Book 4
The Athenians being hereof presently advertised, and much more angry now than before, made preparation to war upon both;
and Brasidas expecting that they would send a fleet against them, received the women and children of the Scionaeans and Mendaeans into Olynthus in Chalcidea, and sent over thither five hundred Peloponnesian men of arms and three hundred Chalcidean targetiers, and for commander of them all Polydamidas. And those that were left in Scione and Mende joined in the administration of their affairs, as expecting to have the Athenian fleet immediately with them.
In the meantime Brasidas and Perdiccas, with joint forces, march into Lyncus against Arrhibaeus the second time. Perdiccas led with him the power of the Macedonians, his subjects, and such Grecian men of arms as dwelt among them. Brasidas, besides the Peloponnesians that were left him, led with him the Chalcideans, Acanthians, and the rest, according to the forces they could severally make. The whole number of the Grecian men of arms were about three thousand. The horsemen, both Macedonians and Chalcideans, somewhat less than a thousand; but the other rabble of barbarians was great.
Being entered the territory of Arrhibaeus, and finding the Lyncesteans encamped in the field, they also sat down opposite to their camp.
And the foot of each side being lodged upon a hill, and a plain lying betwixt them both, the horsemen ran down into the same, and a skirmish followed, first between the horse only of them both. But afterwards, the men of arms of the Lyncesteans coming down to aid their horse from the hill, and offering battle first, Brasidas and Perdiccas drew down their army likewise, and charging, put the Lyncesteans to flight; many of which being slain, the rest retired to the hill-top and lay still.
After this they erected a trophy and stayed two or three days, expecting the Illyrians who were coming to Perdiccas upon hire; and Perdiccas meant afterwards to have gone on against the villages of Arrhibaeus one after another, and to have sitten still there no longer. But Brasidas, having his thoughts on Mende, lest if the Athenians came thither before his return it should receive some blow, seeing withal that the Illyrians came not, had no liking to do so, but rather to retire.
Whilst they thus varied, word was brought that the Illyrians had betrayed Perdiccas and joined themselves with Arrhibaeus. So that now it was thought good to retire by them both, for fear of these who were a warlike people; but yet for the time when to march, there was nothing concluded, by reason of their variance. The next night, the Macedonians and multitude of barbarians (as it is usual with great armies to be terrified upon causes unknown) being suddenly affrighted, and supposing them to be many more in number than they were, and even now upon them, betook themselves to present flight and went home. And Perdiccas, who at first knew not of it, they constrained when he knew, before he had spoken with Brasidas (their camps being far asunder), to be gone also.
Brasidas betimes in the morning, when he understood that the Macedonians were gone away without him, and that the Illyrians and Arrhibaeans were coming upon him, putting his men of arms into a square form and receiving the multitude of his light-armed into the middle, intended to retire likewise. The youngest men of his soldiers he appointed to run out upon the enemy when they charged the army anywhere [with shot];
and he himself, with three hundred chosen men marching in the rear, intended, as he retired, to sustain the foremost of the enemy, fighting if they came close up.
But before the enemy approached, he encouraged his soldiers, as the shortness of time gave him leave, with words to this effect:
Men of Peloponnesus, if I did not mistrust, in respect you are thus abandoned by the Macedonians and that the barbarians which come upon you are many, that you were afraid, I should not [at this time] instruct you and encourage you as I do. But now, against this desertion of your companions and the multitude of your enemies, I will endeavour with a short instruction and hortative to give you encouragement to the full.
For to be good soldiers is unto you natural, not by the presence of any confederates, but by your own valour; and not to fear others for the number, seeing you are not come from a city where the many bear rule over the few, but the few over the many; and have gotten this for power by no other means than by overcoming in fight.
And as to these barbarians, whom through ignorance you fear, you may take notice, both by the former battles fought by us against them before, in favour of the Macedonians, and also by what I myself conjecture and have heard by others, that they have no great danger in them.
For when any enemy whatsoever maketh show of strength, being indeed weak, the truth once known doth rather serve to embolden the other side; whereas, against such as have valour indeed, a man will be the boldest when he knoweth the least. These men here, to such as have not tried them, do indeed make terrible offers;
for the sight of their number is fearful, the greatness of their cry intolerable, and the vain shaking of their weapons on high is not without signification of menacing. But they are not answerable to this when with such as stand them they come to blows. For fighting without order they will quit their place without shame if they be once pressed; and seeing it is with them honourable alike to fight or run away, their valours are never called in question; and a battle wherein every one may do as he lists, affords them a more handsome excuse to save themselves. But they trust rather in their standing out of danger and terrifying us afar off than in coming to hands with us; for else they would rather have taken that course than this.
And you see manifestly that all that was before terrible in them is in effect little, and serves only to urge you to be going with their show and noise. Which if you sustain at their first coming on, and again withdraw yourselves still, as you shall have leisure, in your order and places, you shall not only come the sooner to a place of safety, but shall learn also against hereafter that such a rabble as this, to men prepared to endure their first charge, do but make a flourish of valour with threats from afar before the battle; but to such as give them ground, they are eager enough to seem courageous where they may do it safely.
When Brasidas had made his exhortation, he led away his army. And the barbarians, seeing it, pressed after them with great cries and tumult, as supposing he fled.
But seeing that those who were appointed to run out upon them [did so, and] met them which way soever they came on, and that Brasidas himself, with his chosen band, sustained them where they charged close and endured the first brunt beyond their expectation, and seeing also that afterwards continually when they charged, the other received them and fought, and when they ceased the other retired, then at length the greatest part of the barbarians forbore the Grecians that with Brasidas were in the open field, and leaving a part to follow them with shot, the rest ran with all speed after the Macedonians which were fled, of whom as many as they overtook they slew; and withal prepossessed the passage, which is a narrow one between two hills, giving entrance into the country of Arrhibaeus, knowing that there was no other passage by which Brasidas could get away. And when he was come to the very strait, they were going about him to have cut him off.
He, when he saw this, commanded the three hundred that were with him to run every man as fast as he could to one of the tops, which of them they could easliest get up to, and try if they could drive down those barbarians that were now going up to the same, before any greater number was above to hem them in.
These accordingly fought with and overcame those barbarians upon the hill, and thereby the rest of the army marched the more easily to the top. For this beating of them from the vantage of the hill made the barbarians also afraid, so that they followed them no further, conceiving withal that they were now at the confines and already escaped through.
Brasidas, having now gotten the hills and marching with more safety, came first the same day to Arnissa, of the dominion of Perdiccas.
And the soldiers of themselves, being angry with the Macedonians for leaving them behind, whatsoever teams of oxen or fardles fallen from any man (as was likely to happen in a retreat made in fear and in the night) they lighted on by the way, the oxen they cut in pieces and took the fardles to themselves.
And from this time did Perdiccas first esteem Brasidas as his enemy, and afterwards hated the Peloponnesians, not with ordinary hatred for the Athenians' sake, but being utterly fallen out with him about his own particular interest, sought means as soon as he could to compound with these and be disleagued from the other.
Brasidas, at his return out of Macedonia to Torone, found that the Athenians had already taken Mende; and therefore staying there (for he thought it impossible to pass over into Pallene and to recover Mende), he kept good watch upon Torone.
For about the time that these things passed amongst the Lyncesteans, the Athenians, after all was in readiness, set sail for Mende and Scione with fifty galleys (whereof ten were of Chios) and a thousand men of arms of their own city, six hundred archers, a thousand Thracian mercenaries, and other targetiers of their own confederates thereabouts, under the conduct of Nicias, the son of Niceratus, and Nicostratus, the son of Diotrephes.
These, launching from Potidaea with their galleys and putting in at the temple of Neptune, marched presently against the Mendaeans. The Mendaeans with their own forces, three hundred of Scione that came to aid them, and the aids of the Peloponnesians, in all seven hundred men of arms, and Polydamidas their commander, were encamped upon a strong hill without the city.
Nicias, with a hundred and twenty lightarmed soldiers of Methone and sixty chosen men of arms of Athens and all his archers, attempting to get up by a path that was in the hill's side, was wounded in the attempt and could not make his way by force. And Nicostratus, with all the rest of the army, going another way further about, as he climbed the hill, being hard of access, was quite disordered;
and the whole army wanted little of being utterly discomfited. So for this day, seeing the Mendaeans and their confederates stood to it, the Athenians retired and pitched their camp; and at night the Mendaeans retired into the city.
The next day the Athenians, sailing about unto that part of the city which is towards Scione, seized on the suburbs, and all that day wasted their fields, no man coming forth to oppose them (for there was also sedition in the city); and the three hundred Scionaeans the night following went home again.
The next day Nicias, with the one half of the army, marched to the confines and wasted the territory of the Scionaeans; and Nicostratus at the same time, with the other half, sat down against the city before the higher gates towards Potidaea.
Polydamidas (for it fell out that the Mendaeans and their aids had their arms lying within the wall in this part) set his men in order for the battle and encouraged the Mendaeans to make a sally.
But when one of the faction of the commons in sedition said, to the contrary, that they would not go out and that it was not necessary to fight, and was upon this contradiction by Polydamidas pulled and molested, the commons in passion presently took up their arms and made towards the Peloponnesians and such other with them as were of the contrary faction;
and falling upon them put them to flight, partly with the suddenness of the charge and partly through the fear they were in of the Athenians, to whom the gates were at the same time opened. For they imagined that this insurrection was by some appointment made between them.
So they fled into the citadel, as many as were not presently slain, which was also in their own hands before. But the Athenians (for now was Nicias also come back, and at the town-side) rushed into the city with the whole army and rifled it, not as opened to them by agreement, but as taken by force; and the captains had much ado to keep them that they also killed not the men.
After this, they bade the Mendaeans use the same form of government they had done before, and to give judgment upon those they thought the principal authors of the revolt amongst themselves. Those that were in the citadel they shut up with a wall reaching on both sides to the sea, and left a guard to defend it. And having thus gotten Mende, they led their army against Scione.
The Scionaeans and the Peloponnesians, coming out against them, possessed themselves of a strong hill before the city, which if the enemy did not win, he should not be able to enclose the city with a wall.
The Athenians, having strongly charged them [with shot] and beaten the defendants from it, encamped upon the hill, and after they had set up their trophy, prepared to build their wall about the city.
Not long after, whilst the Athenians were at work about this, those aids that were besieged in the citadel of Mende, forcing the watch by the sea-side, came by night, and escaping most of them through the camp before Scione, put themselves into that city.
As they were enclosing of Scione, Perdiccas sent a herald to the Athenian commanders and concluded a peace with the Athenians, upon hatred to Brasidas about the retreat made out of Lyncus, having then immediately begun to treat of the same.
For it happened also at this time that Ischagoras, a Lacedaemonian, was leading an army of foot unto Brasidas. And Perdiccas, partly because Nicias advised him, seeing the peace was made, to give some clear token that he would be firm, and partly because he himself desired not that the Peloponnesians should come any more into his territories, wrought with his hosts in Thessaly, having in that kind ever used the prime men, and so stopped the army and munition as they would not so much as try the Thessalians [whether they would let them pass or not].