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The History of the Peloponnesian War
Book 2 - Chapter VII
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Second Year of the War - The Plague of Athens - Position and
Policy of Pericles - Fall of Potidaea
Such was the funeral that took place during this winter, with
which the first year of the war came to an end. In the first days of
summer the Lacedaemonians and their allies, with two-thirds of their
forces as before, invaded Attica, under the command of Archidamus, son
of Zeuxidamus, King of Lacedaemon, and sat down and laid waste the
country. Not many days after their arrival in Attica the plague
first began to show itself among the Athenians. It was said that it
had broken out in many places previously in the neighbourhood of
Lemnos and elsewhere; but a pestilence of such extent and mortality
was nowhere remembered. Neither were the physicians at first of any
service, ignorant as they were of the proper way to treat it, but they
died themselves the most thickly, as they visited the sick most often;
nor did any human art succeed any better. Supplications in the
temples, divinations, and so forth were found equally futile, till the
overwhelming nature of the disaster at last put a stop to them
altogether.
It first began, it is said, in the parts of Ethiopia above Egypt,
and thence descended into Egypt and Libya and into most of the
King's country. Suddenly falling upon Athens, it first attacked the
population in Piraeus--which was the occasion of their saying that
the Peloponnesians had poisoned the reservoirs, there being as yet
no wells there--and afterwards appeared in the upper city, when the
deaths became much more frequent. All speculation as to its origin
and its causes, if causes can be found adequate to produce so great
a disturbance, I leave to other writers, whether lay or
professional; for myself, I shall simply set down its nature, and
explain the symptoms by which perhaps it may be recognized by the
student, if it should ever break out again.
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This I can the better do, as I had the disease myself, and watched
its operation in the case of others.
That year then is admitted to have been otherwise unprecedentedly
free from sickness; and such few cases as occurred all determined in
this. As a rule, however, there was no ostensible cause; but people in
good health were all of a sudden attacked by violent heats in the
head, and redness and inflammation in the eyes, the inward parts, such
as the throat or tongue, becoming bloody and emitting an unnatural and
fetid breath. These symptoms were followed by sneezing and hoarseness,
after which the pain soon reached the chest, and produced a hard
cough. When it fixed in the stomach, it upset it; and discharges of
bile of every kind named by physicians ensued, accompanied by very
great distress. In most cases also an ineffectual retching followed,
producing violent spasms, which in some cases ceased soon after, in
others much later. Externally the body was not very hot to the
touch, nor pale in its appearance, but reddish, livid, and breaking
out into small pustules and ulcers. But internally it burned so that
the patient could not bear to have on him clothing or linen even of
the very lightest description; or indeed to be otherwise than stark
naked. What they would have liked best would have been to throw
themselves into cold water; as indeed was done by some of the
neglected sick, who plunged into the rain-tanks in their agonies of
unquenchable thirst; though it made no difference whether they drank
little or much. Besides this, the miserable feeling of not being
able to rest or sleep never ceased to torment them. The body meanwhile
did not waste away so long as the distemper was at its height, but
held out to a marvel against its ravages; so that when they succumbed,
as in most cases, on the seventh or eighth day to the internal
inflammation, they had still some strength in them. But if they passed
this stage, and the disease descended further into the bowels,
inducing a violent ulceration there accompanied by severe diarrhoea,
this brought on a weakness which was generally fatal. For the disorder
first settled in the head, ran its course from thence through the
whole of the body, and, even where it did not prove mortal, it still
left its mark on the extremities; for it settled in the privy parts,
the fingers and the toes, and many escaped with the loss of these,
some too with that of their eyes. Others again were seized with an
entire loss of memory on their first recovery, and did not know either
themselves or their friends.
But while the nature of the distemper was such as to baffle all
description, and its attacks almost too grievous for human nature to
endure, it was still in the following circumstance that its difference
from all ordinary disorders was most clearly shown. All the birds
and beasts that prey upon human bodies, either abstained from touching
them (though there were many lying unburied), or died after tasting
them. In proof of this, it was noticed that birds of this kind
actually disappeared; they were not about the bodies, or indeed to
be seen at all. But of course the effects which I have mentioned could
best be studied in a domestic animal like the dog.
Such then, if we pass over the varieties of particular cases which
were many and peculiar, were the general features of the distemper.
Meanwhile the town enjoyed an immunity from all the ordinary
disorders; or if any case occurred, it ended in this. Some died in
neglect, others in the midst of every attention. No remedy was found
that could be used as a specific; for what did good in one case, did
harm in another. Strong and weak constitutions proved equally
incapable of resistance, all alike being swept away, although dieted
with the utmost precaution. By far the most terrible feature in the
malady was the dejection which ensued when any one felt himself
sickening, for the despair into which they instantly fell took away
their power of resistance, and left them a much easier prey to the
disorder; besides which, there was the awful spectacle of men dying
like sheep, through having caught the infection in nursing each other.
This caused the greatest mortality. On the one hand, if they were
afraid to visit each other, they perished from neglect; indeed many
houses were emptied of their inmates for want of a nurse: on the
other, if they ventured to do so, death was the consequence. This
was especially the case with such as made any pretensions to goodness:
honour made them unsparing of themselves in their attendance in
their friends' houses, where even the members of the family were at
last worn out by the moans of the dying, and succumbed to the force of
the disaster. Yet it was with those who had recovered from the disease
that the sick and the dying found most compassion. These knew what
it was from experience, and had now no fear for themselves; for the
same man was never attacked twice--never at least fatally. And such
persons not only received the congratulations of others, but
themselves also, in the elation of the moment, half entertained the
vain hope that they were for the future safe from any disease
whatsoever.
An aggravation of the existing calamity was the influx from the
country into the city, and this was especially felt by the new
arrivals. As there were no houses to receive them, they had to be
lodged at the hot season of the year in stifling cabins, where the
mortality raged without restraint. The bodies of dying men lay one
upon another, and half-dead creatures reeled about the streets and
gathered round all the fountains in their longing for water. The
sacred places also in which they had quartered themselves were full of
corpses of persons that had died there, just as they were; for as
the disaster passed all bounds, men, not knowing what was to become of
them, became utterly careless of everything, whether sacred or
profane. All the burial rites before in use were entirely upset, and
they buried the bodies as best they could. Many from want of the
proper appliances, through so many of their friends having died
already, had recourse to the most shameless sepultures: sometimes
getting the start of those who had raised a pile, they threw their own
dead body upon the stranger's pyre and ignited it; sometimes they
tossed the corpse which they were carrying on the top of another
that was burning, and so went off.
Nor was this the only form of lawless extravagance which owed its
origin to the plague. Men now coolly ventured on what they had
formerly done in a corner, and not just as they pleased, seeing the
rapid transitions produced by persons in prosperity suddenly dying and
those who before had nothing succeeding to their property. So they
resolved to spend quickly and enjoy themselves, regarding their
lives and riches as alike things of a day. Perseverance in what men
called honour was popular with none, it was so uncertain whether
they would be spared to attain the object; but it was settled that
present enjoyment, and all that contributed to it, was both honourable
and useful. Fear of gods or law of man there was none to restrain
them. As for the first, they judged it to be just the same whether
they worshipped them or not, as they saw all alike perishing; and
for the last, no one expected to live to be brought to trial for his
offences, but each felt that a far severer sentence had been already
passed upon them all and hung ever over their heads, and before this
fell it was only reasonable to enjoy life a little.
Such was the nature of the calamity, and heavily did it weigh on the
Athenians; death raging within the city and devastation without. Among
other things which they remembered in their distress was, very
naturally, the following verse which the old men said had long ago
been uttered:
A Dorian war shall come and with it death.
So a dispute arose as to whether dearth and not death had not been the
word in the verse; but at the present juncture, it was of course
decided in favour of the latter; for the people made their
recollection fit in with their sufferings. I fancy, however, that if
another Dorian war should ever afterwards come upon us, and a dearth
should happen to accompany it, the verse will probably be read
accordingly. The oracle also which had been given to the
Lacedaemonians was now remembered by those who knew of it. When the
god was asked whether they should go to war, he answered that if
they put their might into it, victory would be theirs, and that he
would himself be with them. With this oracle events were supposed to
tally. For the plague broke out as soon as the Peloponnesians
invaded Attica, and never entering Peloponnese (not at least to an
extent worth noticing), committed its worst ravages at Athens, and
next to Athens, at the most populous of the other towns. Such was
the history of the plague.
After ravaging the plain, the Peloponnesians advanced into the
Paralian region as far as Laurium, where the Athenian silver mines
are, and first laid waste the side looking towards Peloponnese, next
that which faces Euboea and Andros. But Pericles, who was still
general, held the same opinion as in the former invasion, and would
not let the Athenians march out against them.
However, while they were still in the plain, and had not yet entered
the Paralian land, he had prepared an armament of a hundred ships
for Peloponnese, and when all was ready put out to sea. On board the
ships he took four thousand Athenian heavy infantry, and three hundred
cavalry in horse transports, and then for the first time made out of
old galleys; fifty Chian and Lesbian vessels also joining in the
expedition. When this Athenian armament put out to sea, they left
the Peloponnesians in Attica in the Paralian region. Arriving at
Epidaurus in Peloponnese they ravaged most of the territory, and
even had hopes of taking the town by an assault: in this however
they were not successful. Putting out from Epidaurus, they laid
waste the territory of Troezen, Halieis, and Hermione, all towns on
the coast of Peloponnese, and thence sailing to Prasiai, a maritime
town in Laconia, ravaged part of its territory, and took and sacked
the place itself; after which they returned home, but found the
Peloponnesians gone and no longer in Attica.
During the whole time that the Peloponnesians were in Attica and the
Athenians on the expedition in their ships, men kept dying of the
plague both in the armament and in Athens. Indeed it was actually
asserted that the departure of the Peloponnesians was hastened by fear
of the disorder; as they heard from deserters that it was in the city,
and also could see the burials going on. Yet in this invasion they
remained longer than in any other, and ravaged the whole country,
for they were about forty days in Attica.
The same summer Hagnon, son of Nicias, and Cleopompus, son of
Clinias, the colleagues of Pericles, took the armament of which he had
lately made use, and went off upon an expedition against the
Chalcidians in the direction of Thrace and Potidaea, which was still
under siege. As soon as they arrived, they brought up their engines
against Potidaea and tried every means of taking it, but did not
succeed either in capturing the city or in doing anything else
worthy of their preparations. For the plague attacked them here
also, and committed such havoc as to cripple them completely, even the
previously healthy soldiers of the former expedition catching the
infection from Hagnon's troops; while Phormio and the sixteen
hundred men whom he commanded only escaped by being no longer in the
neighbourhood of the Chalcidians. The end of it was that Hagnon
returned with his ships to Athens, having lost one thousand and
fifty out of four thousand heavy infantry in about forty days;
though the soldiers stationed there before remained in the country and
carried on the siege of Potidaea.
After the second invasion of the Peloponnesians a change came over
the spirit of the Athenians. Their land had now been twice laid waste;
and war and pestilence at once pressed heavy upon them. They began
to find fault with Pericles, as the author of the war and the cause of
all their misfortunes, and became eager to come to terms with
Lacedaemon, and actually sent ambassadors thither, who did not however
succeed in their mission. Their despair was now complete and all
vented itself upon Pericles. When he saw them exasperated at the
present turn of affairs and acting exactly as he had anticipated, he
called an assembly, being (it must be remembered) still general,
with the double object of restoring confidence and of leading them
from these angry feelings to a calmer and more hopeful state of
mind. He accordingly came forward and spoke as follows:
"I was not unprepared for the indignation of which I have been the
object, as I know its causes; and I have called an assembly for the
purpose of reminding you upon certain points, and of protesting
against your being unreasonably irritated with me, or cowed by your
sufferings. I am of opinion that national greatness is more for the
advantage of private citizens, than any individual well-being
coupled with public humiliation. A man may be personally ever so
well off, and yet if his country be ruined he must be ruined with
it; whereas a flourishing commonwealth always affords chances of
salvation to unfortunate individuals. Since then a state can support
the misfortunes of private citizens, while they cannot support hers,
it is surely the duty of every one to be forward in her defence, and
not like you to be so confounded with your domestic afflictions as
to give up all thoughts of the common safety, and to blame me for
having counselled war and yourselves for having voted it. And yet if
you are angry with me, it is with one who, as I believe, is second
to no man either in knowledge of the proper policy, or in the
ability to expound it, and who is moreover not only a patriot but an
honest one. A man possessing that knowledge without that faculty of
exposition might as well have no idea at all on the matter: if he
had both these gifts, but no love for his country, he would be but a
cold advocate for her interests; while were his patriotism not proof
against bribery, everything would go for a price. So that if you
thought that I was even moderately distinguished for these qualities
when you took my advice and went to war, there is certainly no
reason now why I should be charged with having done wrong.
"For those of course who have a free choice in the matter and
whose fortunes are not at stake, war is the greatest of follies. But
if the only choice was between submission with loss of independence,
and danger with the hope of preserving that independence, in such a
case it is he who will not accept the risk that deserves blame, not he
who will. I am the same man and do not alter, it is you who change,
since in fact you took my advice while unhurt, and waited for
misfortune to repent of it; and the apparent error of my policy lies
in the infirmity of your resolution, since the suffering that it
entails is being felt by every one among you, while its advantage is
still remote and obscure to all, and a great and sudden reverse having
befallen you, your mind is too much depressed to persevere in your
resolves. For before what is sudden, unexpected, and least within
calculation, the spirit quails; and putting all else aside, the plague
has certainly been an emergency of this kind. Born, however, as you
are, citizens of a great state, and brought up, as you have been, with
habits equal to your birth, you should be ready to face the greatest
disasters and still to keep unimpaired the lustre of your name. For
the judgment of mankind is as relentless to the weakness that falls
short of a recognized renown, as it is jealous of the arrogance that
aspires higher than its due. Cease then to grieve for your private
afflictions, and address yourselves instead to the safety of the
commonwealth.
"If you shrink before the exertions which the war makes necessary,
and fear that after all they may not have a happy result, you know the
reasons by which I have often demonstrated to you the groundlessness
of your apprehensions. If those are not enough, I will now reveal an
advantage arising from the greatness of your dominion, which I think
has never yet suggested itself to you, which I never mentioned in my
previous speeches, and which has so bold a sound that I should
scarce adventure it now, were it not for the unnatural depression
which I see around me. You perhaps think that your empire extends only
over your allies; I will declare to you the truth. The visible field
of action has two parts, land and sea. In the whole of one of these
you are completely supreme, not merely as far as you use it at
present, but also to what further extent you may think fit: in fine,
your naval resources are such that your vessels may go where they
please, without the King or any other nation on earth being able to
stop them. So that although you may think it a great privation to lose
the use of your land and houses, still you must see that this power is
something widely different; and instead of fretting on their
account, you should really regard them in the light of the gardens and
other accessories that embellish a great fortune, and as, in
comparison, of little moment. You should know too that liberty
preserved by your efforts will easily recover for us what we have
lost, while, the knee once bowed, even what you have will pass from
you. Your fathers receiving these possessions not from others, but
from themselves, did not let slip what their labour had acquired,
but delivered them safe to you; and in this respect at least you
must prove yourselves their equals, remembering that to lose what
one has got is more disgraceful than to be balked in getting, and
you must confront your enemies not merely with spirit but with
disdain. Confidence indeed a blissful ignorance can impart, ay, even
to a coward's breast, but disdain is the privilege of those who,
like us, have been assured by reflection of their superiority to their
adversary. And where the chances are the same, knowledge fortifies
courage by the contempt which is its consequence, its trust being
placed, not in hope, which is the prop of the desperate, but in a
judgment grounded upon existing resources, whose anticipations are
more to be depended upon.
"Again, your country has a right to your services in sustaining
the glories of her position. These are a common source of pride to you
all, and you cannot decline the burdens of empire and still expect
to share its honours. You should remember also that what you are
fighting against is not merely slavery as an exchange for
independence, but also loss of empire and danger from the
animosities incurred in its exercise. Besides, to recede is no
longer possible, if indeed any of you in the alarm of the moment has
become enamoured of the honesty of such an unambitious part. For
what you hold is, to speak somewhat plainly, a tyranny; to take it
perhaps was wrong, but to let it go is unsafe. And men of these
retiring views, making converts of others, would quickly ruin a state;
indeed the result would be the same if they could live independent
by themselves; for the retiring and unambitious are never secure
without vigorous protectors at their side; in fine, such qualities are
useless to an imperial city, though they may help a dependency to an
unmolested servitude.
"But you must not be seduced by citizens like these or angry with
me--who, if I voted for war, only did as you did yourselves--in spite
of the enemy having invaded your country and done what you could be
certain that he would do, if you refused to comply with his demands;
and although besides what we counted for, the plague has come upon
us--the only point indeed at which our calculation has been at fault.
It is this, I know, that has had a large share in making me more
unpopular than I should otherwise have been--quite undeservedly,
unless you are also prepared to give me the credit of any success with
which chance may present you. Besides, the hand of heaven must be
borne with resignation, that of the enemy with fortitude; this was the
old way at Athens, and do not you prevent it being so still. Remember,
too, that if your country has the greatest name in all the world, it
is because she never bent before disaster; because she has expended
more life and effort in war than any other city, and has won for
herself a power greater than any hitherto known, the memory of which
will descend to the latest posterity; even if now, in obedience to the
general law of decay, we should ever be forced to yield, still it will
be remembered that we held rule over more Hellenes than any other
Hellenic state, that we sustained the greatest wars against their
united or separate powers, and inhabited a city unrivalled by any
other in resources or magnitude. These glories may incur the censure
of the slow and unambitious; but in the breast of energy they will
awake emulation, and in those who must remain without them an
envious regret. Hatred and unpopularity at the moment have fallen to
the lot of all who have aspired to rule others; but where odium must
be incurred, true wisdom incurs it for the highest objects. Hatred
also is short-lived; but that which makes the splendour of the present
and the glory of the future remains for ever unforgotten. Make your
decision, therefore, for glory then and honour now, and attain both
objects by instant and zealous effort: do not send heralds to
Lacedaemon, and do not betray any sign of being oppressed by your
present sufferings, since they whose minds are least sensitive to
calamity, and whose hands are most quick to meet it, are the
greatest men and the greatest communities."
Such were the arguments by which Pericles tried to cure the
Athenians of their anger against him and to divert their thoughts from
their immediate afflictions. As a community he succeeded in convincing
them; they not only gave up all idea of sending to Lacedaemon, but
applied themselves with increased energy to the war; still as
private individuals they could not help smarting under their
sufferings, the common people having been deprived of the little
that they were possessed, while the higher orders had lost fine
properties with costly establishments and buildings in the country,
and, worst of all, had war instead of peace. In fact, the public
feeling against him did not subside until he had been fined. Not
long afterwards, however, according to the way of the multitude,
they again elected him general and committed all their affairs to
his hands, having now become less sensitive to their private and
domestic afflictions, and understanding that he was the best man of
all for the public necessities. For as long as he was at the head of
the state during the peace, he pursued a moderate and conservative
policy; and in his time its greatness was at its height. When the
war broke out, here also he seems to have rightly gauged the power
of his country. He outlived its commencement two years and six months,
and the correctness of his previsions respecting it became better
known by his death. He told them to wait quietly, to pay attention
to their marine, to attempt no new conquests, and to expose the city
to no hazards during the war, and doing this, promised them a
favourable result. What they did was the very contrary, allowing
private ambitions and private interests, in matters apparently quite
foreign to the war, to lead them into projects unjust both to
themselves and to their allies--projects whose success would only
conduce to the honour and advantage of private persons, and whose
failure entailed certain disaster on the country in the war. The
causes of this are not far to seek. Pericles indeed, by his rank,
ability, and known integrity, was enabled to exercise an independent
control over the multitude--in short, to lead them instead of being
led by them; for as he never sought power by improper means, he was
never compelled to flatter them, but, on the contrary, enjoyed so high
an estimation that he could afford to anger them by contradiction.
Whenever he saw them unseasonably and insolently elated, he would with
a word reduce them to alarm; on the other hand, if they fell victims
to a panic, he could at once restore them to confidence. In short,
what was nominally a democracy became in his hands government by the
first citizen. With his successors it was different. More on a level
with one another, and each grasping at supremacy, they ended by
committing even the conduct of state affairs to the whims of the
multitude. This, as might have been expected in a great and
sovereign state, produced a host of blunders, and amongst them the
Sicilian expedition; though this failed not so much through a
miscalculation of the power of those against whom it was sent, as
through a fault in the senders in not taking the best measures
afterwards to assist those who had gone out, but choosing rather to
occupy themselves with private cabals for the leadership of the
commons, by which they not only paralysed operations in the field, but
also first introduced civil discord at home. Yet after losing most
of their fleet besides other forces in Sicily, and with faction
already dominant in the city, they could still for three years make
head against their original adversaries, joined not only by the
Sicilians, but also by their own allies nearly all in revolt, and at
last by the King's son, Cyrus, who furnished the funds for the
Peloponnesian navy. Nor did they finally succumb till they fell the
victims of their own intestine disorders. So superfluously abundant
were the resources from which the genius of Pericles foresaw an easy
triumph in the war over the unaided forces of the Peloponnesians.
During the same summer the Lacedaemonians and their allies made an
expedition with a hundred ships against Zacynthus, an island lying off
the coast of Elis, peopled by a colony of Achaeans from Peloponnese,
and in alliance with Athens. There were a thousand Lacedaemonian heavy
infantry on board, and Cnemus, a Spartan, as admiral. They made a
descent from their ships, and ravaged most of the country; but as
the inhabitants would not submit, they sailed back home.
At the end of the same summer the Corinthian Aristeus, Aneristus,
Nicolaus, and Stratodemus, envoys from Lacedaemon, Timagoras, a
Tegean, and a private individual named Pollis from Argos, on their way
to Asia to persuade the King to supply funds and join in the war, came
to Sitalces, son of Teres in Thrace, with the idea of inducing him, if
possible, to forsake the alliance of Athens and to march on Potidaea
then besieged by an Athenian force, and also of getting conveyed by
his means to their destination across the Hellespont to Pharnabazus,
who was to send them up the country to the King. But there chanced
to be with Sitalces some Athenian ambassadors--Learchus, son of
Callimachus, and Ameiniades, son of Philemon--who persuaded Sitalces'
son, Sadocus, the new Athenian citizen, to put the men into their
hands and thus prevent their crossing over to the King and doing their
part to injure the country of his choice. He accordingly had them
seized, as they were travelling through Thrace to the vessel in
which they were to cross the Hellespont, by a party whom he had sent
on with Learchus and Ameiniades, and gave orders for their delivery to
the Athenian ambassadors, by whom they were brought to Athens. On
their arrival, the Athenians, afraid that Aristeus, who had been
notably the prime mover in the previous affairs of Potidaea and
their Thracian possessions, might live to do them still more
mischief if he escaped, slew them all the same day, without giving
them a trial or hearing the defence which they wished to offer, and
cast their bodies into a pit; thinking themselves justified in using
in retaliation the same mode of warfare which the Lacedaemonians had
begun, when they slew and cast into pits all the Athenian and allied
traders whom they caught on board the merchantmen round Peloponnese.
Indeed, at the outset of the war, the Lacedaemonians butchered as
enemies all whom they took on the sea, whether allies of Athens or
neutrals.
About the same time towards the close of the summer, the Ambraciot
forces, with a number of barbarians that they had raised, marched
against the Amphilochian Argos and the rest of that country. The
origin of their enmity against the Argives was this. This Argos and
the rest of Amphilochia were colonized by Amphilochus, son of
Amphiaraus. Dissatisfied with the state of affairs at home on his
return thither after the Trojan War, he built this city in the
Ambracian Gulf, and named it Argos after his own country. This was the
largest town in Amphilochia, and its inhabitants the most powerful.
Under the pressure of misfortune many generations afterwards, they
called in the Ambraciots, their neighbours on the Amphilochian border,
to join their colony; and it was by this union with the Ambraciots
that they learnt their present Hellenic speech, the rest of the
Amphilochians being barbarians. After a time the Ambraciots expelled
the Argives and held the city themselves. Upon this the
Amphilochians gave themselves over to the Acarnanians; and the two
together called the Athenians, who sent them Phormio as general and
thirty ships; upon whose arrival they took Argos by storm, and made
slaves of the Ambraciots; and the Amphilochians and Acarnanians
inhabited the town in common. After this began the alliance between
the Athenians and Acarnanians. The enmity of the Ambraciots against
the Argives thus commenced with the enslavement of their citizens; and
afterwards during the war they collected this armament among
themselves and the Chaonians, and other of the neighbouring
barbarians. Arrived before Argos, they became masters of the
country; but not being successful in their attacks upon the town,
returned home and dispersed among their different peoples.
Such were the events of the summer. The ensuing winter the Athenians
sent twenty ships round Peloponnese, under the command of Phormio, who
stationed himself at Naupactus and kept watch against any one
sailing in or out of Corinth and the Crissaean Gulf. Six others went
to Caria and Lycia under Melesander, to collect tribute in those
parts, and also to prevent the Peloponnesian privateers from taking up
their station in those waters and molesting the passage of the
merchantmen from Phaselis and Phoenicia and the adjoining continent.
However, Melesander, going up the country into Lycia with a force of
Athenians from the ships and the allies, was defeated and killed in
battle, with the loss of a number of his troops.
The same winter the Potidaeans at length found themselves no
longer able to hold out against their besiegers. The inroads of the
Peloponnesians into Attica had not had the desired effect of making
the Athenians raise the siege. Provisions there were none left; and so
far had distress for food gone in Potidaea that, besides a number of
other horrors, instances had even occurred of the people having
eaten one another. In this extremity they at last made proposals for
capitulating to the Athenian generals in command against
them--Xenophon, son of Euripides, Hestiodorus, son of Aristocleides,
and Phanomachus, son of Callimachus. The generals accepted their
proposals, seeing the sufferings of the army in so exposed a position;
besides which the state had already spent two thousand talents upon
the siege. The terms of the capitulation were as follows: a free
passage out for themselves, their children, wives and auxiliaries,
with one garment apiece, the women with two, and a fixed sum of
money for their journey. Under this treaty they went out to Chalcidice
and other places, according as was their power. The Athenians,
however, blamed the generals for granting terms without instructions
from home, being of opinion that the place would have had to surrender
at discretion. They afterwards sent settlers of their own to Potidaea,
and colonized it. Such were the events of the winter, and so ended the
second year of this war of which Thucydides was the historian.
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