accused some of failure in military service,

some of fighting against each other, and others, as the case might be,

upon any colourable pretext that could be found, until they thus

subdued them all. In fine, in the struggle against the Medes, the

Athenians did not fight for the liberty of the Hellenes, or the

Hellenes for their own liberty, but the former to make their

countrymen serve them instead of him, the latter to change one

master for another, wiser indeed than the first, but wiser for evil.

 

“But we are not now come to declare to an audience familiar with

them the misdeeds of a state so open to accusation as is the Athenian,

but much rather to blame ourselves, who, with the warnings we

possess in the Hellenes in those parts that have been enslaved through

not supporting each other, and seeing the same sophisms being now

tried upon ourselves—such as restorations of Leontine kinsfolk and

support of Egestaean allies—do not stand together and resolutely

show them that here are no Ionians, or Hellespontines, or islanders,

who change continually, but always serve a master, sometimes the

Mede and sometimes some other, but free Dorians from independent

Peloponnese, dwelling in Sicily. Or, are we waiting until we be

taken in detail, one city after another; knowing as we do that in no

other way can we be conquered, and seeing that they turn to this plan,

so as to divide some of us by words, to draw some by the bait of an

alliance into open war with each other, and to ruin others by such

flattery as different circumstances may render acceptable? And do we

fancy when destruction first overtakes a distant fellow countryman

that the danger will not come to each of us also, or that he who

suffers before us will suffer in himself alone?

 

“As for the Camarinaean who says that it is the Syracusan, not he,

that is the enemy of the Athenian, and who thinks it hard to have to

encounter risk in behalf of my country, I would have him bear in

mind that he will fight in my country, not more for mine than for

his own, and by so much the more safely in that he will enter on the

struggle not alone, after the way has been cleared by my ruin, but

with me as his ally, and that the object of the Athenian is not so

much to punish the enmity of the Syracusan as to use me as a blind

to secure the friendship of the Camarinaean. As for him who envies

or even fears us (and envied and feared great powers must always

be), and who on this account wishes Syracuse to be humbled to teach us

a lesson, but would still have her survive, in the interest of his own

security the wish that he indulges is not humanly possible. A man

can control his own desires, but he cannot likewise control

circumstances; and in the event of his calculations proving

mistaken, he may live to bewail his own misfortune, and wish to be

again envying my prosperity. An idle wish, if he now sacrifice us

and refuse to take his share of perils which are the same, in

reality though not in name, for him as for us; what is nominally the

preservation of our power being really his own salvation. It was to be

expected that you, of all people in the world, Camarinaeans, being our

immediate neighbours and the next in danger, would have foreseen this,

and instead of supporting us in the lukewarm way that you are now

doing, would rather come to us of your own accord, and be now offering

at Syracuse the aid which you would have asked for at Camarina, if

to Camarina the Athenians had first come, to encourage us to resist

the invader. Neither you, however, nor the rest have as yet

bestirred yourselves in this direction.

 

“Fear perhaps will make you study to do right both by us and by

the invaders, and plead that you have an alliance with the

Athenians. But you made that alliance, not against your friends, but

against the enemies that might attack you, and to help the Athenians

when they were wronged by others, not when as now they are wronging

their neighbours. Even the Rhegians, Chalcidians though they be,

refuse to help to restore the Chalcidian Leontines; and it would be

strange if, while they suspect the gist of this fine pretence and

are wise without reason, you, with every reason on your side, should

yet choose to assist your natural enemies, and should join with

their direst foes in undoing those whom nature has made your own

kinsfolk. This is not to do right; but you should help us without fear

of their armament, which has no terrors if we hold together, but

only if we let them succeed in their endeavours to separate us;

since even after attacking us by ourselves and being victorious in

battle, they had to go off without effecting their purpose.

 

“United, therefore, we have no cause to despair, but rather new

encouragement to league together; especially as succour will come to

us from the Peloponnesians, in military matters the undoubted

superiors of the Athenians. And you need not think that your prudent

policy of taking sides with neither, because allies of both, is either

safe for you or fair to us. Practically it is not as fair as it

pretends to be. If the vanquished be defeated, and the victor conquer,

through your refusing to join, what is the effect of your abstention

but to leave the former to perish unaided, and to allow the latter

to offend unhindered? And yet it were more honourable to join those

who are not only the injured party, but your own kindred, and by so

doing to defend the common interests of Sicily and save your friends

the Athenians from doing wrong.

 

“In conclusion, we Syracusans say that it is useless for us to

demonstrate either to you or to the rest what you know already as well

as we do; but we entreat, and if our entreaty fail, we protest that we

are menaced by our eternal enemies the Ionians, and are betrayed by

you our fellow Dorians. If the Athenians reduce us,