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while the command of the cavalry was given to Perdiccas, who

had at once left the alliance of the Athenians and gone back to that

of the Potidaeans, having deputed Iolaus as his general: The plan of

Aristeus was to keep his own force on the isthmus, and await the

attack of the Athenians; leaving the Chalcidians and the allies

outside the isthmus, and the two hundred cavalry from Perdiccas in

Olynthus to act upon the Athenian rear, on the occasion of their

advancing against him; and thus to place the enemy between two

fires. While Callias the Athenian general and his colleagues

dispatched the Macedonian horse and a few of the allies to Olynthus,

to prevent any movement being made from that quarter, the Athenians

themselves broke up their camp and marched against Potidaea. After

they had arrived at the isthmus, and saw the enemy preparing for

battle, they formed against him, and soon afterwards engaged. The wing

of Aristeus, with the Corinthians and other picked troops round him,

routed the wing opposed to it, and followed for a considerable

distance in pursuit. But the rest of the army of the Potidaeans and of

the Peloponnesians was defeated by the Athenians, and took refuge

within the fortifications. Returning from the pursuit, Aristeus

perceived the defeat of the rest of the army. Being at a loss which of

the two risks to choose, whether to go to Olynthus or to Potidaea,

he at last determined to draw his men into as small a space as

possible, and force his way with a run into Potidaea. Not without

difficulty, through a storm of missiles, he passed along by the

breakwater through the sea, and brought off most of his men safe,

though a few were lost. Meanwhile the auxiliaries of the Potidaeans

from Olynthus, which is about seven miles off and in sight of

Potidaea, when the battle began and the signals were raised,

advanced a little way to render assistance; and the Macedonian horse

formed against them to prevent it. But on victory speedily declaring

for the Athenians and the signals being taken down, they retired

back within the wall; and the Macedonians returned to the Athenians.

Thus there were no cavalry present on either side. After the battle

the Athenians set up a trophy, and gave back their dead to the

Potidaeans under truce. The Potidaeans and their allies had close upon

three hundred killed; the Athenians a hundred and fifty of their own

citizens, and Callias their general.

 

The wall on the side of the isthmus had now works at once raised

against it, and manned by the Athenians. That on the side of Pallene

had no works raised against it. They did not think themselves strong

enough at once to keep a garrison in the isthmus and to cross over

to Pallene and raise works there; they were afraid that the Potidaeans

and their allies might take advantage of their division to attack

them. Meanwhile the Athenians at home learning that there were no

works at Pallene, some time afterwards sent off sixteen hundred

heavy infantry of their own citizens under the command of Phormio, son

of Asopius. Arrived at Pallene, he fixed his headquarters at

Aphytis, and led his army against Potidaea by short marches,

ravaging the country as he advanced. No one venturing to meet him in

the field, he raised works against the wall on the side of Pallene. So

at length Potidaea was strongly invested on either side, and from

the sea by the ships co-operating in the blockade. Aristeus, seeing

its investment complete, and having no hope of its salvation, except

in the event of some movement from the Peloponnese, or of some other

improbable contingency, advised all except five hundred to watch for a

wind and sail out of the place, in order that their provisions might

last the longer. He was willing to be himself one of those who

remained. Unable to persuade them, and desirous of acting on the

next alternative, and of having things outside in the best posture

possible, he eluded the guardships of the Athenians and sailed out.

Remaining among the Chalcidians, he continued to carry on the war;

in particular he laid an ambuscade near the city of the Sermylians,

and cut off many of them; he also communicated with Peloponnese, and

tried to contrive some method by which help might be brought.

Meanwhile, after the completion of the investment of Potidaea, Phormio

next employed his sixteen hundred men in ravaging Chalcidice and

Bottica: some of the towns also were taken by him.

CHAPTER III

Congress of the Peloponnesian Confederacy at Lacedaemon

 

The Athenians and Peloponnesians had these antecedent grounds of

complaint against each other: the complaint of Corinth was that her

colony of Potidaea, and Corinthian and Peloponnesian citizens within

it, were being besieged; that of Athens against the Peloponnesians

that they had incited a town of hers, a member of her alliance and a

contributor to her revenue, to revolt, and had come and were openly

fighting against her on the side of the Potidaeans. For all this,

war had not yet broken out: there was still truce for a while; for

this was a private enterprise on the part of Corinth.

 

But the siege of Potidaea put an end to her inaction; she had men

inside it: besides, she feared for the place. Immediately summoning

the allies to Lacedaemon, she came and loudly accused Athens of breach

of the treaty and aggression on the rights of Peloponnese. With her,

the Aeginetans, formally unrepresented from fear of Athens, in

secret proved not the least urgent of the advocates for war, asserting

that they had not the independence guaranteed to them by the treaty.

After extending the summons to any of their allies and others who

might have complaints to make of Athenian aggression, the

Lacedaemonians held their ordinary assembly, and invited them to

speak. There were many who came forward and made their several

accusations; among them the Megarians, in a long list of grievances,

called special attention to the fact of their exclusion from the ports

of the Athenian empire and the market of Athens, in defiance of the

treaty. Last of all the Corinthians came forward, and having let those

who preceded them inflame the Lacedaemonians, now followed with a

speech to this effect:

 

“Lacedaemonians! the confidence which you feel in your

constitution and social order, inclines you to receive any reflections

of ours on other powers with a certain scepticism. Hence springs

your moderation, but hence also the rather limited knowledge which you

betray in dealing with foreign politics. Time after time was our voice

raised to warn you of the blows about to be dealt us by Athens, and

time after time, instead of taking the trouble to ascertain the

worth of our communications, you contented yourselves with

suspecting the speakers of being inspired by private interest. And so,

instead of calling these allies together before the blow fell, you

have delayed to do so till we are smarting under it; allies among whom

we have not the worst title to speak, as having the greatest

complaints to make, complaints of Athenian outrage and Lacedaemonian

neglect. Now if these assaults on the rights of Hellas had been made

in the dark, you might be unacquainted with the facts, and it would be

our duty to enlighten you. As it is, long speeches are not needed

where you see servitude accomplished for some of us, meditated for

others—in particular for our allies—and prolonged preparations in

the aggressor against the hour of war. Or what, pray, is the meaning

of their reception of Corcyra by fraud, and their holding it against

us by force? what of the siege of Potidaea?—places one of which lies

most conveniently for any action against the Thracian towns; while the

other would have contributed a very large navy to the Peloponnesians?

 

“For all this you are responsible. You it was who first allowed them

to fortify their city after the Median war, and afterwards to erect

the long walls—you who, then and now, are always depriving of

freedom not only those whom they have enslaved, but also those who

have as yet been your allies. For the true author of the subjugation

of a people is not so much the immediate agent, as the power which

permits it having the means to prevent it; particularly if that

power aspires to the glory of being the liberator of Hellas. We are at

last assembled. It has not been easy to assemble, nor even now are our

objects defined. We ought not to be still inquiring into the fact of

our wrongs, but into the means of our defence. For the aggressors with

matured plans to oppose to our indecision have cast threats aside

and betaken themselves to action. And we know what are the paths by

which Athenian aggression travels, and how insidious is its

progress. A degree of confidence she may feel from the idea that

your bluntness of perception prevents your noticing her; but it is

nothing to the impulse which her advance will receive from the

knowledge that you see, but do not care to interfere. You,

Lacedaemonians, of all the Hellenes are alone inactive, and defend

yourselves not by doing anything but by looking as if you would do

something; you alone wait till the power of an enemy is becoming twice

its original size, instead of crushing it in its infancy. And yet

the world used to say that you were to be depended upon; but in your

case, we fear, it said more than the truth. The Mede, we ourselves

know, had time to come from the ends of the earth to Peloponnese,

without any force of yours worthy of the name advancing to meet him.

But this was a distant enemy. Well, Athens at all events is a near

neighbour, and yet Athens you utterly disregard; against Athens you

prefer to act on the defensive instead of on the offensive, and to

make it an affair of chances by deferring the struggle till she has

grown far stronger than at first. And yet you know that on the whole

the rock on which the barbarian was wrecked was himself, and that if

our present enemy Athens has not again and again annihilated us, we

owe it more to her blunders than to your protection; Indeed,

expectations from you have before now been the ruin of some, whose

faith induced them to omit preparation.

 

“We hope that none of you will consider these words of

remonstrance to be rather words of hostility; men remonstrate with

friends who are in error, accusations they reserve for enemies who

have wronged them. Besides, we consider that we have as good a right

as any one to point out a neighbour’s faults, particularly when we

contemplate the great contrast between the two national characters;

a contrast of which, as far as we can see, you have little perception,

having never yet considered what sort of antagonists you will

encounter in the Athenians, how widely, how absolutely different

from yourselves. The Athenians are addicted to innovation, and their

designs are characterized by swiftness alike in conception and

execution; you have a genius for keeping what you have got,

accompanied by a total want of invention, and when forced to act you

never go far enough. Again, they are adventurous beyond their power,

and daring beyond their judgment, and in danger they are sanguine;

your wont is to attempt less than is justified by your power, to

mistrust even what is sanctioned by your judgment, and to fancy that

from danger there is no release. Further, there is promptitude on

their side against procrastination on yours; they are never at home,

you are never from it: for they hope by their absence to extend

their acquisitions, you

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