Book 3
The summer following, the Peloponnesians and their confederates, at the time when corn was at the highest, entered with their army into Attica under the conduct of Archidamus, the son of Zeuxidamus, king of the Lacedaemonians, and there set them down and wasted the territory about.
And the Athenian horsemen, as they were wont, fell upon the enemy where they thought fit and kept back the multitude of light-armed soldiers from going out before the men of arms and infesting the places near the city.
And when they had stayed as long as their victual lasted, they returned and were dissolved according to their cities.
After the Peloponnesians were entered Attica, Lesbos immediately, all but Methymne, revolted from the Athenians, which though they would have done before the war and the Lacedaemonians would not then receive them, yet even now they were forced to revolt sooner than they had intended to do.
For they stayed to have first straitened the mouth of their haven with dams of earth, to have finished their walls and their galleys then in building, and to have gotten in all that was to come out of Pontus, as archers, and victual, and whatsoever else they had sent for.
But the Tenedians, with whom they were at odds, and the Methymnaeans, and of the Mytilenaeans themselves certain particular men upon faction, being hosts to the Athenians, made known unto them that the Lesbians were forced to go all into Mytilene; that by the help of the Lacedaemonians and their kindred, the Boeotians, they hastened all manner of provision necessary for a revolt; and that unless it were presently prevented, all Lesbos would be lost.
The Athenians, afflicted with the disease, and with the war now on foot and at the hottest, thought it a dangerous matter that Lesbos, which had a navy and was of strength entire, should thus be added to the rest of their enemies, and at first received not the accusations, holding them therefore the rather feigned because they would not have them true. But after, when they had sent ambassadors to Mytilene and could not persuade them to dissolve themselves and undo their preparation, they then feared the worst and would have prevented them,
and to that purpose suddenly sent out the forty galleys made ready for Peloponnesus with Cleippedes and two other commanders.
For they had been advertised that there was a holiday of Apollo Maloeis to be kept without the city and that to the celebration thereof the Mytilenaeans were accustomed to come all out of the town; and they hoped, making haste, to take them there unawares. And if the attempt succeeded, it was well; if not, they might command the Mytilenaeans to deliver up their galleys and to demolish their walls; or they might make war against them if they refused.
So these galleys went their way. And ten galleys of Mytilene which then chanced to be at Athens, by virtue of their league to aid them, the Athenians stayed and cast into prison the men that were in them.
In the meantime a certain man went from Athens into Euboea by sea and then by land to Geraestus and, finding there a ship ready to put off, having the wind favourable, arrived in Mytilene three days after he set forth from Athens and gave them notice of the coming of the fleet. Hereupon they not only went not out to Maloeis, as was expected, but also stopped the gaps of their walls and ports where they were left unfinished and placed guards to defend them.
When the Athenians not long after arrived and saw this, the commanders of the fleet delivered to the Mytilenaeans what they had in charge, which not hearkened unto, they presently fell to the war.
The Mytilenaeans, unprovided and compelled to a war on such a sudden, put out some few galleys before the haven to fight; but being driven in again by the galleys of Athens, they called to the Athenian commanders to parley, desiring, if they could upon reasonable conditions, to get the galleys for the present sent away.
And the Athenian commander allowed the conditions, he also fearing they should be too weak to make war against the whole island.
When a cessation of arms was granted, the Mytilenaeans amongst others sent to Athens one of those that had given intelligence there of their design, and had repented him after of the same, to try if they could persuade them to withdraw their fleet from them as not intending any innovation.
Withal they sent ambassadors at the same time to Lacedaemon, undiscovered of the fleet of the Athenians which was riding at anchor in Malea to the north of the city, being without any confidence of their success at Athens.
And these men, after an ill voyage through the wide sea, arriving at Lacedaemon, negotiated the sending of aid from thence.
But when their ambassadors were come back from Athens without effect, the Mytilenaeans and the rest of Lesbos, save only Methymne (for these, together with the Imbrians, Lemnians, and some few other their confederates, aided the Athenians), prepared themselves for the war. And the Mytilenaeans with the whole strength of the city made a sally upon the Athenian camp and came to a battle;
wherein, though the Mytilenaeans had not the worse, yet they lay not that night without the walls nor durst trust to their strength but retiring into the town, lay quiet there, expecting to try their fortune with the accession of such forces as (if any came) they were to have from Peloponnesus. For there were now come into the city one Meleas a Laconian and Hermiondas a Theban, who, having been sent out before the revolt but unable to arrive before the coming of the Athenian fleet, secretly after the end of the battle entered the haven in a galley and persuaded them to send another galley along with them with other ambassadors to Sparta, which they did.
But the Athenians, much confirmed by this the Mytilenaeans' cessation, called in their confederates (who, because they saw no assurance on the part of the Lesbians, came much sooner in than was thought they would have done) and, riding at anchor to the south of the city, fortified two camps, on either side one, and brought their galleys before both the ports and so quite excluded the Mytilenaeans from the use of the sea.
As for the land, the Athenians held so much only as lay near their camps, which was not much; and the Mytilenaeans and other Lesbians, that were now come to aid them, were masters of the rest. For Malea served the Athenians for a station only for their galleys and to keep their market in. And thus proceeded the war before Mytilene.
About the same time of the same summer, the Athenians sent likewise thirty galleys into Peloponnesus under the conduct of Asopius the son of Phormio. For the Acarnanians had desired them to send some son or kinsman of Phormio for general into those parts.
These, as they sailed by, wasted the maritime country of Laconia;
and then sending back the greatest part of his fleet to Athens, Asopius himself with twelve galleys went on to Naupactus. And afterwards, having raised the whole power of Acarnania, he made war upon the Oeniades and both entered with his galleys into the river of Achelöus and with his land forces wasted the territory.
But when the Oeniades would not yield, he disbanded his land forces and sailed with his galleys to Leucas and landed his soldiers on the territory of Neritum, but in going off was by those of the country that came out to defend it and by some few of the garrison soldiers there both himself and part of his company slain.
And having upon truce received from the Leucadians their dead bodies, they went their ways.
Now the ambassadors of the Mytilenaeans that went out in the first galley, having been referred by the Lacedaemonians to the general meeting of the Grecians at Olympia to the end they might determine of them together with the rest of the confederates, went to Olympia accordingly. It was that Olympiad wherein Dorieus of Rhodes was the second time victor.
And when after the solemnity they were set in council, the ambassadors spake unto them in this manner:
"Men of Lacedaemon and confederates, we know the received custom of the Grecians. For they that take into league such as revolt in the wars and relinquish a former league, though they like them as long as they have profit by them, yet accounting them but traitors to their former friends, they esteem the worse of them in their judgment.
And to say the truth, this judgment is not without good reason when they that revolt and they from whom the revolt is made are mutually like minded and affected, and equal in provision and strength, and no just cause of their revolt given. But now between us and the Athenians it is not so.
Nor let any man think the worse of us for that having been honoured by them in time of peace, we have now revolted in time of danger.
"For the first point of our speech, especially now we seek to come into league with you, shall be to make good the justice and honesty of our revolt. For we know there can be neither firm friendship between man and man nor any communion between city and city to any purpose whatsoever without a mutual opinion of each other's honesty, and also a similitude of customs otherwise; for in the difference of minds is grounded the diversity of actions.
"As for our league with the Athenians, it was first made when you gave over the Medan war, and they remained to prosecute the relics of that business.
Yet we entered not such a league as to be their helpers in bringing the Grecians into the servitude of the Athenians but to set free the Grecians from the servitude of the Medes.
And as long as they led us as equals, we followed them with much zeal: but when we saw they remitted their enmity against the Medes and led us to the subjugation of the confederates, we could not then but be afraid.
And the confederates, through the multitude of distinct counsels unable to unite themselves for resistance, fell all but ourselves and the Chians into their subjection. And we, having still our own laws and being in name a free state, followed them to the wars;
but so, as by the examples of their former actions, we held them not any longer for faithful leaders. For it was not probable when they had subdued those whom together with us they took into league but that, when they should be able, they would do the like also by the rest.
"It is true that if we were now in liberty all, we might be the better assured that they would forbear to innovate; but since they have under them the greatest part already, in all likelihood they will take it ill to deal on equal terms with us alone and, the rest yielding, to let us only stand up as their equals. Especially when by how much they are become stronger by the subjection of their confederates, by so much the more are we become desolate.
But the equality of mutual fear is the only band of faith in leagues.
For he that hath the will to transgress, yet when he hath not the odds of strength, will abstain from coming on. Now the reason why they have left us yet free is no other but that they may have a fair colour to lay upon their domination over the rest and because it hath seemed unto them more expedient to take us in by policy than by force.