Book 6
During the same winter the Athenians wished to416 B.C. sail again to Sicily with a larger armament than that conducted by Laches and Eurymedon,Two separate earlier expeditions, one under Laches and Charoeades, 427 B.C. (3.86.1), the other under Pythodorus. Sophocles and Eurymedon, 424 B.C. (4.2.), are here comprised under the one formula. and subdue it, if they could, most of them being ignorant of the great size of the island and of the large number of its inhabitants, Hellenic as well as Barbarian, and that they were undertaking a war not very much inferior to that against
the Peloponnesians. For the voyage round Sicily, for a merchantman, is one of not much less than eight days; and although it is so large only a distance of about twenty stadia of the sea divides the island from the mainland.
Sicily was settled originally in the following manner, and the whole number of the nations that occupied it were these. Most ancient of all those who are reported to have settled in any part of the island were the Cyclopes and Laestrygonians, as to whom, however, I am able to tell neither their stock nor whence they came nor whither they went;
let it suffice as the story has been told by the poets,Homer, no doubt, especially, as also in 1.10.1; 1.11.3; 1.20.1 and as each man has formed his opinion about them. The Sicanians appear to have been the first to settle there after them, indeed, as they themselves assert, even before them, as being indigenous, but as the truth is found to be, they were Iberians and were driven by the Ligurians from the River Sicanus in Iberia. From them the island was then called Sicania, having been called Trinacria before;
and they still inhabit the western parts of Sicily. But on the capture of Ilium some of the Trojans, who had escaped the Achaeans, came in boats to Sicily, and settling on the borders of the Sicanians were called, as a people, Elymi, while their cities were named Eryx and Egesta. And there settled with them also some of the Phocians, who on their return at that time from Troy were driven by a storm first to Libya and thence to Sicily.
The Sicels, again, crossed over from Italy, where they dwelt, to Sicily, fleeing from the Opicans—as is probable and indeed is reported— on rafts, having waited for their passage till the wind was from the shore; or perhaps they sailed thither in some other way also. Even now there are Sicels still in Italy; and the country was named Italy after Italus, a king of the Sicels who had this name.
These crossed over to Sicily in a vast horde and conquering the Sicanians in battle forced them back to the southern and western parts of the island, causing it to be called Sicily instead of Sicania. They settled there after they had crossed and held the best parts of the land for nearly three hundred years before the Hellenes came to Sicily; and even now they still hold the central and northern parts of the island.
Phoenicians, too, had settlements all round Sicily, on promontories along the sea coast, which they walled off, and on the adjacent islets, for the sake of trade with the Sicels. But when the Hellenes also began to come in by sea in large numbers, the Phoenicians left most of these places and settling together lived in Motya,On the little island of S. Pantaleon near the promontory of Lilybaeum. SoloeisEast of Palermo, now Salanto. and PanormusNow Palermo. near the Elymi, partly because they trusted in their alliance with the Elymi and partly because from there the voyage from Sicily to Carthage is shortest. These, then, were the barbarians and such was the manner in which they settled in Sicily.
Of the Hellenes, on the other hand, the first to sail over were some Chalcidians from Euboea who settled Naxos735 B.C. The site was the best point for landing from Hellas, near Tauromenium (Taormina). with Thucles as founder,A leader appointed by a state to conduct the people sent out to establish a colony. He probably received material privileges and grants while alive, and certainly was paid divine honours—sacrifices and games—after death. If a colony afterwards founded another colony, it was customary to ask a leader from the mother city. and built an altar in honour of Apollo Archegetes.So called as “founder” or protector of a new settlement. This is now outside of the city, and on it the sacred deputies,On missions to games or oracles. when they sail from Sicily, first offer sacrifice.
The following year Syracuse734 B.C. was founded by Archias, one of the Heracleidae from Corinth, after he had first expelled the Sicels from the island, no longer surrounded by water, on which now stands the inner city; and at a later period also the outer city was connected with it by walls and became populous.
In the fifth year after the settlement of Syracuse, Thucles and the Chalcidians, setting forth from Naxos, drove out the Sicels in war and settled Leontini, and after it Catana.729 B.C. The Catanaeans, however, chose for themselves Evarchus as founder.
About the same time Lamis also came to Sicily with a colony from Megara and settled in a place called Trotilus, beyond the river Pantaeyas; but afterwards, having removed from there and joined the settlement of the Chalcidians at Leontini, he was a little later driven out by them, and then after colonizing ThapsusA peninsula just north of Syracuse (now called Isola di Magnisi). met his death. His followers were expelled from Thapsus and settled then at a place called Megara Hyblaea,728 B.C. since Hyblon, a Sicel king, gave up the land to them and led them to the site.
After dwelling there two hundred and forty-five years, they were driven out of the town and country by Gelon, tyrant of Syracuse. But before they were driven out, a hundred years after they had settled there, they founded Selinus,628 B.C. sending thither Pammilus, who came from the mother-city Megara and joined in the settlement.
In the forty-fifth year after the settlement of Syracuse Gela689 B.C. was founded by Antiphemus from Rhodes and Entimus from Crete, who together led out the colony The city got its name from the river Gela, but the place where the acropolis now is and which was the first to be fortified is called Lindii.So called evidently from Lindus in Rhodes; cf. Hdt 1.cliii.
The institutions given it were Dorian. Just about one hundred and eight years after their own foundation, the Geloans colonized Acragas581 B.C.; and they named the city after the river Acragas, making Aristonous and Pystilus founders, and giving it the institutions of the Geloans.
Zancle was settled, in the beginning, by pirates who came from Cyme, the Chalcidian city in Opicia; but afterwards a large number of colonists came from Chalcis and the rest of Euboea and shared the land with them, the founders being Perieres and Crataemenes, the one from Cyme, the other from Chalcis. Its name at first was Zancle, and it was so called by the Sicels because the place is sickle-shaped: for the Sicels call a sickle “zanclon.” Afterwards these settlers were driven out by Samians and other Ionians, who in their flight before the Persians landed in Sicilycf. Hdt. VI. xxii., xxiii.;
but the Samians were expelled not long afterwards by Anaxilas, tyrant of Rhegium, who colonized the place with a mixed population and changed its name to Messene730 B.C. after his own original fatherland.
Himera648 B.C. was colonized from Zancle by Eucleides, Simus and Sacon. Most of the colonists were Chalcidians; but there settled with them also fugitives from Syracuse who had been vanquished in a factional quarrel, the Myletidae as they were called. Their language was a mixture of Chalcidic and Doric, but Chalcidic institutions prevailed. Acrae and Casmenae were colonized by the Syracusans:
Acrae664 B.C. seventy years after Syracuse, Casmenae644 B.C. nearly twenty years after Acrae.
Camarina599 B.C. was first colonized by the Syracusans, just about one hundred and thirty-five years after the foundation of Syracuse, its founders being Dascon and Menecolus. But the Camarinaeans were driven out by the Syracusans in a war which arose from a revolt, and some time later Hippocrates, tyrant of Gela,Dates 498-491. receiving the territory of the Camarinaeans as ransom for some Syracusan prisoners of war, himself became founder and recolonized Camarina. And again the place was depopulated by Gelon, and was then colonized for the third time by the Geloans.
Such were the nations, Hellenic and barbarian,416 B.C. that inhabited Sicily; and such was the magnitude of the island which the Athenians were bent upon invading. To give the truest explanation, they were eager to attain to empire of the whole of it, but they wished at the same time to have the fair pretext of succouring their own kinsmen and their
old allies.Or, reading προσγεγενημένοις,—“the allies they had acquired besides”—the Camarinaeans and Agrigentines (5.4.6) and some of the Sicels (3.103.1). But most of all they were instigated by envoys of the Egestaeans who were present and invoked their aid more earnestly than ever. For bordering as they did on the Selinuntians they had got into war with them about certain marriage rights and about disputed territory; and the Selinuntians, bringing in the Syracusans as allies, were pressing them hard in the war both by land and by sea. And so the Egestaeans, reminding the Athenians of their alliance which had been made with the Leontines in the time of Laches and the former war,cf. 2.86.1. begged them to send ships to their relief; saying many other things but chiefly this, that if the Syracusans should go unpunished for depopulating Leontini, and by destroying those of their allies that were still left should get the whole of Sicily into their power, there was danger that some time, lending aid with a great force, both as Dorians to Dorians on account of kinship, and at the same time as colonists to the Peloponnesians that had sent them out, they might help to pull down the power of
the Athenians. It would be wise, therefore, with their allies that were still left, to oppose the Syracusans, especially as the Egestaeans would furnish money sufficient for the war. And the Athenians, hearing in their assemblies these arguments of the Egestaeans and their supporters, who constantly repeated them, voted first to send envoys to Egesta to see whether the money was on hand, as they said, in the treasury and in the temples, and at the same time to ascertain how matters stood with reference to the war with the Selinuntians.
Accordingly the Athenian envoys were despatched to Sicily. But during the same winter the Lacedaemonians and their allies, except the Corinthians, invaded the Argive territory, ravaged a small part of the land and carried off some corn in wagons which they had brought with them; then having settled the Argive fugitives at Orneae, leaving with them also a small body of troops, after they had made a truce for a certain time, on condition that the Orneates and Argives were not to injure one another's land, they went home with the rest of their force.
When the Athenians came not long afterwards with thirty ships and six hundred hoplites, the Argives, in company with the Athenians, went out in full force and besieged the garrison at Orneae for a single day; but under cover of night, when the besieging army had bivouacked at a distance, the garrison of Orneae escaped.
The next day the Argives, on learning this, razed Orneae to the ground and withdrew, and later the Athenians also went home with their ships. The Athenians also conveyed by sea some of their own cavalry and the Macedonian exiles that were with them to Methone, which borders on Macedonia, and ravaged the country of Perdiccas.
And the Lacedaemonians sent to the Chalcidians in Thrace, who were observing a truce renewable every ten days with the Athenians, and urged them to join Perdiccas in the war; but they were unwilling. So the winter ended, and with it the sixteenth year of this war of which Thucydides wrote the history.
The next year at the opening of spring theMarch 415 B.C. Athenian envoys returned from Sicily, and with them the Egestaeans, bringing sixty talents£12,000, $57,360. of uncoined silver as a month's pay for sixty ships, which they were to ask the
Athenians to send. And the Athenians, calling an assembly and hearing from the Egestaeans and their own envoys other things that were enticing but not true, and that the money was ready in large quantity in the temples and in the treasury, voted to send to Sicily sixty ships, with Alcibiades son of Cleinias, Nicias son of Niceratus, and Lamachus son of Xenophanes as generals with full powers, to aid the Egestaeans against the Selinuntians, and also to join in restoring Leontini, in case they should have any success in the war; and further to settle all other matters in Sicily as they might deem best
for the Athenians. But on the fifth day after this a meeting of the assembly was again held, to determine in what way the ships could be equipped most speedily, and in case the generals should need anything further for the expedition, to vote
it for them. And Nicias, who had been elected to the command against his will, and thought the city had not come to a right decision, but that, with a slight and specious pretext, it was the conquest of all Sicily, a great undertaking, at which they aimed, came forward with the purpose of averting this, and advised the Athenians as follows:—
"This assembly was convoked with reference to our armament, to consider in what way we should make the expedition to Sicily; to me, however, it seems that we ought to consider yet again this very question, whether it is best to send the ships at all, and that we ought not, on such slight deliberation about matters of great importance, at the instigation of men of alien race, to undertake a war that does not concern us.
And yet from such an enterprise I for my part get honour, and have less dread than others about my life,He may have been suffering already from the kidney trouble of which he complained the next summer in his letter to the Athenians (7.15.1). although I consider that he is quite as good a citizen who takes some forethought for his life and property; for such an one would, for his own sake, be most desirous that the affairs of the city should prosper. But nevertheless neither in the past have I, for the sake of being preferred in honour, spoken contrary to my judgment, nor shall I do so now, but I shall speak just as I deem best.
Against tempers, indeed, like yours my words would be unavailing, if I should exhort you to preserve what you have already and not to hazard present possessions for things that are unseen and in the future; that, however, neither is your haste timely, nor is it easy to attain what you are striving for, this I shall show.
"I say, then, that you, leaving behind you many enemies here, are bent upon sailing there land bringing upon you here still other enemies.
And you think perhaps that the treaty which has been made affords you some security—a treaty which indeed, as long as you are quiet, will be a treaty in name (for so certain men here and among our enemies have managed these matters); but should you perchance suffer defeat with a considerable force, our foes will be quick to make their attack upon us. For the compact in the first place was concluded by them under compulsion through stress of misfortune and with less credit to them than to us; and, besides, in the compact itself there are many disputed points.
There are also some states which have not as yet accepted even this agreement, and these not the weakest; on the contrary, some of them are at open war with us, while others again, merely because the Lacedaemonians still keep quiet, are themselves also kept in restraint by a truce renewable every ten days.
But very probably, if they should find our power divided—the very thing we are now so anxious to bring about—they would eagerly join in an attack upon us along with the Siceliots, whose alliance they would heretofore have given much to obtain.
And so we must consider these matters and resolve not to run into danger while the state is still amid the waves, and reach out after another empire before we have secured that which we have, seeing that the Chalcidians in Thrace, after so many years of revolt from us, are still unsubdued, while others at various points on the mainland render us a dubious allegiance. But we, it seems, must rush to bring aid to Egestaeans, being, forsooth, our allies, on the ground that they are wronged, while on those by whose revolt we ourselves have long been wronged we still delay to inflict punishment.
"And yet these, if once brought under control, we might also keep under control; but the Siceliots, even if we should get the better of them, we should find it hard to govern, far off as they are and formidable in numbers. But it is folly to go against men when victory will not bring control over them and failure will not leave matters in the same condition as before the attack was made.