Book 3
For therein they made use of us for an argument that having equal vote with them we would never have followed them to the wars if those against whom they led us had not done the injury:
and thereby also they brought the stronger against the weaker and, reserving the strongest to the last, made them the weaker by removing the rest. Whereas if they had begun with us, when the confederates had had both their own strength and a side to adhere to, they had never subdued them so easily.
Likewise our navy kept them in some fear, lest united and added to yours or to any other, it might have created them some danger.
Partly also we escaped by our observance toward their commons and most eminent men from time to time.
But yet we still thought we could not do so long, considering the examples they have showed us in the rest, if this war should not have fallen out.
"What friendship then or assurance of liberty was this when we received each other with alienated affections: when whilst they had wars, they for fear courted us; and when they had peace, we for fear courted them: and whereas in others good will assureth loyalty, in us it was the effect of fear? So it was more for fear than love that we remained their confederates; and whomsoever security should first embolden, he was first likely by one means or other to break the league.
Now if any man think we did unjustly to revolt upon the expectation of evil intended without staying to be certain whether they would do it or not, he weigheth not the matter aright.
For if we were as able to contrive evil against them and again to defer it, as they can against us, being thus equal, what needed us to be at their discretion? But seeing it is in their hands to invade at pleasure, it ought to be in ours to anticipate.
"Upon these pretensions, therefore, and causes, men of Lacedaemon and confederates, we have revolted, the which are both clear enough for the hearers to judge upon, that we had reason for it, and weighty enough to affright, and compel us to take some course for our own safety, which we would have done before, when before the war we sent ambassadors to you about our revolt, but could not because you would not then admit us into your league. And now when the Boeotians invited us to it, we presently obeyed. Wherein we thought we made a double revolt, one from the Grecians, in ceasing to do them mischief with the Athenians and helping to set them free, and another from the Athenians, in breaking first and not staying to be destroyed by them hereafter.
But this revolt of ours hath been sooner than was fit and before we were provided for it. For which cause also the confederates ought so much the sooner to admit us into the league and send us the speedier aid, thereby the better at once both to defend those you ought to defend and to annoy your enemies.
Whereof there was never better opportunity than at present.
For the Athenians being both with the sickness and their great expenses consumed and their navy divided, part upon your own coasts and part upon ours, it is not likely they should have many galleys to spare in case you again this summer invade them both by sea and land, but that they should either be unable to resist the invasion of your fleet or be forced to come off from both our coasts.
And let not any man conceive that you shall herein at your own danger defend the territory of another. For though Lesbos seem remote, the profit of it will be near you. For the war will not be, as a man would think, in Attica but there from whence cometh the profit to Attica.
This profit is the revenue they have from the confederates, which, if they subdue us, will still be greater. For neither will any other revolt; and all that is ours will accrue unto them, and we shall be worse handled besides than those that were under them before.
But aiding us with diligence, you shall both add to your league a city that hath a great navy, the thing you most stand in need of, and also easily overthrow the Athenians by subduction of their confederates because everyone will then be more confident to come in, and you shall avoid the imputation of not assisting such as revolt unto you. And if it appear that your endeavour is to make them free, your strength in this war will be much the more confirmed.
In reverence therefore of the hopes which the Grecians have reposed in you and of the presence of Jupiter Olympius, in whose temple here we are in a manner suppliants to you, receive the Mytilenaeans into league and aid us. And do not cast us off, who (though, as to the exposing of our persons, the danger be our own) shall bring a common profit to all Greece if we prosper and a more common detriment to all the Grecians if, through your inflexibleness, we miscarry.
Be you therefore men such as the Grecians esteem you and our fears require you to be.
In this manner spake the Mytilenaeans. And the Lacedaemonians and their confederates, when they had heard and allowed their reasons, decreed not only a league with the Lesbians but also again to make an invasion into Attica. And to that purpose the Lacedaemonians appointed their confederates there present to make as much speed as they could with two parts of their forces into the isthmus; and they themselves being first there prepared engines in the isthmus for the drawing up of galleys, with intention to carry the navy from Corinth to the other sea that lieth towards Athens, and to set upon them both by sea and land.
And these things diligently did they. But the rest of the confederates assembled but slowly, being busied in the gathering in of their fruits and weary of warfare.
The Athenians, perceiving all this preparation to be made upon an opinion of their weakness and desirous to let them see they were deceived as being able, without stirring the fleet at Lesbos, easily to master the fleet that should come against them out of Peloponnesus, manned out a hundred galleys and embarked therein generally, both citizens (except those of the degree of Pentacosiomedimni and Horsemen) and also strangers that dwelt amongst them, and sailing to the isthmus made a show of their strength and landed their soldiers in such parts of Peloponnesus as they thought fit.
When the Lacedaemonians saw things so contrary to their expectation, they thought it false which was spoken by the Lesbian ambassadors, and esteeming the action difficult, seeing their confederates were not arrived and that news was brought of the wasting of the territory near their city by the thirty galleys formerly sent about Peloponnesus by the Athenians, went home again,
and afterwards prepared to send a fleet to Lesbos, and intimated to the cities rateably to furnish forty galleys, and appointed Alcidas, who was to go thither with them, for admiral.
And the Athenians, when they saw the Peloponnesians gone, went likewise home with their hundred galleys.
About the time that this fleet was out, they had surely the most galleys (besides the beauty of them) together in action in these employment; yet in the beginning of the war they had both as good and more in number.
For a hundred attended the guard of Attica, Euboea, and Salamis; and another hundred were about Peloponnesus, besides those that were at Potidaea and other places, so that in one summer they had in all two hundred and fifty sail.
And this, together with Potidaea, was it that most exhausted their treasure.
For the men of arms that besieged the city had each of them two drachmes a day, one for himself and another for his man, and were three thousand in number that were sent thither at first and remained to the end of the siege, besides sixteen hundred more that went with Phormio and came away before the town was won. And the galleys had all the same pay. In this manner was their money consumed and so many galleys employed, the most indeed that ever they had manned at once.
About the same time that the Lacedaemonians were in the isthmus, the Mytilenaeans marched by land, both they and their auxiliaries, against Methymne in hope to have had it betrayed unto them and, having assaulted the city, when it succeeded not the way they looked for, they went thence to Antissa, Pyrrha, and Eressus; and after they had settled the affairs of those places and made strong their walls returned speedily home.
When these were gone, the Methymnaeans likewise made war upon Antissa; but beaten by the Antisaeans and some auxiliaries that were with them, they made haste again to Methymne with the loss of many of their soldiers.
But the Athenians being advertised hereof and understanding that the Mytilenaeans were masters of the land and that their own soldiers there were not enough to keep them in, sent thither, about the beginning of autumn, Paches, the son of Epicurus, with a thousand men of arms of their own city,
who, supplying the place of rowers themselves, arrived at Mytilene and ingirt it with a single wall, save that in some places, stronger by nature than the rest, they only built turrets and placed guards in them.
So that the city was every way strongly besieged, both by sea and land, and the winter began.
The Athenians, standing in need of money for the siege, both contributed themselves and sent thither two hundred talents of this their first contribution, and also dispatched Lysicles and four others with twelve galleys to levy money amongst the confederates.
But Lysicles, after he had been to and fro and gathered money in divers places, as he was going up from Myus through the plains of Maeander in Caria as far as to the hill Sandius, was set upon there by the Carians and Anaeitans and himself with a great part of his soldiers slain.
The same winter the Plataeans (for they were besieged by the Peloponnesians and Boeotians), pressed now with want of victual and hopeless of relief from Athens, and no other means of safety appearing, took counsel, both they and the Athenians that were besieged with them, at first all to go out and, if they could, to pass over the wall of the enemy by force. The authors of this attempt, were Theaenetus the son of Tolmidas, a soothsayer, and Eupompidas the son of Daimachus, one of their commanders.
But half of them afterwards, by one means or other, for the greatness of the danger shrunk from it again; but two hundred and twenty or thereabouts voluntarily persisted to go out in this manner.
They made them ladders fit for the height of the enemy's wall; the wall they measured by the lays of bricks on the part toward the town where it was not plastered over; and divers men at once numbered the lays of bricks, whereof, though some missed, yet the greatest part took the reckoning just, especially numbering them so often and at no great distance but where they might easily see the part to which their ladders were to be applied, and so by guess of the thickness of one brick took the measure of their ladders.
As for the wall of the Peloponnesians, it was thus built. It consisted of a double circle, one towards Plataea and another outward in case of an assault from Athens. These two walls were distant one from the other about sixteen foot;
and that sixteen foot of space which was betwixt them was disposed and built into cabins for the watchmen, which was so joined and continued one to another that the whole appeared to be one thick wall with battlements on either side.
At every ten battlements stood a great tower of a just breadth to comprehend both walls and reach from the outmost to the inmost front of the whole, so that there was no passage by the side of a tower but through the midst of it.