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The History of the Peloponnesian War
Book 3 - Chapter XI
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Year of the War - Campaigns of Demosthenes in Western Greece -
Ruin of Ambracia
Summer was now over. The winter following, the plague a second
time attacked the Athenians; for although it had never entirely left
them, still there had been a notable abatement in its ravages. The
second visit lasted no less than a year, the first having lasted
two; and nothing distressed the Athenians and reduced their power more
than this. No less than four thousand four hundred heavy infantry in
the ranks died of it and three hundred cavalry, besides a number of
the multitude that was never ascertained. At the same time took
place the numerous earthquakes in Athens, Euboea, and Boeotia,
particularly at Orchomenus in the last-named country.
The same winter the Athenians in Sicily and the Rhegians, with
thirty ships, made an expedition against the islands of Aeolus; it
being impossible to invade them in summer, owing to the want of water.
These islands are occupied by the Liparaeans, a Cnidian colony, who
live in one of them of no great size called Lipara; and from this as
their headquarters cultivate the rest, Didyme, Strongyle, and Hiera.
In Hiera the people in those parts believe that Hephaestus has his
forge, from the quantity of flame which they see it send out by night,
and of smoke by day. These islands lie off the coast of the Sicels and
Messinese, and were allies of the Syracusans. The Athenians laid waste
their land, and as the inhabitants did not submit, sailed back to
Rhegium. Thus the winter ended, and with it ended the fifth year of
this war, of which Thucydides was the historian.
The next summer the Peloponnesians and their allies set out to
invade Attica under the command of Agis, son of Archidamus, and went as far as
the Isthmus, but
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numerous earthquakes occurring, turned back again without the
invasion taking place. About the same time that these earthquakes
were so common, the sea at Orobiae, in Euboea,
retiring from the then line of coast, returned in a huge wave and
invaded a great part of the town, and retreated leaving some of it
still under water; so that what was once land is now sea; such of
the inhabitants perishing as could not run up to the higher ground
in time. A similar inundation also occurred at Atalanta, the island
off the Opuntian Locrian coast, carrying away part of the Athenian
fort and wrecking one of two ships which were drawn up on the beach.
At Peparethus also the sea retreated a little, without however any
inundation following; and an earthquake threw down part of the wall,
the town hall, and a few other buildings. The cause, in my opinion, of
this phenomenon must be sought in the earthquake. At the point where
its shock has been the most violent, the sea is driven back and,
suddenly recoiling with redoubled force, causes the inundation.
Without an earthquake I do not see how such an accident could happen.
During the same summer different operations were carried on by the
different belligerents in Sicily; by the Siceliots themselves against
each other, and by the Athenians and their allies: I shall however
confine myself to the actions in which the Athenians took part,
choosing the most important. The death of the Athenian general
Charoeades, killed by the Syracusans in battle, left Laches in the
sole command of the fleet, which he now directed in concert with the
allies against Mylae, a place belonging to the Messinese. Two
Messinese battalions in garrison at Mylae laid an ambush for the party
landing from the ships, but were routed with great slaughter by the
Athenians and their allies, who thereupon assaulted the
fortification and compelled them to surrender the Acropolis and to
march with them upon Messina. This town afterwards also submitted upon
the approach of the Athenians and their allies, and gave hostages
and all other securities required.
The same summer the Athenians sent thirty ships round Peloponnese
under Demosthenes, son of Alcisthenes, and Procles, son of
Theodorus, and sixty others, with two thousand heavy infantry, against
Melos, under Nicias, son of Niceratus; wishing to reduce the
Melians, who, although islanders, refused to be subjects of Athens
or even to join her confederacy. The devastation of their land not
procuring their submission, the fleet, weighing from Melos, sailed
to Oropus in the territory of Graea, and landing at nightfall, the
heavy infantry started at once from the ships by land for Tanagra in
Boeotia, where they were met by the whole levy from Athens,
agreeably to a concerted signal, under the command of Hipponicus,
son of Callias, and Eurymedon, son of Thucles. They encamped, and
passing that day in ravaging the Tanagraean territory, remained
there for the night; and next day, after defeating those of the
Tanagraeans who sailed out against them and some Thebans who had
come up to help the Tanagraeans, took some arms, set up a trophy,
and retired, the troops to the city and the others to the ships.
Nicias with his sixty ships coasted alongshore and ravaged the Locrian
seaboard, and so returned home.
About this time the Lacedaemonians founded their colony of
Heraclea in Trachis, their object being the following: the Malians
form in all three tribes, the Paralians, the Hiereans, and the
Trachinians. The last of these having suffered severely in a war
with their neighbours the Oetaeans, at first intended to give
themselves up to Athens; but afterwards fearing not to find in her the
security that they sought, sent to Lacedaemon, having chosen Tisamenus
for their ambassador. In this embassy joined also the Dorians from the
mother country of the Lacedaemonians, with the same request, as they
themselves also suffered from the same enemy. After hearing them,
the Lacedaemonians determined to send out the colony, wishing to
assist the Trachinians and Dorians, and also because they thought that
the proposed town would lie conveniently for the purposes of the war
against the Athenians. A fleet might be got ready there against
Euboea, with the advantage of a short passage to the island; and the
town would also be useful as a station on the road to Thrace. In
short, everything made the Lacedaemonians eager to found the place.
After first consulting the god at Delphi and receiving a favourable
answer, they sent off the colonists, Spartans, and Perioeci,
inviting also any of the rest of the Hellenes who might wish to
accompany them, except Ionians, Achaeans, and certain other
nationalities; three Lacedaemonians leading as founders of the colony,
Leon, Alcidas, and Damagon. The settlement effected, they fortified
anew the city, now called Heraclea, distant about four miles and a
half from Thermopylae and two miles and a quarter from the sea, and
commenced building docks, closing the side towards Thermopylae just by
the pass itself, in order that they might be easily defended.
The foundation of this town, evidently meant to annoy Euboea (the
passage across to Cenaeum in that island being a short one), at
first caused some alarm at Athens, which the event however did nothing
to justify, the town never giving them any trouble. The reason of this
was as follows. The Thessalians, who were sovereign in those parts,
and whose territory was menaced by its foundation, were afraid that it
might prove a very powerful neighbour, and accordingly continually
harassed and made war upon the new settlers, until they at last wore
them out in spite of their originally considerable numbers, people
flocking from all quarters to a place founded by the Lacedaemonians,
and thus thought secure of prosperity. On the other hand the
Lacedaemonians themselves, in the persons of their governors, did
their full share towards ruining its prosperity and reducing its
population, as they frightened away the greater part of the
inhabitants by governing harshly and in some cases not fairly, and
thus made it easier for their neighbours to prevail against them.
The same summer, about the same time that the Athenians were
detained at Melos, their fellow citizens in the thirty ships
cruising round Peloponnese, after cutting off some guards in an ambush
at Ellomenus in Leucadia, subsequently went against Leucas itself with
a large armament, having been reinforced by the whole levy of the
Acarnanians except Oeniadae, and by the Zacynthians and
Cephallenians and fifteen ships from Corcyra. While the Leucadians
witnessed the devastation of their land, without and within the
isthmus upon which the town of Leucas and the temple of Apollo
stand, without making any movement on account of the overwhelming
numbers of the enemy, the Acarnanians urged Demosthenes, the
Athenian general, to build a wall so as to cut off the town from the
continent, a measure which they were convinced would secure its
capture and rid them once and for all of a most troublesome enemy.
Demosthenes however had in the meanwhile been persuaded by the
Messenians that it was a fine opportunity for him, having so large
an army assembled, to attack the Aetolians, who were not only the
enemies of Naupactus, but whose reduction would further make it easy
to gain the rest of that part of the continent for the Athenians.
The Aetolian nation, although numerous and warlike, yet dwelt in
unwalled villages scattered far apart, and had nothing but light
armour, and might, according to the Messenians, be subdued without
much difficulty before succours could arrive. The plan which they
recommended was to attack first the Apodotians, next the Ophionians,
and after these the Eurytanians, who are the largest tribe in Aetolia,
and speak, as is said, a language exceedingly difficult to understand,
and eat their flesh raw. These once subdued, the rest would easily
come in.
To this plan Demosthenes consented, not only to please the
Messenians, but also in the belief that by adding the Aetolians to his
other continental allies he would be able, without aid from home, to
march against the Boeotians by way of Ozolian Locris to Kytinium in
Doris, keeping Parnassus on his right until he descended to the
Phocians, whom he could force to join him if their ancient
friendship for Athens did not, as he anticipated, at once decide
them to do so. Arrived in Phocis he was already upon the frontier of
Boeotia. He accordingly weighed from Leucas, against the wish of the
Acarnanians, and with his whole armament sailed along the coast to
Sollium, where he communicated to them his intention; and upon their
refusing to agree to it on account of the non-investment of Leucas,
himself with the rest of the forces, the Cephallenians, the
Messenians, and Zacynthians, and three hundred Athenian marines from
his own ships (the fifteen Corcyraean vessels having departed),
started on his expedition against the Aetolians. His base he
established at Oeneon in Locris, as the Ozolian Locrians were allies
of Athens and were to meet him with all their forces in the
interior. Being neighbours of the Aetolians and armed in the same way,
it was thought that they would be of great service upon the
expedition, from their acquaintance with the localities and the
warfare of the inhabitants.
After bivouacking with the army in the precinct of Nemean Zeus, in
which the poet Hesiod is said to have been killed by the people of the
country, according to an oracle which had foretold that he should
die in Nemea, Demosthenes set out at daybreak to invade Aetolia. The
first day he took Potidania, the next Krokyle, and the third
Tichium, where he halted and sent back the booty to Eupalium in
Locris, having determined to pursue his conquests as far as the
Ophionians, and, in the event of their refusing to submit, to return
to Naupactus and make them the objects of a second expedition.
Meanwhile the Aetolians had been aware of his design from the moment
of its formation, and as soon as the army invaded their country came
up in great force with all their tribes; even the most remote
Ophionians, the Bomiensians, and Calliensians, who extend towards
the Malian Gulf, being among the number.
The Messenians, however, adhered to their original advice.
Assuring Demosthenes that the Aetolians were an easy conquest, they
urged him to push on as rapidly as possible, and to try to take the
villages as fast as he came up to them, without waiting until the
whole nation should be in arms against him. Led on by his advisers and
trusting in his fortune, as he had met with no opposition, without
waiting for his Locrian reinforcements, who were to have supplied
him with the light-armed darters in which he was most deficient, he
advanced and stormed Aegitium, the inhabitants flying before him and
posting themselves upon the hills above the town, which stood on
high ground about nine miles from the sea. Meanwhile the Aetolians had
gathered to the rescue, and now attacked the Athenians and their
allies, running down from the hills on every side and darting their
javelins, falling back when the Athenian army advanced, and coming
on as it retired; and for a long while the battle was of this
character, alternate advance and retreat, in both which operations the
Athenians had the worst.
Still as long as their archers had arrows left and were able to
use them, they held out, the light-armed Aetolians retiring before the
arrows; but after the captain of the archers had been killed and his
men scattered, the soldiers, wearied out with the constant
repetition of the same exertions and hard pressed by the Aetolians
with their javelins, at last turned and fled, and falling into
pathless gullies and places that they were unacquainted with, thus
perished, the Messenian Chromon, their guide, having also
unfortunately been killed. A great many were overtaken in the
pursuit by the swift-footed and light-armed Aetolians, and fell
beneath their javelins; the greater number however missed their road
and rushed into the wood, which had no ways out, and which was soon
fired and burnt round them by the enemy. Indeed the Athenian army fell
victims to death in every form, and suffered all the vicissitudes of
flight; the survivors escaped with difficulty to the sea and Oeneon in
Locris, whence they had set out. Many of the allies were killed, and
about one hundred and twenty Athenian heavy infantry, not a man
less, and all in the prime of life. These were by far the best men
in the city of Athens that fell during this war. Among the slain was
also Procles, the colleague of Demosthenes. Meanwhile the Athenians
took up their dead under truce from the Aetolians, and retired to
Naupactus, and from thence went in their ships to Athens;
Demosthenes staying behind in Naupactus and in the neighbourhood,
being afraid to face the Athenians after the disaster.
About the same time the Athenians on the coast of Sicily sailed to
Locris, and in a descent which they made from the ships defeated the
Locrians who came against them, and took a fort upon the river Halex.
The same summer the Aetolians, who before the Athenian expedition
had sent an embassy to Corinth and Lacedaemon, composed of Tolophus,
an Ophionian, Boriades, an Eurytanian, and Tisander, an Apodotian,
obtained that an army should be sent them against Naupactus, which had
invited the Athenian invasion. The Lacedaemonians accordingly sent off
towards autumn three thousand heavy infantry of the allies, five
hundred of whom were from Heraclea, the newly founded city in Trachis,
under the command of Eurylochus, a Spartan, accompanied by Macarius
and Menedaius, also Spartans.
The army having assembled at Delphi, Eurylochus sent a herald to the
Ozolian Locrians; the road to Naupactus lying through their territory,
and he having besides conceived the idea of detaching them from
Athens. His chief abettors in Locris were the Amphissians, who were
alarmed at the hostility of the Phocians. These first gave hostages
themselves, and induced the rest to do the same for fear of the
invading army; first, their neighbours the Myonians, who held the most
difficult of the passes, and after them the Ipnians, Messapians,
Tritaeans, Chalaeans, Tolophonians, Hessians, and Oeanthians, all of
whom joined in the expedition; the Olpaeans contenting themselves with
giving hostages, without accompanying the invasion; and the Hyaeans
refusing to do either, until the capture of Polis, one of their
villages.
His preparations completed, Eurylochus lodged the hostages in
Kytinium, in Doris, and advanced upon Naupactus through the country of
the Locrians, taking upon his way Oeneon and Eupalium, two of their
towns that refused to join him. Arrived in the Naupactian territory,
and having been now joined by the Aetolians, the army laid waste the
land and took the suburb of the town, which was unfortified; and after
this Molycrium also, a Corinthian colony subject to Athens.
Meanwhile the Athenian Demosthenes, who since the affair in Aetolia
had remained near Naupactus, having had notice of the army and fearing
for the town, went and persuaded the Acarnanians, although not without
difficulty because of his departure from Leucas, to go to the relief
of Naupactus. They accordingly sent with him on board his ships a
thousand heavy infantry, who threw themselves into the place and saved
it; the extent of its wall and the small number of its defenders
otherwise placing it in the greatest danger. Meanwhile Eurylochus
and his companions, finding that this force had entered and that it
was impossible to storm the town, withdrew, not to Peloponnese, but to
the country once called Aeolis, and now Calydon and Pleuron, and to
the places in that neighbourhood, and Proschium in Aetolia; the
Ambraciots having come and urged them to combine with them in
attacking Amphilochian Argos and the rest of Amphilochia and
Acarnania; affirming that the conquest of these countries would
bring all the continent into alliance with Lacedaemon. To this
Eurylochus consented, and dismissing the Aetolians, now remained quiet
with his army in those parts, until the time should come for the
Ambraciots to take the field, and for him to join them before Argos.
Summer was now over. The winter ensuing, the Athenians in Sicily
with their Hellenic allies, and such of the Sicel subjects or allies
of Syracuse as had revolted from her and joined their army, marched
against the Sicel town Inessa, the acropolis of which was held by
the Syracusans, and after attacking it without being able to take
it, retired. In the retreat, the allies retreating after the Athenians
were attacked by the Syracusans from the fort, and a large part of
their army routed with great slaughter. After this, Laches and the
Athenians from the ships made some descents in Locris, and defeating
the Locrians, who came against them with Proxenus, son of Capaton,
upon the river Caicinus, took some arms and departed.
The same winter the Athenians purified Delos, in compliance, it
appears, with a certain oracle. It had been purified before by
Pisistratus the tyrant; not indeed the whole island, but as much of it
as could be seen from the temple. All of it was, however, now purified
in the following way. All the sepulchres of those that had died in
Delos were taken up, and for the future it was commanded that no one
should be allowed either to die or to give birth to a child in the
island; but that they should be carried over to Rhenea, which is so
near to Delos that Polycrates, tyrant of Samos, having added Rhenea to
his other island conquests during his period of naval ascendancy,
dedicated it to the Delian Apollo by binding it to Delos with a chain.
The Athenians, after the purification, celebrated, for the first
time, the quinquennial festival of the Delian games. Once upon a time,
indeed, there was a great assemblage of the Ionians and the
neighbouring islanders at Delos, who used to come to the festival,
as the Ionians now do to that of Ephesus, and athletic and poetical
contests took place there, and the cities brought choirs of dancers.
Nothing can be clearer on this point than the following verses of
Homer, taken from a hymn to Apollo:
Phoebus, wherever thou strayest, far or near,
Delos was still of all thy haunts most dear.
Thither the robed Ionians take their way
With wife and child to keep thy holiday,
Invoke thy favour on each manly game,
And dance and sing in honour of thy name.
That there was also a poetical contest in which the Ionians went
to contend, again is shown by the following, taken from the same hymn.
After celebrating the Delian dance of the women, he ends his song of
praise with these verses, in which he also alludes to himself:
Well, may Apollo keep you all! and so,
Sweethearts, good-bye--yet tell me not I go
Out from your hearts; and if in after hours
Some other wanderer in this world of ours
Touch at your shores, and ask your maidens here
Who sings the songs the sweetest to your ear,
Think of me then, and answer with a smile,
'A blind old man of Scio's rocky isle.'
Homer thus attests that there was anciently a great assembly and
festival at Delos. In later times, although the islanders and the
Athenians continued to send the choirs of dancers with sacrifices, the
contests and most of the ceremonies were abolished, probably through
adversity, until the Athenians celebrated the games upon this occasion
with the novelty of horse-races.
The same winter the Ambraciots, as they had promised Eurylochus when
they retained his army, marched out against Amphilochian Argos with
three thousand heavy infantry, and invading the Argive territory
occupied Olpae, a stronghold on a hill near the sea, which had been
formerly fortified by the Acarnanians and used as the place of assizes
for their nation, and which is about two miles and three-quarters from
the city of Argos upon the sea-coast. Meanwhile the Acarnanians went
with a part of their forces to the relief of Argos, and with the
rest encamped in Amphilochia at the place called Crenae, or the Wells,
to watch for Eurylochus and his Peloponnesians, and to prevent their
passing through and effecting their junction with the Ambraciots;
while they also sent for Demosthenes, the commander of the Aetolian
expedition, to be their leader, and for the twenty Athenian ships that
were cruising off Peloponnese under the command of Aristotle, son of
Timocrates, and Hierophon, son of Antimnestus. On their part, the
Ambraciots at Olpae sent a messenger to their own city, to beg them to
come with their whole levy to their assistance, fearing that the
army of Eurylochus might not be able to pass through the
Acarnanians, and that they might themselves be obliged to fight
single-handed, or be unable to retreat, if they wished it, without
danger.
Meanwhile Eurylochus and his Peloponnesians, learning that the
Ambraciots at Olpae had arrived, set out from Proschium with all haste
to join them, and crossing the Achelous advanced through Acarnania,
which they found deserted by its population, who had gone to the
relief of Argos; keeping on their right the city of the Stratians
and its garrison, and on their left the rest of Acarnania.
Traversing the territory of the Stratians, they advanced through
Phytia, next, skirting Medeon, through Limnaea; after which they
left Acarnania behind them and entered a friendly country, that of the
Agraeans. From thence they reached and crossed Mount Thymaus, which
belongs to the Agraeans, and descended into the Argive territory after
nightfall, and passing between the city of Argos and the Acarnanian
posts at Crenae, joined the Ambraciots at Olpae.
Uniting here at daybreak, they sat down at the place called
Metropolis, and encamped. Not long afterwards the Athenians in the
twenty ships came into the Ambracian Gulf to support the Argives, with
Demosthenes and two hundred Messenian heavy infantry, and sixty
Athenian archers. While the fleet off Olpae blockaded the hill from
the sea, the Acarnanians and a few of the Amphilochians, most of
whom were kept back by force by the Ambraciots, had already arrived at
Argos, and were preparing to give battle to the enemy, having chosen
Demosthenes to command the whole of the allied army in concert with
their own generals. Demosthenes led them near to Olpae and encamped, a
great ravine separating the two armies. During five days they remained
inactive; on the sixth both sides formed in order of battle. The
army of the Peloponnesians was the largest and outflanked their
opponents; and Demosthenes fearing that his right might be surrounded,
placed in ambush in a hollow way overgrown with bushes some four
hundred heavy infantry and light troops, who were to rise up at the
moment of the onset behind the projecting left wing of the enemy,
and to take them in the rear. When both sides were ready they joined
battle; Demosthenes being on the right wing with the Messenians and
a few Athenians, while the rest of the line was made up of the
different divisions of the Acarnanians, and of the Amphilochian
carters. The Peloponnesians and Ambraciots were drawn up pell-mell
together, with the exception of the Mantineans, who were massed on the
left, without however reaching to the extremity of the wing, where
Eurylochus and his men confronted the Messenians and Demosthenes.
The Peloponnesians were now well engaged and with their
outflanking wing were upon the point of turning their enemy's right;
when the Acarnanians from the ambuscade set upon them from behind, and
broke them at the first attack, without their staying to resist; while
the panic into which they fell caused the flight of most of their
army, terrified beyond measure at seeing the division of Eurylochus
and their best troops cut to pieces. Most of the work was done by
Demosthenes and his Messenians, who were posted in this part of the
field. Meanwhile the Ambraciots (who are the best soldiers in those
countries) and the troops upon the right wing, defeated the division
opposed to them and pursued it to Argos. Returning from the pursuit,
they found their main body defeated; and hard pressed by the
Acarnanians, with difficulty made good their passage to Olpae,
suffering heavy loss on the way, as they dashed on without
discipline or order, the Mantineans excepted, who kept their ranks
best of any in the army during the retreat.
The battle did not end until the evening. The next day Menedaius,
who on the death of Eurylochus and Macarius had succeeded to the
sole command, being at a loss after so signal a defeat how to stay and
sustain a siege, cut off as he was by land and by the Athenian fleet
by sea, and equally so how to retreat in safety, opened a parley
with Demosthenes and the Acarnanian generals for a truce and
permission to retreat, and at the same time for the recovery of the
dead. The dead they gave back to him, and setting up a trophy took
up their own also to the number of about three hundred. The retreat
demanded they refused publicly to the army; but permission to depart
without delay was secretly granted to the Mantineans and to
Menedaius and the other commanders and principal men of the
Peloponnesians by Demosthenes and his Acarnanian colleagues; who
desired to strip the Ambraciots and the mercenary host of foreigners
of their supporters; and, above all, to discredit the Lacedaemonians
and Peloponnesians with the Hellenes in those parts, as traitors and
self-seekers.
While the enemy was taking up his dead and hastily burying them as
he could, and those who obtained permission were secretly planning
their retreat, word was brought to Demosthenes and the Acarnanians
that the Ambraciots from the city, in compliance with the first
message from Olpae, were on the march with their whole levy through
Amphilochia to join their countrymen at Olpae, knowing nothing of what
had occurred. Demosthenes prepared to march with his army against
them, and meanwhile sent on at once a strong division to beset the
roads and occupy the strong positions. In the meantime the
Mantineans and others included in the agreement went out under the
pretence of gathering herbs and firewood, and stole off by twos and
threes, picking on the way the things which they professed to have
come out for, until they had gone some distance from Olpae, when
they quickened their pace. The Ambraciots and such of the rest as
had accompanied them in larger parties, seeing them going on, pushed
on in their turn, and began running in order to catch them up. The
Acarnanians at first thought that all alike were departing without
permission, and began to pursue the Peloponnesians; and believing that
they were being betrayed, even threw a dart or two at some of their
generals who tried to stop them and told them that leave had been
given. Eventually, however, they let pass the Mantineans and
Peloponnesians, and slew only the Ambraciots, there being much dispute
and difficulty in distinguishing whether a man was an Ambraciot or a
Peloponnesian. The number thus slain was about two hundred; the rest
escaped into the bordering territory of Agraea, and found refuge
with Salynthius, the friendly king of the Agraeans.
Meanwhile the Ambraciots from the city arrived at Idomene. Idomene
consists of two lofty hills, the higher of which the troops sent on by
Demosthenes succeeded in occupying after nightfall, unobserved by
the Ambraciots, who had meanwhile ascended the smaller and
bivouacked under it. After supper Demosthenes set out with the rest of
the army, as soon as it was evening; himself with half his force
making for the pass, and the remainder going by the Amphilochian
hills. At dawn he fell upon the Ambraciots while they were still abed,
ignorant of what had passed, and fully thinking that it was their
own countrymen--Demosthenes having purposely put the Messenians in
front with orders to address them in the Doric dialect, and thus to
inspire confidence in the sentinels, who would not be able to see them
as it was still night. In this way he routed their army as soon as
he attacked it, slaying most of them where they were, the rest
breaking away in flight over the hills. The roads, however, were
already occupied, and while the Amphilochians knew their own
country, the Ambraciots were ignorant of it and could not tell which
way to turn, and had also heavy armour as against a light-armed enemy,
and so fell into ravines and into the ambushes which had been set
for them, and perished there. In their manifold efforts to escape some
even turned to the sea, which was not far off, and seeing the Athenian
ships coasting alongshore just while the action was going on, swam off
to them, thinking it better in the panic they were in, to perish, if
perish they must, by the hands of the Athenians, than by those of
the barbarous and detested Amphilochians. Of the large Ambraciot force
destroyed in this manner, a few only reached the city in safety; while
the Acarnanians, after stripping the dead and setting up a trophy,
returned to Argos.
The next day arrived a herald from the Ambraciots who had fled
from Olpae to the Agraeans, to ask leave to take up the dead that
had fallen after the first engagement, when they left the camp with
the Mantineans and their companions, without, like them, having had
permission to do so. At the sight of the arms of the Ambraciots from
the city, the herald was astonished at their number, knowing nothing
of the disaster and fancying that they were those of their own
party. Some one asked him what he was so astonished at, and how many
of them had been killed, fancying in his turn that this was the herald
from the troops at Idomene. He replied: "About two hundred"; upon
which his interrogator took him up, saying: "Why, the arms you see
here are of more than a thousand." The herald replied: "Then they
are not the arms of those who fought with us?" The other answered:
"Yes, they are, if at least you fought at Idomene yesterday." "But
we fought with no one yesterday; but the day before in the retreat."
"However that may be, we fought yesterday with those who came to
reinforce you from the city of the Ambraciots." When the herald
heard this and knew that the reinforcement from the city had been
destroyed, he broke into wailing and, stunned at the magnitude of
the present evils, went away at once without having performed his
errand, or again asking for the dead bodies. Indeed, this was by far
the greatest disaster that befell any one Hellenic city in an equal
number of days during this war; and I have not set down the number
of the dead, because the amount stated seems so out of proportion to
the size of the city as to be incredible. In any case I know that if
the Acarnanians and Amphilochians had wished to take Ambracia as the
Athenians and Demosthenes advised, they would have done so without a
blow; as it was, they feared that if the Athenians had it they would
be worse neighbours to them than the present.
After this the Acarnanians allotted a third of the spoils to the
Athenians, and divided the rest among their own different towns. The
share of the Athenians was captured on the voyage home; the arms now
deposited in the Attic temples are three hundred panoplies, which
the Acarnanians set apart for Demosthenes, and which he brought to
Athens in person, his return to his country after the Aetolian
disaster being rendered less hazardous by this exploit. The
Athenians in the twenty ships also went off to Naupactus. The
Acarnanians and Amphilochians, after the departure of Demosthenes
and the Athenians, granted the Ambraciots and Peloponnesians who had
taken refuge with Salynthius and the Agraeans a free retreat from
Oeniadae, to which place they had removed from the country of
Salynthius, and for the future concluded with the Ambraciots a
treaty and alliance for one hundred years, upon the terms following.
It was to be a defensive, not an offensive alliance; the Ambraciots
could not be required to march with the Acarnanians against the
Peloponnesians, nor the Acarnanians with the Ambraciots against the
Athenians; for the rest the Ambraciots were to give up the places
and hostages that they held of the Amphilochians, and not to give help
to Anactorium, which was at enmity with the Acarnanians. With this
arrangement they put an end to the war. After this the Corinthians
sent a garrison of their own citizens to Ambracia, composed of three
hundred heavy infantry, under the command of Xenocleides, son of
Euthycles, who reached their destination after a difficult journey
across the continent. Such was the history of the affair of Ambracia.
The same winter the Athenians in Sicily made a descent from their
ships upon the territory of Himera, in concert with the Sicels, who
had invaded its borders from the interior, and also sailed to the
islands of Aeolus. Upon their return to Rhegium they found the
Athenian general, Pythodorus, son of Isolochus, come to supersede
Laches in the command of the fleet. The allies in Sicily had sailed to
Athens and induced the Athenians to send out more vessels to their
assistance, pointing out that the Syracusans who already commanded
their land were making efforts to get together a navy, to avoid
being any longer excluded from the sea by a few vessels. The Athenians
proceeded to man forty ships to send to them, thinking that the war in
Sicily would thus be the sooner ended, and also wishing to exercise
their navy. One of the generals, Pythodorus, was accordingly sent
out with a few ships; Sophocles, son of Sostratides, and Eurymedon,
son of Thucles, being destined to follow with the main body. Meanwhile
Pythodorus had taken the command of Laches' ships, and towards the end
of winter sailed against the Locrian fort, which Laches had formerly
taken, and returned after being defeated in battle by the Locrians.
In the first days of this spring, the stream of fire issued from
Etna, as on former occasions, and destroyed some land of the
Catanians, who live upon Mount Etna, which is the largest mountain
in Sicily. Fifty years, it is said, had elapsed since the last
eruption, there having been three in all since the Hellenes have
inhabited Sicily. Such were the events of this winter; and with it
ended the sixth year of this war, of which Thucydides was the
historian.
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