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

and took much booty from the Lacedaemonians, which was

sold for no less than twenty-five talents. The same summer, not long

after, the Thespian commons made an attack upon the party in office,

which was not successful, but succours arrived from Thebes, and some

were caught, while others took refuge at Athens.

 

The same summer the Syracusans learned that the Athenians had been

joined by their cavalry, and were on the point of marching against

them; and seeing that without becoming masters of Epipolae, a

precipitous spot situated exactly over the town, the Athenians could

not, even if victorious in battle, easily invest them, they determined

to guard its approaches, in order that the enemy might not ascend

unobserved by this, the sole way by which ascent was possible, as

the remainder is lofty ground, and falls right down to the city, and

can all be seen from inside; and as it lies above the rest the place

is called by the Syracusans Epipolae or Overtown. They accordingly

went out in mass at daybreak into the meadow along the river Anapus,

their new generals, Hermocrates and his colleagues, having just come

into office, and held a review of their heavy infantry, from whom they

first selected a picked body of six hundred, under the command of

Diomilus, an exile from Andros, to guard Epipolae, and to be ready

to muster at a moment’s notice to help wherever help should be

required.

 

Meanwhile the Athenians, the very same morning, were holding a

review, having already made land unobserved with all the armament from

Catana, opposite a place called Leon, not much more than half a mile

from Epipolae, where they disembarked their army, bringing the fleet

to anchor at Thapsus, a peninsula running out into the sea, with a

narrow isthmus, and not far from the city of Syracuse either by land

or water. While the naval force of the Athenians threw a stockade

across the isthmus and remained quiet at Thapsus, the land army

immediately went on at a run to Epipolae, and succeeded in getting

up by Euryelus before the Syracusans perceived them, or could come

up from the meadow and the review. Diomilus with his six hundred and

the rest advanced as quickly as they could, but they had nearly

three miles to go from the meadow before reaching them. Attacking in

this way in considerable disorder, the Syracusans were defeated in

battle at Epipolae and retired to the town, with a loss of about three

hundred killed, and Diomilus among the number. After this the

Athenians set up a trophy and restored to the Syracusans their dead

under truce, and next day descended to Syracuse itself; and no one

coming out to meet them, reascended and built a fort at Labdalum, upon

the edge of the cliffs of Epipolae, looking towards Megara, to serve

as a magazine for their baggage and money, whenever they advanced to

battle or to work at the lines.

 

Not long afterwards three hundred cavalry came to them from

Egesta, and about a hundred from the Sicels, Naxians, and others;

and thus, with the two hundred and fifty from Athens, for whom they

had got horses from the Egestaeans and Catanians, besides others

that they bought, they now mustered six hundred and fifty cavalry in

all. After posting a garrison in Labdalum, they advanced to Syca,

where they sat down and quickly built the Circle or centre of their

wall of circumvallation. The Syracusans, appalled at the rapidity with

which the work advanced, determined to go out against them and give

battle and interrupt it; and the two armies were already in battle

array, when the Syracusan generals observed that their troops found

such difficulty in getting into line, and were in such disorder,

that they led them back into the town, except part of the cavalry.

These remained and hindered the Athenians from carrying stones or

dispersing to any great distance, until a tribe of the Athenian

heavy infantry, with all the cavalry, charged and routed the Syracusan

horse with some loss; after which they set up a trophy for the cavalry

action.

 

The next day the Athenians began building the wall to the north of

the Circle, at the same time collecting stone and timber, which they

kept laying down towards Trogilus along the shortest line for their

works from the great harbour to the sea; while the Syracusans,

guided by their generals, and above all by Hermocrates, instead of

risking any more general engagements, determined to build a

counterwork in the direction in which the Athenians were going to

carry their wall. If this could be completed in time, the enemy’s

lines would be cut; and meanwhile, if he were to attempt to

interrupt them by an attack, they would send a part of their forces

against him, and would secure the approaches beforehand with their

stockade, while the Athenians would have to leave off working with

their whole force in order to attend to them. They accordingly sallied

forth and began to build, starting from their city, running a cross

wall below the Athenian Circle, cutting down the olives and erecting

wooden towers. As the Athenian fleet had not yet sailed round into the

great harbour, the Syracusans still commanded the seacoast, and the

Athenians brought their provisions by land from Thapsus.

 

The Syracusans now thought the stockades and stonework of their

counterwall sufficiently far advanced; and as the Athenians, afraid of

being divided and so fighting at a disadvantage, and intent upon their

own wall, did not come out to interrupt them, they left one tribe to

guard the new work and went back into the city. Meanwhile the

Athenians destroyed their pipes of drinking-water carried

underground into the city; and watching until the rest of the

Syracusans were in their tents at midday, and some even gone away into

the city, and those in the stockade keeping but indifferent guard,

appointed three hundred picked men of their own, and some men picked

from the light troops and armed for the purpose, to run suddenly as

fast as they could to the counterwork, while the rest of the army

advanced in two divisions, the one with one of the generals to the

city in case of a sortie, the other with the other general to the

stockade by the postern gate. The three hundred attacked and took

the stockade, abandoned by its garrison, who took refuge in the

outworks round the statue of Apollo Temenites. Here the pursuers burst

in with them, and after getting in were beaten out by the

Syracusans, and some few of the Argives and Athenians slain; after

which the whole army retired, and having demolished the counterwork

and pulled up the stockade, carried away the stakes to their own

lines, and set up a trophy.

 

The next day the Athenians from the Circle proceeded to fortify

the cliff above the marsh which on this side of Epipolae looks towards

the great harbour; this being also the shortest line for their work to

go down across the plain and the marsh to the harbour. Meanwhile the

Syracusans marched out and began a second stockade, starting from

the city, across the middle of the marsh, digging a trench alongside

to make it impossible for the Athenians to carry their wall down to

the sea. As soon as the Athenians had finished their work at the cliff

they again attacked the stockade and ditch of the Syracusans. Ordering

the fleet to sail round from Thapsus into the great harbour of

Syracuse, they descended at about dawn from Epipolae into the plain,

and laying doors and planks over the marsh, where it was muddy and

firmest, crossed over on these, and by daybreak took the ditch and the

stockade, except a small portion which they captured afterwards. A

battle now ensued, in which the Athenians were victorious, the right

wing of the Syracusans flying to the town and the left to the river.

The three hundred picked Athenians, wishing to cut off their

passage, pressed on at a run to the bridge, when the alarmed

Syracusans, who had with them most of their cavalry, closed and routed

them, hurling them back upon the Athenian right wing, the first

tribe of which was thrown into a panic by the shock. Seeing this,

Lamachus came to their aid from the Athenian left with a few archers

and with the Argives, and crossing a ditch, was left alone with a

few that had crossed with him, and was killed with five or six of

his men. These the Syracusans managed immediately to snatch up in

haste and get across the river into a place of security, themselves

retreating as the rest of the Athenian army now came up.

 

Meanwhile those who had at first fled for refuge to the city, seeing

the turn affairs were taking, now rallied from the town and formed

against the Athenians in front of them, sending also a part of their

number to the Circle on Epipolae, which they hoped to take while

denuded of its defenders. These took and destroyed the Athenian

outwork of a thousand feet, the Circle itself being saved by Nicias,

who happened to have been left in it through illness, and who now

ordered the servants to set fire to the engines and timber thrown down

before the wall; want of men, as he was aware, rendering all other

means of escape impossible. This step was justified by the result, the

Syracusans not coming any further on account of the fire, but

retreating. Meanwhile succours were coming up from the Athenians

below, who had put to flight the troops opposed to them; and the fleet

also, according to orders, was sailing from Thapsus into the great

harbour. Seeing this, the troops on the heights retired in haste,

and the whole army of the Syracusans re-entered the city, thinking

that with their present force they would no longer be able to hinder

the wall reaching the sea.

 

After this the Athenians set up a trophy and restored to the

Syracusans their dead under truce, receiving in return Lamachus and

those who had fallen with him. The whole of their forces, naval and

military, being now with them, they began from Epipolae and the cliffs

and enclosed the Syracusans with a double wall down to the sea.

Provisions were now brought in for the armament from all parts of

Italy; and many of the Sicels, who had hitherto been looking to see

how things went, came as allies to the Athenians: there also arrived

three ships of fifty oars from Tyrrhenia. Meanwhile everything else

progressed favourably for their hopes. The Syracusans began to despair

of finding safety in arms, no relief having reached them from

Peloponnese, and were now proposing terms of capitulation among

themselves and to Nicias, who after the death of Lamachus was left

sole commander. No decision was come to, but, as was natural with

men in difficulties and besieged more straitly than before, there

was much discussion with Nicias and still more in the town. Their

present misfortunes had also made them suspicious of one another;

and the blame of their disasters was thrown upon the ill-fortune or

treachery of the generals under whose command they had happened; and

these were deposed and others, Heraclides, Eucles, and Tellias,

elected in their stead.

 

Meanwhile the Lacedaemonian, Gylippus, and the ships from Corinth

were now off Leucas, intent upon going with all haste to the relief of

Sicily. The reports that reached them being of an alarming kind, and

all agreeing in the falsehood that Syracuse was already completely

invested, Gylippus abandoned all hope of Sicily, and wishing to save

Italy, rapidly crossed the Ionian Sea to Tarentum with the Corinthian,

Pythen, two Laconian, and two Corinthian vessels, leaving the

Corinthians to follow him after manning, in addition to their own