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

their approaching ruin. While they were resting,

Gylippus and the Syracusans sent a part of their army to throw up

works in their rear on the way by which they had advanced; however,

the Athenians immediately sent some of their men and prevented them;

after which they retreated more towards the plain and halted for the

night. When they advanced the next day the Syracusans surrounded and

attacked them on every side, and disabled many of them, falling back

if the Athenians advanced and coming on if they retired, and in

particular assaulting their rear, in the hope of routing them in

detail, and thus striking a panic into the whole army. For a long

while the Athenians persevered in this fashion, but after advancing

for four or five furlongs halted to rest in the plain, the

Syracusans also withdrawing to their own camp.

 

During the night Nicias and Demosthenes, seeing the wretched

condition of their troops, now in want of every kind of necessary, and

numbers of them disabled in the numerous attacks of the enemy,

determined to light as many fires as possible, and to lead off the

army, no longer by the same route as they had intended, but towards

the sea in the opposite direction to that guarded by the Syracusans.

The whole of this route was leading the army not to Catana but to

the other side of Sicily, towards Camarina, Gela, and the other

Hellenic and barbarian towns in that quarter. They accordingly lit a

number of fires and set out by night. Now all armies, and the greatest

most of all, are liable to fears and alarms, especially when they

are marching by night through an enemy’s country and with the enemy

near; and the Athenians falling into one of these panics, the

leading division, that of Nicias, kept together and got on a good

way in front, while that of Demosthenes, comprising rather more than

half the army, got separated and marched on in some disorder. By

morning, however, they reached the sea, and getting into the

Helorine road, pushed on in order to reach the river Cacyparis, and to

follow the stream up through the interior, where they hoped to be

met by the Sicels whom they had sent for. Arrived at the river, they

found there also a Syracusan party engaged in barring the passage of

the ford with a wall and a palisade, and forcing this guard, crossed

the river and went on to another called the Erineus, according to

the advice of their guides.

 

Meanwhile, when day came and the Syracusans and allies found that

the Athenians were gone, most of them accused Gylippus of having let

them escape on purpose, and hastily pursuing by the road which they

had no difficulty in finding that they had taken, overtook them

about dinnertime. They first came up with the troops under

Demosthenes, who were behind and marching somewhat slowly and in

disorder, owing to the night panic above referred to, and at once

attacked and engaged them, the Syracusan horse surrounding them with

more ease now that they were separated from the rest and hemming

them in on one spot. The division of Nicias was five or six miles on

in front, as he led them more rapidly, thinking that under the

circumstances their safety lay not in staying and fighting, unless

obliged, but in retreating as fast as possible, and only fighting when

forced to do so. On the other hand, Demosthenes was, generally

speaking, harassed more incessantly, as his post in the rear left

him the first exposed to the attacks of the enemy; and now, finding

that the Syracusans were in pursuit, he omitted to push on, in order

to form his men for battle, and so lingered until he was surrounded by

his pursuers and himself and the Athenians with him placed in the most

distressing position, being huddled into an enclosure with a wall

all round it, a road on this side and on that, and olive-trees in

great number, where missiles were showered in upon them from every

quarter. This mode of attack the Syracusans had with good reason

adopted in preference to fighting at close quarters, as to risk a

struggle with desperate men was now more for the advantage of the

Athenians than for their own; besides, their success had now become so

certain that they began to spare themselves a little in order not to

be cut off in the moment of victory, thinking too that, as it was,

they would be able in this way to subdue and capture the enemy.

 

In fact, after plying the Athenians and allies all day long from

every side with missiles, they at length saw that they were worn out

with their wounds and other sufferings; and Gylippus and the

Syracusans and their allies made a proclamation, offering their

liberty to any of the islanders who chose to come over to them; and

some few cities went over. Afterwards a capitulation was agreed upon

for all the rest with Demosthenes, to lay down their arms on condition

that no one was to be put to death either by violence or

imprisonment or want of the necessaries of life. Upon this they

surrendered to the number of six thousand in all, laying down all

the money in their possession, which filled the hollows of four

shields, and were immediately conveyed by the Syracusans to the town.

 

Meanwhile Nicias with his division arrived that day at the river

Erineus, crossed over, and posted his army upon some high ground

upon the other side. The next day the Syracusans overtook him and told

him that the troops under Demosthenes had surrendered, and invited him

to follow their example. Incredulous of the fact, Nicias asked for a

truce to send a horseman to see, and upon the return of the

messenger with the tidings that they had surrendered, sent a herald to

Gylippus and the Syracusans, saying that he was ready to agree with

them on behalf of the Athenians to repay whatever money the Syracusans

had spent upon the war if they would let his army go; and offered

until the money was paid to give Athenians as hostages, one for

every talent. The Syracusans and Gylippus rejected this proposition,

and attacked this division as they had the other, standing all round

and plying them with missiles until the evening. Food and

necessaries were as miserably wanting to the troops of Nicias as

they had been to their comrades; nevertheless they watched for the

quiet of the night to resume their march. But as they were taking up

their arms the Syracusans perceived it and raised their paean, upon

which the Athenians, finding that they were discovered, laid them down

again, except about three hundred men who forced their way through the

guards and went on during the night as they were able.

 

As soon as it was day Nicias put his army in motion, pressed, as

before, by the Syracusans and their allies, pelted from every side

by their missiles, and struck down by their javelins. The Athenians

pushed on for the Assinarus, impelled by the attacks made upon them

from every side by a numerous cavalry and the swarm of other arms,

fancying that they should breathe more freely if once across the

river, and driven on also by their exhaustion and craving for water.

Once there they rushed in, and all order was at an end, each man

wanting to cross first, and the attacks of the enemy making it

difficult to cross at all; forced to huddle together, they fell

against and trod down one another, some dying immediately upon the

javelins, others getting entangled together and stumbling over the

articles of baggage, without being able to rise again. Meanwhile the

opposite bank, which was steep, was lined by the Syracusans, who

showered missiles down upon the Athenians, most of them drinking

greedily and heaped together in disorder in the hollow bed of the

river. The Peloponnesians also came down and butchered them,

especially those in the water, which was thus immediately spoiled, but

which they went on drinking just the same, mud and all, bloody as it

was, most even fighting to have it.

 

At last, when many dead now lay piled one upon another in the

stream, and part of the army had been destroyed at the river, and

the few that escaped from thence cut off by the cavalry, Nicias

surrendered himself to Gylippus, whom he trusted more than he did

the Syracusans, and told him and the Lacedaemonians to do what they

liked with him, but to stop the slaughter of the soldiers. Gylippus,

after this, immediately gave orders to make prisoners; upon which

the rest were brought together alive, except a large number secreted

by the soldiery, and a party was sent in pursuit of the three

hundred who had got through the guard during the night, and who were

now taken with the rest. The number of the enemy collected as public

property was not considerable; but that secreted was very large, and

all Sicily was filled with them, no convention having been made in

their case as for those taken with Demosthenes. Besides this, a

large portion were killed outright, the carnage being very great,

and not exceeded by any in this Sicilian war. In the numerous other

encounters upon the march, not a few also had fallen. Nevertheless

many escaped, some at the moment, others served as slaves, and then

ran away subsequently. These found refuge at Catana.

 

The Syracusans and their allies now mustered and took up the

spoils and as many prisoners as they could, and went back to the city.

The rest of their Athenian and allied captives were deposited in the

quarries, this seeming the safest way of keeping them; but Nicias

and Demosthenes were butchered, against the will of Gylippus, who

thought that it would be the crown of his triumph if he could take the

enemy’s generals to Lacedaemon. One of them, as it happened,

Demosthenes, was one of her greatest enemies, on account of the affair

of the island and of Pylos; while the other, Nicias, was for the

same reasons one of her greatest friends, owing to his exertions to

procure the release of the prisoners by persuading the Athenians to

make peace. For these reasons the Lacedaemonians felt kindly towards

him; and it was in this that Nicias himself mainly confided when he

surrendered to Gylippus. But some of the Syracusans who had been in

correspondence with him were afraid, it was said, of his being put

to the torture and troubling their success by his revelations; others,

especially the Corinthians, of his escaping, as he was wealthy, by

means of bribes, and living to do them further mischief; and these

persuaded the allies and put him to death. This or the like was the

cause of the death of a man who, of all the Hellenes in my time, least

deserved such a fate, seeing that the whole course of his life had

been regulated with strict attention to virtue.

 

The prisoners in the quarries were at first hardly treated by the

Syracusans. Crowded in a narrow hole, without any roof to cover

them, the heat of the sun and the stifling closeness of the air

tormented them during the day, and then the nights, which came on

autumnal and chilly, made them ill by the violence of the change;

besides, as they had to do everything in the same place for want of

room, and the bodies of those who died of their wounds or from the

variation in the temperature, or from similar causes, were left heaped

together one upon another, intolerable stenches arose; while hunger

and thirst never ceased to afflict them, each man during eight

months having only half a pint of