Book 4
Advance to meet them, then, in a manner worthy of the state in which each of you boasts that he has the first country in Greece; and of your fathers, who, by defeating these men in battle at Aenophyta, under Myronides, once got possession of Boeotia.
While Hippocrates was thus exhorting his men, and when he had reached the centre of the line, but had not had time to go farther, the Boeotians, having also been exhorted in few words by Pagondas, on that occasion as well as the former, raised their paean, and advanced against them from the hill.
The Athenians, on their side, also advanced to meet them, and closed with them at a run. The extremity of neither line came into action, but both were in the same case; for water-courses were in their way:
but the rest met in an obstinate engagement, shield to shield. And the Boeotian left, and as far as the centre, was beaten by the Athenians, who pressed hard both the others posted there, and especially the Thespians. For the troops next to them in the line having given way, and the Thespians being thus surrounded in a narrow space, those of them who were killed were cut down while defending themselves hand to hand:
and some of the Athenians also, being thrown into confusion through surrounding the enemy, failed to recognise their own men, and so killed each other. This part then of the Boeotian line was beaten, and retreated on that which was still fighting;
but their right, where the Thebans were posted, had the advantage over the Athenians, and drove them back, and pursued them, though but gradually at first. It happened also, that Pagondas having secretly sent two squadrons of horse round the hill when his left was distressed, and these suddenly making their appearance, the victorious wing of the Athenians, thinking that another army was coming against them, was seized with a panic;
and so now on both parts of the field, owing to this supposition, and to the Thebans' pursuing them and breaking their line, the whole Athenian army took to flight.
Some hurried to Delium and the sea-coast, others towards Oropus, others to Mount Parnes, and others as they severally had hope of saving themselves.
The Boeotians, in the mean time, were pursuing them close, and putting them to the sword, especially the cavalry, both their own and the Locrian, which came to their succour just as the rout took place: but the mass of the fugitives escaped more easily than they would else have done, in consequence of night coming on before the business was over.
The next day, the troops at Oropus and those at Delium, having left a garrison in it, (for they still continued to hold it notwithstanding,) returned home by sea.
The Boeotians, after erecting a trophy, taking up their own dead, stripping those of the enemy, and leaving a guard over them, retired to Tanagra, and formed plans for assaulting Delium.
Meanwhile, a herald from the Athenians, coming to ask back the dead, met a Boeotian herald, who turned him back, and told him that he would gain nothing before he himself had come back again. Then he went to the Athenians, and delivered the message of the Boeotians, viz. that they had not acted right in violating the laws of the Greeks. For it was a principle acknowledged by all, that in an invasion of each other's territory, they should abstain from injuring the temples that were in it.
But the Athenians had fortified Delium, and were living in it, every thing that men do in profane ground being done there; and they drew and used for ordinary purposes the water which was never touched by themselves, except to use in the laver of purification.
In the god's behalf, therefore, as well as their own, the Boeotians appealed to the associated deities and to Apollo, and charged them to retire from the sanctuary, and then take back Or, as Hobbes and Bloomfield take it, to carry away their property with them. But I think that there is a reference to this paragraph in the 7th and 8th of the next chapter; and in that case it can only bear the meaning which I have given to it. the dead which belonged to them.
The herald having spoken to this effect, the Athenians sent their own herald to the Boeotians, and said, that as for the sanctuary, they had neither done it any injury, nor would they in future voluntarily damage it; for neither had they originally entered it for that purpose, but to avenge themselves from it on those who were rather injuring them.
Now the law of the Greeks was, that whoever in any case had command of the country, whether more or less extensive, to them the temples always belonged, provided they received such honours as the occupiers had the power to pay, Literally, in addition to what were usual. without limiting them to what were usual.
For the Boeotians, and most others who had expelled any people from their country and taken forcible possession of it, had proceeded against temples which originally belonged to others, and now held them as their own. And if the Athenians had been able to make themselves masters of the Boeotian territory to a greater extent, such would have been the case:
but as it was, from the part in which they then were they would not, if they could help it, retire; as they considered that it belonged to them.
The water they had disturbed under the pressure of necessity, which they had not wantonly brought on themselves; but they were compelled to use it while defending themselves against the Boeotians, who had first come against their country.
And every thing, it was natural to suppose, done under pressure of war, or any other danger, would be considered as pardonable even in the eyes of the god. For the altars were a place of refuge in unintentional offences; and transgression was a term applied to those who were wicked through no compulsion, and not to those who had ventured to do any thing in consequence of their misfortunes.
Nay, the Boeotians were much more impious in wishing to give back dead bodies in return for sanctuaries, than they were who would not at the price of sanctuaries recover things not suitable [for such bartering].
They begged, then, that they would simply tell them to take up their dead, not after evacuating the territory of the Boeotians —for they were no longer in their territory, but in one which they had won with their arms—but, on making a truce according to the custom of their fathers.
The Boeotians replied, that if they were in Boeotia, they might take up their dead after evacuating their country; but if in Athenian territory, then i. e. they might take them away when they pleased. But, as Arnold remarks, the Boeotians knew all the time that this was merely vexatious; for the Athenians would not bury their dead without their leave, whether the ground which they occupied belonged to Attica or to Boeotia. they knew themselves what to do: considering that the Oropian territory, in which the bodies happened to be lying, (for the battle was fought on the borders,) was indeed subject to Athens, and yet that the Athenians could not get possession of them without their consent. Nor, again, were they disposed, they said, to grant any truce for a country belonging to Athens; but they thought it was a fair answer to give, that when they had evacuated the Boeotian territory, they might then recover what they asked. So the herald of the Athenians, after hearing their answer, returned without effecting his object.
The Boeotians immediately sent for dartmen and slingers from the Malian gulf, and having been reinforced since the battle by two thousand Corinthian heavy-armed, and the Peloponnesian garrison which had evacuated Nisaea, and some Megareans with them, they marched against Delium and assaulted the fortress, both attempting it in other ways, and bringing against it an engine of the following description, which was the means of taking it.
Having sawn a great beam in two, they hollowed out the whole of it, and fitted it nicely together again, like a pipe, and hung by chains at the end of it a caldron, into which was placed an iron bellows-pipe, inclining from the beam, the timber also being for a considerable distance covered with iron.
This they brought up from a distance on carts to that part of the wall where it had been chiefly built of the vines and timber; and when it was near, they applied great bellows to the end of the beam next themselves, and blew them.
The blast passing closely confined into the caldron, which held lighted coals, sulphur, and pitch, produced a great flame, and set fire to a part of the wall; so that no one could any longer stand upon it, but they left it and took to flight; and in this way the fortress was taken.
Of the garrison some were killed, and two hundred taken: of the rest the greater part got on board their ships, and returned home.
Delium having thus been taken on the fifteenth day after the battle, and the Athenian herald, without knowing any thing that had happened, having soon after come again respecting the bodies, the Boeotians restored them, and no longer made the same answer as before.
There fell in the engagement, of the Boeotians, not quite five hundred; of the Athenians, not quite a thousand, and Hippocrates the general; but of light-armed and camp-followers a great number.
A short time after this battle, Demosthenes, having had no success with regard to Siphae being betrayed to him, when he sailed thither at that time, and having still on board his ships the Acarnanian and Agraean forces, with four hundred Athenian heavy-armed, made a descent on the territory of
Sicyon. But before all his ships reached the shore, the Sicyonians came against them, and routed those that had landed, and drove them back to their vessels, killing some, and taking others prisoners. Having erected a trophy, they restored the dead under
truce. It was also about the same time as the affair at Delium, that Sitalces, king of the Odrysse, died, after making an expedition against the Triballi, and being defeated in battle; and Seuthes son of Sparadocus, his nephew, succeeded to the kingdom of the Odrysae, and the other parts of Thrace, over which Sitalces had reigned.
The same winter, Brasidas with his allies Thrace-ward marched against Amphipolis, the Athenian colony on the river Strymon.
On the site on which the town now stands a settlement was before attempted by Aristagoras the Milesian, when flying from king Darius; but he was driven away by the Edonians: and then by the Athenians, two-and-thirty years later, who sent ten thousand settlers of their own citizens, and whoever else would go; who were cut off by the Thracians at Drabescus.
Twenty-nine years after, the Athenians went again, Hagnon son of Nicias being sent out as leader of the colony, and expelled the Edonians, and founded a town on the spot which before was called Nineways. They set out for the purpose from Eion, which they occupied themselves at the mouth of the river, on the coast, at a distance of five-and-twenty stades from the present town, which Hagnon named i. e. a city looking both ways. For a description of it see the memoir at the end of Arnold' s 2nd volume Amphipolis, because, as the river Strymon flows round it on both sides, I have followed Arnold in supposing that διὰ in this passage expresses final, rather than efficient cause. as it often does with an infinitive mood: at least I infer that such was his view of it, from the passages which he compare with it, δι᾽ ἀχθηδόνα, ch. 40. 2. and V. 53. διὰ την ἔσπραξιν with a view to enclosing it, he ran a long wall across from river to river, and built the town so as to be conspicuous both towards the sea and towards the land.
Against this town then Brasidas marched with his forces, starting from Arnae in Chalcidice. Having arrived about dusk at Aulon and Bromiscus, where the lake Bolbe empties itself into the sea, and there supped, he proceeded during the night. The weather was stormy, and it was snowing a little;
on which account he hurried or the more, wishing to surprise the people of Amphipolis, except those who were to betray it.
For there were residing in it some Argilians, (this people are a colony from Andros,) and some others, who were carrying on this intrigue together; some at the suggestion of Perdiccas, others at that of the Chalcidians.
But most active of all were the Argilians, who lived close by, and had always been suspected by the Athenians of forming designs upon the place. For when the opportunity now presented itself, and Brasidas had come; as they had for some time past been intriguing with their countrymen who resided there with a view to its being delivered up to him, so at that time they received him into their own town, and revolted from Athens, and took him forward that same night to the bridge over the river.