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The History of the Peloponnesian War
Book 7 - Chapter XXI
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Eighteenth and Nineteenth Years of the War - Arrival of
Gylippus at Syracuse - Fortification of Decelea -
Successes of the Syracusans
After refitting their ships, Gylippus and Pythen coasted along
from Tarentum to Epizephyrian Locris. They now received the more
correct information that Syracuse was not yet completely invested, but
that it was still possible for an army arriving at Epipolae to
effect an entrance; and they consulted, accordingly, whether they
should keep Sicily on their right and risk sailing in by sea, or,
leaving it on their left, should first sail to Himera and, taking with
them the Himeraeans and any others that might agree to join them, go
to Syracuse by land. Finally they determined to sail for Himera,
especially as the four Athenian ships which Nicias had at length
sent off, on hearing that they were at Locris, had not yet arrived
at Rhegium. Accordingly, before these reached their post, the
Peloponnesians crossed the strait and, after touching at Rhegium and
Messina, came to Himera. Arrived there, they persuaded the
Himeraeans to join in the war, and not only to go with them themselves
but to provide arms for the seamen from their vessels which they had
drawn ashore at Himera; and they sent and appointed a place for the
Selinuntines to meet them with all their forces. A few troops were
also promised by the Geloans and some of the Sicels, who were now
ready to join them with much greater alacrity, owing to the recent
death of Archonidas, a powerful Sicel king in that neighbourhood and
friendly to Athens, and owing also to the vigour shown by Gylippus
in coming from Lacedaemon. Gylippus now took with him about seven
hundred of his sailors and marines, that number only having arms, a
thousand heavy infantry and light troops from Himera with a body of
a hundred horse, some light troops and cavalry from Selinus, a few
Geloans, and Sicels numbering a thousand in all, and set out on his
march for Syracuse.
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Meanwhile the Corinthian fleet from Leucas made all haste to arrive;
and one of their commanders, Gongylus, starting last with a single
ship, was the first to reach Syracuse, a little before Gylippus.
Gongylus found the Syracusans on the point of holding an assembly to
consider whether they should put an end to the war. This he prevented,
and reassured them by telling them that more vessels were still to
arrive, and that Gylippus, son of Cleandridas, had been dispatched
by the Lacedaemonians to take the command. Upon this the Syracusans
took courage, and immediately marched out with all their forces to
meet Gylippus, who they found was now close at hand. Meanwhile
Gylippus, after taking Ietae, a fort of the Sicels, on his way, formed
his army in order of battle, and so arrived at Epipolae, and ascending
by Euryelus, as the Athenians had done at first, now advanced with the
Syracusans against the Athenian lines. His arrival chanced at a
critical moment. The Athenians had already finished a double wall of
six or seven furlongs to the great harbour, with the exception of a
small portion next the sea, which they were still engaged upon; and in
the remainder of the circle towards Trogilus on the other sea,
stones had been laid ready for building for the greater part of the
distance, and some points had been left half finished, while others
were entirely completed. The danger of Syracuse had indeed been great.
Meanwhile the Athenians, recovering from the confusion into which
they had been first thrown by the sudden approach of Gylippus and
the Syracusans, formed in order of battle. Gylippus halted at a
short distance off and sent on a herald to tell them that, if they
would evacuate Sicily with bag and baggage within five days' time,
he was willing to make a truce accordingly. The Athenians treated this
proposition with contempt, and dismissed the herald without an answer.
After this both sides began to prepare for action. Gylippus, observing
that the Syracusans were in disorder and did not easily fall into
line, drew off his troops more into the open ground, while Nicias
did not lead on the Athenians but lay still by his own wall. When
Gylippus saw that they did not come on, he led off his army to the
citadel of the quarter of Apollo Temenites, and passed the night
there. On the following day he led out the main body of his army, and,
drawing them up in order of battle before the walls of the Athenians
to prevent their going to the relief of any other quarter,
dispatched a strong force against Fort Labdalum, and took it, and
put all whom he found in it to the sword, the place not being within
sight of the Athenians. On the same day an Athenian galley that lay
moored off the harbour was captured by the Syracusans.
After this the Syracusans and their allies began to carry a single
wall, starting from the city, in a slanting direction up Epipolae,
in order that the Athenians, unless they could hinder the work,
might be no longer able to invest them. Meanwhile the Athenians,
having now finished their wall down to the sea, had come up to the
heights; and part of their wall being weak, Gylippus drew out his army
by night and attacked it. However, the Athenians who happened to be
bivouacking outside took the alarm and came out to meet him, upon
seeing which he quickly led his men back again. The Athenians now
built their wall higher, and in future kept guard at this point
themselves, disposing their confederates along the remainder of the
works, at the stations assigned to them. Nicias also determined to
fortify Plemmyrium, a promontory over against the city, which juts out
and narrows the mouth of the Great Harbour. He thought that the
fortification of this place would make it easier to bring in supplies,
as they would be able to carry on their blockade from a less distance,
near to the port occupied by the Syracusans; instead of being obliged,
upon every movement of the enemy's navy, to put out against them
from the bottom of the great harbour. Besides this, he now began to
pay more attention to the war by sea, seeing that the coming of
Gylippus had diminished their hopes by land. Accordingly, he
conveyed over his ships and some troops, and built three forts in
which he placed most of his baggage, and moored there for the future
the larger craft and men-of-war. This was the first and chief occasion
of the losses which the crews experienced. The water which they used
was scarce and had to be fetched from far, and the sailors could not
go out for firewood without being cut off by the Syracusan horse,
who were masters of the country; a third of the enemy's cavalry
being stationed at the little town of Olympieum, to prevent plundering
incursions on the part of the Athenians at Plemmyrium. Meanwhile
Nicias learned that the rest of the Corinthian fleet was
approaching, and sent twenty ships to watch for them, with orders to
be on the look-out for them about Locris and Rhegium and the
approach to Sicily.
Gylippus, meanwhile, went on with the wall across Epipolae, using
the stones which the Athenians had laid down for their own wall, and
at the same time constantly led out the Syracusans and their allies,
and formed them in order of battle in front of the lines, the
Athenians forming against him. At last he thought that the moment
was come, and began the attack; and a hand-to-hand fight ensued
between the lines, where the Syracusan cavalry could be of no use; and
the Syracusans and their allies were defeated and took up their dead
under truce, while the Athenians erected a trophy. After this Gylippus
called the soldiers together, and said that the fault was not theirs
but his; he had kept their lines too much within the works, and had
thus deprived them of the services of their cavalry and darters. He
would now, therefore, lead them on a second time. He begged them to
remember that in material force they would be fully a match for
their opponents, while, with respect to moral advantages, it were
intolerable if Peloponnesians and Dorians should not feel confident of
overcoming Ionians and islanders with the motley rabble that
accompanied them, and of driving them out of the country.
After this he embraced the first opportunity that offered of again
leading them against the enemy. Now Nicias and the Athenians held
the opinion that even if the Syracusans should not wish to offer
battle, it was necessary for them to prevent the building of the cross
wall, as it already almost overlapped the extreme point of their
own, and if it went any further it would from that moment make no
difference whether they fought ever so many successful actions, or
never fought at all. They accordingly came out to meet the Syracusans.
Gylippus led out his heavy infantry further from the fortifications
than on the former occasion, and so joined battle; posting his horse
and darters upon the flank of the Athenians in the open space, where
the works of the two walls terminated. During the engagement the
cavalry attacked and routed the left wing of the Athenians, which
was opposed to them; and the rest of the Athenian army was in
consequence defeated by the Syracusans and driven headlong within
their lines. The night following the Syracusans carried their wall
up to the Athenian works and passed them, thus putting it out of their
power any longer to stop them, and depriving them, even if
victorious in the field, of all chance of investing the city for the
future.
After this the remaining twelve vessels of the Corinthians,
Ambraciots, and Leucadians sailed into the harbour under the command
of Erasinides, a Corinthian, having eluded the Athenian ships on
guard, and helped the Syracusans in completing the remainder of the
cross wall. Meanwhile Gylippus went into the rest of Sicily to raise
land and naval forces, and also to bring over any of the cities that
either were lukewarm in the cause or had hitherto kept out of the
war altogether. Syracusan and Corinthian envoys were also dispatched
to Lacedaemon and Corinth to get a fresh force sent over, in any way
that might offer, either in merchant vessels or transports, or in
any other manner likely to prove successful, as the Athenians too were
sending for reinforcements; while the Syracusans proceeded to man a
fleet and to exercise, meaning to try their fortune in this way
also, and generally became exceedingly confident.
Nicias perceiving this, and seeing the strength of the enemy and his
own difficulties daily increasing, himself also sent to Athens. He had
before sent frequent reports of events as they occurred, and felt it
especially incumbent upon him to do so now, as he thought that they
were in a critical position, and that, unless speedily recalled or
strongly reinforced from home, they had no hope of safety. He
feared, however, that the messengers, either through inability to
speak, or through failure of memory, or from a wish to please the
multitude, might not report the truth, and so thought it best to write
a letter, to ensure that the Athenians should know his own opinion
without its being lost in transmission, and be able to decide upon the
real facts of the case.
His emissaries, accordingly, departed with the letter and the
requisite verbal instructions; and he attended to the affairs of the
army, making it his aim now to keep on the defensive and to avoid
any unnecessary danger.
At the close of the same summer the Athenian general Euetion marched
in concert with Perdiccas with a large body of Thracians against
Amphipolis, and failing to take it brought some galleys round into the
Strymon, and blockaded the town from the river, having his base at
Himeraeum.
Summer was now over. The winter ensuing, the persons sent by Nicias,
reaching Athens, gave the verbal messages which had been entrusted
to them, and answered any questions that were asked them, and
delivered the letter. The clerk of the city now came forward and
read out to the Athenians the letter, which was as follows:
"Our past operations, Athenians, have been made known to you by many
other letters; it is now time for you to become equally familiar
with our present condition, and to take your measures accordingly.
We had defeated in most of our engagements with them the Syracusans,
against whom we were sent, and we had built the works which we now
occupy, when Gylippus arrived from Lacedaemon with an army obtained
from Peloponnese and from some of the cities in Sicily. In our first
battle with him we were victorious; in the battle on the following day
we were overpowered by a multitude of cavalry and darters, and
compelled to retire within our lines. We have now, therefore, been
forced by the numbers of those opposed to us to discontinue the work
of circumvallation, and to remain inactive; being unable to make use
even of all the force we have, since a large portion of our heavy
infantry is absorbed in the defence of our lines. Meanwhile the
enemy have carried a single wall past our lines, thus making it
impossible for us to invest them in future, until this cross wall be
attacked by a strong force and captured. So that the besieger in
name has become, at least from the land side, the besieged in reality;
as we are prevented by their cavalry from even going for any
distance into the country.
"Besides this, an embassy has been dispatched to Peloponnese to
procure reinforcements, and Gylippus has gone to the cities in Sicily,
partly in the hope of inducing those that are at present neutral to
join him in the war, partly of bringing from his allies additional
contingents for the land forces and material for the navy. For I
understand that they contemplate a combined attack, upon our lines
with their land forces and with their fleet by sea. You must none of
you be surprised that I say by sea also. They have discovered that the
length of the time we have now been in commission has rotted our ships
and wasted our crews, and that with the entireness of our crews and
the soundness of our ships the pristine efficiency of our navy has
departed. For it is impossible for us to haul our ships ashore and
careen them, because, the enemy's vessels being as many or more than
our own, we are constantly anticipating an attack. Indeed, they may be
seen exercising, and it lies with them to take the initiative; and not
having to maintain a blockade, they have greater facilities for drying
their ships.
"This we should scarcely be able to do, even if we had plenty of
ships to spare, and were freed from our present necessity of
exhausting all our strength upon the blockade. For it is already
difficult to carry in supplies past Syracuse; and were we to relax our
vigilance in the slightest degree it would become impossible. The
losses which our crews have suffered and still continue to suffer
arise from the following causes. Expeditions for fuel and for
forage, and the distance from which water has to be fetched, cause our
sailors to be cut off by the Syracusan cavalry; the loss of our
previous superiority emboldens our slaves to desert; our foreign
seamen are impressed by the unexpected appearance of a navy against
us, and the strength of the enemy's resistance; such of them as were
pressed into the service take the first opportunity of departing to
their respective cities; such as were originally seduced by the
temptation of high pay, and expected little fighting and large
gains, leave us either by desertion to the enemy or by availing
themselves of one or other of the various facilities of escape which
the magnitude of Sicily affords them. Some even engage in trade
themselves and prevail upon the captains to take Hyccaric slaves on
board in their place; thus they have ruined the efficiency of our
navy.
"Now I need not remind you that the time during which a crew is in
its prime is short, and that the number of sailors who can start a
ship on her way and keep the rowing in time is small. But by far my
greatest trouble is, that holding the post which I do, I am
prevented by the natural indocility of the Athenian seaman from
putting a stop to these evils; and that meanwhile we have no source
from which to recruit our crews, which the enemy can do from many
quarters, but are compelled to depend both for supplying the crews
in service and for making good our losses upon the men whom we brought
with us. For our present confederates, Naxos and Catana, are incapable
of supplying us. There is only one thing more wanting to our
opponents, I mean the defection of our Italian markets. If they were
to see you neglect to relieve us from our present condition, and
were to go over to the enemy, famine would compel us to evacuate,
and Syracuse would finish the war without a blow.
"I might, it is true, have written to you something different and
more agreeable than this, but nothing certainly more useful, if it
is desirable for you to know the real state of things here before
taking your measures. Besides I know that it is your nature to love to
be told the best side of things, and then to blame the teller if the
expectations which he has raised in your minds are not answered by the
result; and I therefore thought it safest to declare to you the truth.
"Now you are not to think that either your generals or your soldiers
have ceased to be a match for the forces originally opposed to them.
But you are to reflect that a general Sicilian coalition is being
formed against us; that a fresh army is expected from Peloponnese,
while the force we have here is unable to cope even with our present
antagonists; and you must promptly decide either to recall us or to
send out to us another fleet and army as numerous again, with a
large sum of money, and someone to succeed me, as a disease in the
kidneys unfits me for retaining my post. I have, I think, some claim
on your indulgence, as while I was in my prime I did you much good
service in my commands. But whatever you mean to do, do it at the
commencement of spring and without delay, as the enemy will obtain his
Sicilian reinforcements shortly, those from Peloponnese after a longer
interval; and unless you attend to the matter the former will be
here before you, while the latter will elude you as they have done
before."
Such were the contents of Nicias's letter. When the Athenians had
heard it they refused to accept his resignation, but chose him two
colleagues, naming Menander and Euthydemus, two of the officers at the
seat of war, to fill their places until their arrival, that Nicias
might not be left alone in his sickness to bear the whole weight of
affairs. They also voted to send out another army and navy, drawn
partly from the Athenians on the muster-roll, partly from the
allies. The colleagues chosen for Nicias were Demosthenes, son of
Alcisthenes, and Eurymedon, son of Thucles. Eurymedon was sent off
at once, about the time of the winter solstice, with ten ships, a
hundred and twenty talents of silver, and instructions to tell the
army that reinforcements would arrive, and that care would be taken of
them; but Demosthenes stayed behind to organize the expedition,
meaning to start as soon as it was spring, and sent for troops to
the allies, and meanwhile got together money, ships, and heavy
infantry at home.
The Athenians also sent twenty vessels round Peloponnese to
prevent any one crossing over to Sicily from Corinth or Peloponnese.
For the Corinthians, filled with confidence by the favourable
alteration in Sicilian affairs which had been reported by the envoys
upon their arrival, and convinced that the fleet which they had before
sent out had not been without its use, were now preparing to
dispatch a force of heavy infantry in merchant vessels to Sicily,
while the Lacedaemonians did the like for the rest of Peloponnese. The
Corinthians also manned a fleet of twenty-five vessels, intending to
try the result of a battle with the squadron on guard at Naupactus,
and meanwhile to make it less easy for the Athenians there to hinder
the departure of their merchantmen, by obliging them to keep an eye
upon the galleys thus arrayed against them.
In the meantime the Lacedaemonians prepared for their invasion of
Attica, in accordance with their own previous resolve, and at the
instigation of the Syracusans and Corinthians, who wished for an
invasion to arrest the reinforcements which they heard that Athens was
about to send to Sicily. Alcibiades also urgently advised the
fortification of Decelea, and a vigorous prosecution of the war. But
the Lacedaemonians derived most encouragement from the belief that
Athens, with two wars on her hands, against themselves and against the
Siceliots, would be more easy to subdue, and from the conviction
that she had been the first to infringe the truce. In the former
war, they considered, the offence had been more on their own side,
both on account of the entrance of the Thebans into Plataea in time of
peace, and also of their own refusal to listen to the Athenian offer
of arbitration, in spite of the clause in the former treaty that where
arbitration should be offered there should be no appeal to arms. For
this reason they thought that they deserved their misfortunes, and
took to heart seriously the disaster at Pylos and whatever else had
befallen them. But when, besides the ravages from Pylos, which went on
without any intermission, the thirty Athenian ships came out from
Argos and wasted part of Epidaurus, Prasiae, and other places; when
upon every dispute that arose as to the interpretation of any doubtful
point in the treaty, their own offers of arbitration were always
rejected by the Athenians, the Lacedaemonians at length decided that
Athens had now committed the very same offence as they had before
done, and had become the guilty party; and they began to be full of
ardour for the war. They spent this winter in sending round to their
allies for iron, and in getting ready the other implements for
building their fort; and meanwhile began raising at home, and also
by forced requisitions in the rest of Peloponnese, a force to be
sent out in the merchantmen to their allies in Sicily. Winter thus
ended, and with it the eighteenth year of this war of which Thucydides
is the historian.
In the first days of the spring following, at an earlier period than
usual, the Lacedaemonians and their allies invaded Attica, under the
command of Agis, son of Archidamus, king of the Lacedaemonians. They
began by devastating the parts bordering upon the plain, and next
proceeded to fortify Decelea, dividing the work among the different
cities. Decelea is about thirteen or fourteen miles from the city of
Athens, and the same distance or not much further from Boeotia; and
the fort was meant to annoy the plain and the richest parts of the
country, being in sight of Athens. While the Peloponnesians and
their allies in Attica were engaged in the work of fortification,
their countrymen at home sent off, at about the same time, the heavy
infantry in the merchant vessels to Sicily; the Lacedaemonians
furnishing a picked force of Helots and Neodamodes (or freedmen),
six hundred heavy infantry in all, under the command of Eccritus, a
Spartan; and the Boeotians three hundred heavy infantry, commanded
by two Thebans, Xenon and Nicon, and by Hegesander, a Thespian.
These were among the first to put out into the open sea, starting from
Taenarus in Laconia. Not long after their departure the Corinthians
sent off a force of five hundred heavy infantry, consisting partly
of men from Corinth itself, and partly of Arcadian mercenaries, placed
under the command of Alexarchus, a Corinthian. The Sicyonians also
sent off two hundred heavy infantry at same time as the Corinthians,
under the command of Sargeus, a Sicyonian. Meantime the
five-and-twenty vessels manned by Corinth during the winter lay
confronting the twenty Athenian ships at Naupactus until the heavy
infantry in the merchantmen were fairly on their way from Peloponnese;
thus fulfilling the object for which they had been manned
originally, which was to divert the attention of the Athenians from
the merchantmen to the galleys.
During this time the Athenians were not idle. Simultaneously with
the fortification of Decelea, at the very beginning of spring, they
sent thirty ships round Peloponnese, under Charicles, son of
Apollodorus, with instructions to call at Argos and demand a force
of their heavy infantry for the fleet, agreeably to the alliance. At
the same time they dispatched Demosthenes to Sicily, as they had
intended, with sixty Athenian and five Chian vessels, twelve hundred
Athenian heavy infantry from the muster-roll, and as many of the
islanders as could be raised in the different quarters, drawing upon
the other subject allies for whatever they could supply that would
be of use for the war. Demosthenes was instructed first to sail
round with Charicles and to operate with him upon the coasts of
Laconia, and accordingly sailed to Aegina and there waited for the
remainder of his armament, and for Charicles to fetch the Argive
troops.
In Sicily, about the same time in this spring, Gylippus came to
Syracuse with as many troops as he could bring from the cities which
he had persuaded to join. Calling the Syracusans together, he told
them that they must man as many ships as possible, and try their
hand at a sea-fight, by which he hoped to achieve an advantage in
the war not unworthy of the risk. With him Hermocrates actively joined
in trying to encourage his countrymen to attack the Athenians at
sea, saying that the latter had not inherited their naval prowess
nor would they retain it for ever; they had been landsmen even to a
greater degree than the Syracusans, and had only become a maritime
power when obliged by the Mede. Besides, to daring spirits like the
Athenians, a daring adversary would seem the most formidable; and
the Athenian plan of paralysing by the boldness of their attack a
neighbour often not their inferior in strength could now be used
against them with as good effect by the Syracusans. He was convinced
also that the unlooked-for spectacle of Syracusans daring to face
the Athenian navy would cause a terror to the enemy, the advantages of
which would far outweigh any loss that Athenian science might
inflict upon their inexperience. He accordingly urged them to throw
aside their fears and to try their fortune at sea; and the Syracusans,
under the influence of Gylippus and Hermocrates, and perhaps some
others, made up their minds for the sea-fight and began to man their
vessels.
When the fleet was ready, Gylippus led out the whole army by
night; his plan being to assault in person the forts on Plemmyrium
by land, while thirty-five Syracusan galleys sailed according to
appointment against the enemy from the great harbour, and the
forty-five remaining came round from the lesser harbour, where they
had their arsenal, in order to effect a junction with those inside and
simultaneously to attack Plemmyrium, and thus to distract the
Athenians by assaulting them on two sides at once. The Athenians
quickly manned sixty ships, and with twenty-five of these engaged
the thirty-five of the Syracusans in the great harbour, sending the
rest to meet those sailing round from the arsenal; and an action now
ensued directly in front of the mouth of the great harbour, maintained
with equal tenacity on both sides; the one wishing to force the
passage, the other to prevent them.
In the meantime, while the Athenians in Plemmyrium were down at
the sea, attending to the engagement, Gylippus made a sudden attack on
the forts in the early morning and took the largest first, and
afterwards the two smaller, whose garrisons did not wait for him,
seeing the largest so easily taken. At the fall of the first fort, the
men from it who succeeded in taking refuge in their boats and
merchantmen, found great difficulty in reaching the camp, as the
Syracusans were having the best of it in the engagement in the great
harbour, and sent a fast-sailing galley to pursue them. But when the
two others fell, the Syracusans were now being defeated; and the
fugitives from these sailed alongshore with more ease. The Syracusan
ships fighting off the mouth of the harbour forced their way through
the Athenian vessels and sailing in without any order fell foul of one
another, and transferred the victory to the Athenians; who not only
routed the squadron in question, but also that by which they were at
first being defeated in the harbour, sinking eleven of the Syracusan
vessels and killing most of the men, except the crews of three ships
whom they made prisoners. Their own loss was confined to three
vessels; and after hauling ashore the Syracusan wrecks and setting
up a trophy upon the islet in front of Plemmyrium, they retired to
their own camp.
Unsuccessful at sea, the Syracusans had nevertheless the forts in
Plemmyrium, for which they set up three trophies. One of the two
last taken they razed, but put in order and garrisoned the two others.
In the capture of the forts a great many men were killed and made
prisoners, and a great quantity of property was taken in all. As the
Athenians had used them as a magazine, there was a large stock of
goods and corn of the merchants inside, and also a large stock
belonging to the captains; the masts and other furniture of forty
galleys being taken, besides three galleys which had been drawn up
on shore. Indeed the first and chiefest cause of the ruin of the
Athenian army was the capture of Plemmyrium; even the entrance of
the harbour being now no longer safe for carrying in provisions, as
the Syracusan vessels were stationed there to prevent it, and
nothing could be brought in without fighting; besides the general
impression of dismay and discouragement produced upon the army.
After this the Syracusans sent out twelve ships under the command of
Agatharchus, a Syracusan. One of these went to Peloponnese with
ambassadors to describe the hopeful state of their affairs, and to
incite the Peloponnesians to prosecute the war there even more
actively than they were now doing, while the eleven others sailed to
Italy, hearing that vessels laden with stores were on their way to the
Athenians. After falling in with and destroying most of the vessels in
question, and burning in the Caulonian territory a quantity of
timber for shipbuilding, which had been got ready for the Athenians,
the Syracusan squadron went to Locri, and one of the merchantmen
from Peloponnese coming in, while they were at anchor there,
carrying Thespian heavy infantry, took these on board and sailed
alongshore towards home. The Athenians were on the look-out for them
with twenty ships at Megara, but were only able to take one vessel
with its crew; the rest getting clear off to Syracuse. There was
also some skirmishing in the harbour about the piles which the
Syracusans had driven in the sea in front of the old docks, to allow
their ships to lie at anchor inside, without being hurt by the
Athenians sailing up and running them down. The Athenians brought up
to them a ship of ten thousand talents burden furnished with wooden
turrets and screens, and fastened ropes round the piles from their
boats, wrenched them up and broke them, or dived down and sawed them
in two. Meanwhile the Syracusans plied them with missiles from the
docks, to which they replied from their large vessel; until at last
most of the piles were removed by the Athenians. But the most
awkward part of the stockade was the part out of sight: some of the
piles which had been driven in did not appear above water, so that
it was dangerous to sail up, for fear of running the ships upon
them, just as upon a reef, through not seeing them. However divers
went down and sawed off even these for reward; although the Syracusans
drove in others. Indeed there was no end to the contrivances to
which they resorted against each other, as might be expected between
two hostile armies confronting each other at such a short distance:
and skirmishes and all kinds of other attempts were of constant
occurrence. Meanwhile the Syracusans sent embassies to the cities,
composed of Corinthians, Ambraciots, and Lacedaemonians, to tell
them of the capture of Plemmyrium, and that their defeat in the
sea-fight was due less to the strength of the enemy than to their
own disorder; and generally, to let them know that they were full of
hope, and to desire them to come to their help with ships and
troops, as the Athenians were expected with a fresh army, and if the
one already there could be destroyed before the other arrived, the war
would be at an end.
While the contending parties in Sicily were thus engaged,
Demosthenes, having now got together the armament with which he was to
go to the island, put out from Aegina, and making sail for
Peloponnese, joined Charicles and the thirty ships of the Athenians.
Taking on board the heavy infantry from Argos they sailed to
Laconia, and, after first plundering part of Epidaurus Limera,
landed on the coast of Laconia, opposite Cythera, where the temple
of Apollo stands, and, laying waste part of the country, fortified a
sort of isthmus, to which the Helots of the Lacedaemonians might
desert, and from whence plundering incursions might be made as from
Pylos. Demosthenes helped to occupy this place, and then immediately
sailed on to Corcyra to take up some of the allies in that island, and
so to proceed without delay to Sicily; while Charicles waited until he
had completed the fortification of the place and, leaving a garrison
there, returned home subsequently with his thirty ships and the
Argives also.
This same summer arrived at Athens thirteen hundred targeteers,
Thracian swordsmen of the tribe of the Dii, who were to have sailed to
Sicily with Demosthenes. Since they had come too late, the Athenians
determined to send them back to Thrace, whence they had come; to
keep them for the Decelean war appearing too expensive, as the pay
of each man was a drachma a day. Indeed since Decelea had been first
fortified by the whole Peloponnesian army during this summer, and then
occupied for the annoyance of the country by the garrisons from the
cities relieving each other at stated intervals, it had been doing
great mischief to the Athenians; in fact this occupation, by the
destruction of property and loss of men which resulted from it, was
one of the principal causes of their ruin. Previously the invasions
were short, and did not prevent their enjoying their land during the
rest of the time: the enemy was now permanently fixed in Attica; at
one time it was an attack in force, at another it was the regular
garrison overrunning the country and making forays for its
subsistence, and the Lacedaemonian king, Agis, was in the field and
diligently prosecuting the war; great mischief was therefore done to
the Athenians. They were deprived of their whole country: more than
twenty thousand slaves had deserted, a great part of them artisans,
and all their sheep and beasts of burden were lost; and as the cavalry
rode out daily upon excursions to Decelea and to guard the country,
their horses were either lamed by being constantly worked upon rocky
ground, or wounded by the enemy.
Besides, the transport of provisions from Euboea, which had before
been carried on so much more quickly overland by Decelea from
Oropus, was now effected at great cost by sea round Sunium; everything
the city required had to be imported from abroad, and instead of a
city it became a fortress. Summer and winter the Athenians were worn
out by having to keep guard on the fortifications, during the day by
turns, by night all together, the cavalry excepted, at the different
military posts or upon the wall. But what most oppressed them was that
they had two wars at once, and had thus reached a pitch of frenzy
which no one would have believed possible if he had heard of it before
it had come to pass. For could any one have imagined that even when
besieged by the Peloponnesians entrenched in Attica, they would still,
instead of withdrawing from Sicily, stay on there besieging in like
manner Syracuse, a town (taken as a town) in no way inferior to
Athens, or would so thoroughly upset the Hellenic estimate of their
strength and audacity, as to give the spectacle of a people which,
at the beginning of the war, some thought might hold out one year,
some two, none more than three, if the Peloponnesians invaded their
country, now seventeen years after the first invasion, after having
already suffered from all the evils of war, going to Sicily and
undertaking a new war nothing inferior to that which they already
had with the Peloponnesians? These causes, the great losses from
Decelea, and the other heavy charges that fell upon them, produced
their financial embarrassment; and it was at this time that they
imposed upon their subjects, instead of the tribute, the tax of a
twentieth upon all imports and exports by sea, which they thought
would bring them in more money; their expenditure being now not the
same as at first, but having grown with the war while their revenues
decayed.
Accordingly, not wishing to incur expense in their present want of
money, they sent back at once the Thracians who came too late for
Demosthenes, under the conduct of Diitrephes, who was instructed, as
they were to pass through the Euripus, to make use of them if possible
in the voyage alongshore to injure the enemy. Diitrephes first
landed them at Tanagra and hastily snatched some booty; he then sailed
across the Euripus in the evening from Chalcis in Euboea and
disembarking in Boeotia led them against Mycalessus. The night he
passed unobserved near the temple of Hermes, not quite two miles
from Mycalessus, and at daybreak assaulted and took the town, which is
not a large one; the inhabitants being off their guard and not
expecting that any one would ever come up so far from the sea to
molest them, the wall too being weak, and in some places having
tumbled down, while in others it had not been built to any height, and
the gates also being left open through their feeling of security.
The Thracians bursting into Mycalessus sacked the houses and
temples, and butchered the inhabitants, sparing neither youth nor age,
but killing all they fell in with, one after the other, children and
women, and even beasts of burden, and whatever other living
creatures they saw; the Thracian race, like the bloodiest of the
barbarians, being even more so when it has nothing to fear. Everywhere
confusion reigned and death in all its shapes; and in particular
they attacked a boys' school, the largest that there was in the place,
into which the children had just gone, and massacred them all. In
short, the disaster falling upon the whole town was unsurpassed in
magnitude, and unapproached by any in suddenness and in horror.
Meanwhile the Thebans heard of it and marched to the rescue, and
overtaking the Thracians before they had gone far, recovered the
plunder and drove them in panic to the Euripus and the sea, where
the vessels which brought them were lying. The greatest slaughter took
place while they were embarking, as they did not know how to swim, and
those in the vessels on seeing what was going on on on shore moored
them out of bowshot: in the rest of the retreat the Thracians made a
very respectable defence against the Theban horse, by which they
were first attacked, dashing out and closing their ranks according
to the tactics of their country, and lost only a few men in that
part of the affair. A good number who were after plunder were actually
caught in the town and put to death. Altogether the Thracians had
two hundred and fifty killed out of thirteen hundred, the Thebans
and the rest who came to the rescue about twenty, troopers and heavy
infantry, with Scirphondas, one of the Boeotarchs. The Mycalessians
lost a large proportion of their population.
While Mycalessus thus experienced a calamity for its extent as
lamentable as any that happened in the war, Demosthenes, whom we
left sailing to Corcyra, after the building of the fort in Laconia,
found a merchantman lying at Phea in Elis, in which the Corinthian
heavy infantry were to cross to Sicily. The ship he destroyed, but the
men escaped, and subsequently got another in which they pursued
their voyage. After this, arriving at Zacynthus and Cephallenia, he
took a body of heavy infantry on board, and sending for some of the
Messenians from Naupactus, crossed over to the opposite coast of
Acarnania, to Alyzia, and to Anactorium which was held by the
Athenians. While he was in these parts he was met by Eurymedon
returning from Sicily, where he had been sent, as has been
mentioned, during the winter, with the money for the army, who told
him the news, and also that he had heard, while at sea, that the
Syracusans had taken Plemmyrium. Here, also, Conon came to them, the
commander at Naupactus, with news that the twenty-five Corinthian
ships stationed opposite to him, far from giving over the war, were
meditating an engagement; and he therefore begged them to send him
some ships, as his own eighteen were not a match for the enemy's
twenty-five. Demosthenes and Eurymedon, accordingly, sent ten of their
best sailers with Conon to reinforce the squadron at Naupactus, and
meanwhile prepared for the muster of their forces; Eurymedon, who
was now the colleague of Demosthenes, and had turned back in
consequence of his appointment, sailing to Corcyra to tell them to man
fifteen ships and to enlist heavy infantry; while Demosthenes raised
slingers and darters from the parts about Acarnania.
Meanwhile the envoys, already mentioned, who had gone from
Syracuse to the cities after the capture of Plemmyrium, had
succeeded in their mission, and were about to bring the army that they
had collected, when Nicias got scent of it, and sent to the Centoripae
and Alicyaeans and other of the friendly Sicels, who held the
passes, not to let the enemy through, but to combine to prevent
their passing, there being no other way by which they could even
attempt it, as the Agrigentines would not give them a passage
through their country. Agreeably to this request the Sicels laid a
triple ambuscade for the Siceliots upon their march, and attacking
them suddenly, while off their guard, killed about eight hundred of
them and all the envoys, the Corinthian only excepted, by whom fifteen
hundred who escaped were conducted to Syracuse.
About the same time the Camarinaeans also came to the assistance
of Syracuse with five hundred heavy infantry, three hundred darters,
and as many archers, while the Geloans sent crews for five ships, four
hundred darters, and two hundred horse. Indeed almost the whole of
Sicily, except the Agrigentines, who were neutral, now ceased merely
to watch events as it had hitherto done, and actively joined
Syracuse against the Athenians.
While the Syracusans after the Sicel disaster put off any
immediate attack upon the Athenians, Demosthenes and Eurymedon,
whose forces from Corcyra and the continent were now ready, crossed
the Ionian Gulf with all their armament to the Iapygian promontory,
and starting from thence touched at the Choerades Isles lying off
Iapygia, where they took on board a hundred and fifty Iapygian darters
of the Messapian tribe, and after renewing an old friendship with
Artas the chief, who had furnished them with the darters, arrived at
Metapontium in Italy. Here they persuaded their allies the
Metapontines to send with them three hundred darters and two
galleys, and with this reinforcement coasted on to Thurii, where
they found the party hostile to Athens recently expelled by a
revolution, and accordingly remained there to muster and review the
whole army, to see if any had been left behind, and to prevail upon
the Thurians resolutely to join them in their expedition, and in the
circumstances in which they found themselves to conclude a defensive
and offensive alliance with the Athenians.
About the same time the Peloponnesians in the twenty-five ships
stationed opposite to the squadron at Naupactus to protect the passage
of the transports to Sicily had got ready for engaging, and manning
some additional vessels, so as to be numerically little inferior to
the Athenians, anchored off Erineus in Achaia in the Rhypic country.
The place off which they lay being in the form of a crescent, the land
forces furnished by the Corinthians and their allies on the spot
came up and ranged themselves upon the projecting headlands on
either side, while the fleet, under the command of Polyanthes, a
Corinthian, held the intervening space and blocked up the entrance.
The Athenians under Diphilus now sailed out against them with
thirty-three ships from Naupactus, and the Corinthians, at first not
moving, at length thought they saw their opportunity, raised the
signal, and advanced and engaged the Athenians. After an obstinate
struggle, the Corinthians lost three ships, and without sinking any
altogether, disabled seven of the enemy, which were struck prow to
prow and had their foreships stove in by the Corinthian vessels, whose
cheeks had been strengthened for this very purpose. After an action of
this even character, in which either party could claim the victory
(although the Athenians became masters of the wrecks through the
wind driving them out to sea, the Corinthians not putting out again to
meet them), the two combatants parted. No pursuit took place, and no
prisoners were made on either side; the Corinthians and Peloponnesians
who were fighting near the shore escaping with ease, and none of the
Athenian vessels having been sunk. The Athenians now sailed back to
Naupactus, and the Corinthians immediately set up a trophy as victors,
because they had disabled a greater number of the enemy's ships.
Moreover they held that they had not been worsted, for the very same
reason that their opponent held that he had not been victorious; the
Corinthians considering that they were conquerors, if not decidedly
conquered, and the Athenians thinking themselves vanquished, because
not decidedly victorious. However, when the Peloponnesians sailed
off and their land forces had dispersed, the Athenians also set up a
trophy as victors in Achaia, about two miles and a quarter from
Erineus, the Corinthian station.
This was the termination of the action at Naupactus. To return to
Demosthenes and Eurymedon: the Thurians having now got ready to join
in the expedition with seven hundred heavy infantry and three
hundred darters, the two generals ordered the ships to sail along
the coast to the Crotonian territory, and meanwhile held a review of
all the land forces upon the river Sybaris, and then led them
through the Thurian country. Arrived at the river Hylias, they here
received a message from the Crotonians, saying that they would not
allow the army to pass through their country; upon which the Athenians
descended towards the shore, and bivouacked near the sea and the mouth
of the Hylias, where the fleet also met them, and the next day
embarked and sailed along the coast touching at all the cities
except Locri, until they came to Petra in the Rhegian territory.
Meanwhile the Syracusans hearing of their approach resolved to
make a second attempt with their fleet and their other forces on
shore, which they had been collecting for this very purpose in order
to do something before their arrival. In addition to other
improvements suggested by the former sea-fight which they now
adopted in the equipment of their navy, they cut down their prows to a
smaller compass to make them more solid and made their cheeks stouter,
and from these let stays into the vessels' sides for a length of six
cubits within and without, in the same way as the Corinthians had
altered their prows before engaging the squadron at Naupactus. The
Syracusans thought that they would thus have an advantage over the
Athenian vessels, which were not constructed with equal strength,
but were slight in the bows, from their being more used to sail
round and charge the enemy's side than to meet him prow to prow, and
that the battle being in the great harbour, with a great many ships in
not much room, was also a fact in their favour. Charging prow to prow,
they would stave in the enemy's bows, by striking with solid and stout
beaks against hollow and weak ones; and secondly, the Athenians for
want of room would be unable to use their favourite manoeuvre of
breaking the line or of sailing round, as the Syracusans would do
their best not to let them do the one, and want of room would
prevent their doing the other. This charging prow to prow, which had
hitherto been thought want of skill in a helmsman, would be the
Syracusans' chief manoeuvre, as being that which they should find most
useful, since the Athenians, if repulsed, would not be able to back
water in any direction except towards the shore, and that only for a
little way, and in the little space in front of their own camp. The
rest of the harbour would be commanded by the Syracusans; and the
Athenians, if hard pressed, by crowding together in a small space
and all to the same point, would run foul of one another and fall into
disorder, which was, in fact, the thing that did the Athenians most
harm in all the sea-fights, they not having, like the Syracusans,
the whole harbour to retreat over. As to their sailing round into
the open sea, this would be impossible, with the Syracusans in
possession of the way out and in, especially as Plemmyrium would be
hostile to them, and the mouth of the harbour was not large.
With these contrivances to suit their skill and ability, and now
more confident after the previous sea-fight, the Syracusans attacked
by land and sea at once. The town force Gylippus led out a little
the first and brought them up to the wall of the Athenians, where it
looked towards the city, while the force from the Olympieum, that is
to say, the heavy infantry that were there with the horse and the
light troops of the Syracusans, advanced against the wall from the
opposite side; the ships of the Syracusans and allies sailing out
immediately afterwards. The Athenians at first fancied that they
were to be attacked by land only, and it was not without alarm that
they saw the fleet suddenly approaching as well; and while some were
forming upon the walls and in front of them against the advancing
enemy, and some marching out in haste against the numbers of horse and
darters coming from the Olympieum and from outside, others manned
the ships or rushed down to the beach to oppose the enemy, and when
the ships were manned put out with seventy-five sail against about
eighty of the Syracusans.
After spending a great part of the day in advancing and retreating
and skirmishing with each other, without either being able to gain any
advantage worth speaking of, except that the Syracusans sank one or
two of the Athenian vessels, they parted, the land force at the same
time retiring from the lines. The next day the Syracusans remained
quiet, and gave no signs of what they were going to do; but Nicias,
seeing that the battle had been a drawn one, and expecting that they
would attack again, compelled the captains to refit any of the ships
that had suffered, and moored merchant vessels before the stockade
which they had driven into the sea in front of their ships, to serve
instead of an enclosed harbour, at about two hundred feet from each
other, in order that any ship that was hard pressed might be able to
retreat in safety and sail out again at leisure. These preparations
occupied the Athenians all day until nightfall.
The next day the Syracusans began operations at an earlier hour, but
with the same plan of attack by land and sea. A great part of the
day the rivals spent as before, confronting and skirmishing with
each other; until at last Ariston, son of Pyrrhicus, a Corinthian, the
ablest helmsman in the Syracusan service, persuaded their naval
commanders to send to the officials in the city, and tell them to move
the sale market as quickly as they could down to the sea, and oblige
every one to bring whatever eatables he had and sell them there,
thus enabling the commanders to land the crews and dine at once
close to the ships, and shortly afterwards, the selfsame day, to
attack the Athenians again when they were not expecting it.
In compliance with this advice a messenger was sent and the market
got ready, upon which the Syracusans suddenly backed water and
withdrew to the town, and at once landed and took their dinner upon
the spot; while the Athenians, supposing that they had returned to the
town because they felt they were beaten, disembarked at their
leisure and set about getting their dinners and about their other
occupations, under the idea that they done with fighting for that day.
Suddenly the Syracusans had manned their ships and again sailed
against them; and the Athenians, in great confusion and most of them
fasting, got on board, and with great difficulty put out to meet them.
For some time both parties remained on the defensive without engaging,
until the Athenians at last resolved not to let themselves be worn out
by waiting where they were, but to attack without delay, and giving
a cheer, went into action. The Syracusans received them, and
charging prow to prow as they had intended, stove in a great part of
the Athenian foreships by the strength of their beaks; the darters
on the decks also did great damage to the Athenians, but still greater
damage was done by the Syracusans who went about in small boats, ran
in upon the oars of the Athenian galleys, and sailed against their
sides, and discharged from thence their darts upon the sailors.
At last, fighting hard in this fashion, the Syracusans gained the
victory, and the Athenians turned and fled between the merchantmen
to their own station. The Syracusan ships pursued them as far as the
merchantmen, where they were stopped by the beams armed with
dolphins suspended from those vessels over the passage. Two of the
Syracusan vessels went too near in the excitement of victory and
were destroyed, one of them being taken with its crew. After sinking
seven of the Athenian vessels and disabling many, and taking most of
the men prisoners and killing others, the Syracusans retired and set
up trophies for both the engagements, being now confident of having
a decided superiority by sea, and by no means despairing of equal
success by land.
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