Book 2
who, having received them, took them to Athens. On their arrival the Athenians, being afraid that if Aristeus escaped he might do them still more mischief, (for even before this he had evidently conducted all the measures in Potidaea and their possessions Thrace-ward,) without giving them a trial, though they requested to say something [in their own defence], put them to death that same day, and threw them into pits; thinking it but just to requite them in the same way as the Lacedaemonians had begun with; for they had killed and thrown into pits the merchants, both of the Athenians and their allies, whom they had taken on board trading vessels about the coast of the Peloponnese. Indeed all that the Lacedaemonians took on the sea at the beginning of the war, they butchered as enemies, both those who were confederates of the Athenians and those who were neutral.
About the same time, when the summer was drawing to a close, the Ambraciots, with their own forces and many of the barbarians whom they had raised, made an expedition against Argos in Amphilochia, and the rest of that country.
Now their enmity against the Argives first arose from the following circumstances.
Argos in Amphilochia and The rest of the country was colonized by Amphilochus the son of Amphiaraus, when he returned home after the Trojan war, and was not pleased with the state of things at Argos;
[and he built it] on the Ambracian Gulf, and called it Argos after the name of his own country.
This was the largest city of Amphilochia, and had the most powerful inhabitants. But many generations afterwards, being pressed by misfortunes, they called in the Ambraciots, who bordered on Amphilochia, as joint-inhabitants; and from the Ambraciots who joined them they were taught the Greek language which they now speak, the rest of the Amphilochians being barbarians.
Now the Ambraciots in process of time drove out the Argives, and held the city by themselves.
Upon this the Amphilochians gave themselves up to the Acarnanians; and both together having called in the Athenians, who sent them Phormio for a general and thirty ships, on the arrival of Phormio they took Argos by storm, and made slaves of the Ambraciots;
while the Amphilochians and Acarnanians occupied the town in common.
And it was after this event that the alliance between the Athenians and Acarnanians was first made. The Ambraciots then first conceived their enmity to the Argives from this enslavement of their people; and afterwards, during the war, formed this armament from themselves and the Chaonians, and some other of the neighboring barbarians. Having come to Argos, they obtained command of the country; but being unable to take the city by assault, they retired homeward, and disbanding returned to their different nations. These were the events of the summer.
The following winter, the Athenians sent twenty ships round the Peloponnese, with Phormio as commander, who, making Naupactus his station, kept watch that no one either sailed out from Corinth and the Crisaean Bay, or into it. Another squadron of six they sent towards Caria and Lycia, with Melesander as commander, to raise money from those parts, and to hinder the privateers of the Peloponnesians from making that their rendezvous, and interfering with the navigation of the merchantmen from Phaselis and Phoenice, and the continent in that direction.
But Melesander, having gone up the country into Lycia with a force composed of the Athenians from the ships and the allies, and being defeated in a battle, was killed, and lost a considerable part of the army.
The same winter, when the Potidaeans could no longer hold out against their besiegers, the inroads of the Peloponnesians into Attica having had no more effect towards causing the Athenians to withdraw, and their provisions being exhausted, and many other horrors having befallen them in their straits for food, and some having even eaten one another; under these circumstances, I say, they make proposals for a capitulation to the generals of the Athenians who were in command against them, Xenophon son of Euripides, Histiodorus son of Aristoclides, and Phanomachus son of Callimachus;
who accepted them, seeing the distress of their army in so exposed a position, and the state having already expended 2000 talents on the siege. On these terms therefore they came to an agreement;
that themselves, their children, wives, and auxiliaries, should go out of the place with one dress each-but the women with two-and with a fixed sum of money for their journey.
According to this treaty, they went out to Chalcidice, or where each could: but the Athenians blamed the generals for having come to an agreement without consulting them; for they thought they might have got possession of the place on their own terms; and afterwards they sent settlers of their own to Potidaea and colonized it. These were the transactions of the winter; and so ended the second year of this war of which Thucydides wrote the history.
The following summer the Peloponnesians and their allies did not make an incursion into Attica, but marched against Plataea, being led by Archidamus, the son of Zeuxidamus, king of the Lacedaemonians. Having encamped his army, he was going to ravage the land; but the Plataeans immediately sent ambassadors to him, and spoke as follows:
Archidamus and Lacedaemonians, you are not doing what is right, or worthy either of yourselves or of the fathers from whom you are sprung, in marching against the territory of the Plataeans. For Pausanias son of Cleombrotus, the Lacedaemonian, when he had liberated Greece from the Medes, in conjunction with those Greeks who had been willing to incur with him the peril of the battle that was fought near our city, after sacrificing in the market-place of Plataea to Jupiter the Deliverer, and assembling all the allies, proceeded to grant to the Plataeans to live in independent possession of their land and city, and that no one should ever make war upon them unjustly, or to enslave them else that the allies then present should assist them to their utmost.
These rewards your fathers gave us for our valour and zeal, shown in those scenes of danger; but you are doing the very contrary; for in conjunction with the Thebans, our bitterest enemies, you are come to enslave us.
Calling the gods then to witness, both those who at that time received the oaths, and those of your own fathers, and those of our country, we charge you not to injure the Plataean territory, nor break the oaths, but to let us live independent, as Pausanias thought right to grant us.
When the Plataeans had spoken thus much, Archidamus took them up and said: You speak what is just, Plataeans, if you act in accordance with your speech. As then Pausanias bequeathed to you, so both enjoy independence yourselves, and assist in liberating the rest, as many as shared the dangers of that day, and are now under the rule of the Athenians; and for whose liberation, and that of the rest [of their subjects], all this provision and war has been undertaken. Do you then yourselves abide by the oaths, by taking your part in this liberation, if possible; but if not, then, as we before proposed, keep quiet in the enjoyment of your own possessions, and do not join either side, but receive both as friends, and for warlike purposes neither the one nor the other.
And this will satisfy us. Thus much said Archidamus. The Plataeans having heard it went into the city, and after communicating to the whole people what had been said, answered him, that it was impossible for them to do what he proposed without consulting the Athenians; for their children and wives were with them; and that they had also fears for the whole city, lest when the Lacedaemonians had retired, the Athenians should come and not leave it in their hands; or the Thebans, as being included in the treaty, on the strength of their receiving both parties, should again endeavour to seize on it.
To encourage them on these points he said, Do you then give up your city and houses to us Lacedaemonians, and point out the boundaries of your territory, and your trees in number, and whatever else can be reduced to number; and yourselves remove wherever you please for as long as the war may last. When it is over, we will restore to you whatever we may have received. Till then we will hold it in trust, cultivating it, and bringing to you such of the produce as will be sufficient for you.
When they had heard his proposal, they went again into the city, and after consulting with the people, said that they wished first to communicate to the Athenians what he proposed, and should they gain their consent, then to do so; but till that time they begged him to grant them a truce, and not to lay waste the land. So he granted them a truce for the number of days within which it was likely they would return home, and in the mean time did not begin to ravage the land.
The Plataean ambassadors having come to the Athenians and consulted with them, returned with the following message to those in the city:
Men of Plataea, the Athenians say, that never in time past, since we became their allies, have they on any occasion deserted us when injured; nor will they neglect us now, but will succour us to the best of their power. And they charge you by the oaths which your fathers swore, to make no innovation in the terms of the alliance.
The ambassadors having delivered this message, they resolved not to prove false to the Athenians, but to endure, it necessary, both to see their land ravaged, and to suffer whatever else might befall them. They resolved also that no one should go out again, but that they should reply from the walls, that it was impossible for them to do as the Lacedaemonians proposed.
When they had given this answer, king Archidamus proceeded in the first place to call to witness the gods and heroes of the country, in these words: Ye gods and heroes that dwell in the land of Plataea, bear witness that it was neither unjustly in the first instance, but when these men had first broken the agreement they had sworn to, that we came against this land, in which our fathers prayed to you before they conquered the Medes, and which you rendered an auspicious one for the Greeks to contend in; nor shall we act unjustly now, whatever we may do; for though we have made many fair proposals, we have not succeeded in gaining their assent. Grant then that those may be punished for the wrong who were the first to begin it, and that those may obtain their revenge who are lawfully trying to inflict it.
Having thus appealed to the gods, he set his army to the war. In the first place he enclosed them with a palisade, made of the trees which they cut down, that no one might go out of the town any longer.
Next they began to throw up a mound against the city, hoping that the reduction of it would be very speedily effected with so large an army at work. Cutting down timber therefore from Cithaeron, they built it up on each side, laying it like lattice-work, to serve as walls, that the mound might not spread over a wide space;
and they carried to it brush-wood, and stone, and soil, and whatever else would help to complete it when thrown on. Seventy days and nights continuously they were throwing it up, being divided into relief-parties, so that some should be carrying, while others were taking sleep and refreshment; the Lacedaemonian officers who shared the command over the contingents of each state urging them to the work.
But the Plataeans, seeing the mound rising, put together a wooden wall, and placed it on the wall of their city, where the mound was being made, and built bricks inside it, which they took from the neighbouring houses.
The timbers served as a frame for them, to prevent the building from being weak as it became high; and for curtains it had skins and hides, so that the workmen and the timbers were not exposed to fiery missiles, but were in safety.
So the wall was raised to a great height, and the mound rose opposite to it no less quickly. The Plataeans also adopted some such device as follows: they took down a part of the wall, where the mound lay against it, and carried the earth into the city.
The Peloponnesians, on perceiving this, rammed down clay in wattles of reed, and threw it into the breach, that it might not be loose, and so carried away like the soil.
Being thus baffled, the Plataeans ceased from this attempt; but having dug a passage under ground from the city, and having guessed their way under the mound, they began again to carry the soil in to them. And for a long time they escaped the observation of the enemy outside; so that though they continued to throw on materials, they were further from finishing it; as their mound was carried away from beneath, and continually sinking down into the vacuum.
Fearing, however, that they might not even by this means be able to hold out, so few in numbers against so many, they adopted the following additional contrivance. They ceased to work at the great building opposite to the mound; but beginning at either end of it, where the wall was of its original height, they built another in the form of a crescent, running inwards into the city; that if the great wall were taken, this might hold out, and their opponents might have to throw up a second mound against it, and as they advanced within, might have double trouble and be more exposed to missiles on both their flanks.
At the same time that they were raising the mound, the Peloponnesians brought engines also to play upon the city; one of which, being brought up close to the wall, shook down a considerable part of the great building, and terrified the Plataeans. Others were advanced against different parts of the wall; but the Plataeans broke them off by throwing nooses around them. They also suspended great beams by long iron chains from the extremity of two levers, which were laid upon the wall, and stretched out beyond it; and having drawn them up at an angle, whenever the engine was going to fall on any point, by loosing the chains and not holding them tight in hand, they let the beam drop; which, falling on it with great impetus, broke off the Arnold thinks that the battering engine ended in a point, to force its way into the wall, rather than with a thick solid end, merely to batter it; and so that τὸ προέχον τῆς ἐμβολῆς answers exactly to τὸ τρύτανον in a parallel passage quoted by him from Aeneas Tacticus. head of the battering-ram.
After this, when their engines were of no avail, and the building of the wall was going on in opposition to the mound, the Peloponnesians, thinking it impossible to take the city by their present means of offence, prepared for circumvallating it.
First however they determined to make an attempt upon it by fire, [and see] whether with the help of a favourable wind they could burn the town, as it was not a large one: for they thought of every possible device, if by any means it might be reduced by them without the expense of a siege.