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The History of the Peloponnesian War
Book 3 - Chapter X
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Fifth Year of the War - Trial and Execution of the Plataeans -
Corcyraean Revolution
During the same summer, after the reduction of Lesbos, the Athenians
under Nicias, son of Niceratus, made an expedition against the
island of Minoa, which lies off Megara and was used as a fortified
post by the Megarians, who had built a tower upon it. Nicias wished to
enable the Athenians to maintain their blockade from this nearer
station instead of from Budorum and Salamis; to stop the Peloponnesian
galleys and privateers sailing out unobserved from the island, as they
had been in the habit of doing; and at the same time prevent
anything from coming into Megara. Accordingly, after taking two towers
projecting on the side of Nisaea, by engines from the sea, and
clearing the entrance into the channel between the island and the
shore, he next proceeded to cut off all communication by building a
wall on the mainland at the point where a bridge across a morass
enabled succours to be thrown into the island, which was not far off
from the continent. A few days sufficing to accomplish this, he
afterwards raised some works in the island also, and leaving a
garrison there, departed with his forces.
About the same time in this summer, the Plataeans, being now without
provisions and unable to support the siege, surrendered to the
Peloponnesians in the following manner. An assault had been made
upon the wall, which the Plataeans were unable to repel. The
Lacedaemonian commander, perceiving their weakness, wished to avoid taking the
place by storm; his instructions from Lacedaemon having been so
conceived, in order that if at any future time peace should be made
with Athens, and they should agree each to restore the places that
they had taken in the war, Plataea might be held to have come over
voluntarily, and not be included in the list.
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He accordingly sent a herald to them to ask if they were willing
voluntarily to surrender the town to the Lacedaemonians, and accept them as their
judges, upon the understanding that the guilty should be punished, but
no one without form of law. The Plataeans were now in the last state
of weakness, and the herald had no sooner delivered his message than
they surrendered the town. The Peloponnesians fed them for some days
until the judges from Lacedaemon, who were five in number, arrived.
Upon their arrival no charge was preferred; they simply called up
the Plataeans, and asked them whether they had done the Lacedaemonians
and allies any service in the war then raging. The Plataeans asked
leave to speak at greater length, and deputed two of their number to
represent them: Astymachus, son of Asopolaus, and Lacon, son of
Aeimnestus, proxenus of the Lacedaemonians, who came forward and spoke
as follows:
"Lacedaemonians, when we surrendered our city we trusted in you, and
looked forward to a trial more agreeable to the forms of law than
the present, to which we had no idea of being subjected; the judges
also in whose hands we consented to place ourselves were you, and
you only (from whom we thought we were most likely to obtain justice),
and not other persons, as is now the case. As matters stand, we are
afraid that we have been doubly deceived. We have good reason to
suspect, not only that the issue to be tried is the most terrible of
all, but that you will not prove impartial; if we may argue from the
fact that no accusation was first brought forward for us to answer,
but we had ourselves to ask leave to speak, and from the question
being put so shortly, that a true answer to it tells against us, while
a false one can be contradicted. In this dilemma, our safest, and
indeed our only course, seems to be to say something at all risks:
placed as we are, we could scarcely be silent without being
tormented by the damning thought that speaking might have saved us.
Another difficulty that we have to encounter is the difficulty of
convincing you. Were we unknown to each other we might profit by
bringing forward new matter with which you were unacquainted: as it
is, we can tell you nothing that you do not know already, and we fear,
not that you have condemned us in your own minds of having failed in
our duty towards you, and make this our crime, but that to please a
third party we have to submit to a trial the result of which is
already decided. Nevertheless, we will place before you what we can
justly urge, not only on the question of the quarrel which the Thebans
have against us, but also as addressing you and the rest of the
Hellenes; and we will remind you of our good services, and endeavour
to prevail with you.
"To your short question, whether we have done the Lacedaemonians and
allies any service in this war, we say, if you ask us as enemies, that
to refrain from serving you was not to do you injury; if as friends,
that you are more in fault for having marched against us. During the
peace, and against the Mede, we acted well: we have not now been the
first to break the peace, and we were the only Boeotians who then
joined in defending against the Mede the liberty of Hellas. Although
an inland people, we were present at the action at Artemisium; in
the battle that took place in our territory we fought by the side of
yourselves and Pausanias; and in all the other Hellenic exploits of
the time we took a part quite out of proportion to our strength.
Besides, you, as Lacedaemonians, ought not to forget that at the
time of the great panic at Sparta, after the earthquake, caused by the
secession of the Helots to Ithome, we sent the third part of our
citizens to assist you.
"On these great and historical occasions such was the part that we
chose, although afterwards we became your enemies. For this you were
to blame. When we asked for your alliance against our Theban
oppressors, you rejected our petition, and told us to go to the
Athenians who were our neighbours, as you lived too far off. In the
war we never have done to you, and never should have done to you,
anything unreasonable. If we refused to desert the Athenians when
you asked us, we did no wrong; they had helped us against the
Thebans when you drew back, and we could no longer give them up with
honour; especially as we had obtained their alliance and had been
admitted to their citizenship at our own request, and after
receiving benefits at their hands; but it was plainly our duty loyally
to obey their orders. Besides, the faults that either of you may
commit in your supremacy must be laid, not upon the followers, but
on the chiefs that lead them astray.
"With regard to the Thebans, they have wronged us repeatedly, and
their last aggression, which has been the means of bringing us into
our present position, is within your own knowledge. In seizing our
city in time of peace, and what is more at a holy time in the month,
they justly encountered our vengeance, in accordance with the
universal law which sanctions resistance to an invader; and it
cannot now be right that we should suffer on their account. By
taking your own immediate interest and their animosity as the test
of justice, you will prove yourselves to be rather waiters on
expediency than judges of right; although if they seem useful to you
now, we and the rest of the Hellenes gave you much more valuable
help at a time of greater need. Now you are the assailants, and others
fear you; but at the crisis to which we allude, when the barbarian
threatened all with slavery, the Thebans were on his side. It is just,
therefore, to put our patriotism then against our error now, if
error there has been; and you will find the merit outweighing the
fault, and displayed at a juncture when there were few Hellenes who
would set their valour against the strength of Xerxes, and when
greater praise was theirs who preferred the dangerous path of honour
to the safe course of consulting their own interest with respect to
the invasion. To these few we belonged, and highly were we honoured
for it; and yet we now fear to perish by having again acted on the
same principles, and chosen to act well with Athens sooner than wisely
with Sparta. Yet in justice the same cases should be decided in the
same way, and policy should not mean anything else than lasting
gratitude for the service of good ally combined with a proper
attention to one's own immediate interest.
"Consider also that at present the Hellenes generally regard you
as a pattern of worth and honour; and if you pass an unjust sentence
upon us in this which is no obscure cause, but one in which you, the
judges, are as illustrious as we, the prisoners, are blameless, take
care that displeasure be not felt at an unworthy decision in the
matter of honourable men made by men yet more honourable than they,
and at the consecration in the national temples of spoils taken from
the Plataeans, the benefactors of Hellas. Shocking indeed will it seem
for Lacedaemonians to destroy Plataea, and for the city whose name
your fathers inscribed upon the tripod at Delphi for its good service,
to be by you blotted out from the map of Hellas, to please the
Thebans. To such a depth of misfortune have we fallen that, while
the Medes' success had been our ruin, Thebans now supplant us in
your once fond regards; and we have been subjected to two dangers, the
greatest of any--that of dying of starvation then, if we had not
surrendered our town, and now of being tried for our lives. So that we
Plataeans, after exertions beyond our power in the cause of the
Hellenes, are rejected by all, forsaken and unassisted; helped by none
of our allies, and reduced to doubt the stability of our only hope,
yourselves.
"Still, in the name of the gods who once presided over our
confederacy, and of our own good service in the Hellenic cause, we
adjure you to relent; to recall the decision which we fear that the
Thebans may have obtained from you; to ask back the gift that you have
given them, that they disgrace not you by slaying us; to gain a pure
instead of a guilty gratitude, and not to gratify others to be
yourselves rewarded with shame. Our lives may be quickly taken, but it
will be a heavy task to wipe away the infamy of the deed; as we are no
enemies whom you might justly punish, but friends forced into taking
arms against you. To grant us our lives would be, therefore, a
righteous judgment; if you consider also that we are prisoners who
surrendered of their own accord, stretching out our hands for quarter,
whose slaughter Hellenic law forbids, and who besides were always your
benefactors. Look at the sepulchres of your fathers, slain by the
Medes and buried in our country, whom year by year we honoured with
garments and all other dues, and the first-fruits of all that our land
produced in their season, as friends from a friendly country and
allies to our old companions in arms. Should you not decide aright,
your conduct would be the very opposite to ours. Consider only:
Pausanias buried them thinking that he was laying them in friendly
ground and among men as friendly; but you, if you kill us and make the
Plataean territory Theban, will leave your fathers and kinsmen in a
hostile soil and among their murderers, deprived of the honours
which they now enjoy. What is more, you will enslave the land in which
the freedom of the Hellenes was won, make desolate the temples of
the gods to whom they prayed before they overcame the Medes, and
take away your ancestral sacrifices from those who founded and
instituted them.
"It were not to your glory, Lacedaemonians, either to offend in this
way against the common law of the Hellenes and against your own
ancestors, or to kill us your benefactors to gratify another's
hatred without having been wronged yourselves: it were more so to
spare us and to yield to the impressions of a reasonable compassion;
reflecting not merely on the awful fate in store for us, but also on
the character of the sufferers, and on the impossibility of predicting
how soon misfortune may fall even upon those who deserve it not. We,
as we have a right to do and as our need impels us, entreat you,
calling aloud upon the gods at whose common altar all the Hellenes
worship, to hear our request, to be not unmindful of the oaths which
your fathers swore, and which we now plead--we supplicate you by the
tombs of your fathers, and appeal to those that are gone to save us
from falling into the hands of the Thebans and their dearest friends
from being given up to their most detested foes. We also remind you of
that day on which we did the most glorious deeds, by your fathers'
sides, we who now on this are like to suffer the most dreadful fate.
Finally, to do what is necessary and yet most difficult for men in our
situation--that is, to make an end of speaking, since with that
ending the peril of our lives draws near--in conclusion we say that
we did not surrender our city to the Thebans (to that we would have
preferred inglorious starvation), but trusted in and capitulated to
you; and it would be just, if we fail to persuade you, to put us
back in the same position and let us take the chance that falls to us.
And at the same time we adjure you not to give us up--your
suppliants, Lacedaemonians, out of your hands and faith, Plataeans
foremost of the Hellenic patriots, to Thebans, our most hated
enemies--but to be our saviours, and not, while you free the rest of
the Hellenes, to bring us to destruction."
Such were the words of the Plataeans. The Thebans, afraid that the
Lacedaemonians might be moved by what they had heard, came forward and
said that they too desired to address them, since the Plataeans had,
against their wish, been allowed to speak at length instead of being
confined to a simple answer to the question. Leave being granted,
the Thebans spoke as follows:
"We should never have asked to make this speech if the Plataeans
on their side had contented themselves with shortly answering the
question, and had not turned round and made charges against us,
coupled with a long defence of themselves upon matters outside the
present inquiry and not even the subject of accusation, and with
praise of what no one finds fault with. However, since they have
done so, we must answer their charges and refute their self-praise, in
order that neither our bad name nor their good may help them, but that
you may hear the real truth on both points, and so decide.
"The origin of our quarrel was this. We settled Plataea some time
after the rest of Boeotia, together with other places out of which
we had driven the mixed population. The Plataeans not choosing to
recognize our supremacy, as had been first arranged, but separating
themselves from the rest of the Boeotians, and proving traitors to
their nationality, we used compulsion; upon which they went over to
the Athenians, and with them did as much harm, for which we
retaliated.
"Next, when the barbarian invaded Hellas, they say that they were
the only Boeotians who did not Medize; and this is where they most
glorify themselves and abuse us. We say that if they did not Medize,
it was because the Athenians did not do so either; just as
afterwards when the Athenians attacked the Hellenes they, the
Plataeans, were again the only Boeotians who Atticized. And yet
consider the forms of our respective governments when we so acted. Our
city at that juncture had neither an oligarchical constitution in
which all the nobles enjoyed equal rights, nor a democracy, but that
which is most opposed to law and good government and nearest a
tyranny--the rule of a close cabal. These, hoping to strengthen their
individual power by the success of the Mede, kept down by force the
people, and brought him into the town. The city as a whole was not its
own mistress when it so acted, and ought not to be reproached for
the errors that it committed while deprived of its constitution.
Examine only how we acted after the departure of the Mede and the
recovery of the constitution; when the Athenians attacked the rest
of Hellas and endeavoured to subjugate our country, of the greater
part of which faction had already made them masters. Did not we
fight and conquer at Coronea and liberate Boeotia, and do we not now
actively contribute to the liberation of the rest, providing horses to
the cause and a force unequalled by that of any other state in the
confederacy?
"Let this suffice to excuse us for our Medism. We will now endeavour
to show that you have injured the Hellenes more than we, and are
more deserving of condign punishment. It was in defence against us,
say you, that you became allies and citizens of Athens. If so, you
ought only to have called in the Athenians against us, instead of
joining them in attacking others: it was open to you to do this if you
ever felt that they were leading you where you did not wish to follow,
as Lacedaemon was already your ally against the Mede, as you so much
insist; and this was surely sufficient to keep us off, and above all
to allow you to deliberate in security. Nevertheless, of your own
choice and without compulsion you chose to throw your lot in with
Athens. And you say that it had been base for you to betray your
benefactors; but it was surely far baser and more iniquitous to
sacrifice the whole body of the Hellenes, your fellow confederates,
who were liberating Hellas, than the Athenians only, who were
enslaving it. The return that you made them was therefore neither
equal nor honourable, since you called them in, as you say, because
you were being oppressed yourselves, and then became their accomplices
in oppressing others; although baseness rather consists in not
returning like for like than in not returning what is justly due but
must be unjustly paid.
"Meanwhile, after thus plainly showing that it was not for the
sake of the Hellenes that you alone then did not Medize, but because
the Athenians did not do so either, and you wished to side with them
and to be against the rest; you now claim the benefit of good deeds
done to please your neighbours. This cannot be admitted: you chose the
Athenians, and with them you must stand or fall. Nor can you plead the
league then made and claim that it should now protect you. You
abandoned that league, and offended against it by helping instead of
hindering the subjugation of the Aeginetans and others of its members,
and that not under compulsion, but while in enjoyment of the same
institutions that you enjoy to the present hour, and no one forcing
you as in our case. Lastly, an invitation was addressed to you
before you were blockaded to be neutral and join neither party: this
you did not accept. Who then merit the detestation of the Hellenes
more justly than you, you who sought their ruin under the mask of
honour? The former virtues that you allege you now show not to be
proper to your character; the real bent of your nature has been at
length damningly proved: when the Athenians took the path of injustice
you followed them.
"Of our unwilling Medism and your wilful Atticizing this then is our
explanation. The last wrong wrong of which you complain consists in
our having, as you say, lawlessly invaded your town in time of peace
and festival. Here again we cannot think that we were more in fault
than yourselves. If of our own proper motion we made an armed attack
upon your city and ravaged your territory, we are guilty; but if the
first men among you in estate and family, wishing to put an end to the
foreign connection and to restore you to the common Boeotian
country, of their own free will invited us, wherein is our crime?
Where wrong is done, those who lead, as you say, are more to blame
than those who follow. Not that, in our judgment, wrong was done
either by them or by us. Citizens like yourselves, and with more at
stake than you, they opened their own walls and introduced us into
their own city, not as foes but as friends, to prevent the bad among
you from becoming worse; to give honest men their due; to reform
principles without attacking persons, since you were not to be
banished from your city, but brought home to your kindred, nor to be
made enemies to any, but friends alike to all.
"That our intention was not hostile is proved by our behaviour. We
did no harm to any one, but publicly invited those who wished to
live under a national, Boeotian government to come over to us; which
as first you gladly did, and made an agreement with us and remained
tranquil, until you became aware of the smallness of our numbers.
Now it is possible that there may have been something not quite fair
in our entering without the consent of your commons. At any rate you
did not repay us in kind. Instead of refraining, as we had done,
from violence, and inducing us to retire by negotiation, you fell upon
us in violation of your agreement, and slew some of us in fight, of
which we do not so much complain, for in that there was a certain
justice; but others who held out their hands and received quarter, and
whose lives you subsequently promised us, you lawlessly butchered.
If this was not abominable, what is? And after these three crimes
committed one after the other--the violation of your agreement, the
murder of the men afterwards, and the lying breach of your promise not
to kill them, if we refrained from injuring your property in the
country--you still affirm that we are the criminals and yourselves
pretend to escape justice. Not so, if these your judges decide aright,
but you will be punished for all together.
"Such, Lacedaemonians, are the facts. We have gone into them at some
length both on your account and on our own, that you may fed that
you will justly condemn the prisoners, and we, that we have given an
additional sanction to our vengeance. We would also prevent you from
being melted by hearing of their past virtues, if any such they had:
these may be fairly appealed to by the victims of injustice, but
only aggravate the guilt of criminals, since they offend against their
better nature. Nor let them gain anything by crying and wailing, by
calling upon your fathers' tombs and their own desolate condition.
Against this we point to the far more dreadful fate of our youth,
butchered at their hands; the fathers of whom either fell at
Coronea, bringing Boeotia over to you, or seated, forlorn old men by
desolate hearths, with far more reason implore your justice upon the
prisoners. The pity which they appeal to is rather due to men who
suffer unworthily; those who suffer justly as they do are on the
contrary subjects for triumph. For their present desolate condition
they have themselves to blame, since they wilfully rejected the better
alliance. Their lawless act was not provoked by any action of ours:
hate, not justice, inspired their decision; and even now the
satisfaction which they afford us is not adequate; they will suffer by
a legal sentence, not as they pretend as suppliants asking for quarter
in battle, but as prisoners who have surrendered upon agreement to
take their trial. Vindicate, therefore, Lacedaemonians, the Hellenic
law which they have broken; and to us, the victims of its violation,
grant the reward merited by our zeal. Nor let us be supplanted in your
favour by their harangues, but offer an example to the Hellenes,
that the contests to which you invite them are of deeds, not words:
good deeds can be shortly stated, but where wrong is done a wealth
of language is needed to veil its deformity. However, if leading
powers were to do what you are now doing, and putting one short
question to all alike were to decide accordingly, men would be less
tempted to seek fine phrases to cover bad actions."
Such were the words of the Thebans. The Lacedaemonian judges decided
that the question whether they had received any service from the
Plataeans in the war, was a fair one for them to put; as they had
always invited them to be neutral, agreeably to the original
covenant of Pausanias after the defeat of the Mede, and had again
definitely offered them the same conditions before the blockade.
This offer having been refused, they were now, they conceived, by
the loyalty of their intention released from their covenant; and
having, as they considered, suffered evil at the hands of the
Plataeans, they brought them in again one by one and asked each of
them the same question, that is to say, whether they had done the
Lacedaemonians and allies any service in the war; and upon their
saying that they had not, took them out and slew them, all without
exception. The number of Plataeans thus massacred was not less than
two hundred, with twenty-five Athenians who had shared in the siege.
The women were taken as slaves. The city the Thebans gave for about
a year to some political emigrants from Megara and to the surviving
Plataeans of their own party to inhabit, and afterwards razed it to
the ground from the very foundations, and built on to the precinct
of Hera an inn two hundred feet square, with rooms all round above and
below, making use for this purpose of the roofs and doors of the
Plataeans: of the rest of the materials in the wall, the brass and the
iron, they made couches which they dedicated to Hera, for whom they
also built a stone chapel of a hundred feet square. The land they
confiscated and let out on a ten years' lease to Theban occupiers. The
adverse attitude of the Lacedaemonians in the whole Plataean affair
was mainly adopted to please the Thebans, who were thought to be
useful in the war at that moment raging. Such was the end of
Plataea, in the ninety-third year after she became the ally of Athens.
Meanwhile, the forty ships of the Peloponnesians that had gone to
the relief of the Lesbians, and which we left flying across the open
sea, pursued by the Athenians, were caught in a storm off Crete, and
scattering from thence made their way to Peloponnese, where they found
at Cyllene thirteen Leucadian and Ambraciot galleys, with Brasidas,
son of Tellis, lately arrived as counsellor to Alcidas; the
Lacedaemonians, upon the failure of the Lesbian expedition, having
resolved to strengthen their fleet and sail to Corcyra, where a
revolution had broken out, so as to arrive there before the twelve
Athenian ships at Naupactus could be reinforced from Athens.
Brasidas and Alcidas began to prepare accordingly.
The Corcyraean revolution began with the return of the prisoners
taken in the sea-fights off Epidamnus. These the Corinthians had
released, nominally upon the security of eight hundred talents given
by their proxeni, but in reality upon their engagement to bring over
Corcyra to Corinth. These men proceeded to canvass each of the
citizens, and to intrigue with the view of detaching the city from
Athens. Upon the arrival of an Athenian and a Corinthian vessel,
with envoys on board, a conference was held in which the Corcyraeans
voted to remain allies of the Athenians according to their
agreement, but to be friends of the Peloponnesians as they had been
formerly. Meanwhile, the returned prisoners brought Peithias, a
volunteer proxenus of the Athenians and leader of the commons, to
trial, upon the charge of enslaving Corcyra to Athens. He, being
acquitted, retorted by accusing five of the richest of their number of
cutting stakes in the ground sacred to Zeus and Alcinous; the legal
penalty being a stater for each stake. Upon their conviction, the
amount of the penalty being very large, they seated themselves as
suppliants in the temples to be allowed to pay it by instalments;
but Peithias, who was one of the senate, prevailed upon that body to
enforce the law; upon which the accused, rendered desperate by the
law, and also learning that Peithias had the intention, while still
a member of the senate, to persuade the people to conclude a defensive
and offensive alliance with Athens, banded together armed with
daggers, and suddenly bursting into the senate killed Peithias and
sixty others, senators and private persons; some few only of the party
of Peithias taking refuge in the Athenian galley, which had not yet
departed.
After this outrage, the conspirators summoned the Corcyraeans to
an assembly, and said that this would turn out for the best, and would
save them from being enslaved by Athens: for the future, they moved to
receive neither party unless they came peacefully in a single ship,
treating any larger number as enemies. This motion made, they
compelled it to be adopted, and instantly sent off envoys to Athens to
justify what had been done and to dissuade the refugees there from any
hostile proceedings which might lead to a reaction.
Upon the arrival of the embassy, the Athenians arrested the envoys
and all who listened to them, as revolutionists, and lodged them in
Aegina. Meanwhile a Corinthian galley arriving in the island with
Lacedaemonian envoys, the dominant Corcyraean party attacked the
commons and defeated them in battle. Night coming on, the commons took
refuge in the Acropolis and the higher parts of the city, and
concentrated themselves there, having also possession of the Hyllaic
harbour; their adversaries occupying the market-place, where most of
them lived, and the harbour adjoining, looking towards the mainland.
The next day passed in skirmishes of little importance, each party
sending into the country to offer freedom to the slaves and to
invite them to join them. The mass of the slaves answered the appeal
of the commons; their antagonists being reinforced by eight hundred
mercenaries from the continent.
After a day's interval hostilities recommenced, victory remaining
with the commons, who had the advantage in numbers and position, the
women also valiantly assisting them, pelting with tiles from the
houses, and supporting the melee with a fortitude beyond their sex.
Towards dusk, the oligarchs in full rout, fearing that the
victorious commons might assault and carry the arsenal and put them to
the sword, fired the houses round the marketplace and the
lodging-houses, in order to bar their advance; sparing neither their
own, nor those of their neighbours; by which much stuff of the
merchants was consumed and the city risked total destruction, if a
wind had come to help the flame by blowing on it. Hostilities now
ceasing, both sides kept quiet, passing the night on guard, while
the Corinthian ship stole out to sea upon the victory of the
commons, and most of the mercenaries passed over secretly to the
continent.
The next day the Athenian general, Nicostratus, son of Diitrephes,
came up from Naupactus with twelve ships and five hundred Messenian
heavy infantry. He at once endeavoured to bring about a settlement,
and persuaded the two parties to agree together to bring to trial
ten of the ringleaders, who presently fled, while the rest were to
live in peace, making terms with each other, and entering into a
defensive and offensive alliance with the Athenians. This arranged, he
was about to sail away, when the leaders of the commons induced him to
leave them five of his ships to make their adversaries less disposed
to move, while they manned and sent with him an equal number of
their own. He had no sooner consented, than they began to enroll their
enemies for the ships; and these, fearing that they might be sent
off to Athens, seated themselves as suppliants in the temple of the
Dioscuri. An attempt on the part of Nicostratus to reassure them and
to persuade them to rise proving unsuccessful, the commons armed
upon this pretext, alleging the refusal of their adversaries to sail
with them as a proof of the hollowness of their intentions, and took
their arms out of their houses, and would have dispatched some whom
they fell in with, if Nicostratus had not prevented it. The rest of
the party, seeing what was going on, seated themselves as suppliants
in the temple of Hera, being not less than four hundred in number;
until the commons, fearing that they might adopt some desperate
resolution, induced them to rise, and conveyed them over to the island
in front of the temple, where provisions were sent across to them.
At this stage in the revolution, on the fourth or fifth day after
the removal of the men to the island, the Peloponnesian ships
arrived from Cyllene where they had been stationed since their
return from Ionia, fifty-three in number, still under the command of
Alcidas, but with Brasidas also on board as his adviser; and
dropping anchor at Sybota, a harbour on the mainland, at daybreak made
sail for Corcyra.
The Corcyraeans in great confusion and alarm at the state of
things in the city and at the approach of the invader, at once
proceeded to equip sixty vessels, which they sent out, as fast as they
were manned, against the enemy, in spite of the Athenians recommending
them to let them sail out first, and to follow themselves afterwards
with all their ships together. Upon their vessels coming up to the
enemy in this straggling fashion, two immediately deserted: in
others the crews were fighting among themselves, and there was no
order in anything that was done; so that the Peloponnesians, seeing
their confusion, placed twenty ships to oppose the Corcyraeans, and
ranged the rest against the twelve Athenian ships, amongst which
were the two vessels Salaminia and Paralus.
While the Corcyraeans, attacking without judgment and in small
detachments, were already crippled by their own misconduct, the
Athenians, afraid of the numbers of the enemy and of being surrounded,
did not venture to attack the main body or even the centre of the
division opposed to them, but fell upon its wing and sank one
vessel; after which the Peloponnesians formed in a circle, and the
Athenians rowed round them and tried to throw them into disorder.
Perceiving this, the division opposed to the Corcyraeans, fearing a
repetition of the disaster of Naupactus, came to support their
friends, and the whole fleet now bore down, united, upon the
Athenians, who retired before it, backing water, retiring as leisurely
as possible in order to give the Corcyraeans time to escape, while the
enemy was thus kept occupied. Such was the character of this
sea-fight, which lasted until sunset.
The Corcyraeans now feared that the enemy would follow up their
victory and sail against the town and rescue the men in the island, or
strike some other blow equally decisive, and accordingly carried the
men over again to the temple of Hera, and kept guard over the city.
The Peloponnesians, however, although victorious in the sea-fight, did
not venture to attack the town, but took the thirteen Corcyraean
vessels which they had captured, and with them sailed back to the
continent from whence they had put out. The next day equally they
refrained from attacking the city, although the disorder and panic
were at their height, and though Brasidas, it is said, urged
Alcidas, his superior officer, to do so, but they landed upon the
promontory of Leukimme and laid waste the country.
Meanwhile the commons in Corcyra, being still in great fear of the
fleet attacking them, came to a parley with the suppliants and their
friends, in order to save the town; and prevailed upon some of them to
go on board the ships, of which they still manned thirty, against
the expected attack. But the Peloponnesians after ravaging the country
until midday sailed away, and towards nightfall were informed by
beacon signals of the approach of sixty Athenian vessels from
Leucas, under the command of Eurymedon, son of Thucles; which had been
sent off by the Athenians upon the news of the revolution and of the
fleet with Alcidas being about to sail for Corcyra.
The Peloponnesians accordingly at once set off in haste by night for
home, coasting along shore; and hauling their ships across the Isthmus
of Leucas, in order not to be seen doubling it, so departed. The
Corcyraeans, made aware of the approach of the Athenian fleet and of
the departure of the enemy, brought the Messenians from outside the
walls into the town, and ordered the fleet which they had manned to
sail round into the Hyllaic harbour; and while it was so doing, slew
such of their enemies as they laid hands on, dispatching afterwards,
as they landed them, those whom they had persuaded to go on board
the ships. Next they went to the sanctuary of Hera and persuaded about
fifty men to take their trial, and condemned them all to death. The
mass of the suppliants who had refused to do so, on seeing what was
taking place, slew each other there in the consecrated ground; while
some hanged themselves upon the trees, and others destroyed themselves
as they were severally able. During seven days that Eurymedon stayed
with his sixty ships, the Corcyraeans were engaged in butchering those
of their fellow citizens whom they regarded as their enemies: and
although the crime imputed was that of attempting to put down the
democracy, some were slain also for private hatred, others by their
debtors because of the moneys owed to them. Death thus raged in
every shape; and, as usually happens at such times, there was no
length to which violence did not go; sons were killed by their
fathers, and suppliants dragged from the altar or slain upon it; while
some were even walled up in the temple of Dionysus and died there.
So bloody was the march of the revolution, and the impression
which it made was the greater as it was one of the first to occur.
Later on, one may say, the whole Hellenic world was convulsed;
struggles being every, where made by the popular chiefs to bring in
the Athenians, and by the oligarchs to introduce the Lacedaemonians.
In peace there would have been neither the pretext nor the wish to
make such an invitation; but in war, with an alliance always at the
command of either faction for the hurt of their adversaries and
their own corresponding advantage, opportunities for bringing in the
foreigner were never wanting to the revolutionary parties. The
sufferings which revolution entailed upon the cities were many and
terrible, such as have occurred and always will occur, as long as
the nature of mankind remains the same; though in a severer or
milder form, and varying in their symptoms, according to the variety
of the particular cases. In peace and prosperity, states and
individuals have better sentiments, because they do not find
themselves suddenly confronted with imperious necessities; but war
takes away the easy supply of daily wants, and so proves a rough
master, that brings most men's characters to a level with their
fortunes. Revolution thus ran its course from city to city, and the
places which it arrived at last, from having heard what had been
done before, carried to a still greater excess the refinement of their
inventions, as manifested in the cunning of their enterprises and
the atrocity of their reprisals. Words had to change their ordinary
meaning and to take that which was now given them. Reckless audacity
came to be considered the courage of a loyal ally; prudent hesitation,
specious cowardice; moderation was held to be a cloak for unmanliness;
ability to see all sides of a question, inaptness to act on any.
Frantic violence became the attribute of manliness; cautious plotting,
a justifiable means of self-defence. The advocate of extreme
measures was always trustworthy; his opponent a man to be suspected.
To succeed in a plot was to have a shrewd head, to divine a plot a
still shrewder; but to try to provide against having to do either
was to break up your party and to be afraid of your adversaries. In
fine, to forestall an intending criminal, or to suggest the idea of
a crime where it was wanting, was equally commended until even blood
became a weaker tie than party, from the superior readiness of those
united by the latter to dare everything without reserve; for such
associations had not in view the blessings derivable from
established institutions but were formed by ambition for their
overthrow; and the confidence of their members in each other rested
less on any religious sanction than upon complicity in crime. The fair
proposals of an adversary were met with jealous precautions by the
stronger of the two, and not with a generous confidence. Revenge
also was held of more account than self-preservation. Oaths of
reconciliation, being only proffered on either side to meet an
immediate difficulty, only held good so long as no other weapon was at
hand; but when opportunity offered, he who first ventured to seize
it and to take his enemy off his guard, thought this perfidious
vengeance sweeter than an open one, since, considerations of safety
apart, success by treachery won him the palm of superior intelligence.
Indeed it is generally the case that men are readier to call rogues
clever than simpletons honest, and are as ashamed of being the
second as they are proud of being the first. The cause of all these
evils was the lust for power arising from greed and ambition; and from
these passions proceeded the violence of parties once engaged in
contention. The leaders in the cities, each provided with the
fairest professions, on the one side with the cry of political
equality of the people, on the other of a moderate aristocracy, sought
prizes for themselves in those public interests which they pretended
to cherish, and, recoiling from no means in their struggles for
ascendancy engaged in the direst excesses; in their acts of
vengeance they went to even greater lengths, not stopping at what
justice or the good of the state demanded, but making the party
caprice of the moment their only standard, and invoking with equal
readiness the condemnation of an unjust verdict or the authority of
the strong arm to glut the animosities of the hour. Thus religion
was in honour with neither party; but the use of fair phrases to
arrive at guilty ends was in high reputation. Meanwhile the moderate
part of the citizens perished between the two, either for not
joining in the quarrel, or because envy would not suffer them to
escape.
Thus every form of iniquity took root in the Hellenic countries by
reason of the troubles. The ancient simplicity into which honour so
largely entered was laughed down and disappeared; and society became
divided into camps in which no man trusted his fellow. To put an end
to this, there was neither promise to be depended upon, nor oath
that could command respect; but all parties dwelling rather in their
calculation upon the hopelessness of a permanent state of things, were
more intent upon self-defence than capable of confidence. In this
contest the blunter wits were most successful. Apprehensive of their
own deficiencies and of the cleverness of their antagonists, they
feared to be worsted in debate and to be surprised by the combinations
of their more versatile opponents, and so at once boldly had
recourse to action: while their adversaries, arrogantly thinking
that they should know in time, and that it was unnecessary to secure
by action what policy afforded, often fell victims to their want of
precaution.
Meanwhile Corcyra gave the first example of most of the crimes
alluded to; of the reprisals exacted by the governed who had never
experienced equitable treatment or indeed aught but insolence from
their rulers--when their hour came; of the iniquitous resolves of
those who desired to get rid of their accustomed poverty, and ardently
coveted their neighbours' goods; and lastly, of the savage and
pitiless excesses into which men who had begun the struggle, not in
a class but in a party spirit, were hurried by their ungovernable
passions. In the confusion into which life was now thrown in the
cities, human nature, always rebelling against the law and now its
master, gladly showed itself ungoverned in passion, above respect
for justice, and the enemy of all superiority; since revenge would not
have been set above religion, and gain above justice, had it not
been for the fatal power of envy. Indeed men too often take upon
themselves in the prosecution of their revenge to set the example of
doing away with those general laws to which all alike can look for
salvation in adversity, instead of allowing them to subsist against
the day of danger when their aid may be required.
While the revolutionary passions thus for the first time displayed
themselves in the factions of Corcyra, Eurymedon and the Athenian
fleet sailed away; after which some five hundred Corcyraean exiles who
had succeeded in escaping, took some forts on the mainland, and
becoming masters of the Corcyraean territory over the water, made this
their base to Plunder their countrymen in the island, and did so
much damage as to cause a severe famine in the town. They also sent
envoys to Lacedaemon and Corinth to negotiate their restoration; but
meeting with no success, afterwards got together boats and mercenaries
and crossed over to the island, being about six hundred in all; and
burning their boats so as to have no hope except in becoming masters
of the country, went up to Mount Istone, and fortifying themselves
there, began to annoy those in the city and obtained command of the
country.
At the close of the same summer the Athenians sent twenty ships
under the command of Laches, son of Melanopus, and Charoeades, son
of Euphiletus, to Sicily, where the Syracusans and Leontines were at
war. The Syracusans had for allies all the Dorian cities except
Camarina--these had been included in the Lacedaemonian confederacy
from the commencement of the war, though they had not taken any active
part in it--the Leontines had Camarina and the Chalcidian cities. In
Italy the Locrians were for the Syracusans, the Rhegians for their
Leontine kinsmen. The allies of the Leontines now sent to Athens and
appealed to their ancient alliance and to their Ionian origin, to
persuade the Athenians to send them a fleet, as the Syracusans were
blockading them by land and sea. The Athenians sent it upon the plea
of their common descent, but in reality to prevent the exportation
of Sicilian corn to Peloponnese and to test the possibility of
bringing Sicily into subjection. Accordingly they established
themselves at Rhegium in Italy, and from thence carried on the war
in concert with their allies.
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