Book 6
But when they saw one of the conspirators familiarly talking with Hippias (for Hippias was very affable to all men), they were afraid and believed that they were discovered and must presently have been apprehended.
They resolved therefore (if it were possible) to be revenged first upon him that had done them the wrong, and for whose sake they had undergone all this danger, and, furnished as they were, ran [furiously] into the city, and finding Hipparchus at a place called Leocorium, without all regard of themselves fell upon him, and with all the anger in the world, one upon jealousy, the other upon disgrace, struck and slew him.
Aristogeiton, for the present, by means of the great confluence of people, escaped through the guard, but taken afterwards, was ungently handled; but Harmodius was slain upon the place.
The news being brought to Hippias in the Cerameicum, he went not towards the place where the fact was committed, but presently unto those that were armed for the solemnity of the shows and were far off, that he might be with them before they heard of it; and composing his countenance [as well as he could] to dissemble the calamity, pointed to a certain place and commanded them to repair thither without their arms.
Which they did accordingly, expecting that he would have told them somewhat. But having commanded his guard to take those arms away, he then fell presently to picking out of such as he meant to question and whosoever else was found amongst them with a dagger. For with shields and spears to be in [the head of] the procession was of custom.
Thus was the enterprise first undertaken upon quarrel of love, and then upon a sudden fear followed this unadvised adventure of Harmodius and Aristogeiton.
And after this time the tyranny grew sorer to the Athenians than it had been before. And Hippias, standing more in fear, not only put many of the citizens to death, but also cast his eye on the states abroad to see if he might get any security from them in this alteration at home.
He therefore afterwards (though an Athenian and to a Lampsacen) gave his daughter Archedice unto Aeantidas, the son of Hippocles, tyrant of Lampsacus, knowing that the Lampsacens were in great favour with King Darius. And her sepulchre is yet to be seen with this inscription:
And Hippias, after he had reigned three years more in Athens, and was in the fourth deposed by the Lacedaemonians and the exiled Alcmaeonides, went under truce to Sigeium, and to Aeantidas at Lampsacus, and thence to King Darius; from whence, twenty years after in his old age, he came to Marathon with the Medan army.
The people of Athens bearing this in mind, and remembering all they had heard concerning them, were extremely bitter and full of jealousy towards those that had been accused of the mysteries, and thought all to have been done upon some oligarchical or tyrannical conspiracy.
And whilst they were passionate upon this surmise, many worthy men had already been cast in prison; and yet they were not likely so to give over, but grew daily more savage, and sought to apprehend more still. Whilst they were at this pass, a prisoner that seemed most to be guilty was persuaded by one of his fellow prisoners to accuse somebody, whether it were true or not true; (for it is but conjectural on both sides; nor was there ever, then or after, any man that could say certainly who it was that did the deed);
who brought him to it by telling him that though he had not done it, yet he might be sure to save his own life and should deliver the city from the present suspicion; and that he should be more certain of his own safety by a free confession than by coming to his trial if he denied it.
Hereupon, he accused both himself and others for the Mercuries. The people of Athens, gladly receiving the certainty (as they thought) of the fact, and having been much vexed before to think that the conspirators should never [perhaps] be discovered to their multitude, presently set at liberty the accuser and the rest with him whom he had not appeached; but for those that were accused, they appointed judges, and all they apprehended they executed; and having condemned to die such as fled, they ordained a sum of money to be given to those that should slay them.
And though it were all this while uncertain whether they suffered justly or unjustly, yet the rest of the city had a manifest ease for the present.
But touching Alcibiades, the Athenians took it extreme ill through the instigation of his enemies, the same that had opposed him before he went. And seeing it was certain, as they thought, for the Mercuries, the other crime also concerning the mysteries, whereof he had been accused, seemed a great deal the more to have been committed by him upon the same reason and conspiracy against the people.
For it fell out withal, whilst the city was in a tumult about this, that an army of the Lacedaemonians was come as far as the isthmus upon some design against the Boeotians. These therefore they thought were come thither not against the Boeotians, but by appointment of him, and that if they had not first apprehended the persons appeached, the city had been betrayed. And one night they watched all night long in their arms in the temple of Theseus within the city.
And the friends of Alcibiades in Argos were at the same time suspected of a purpose to set upon the people there; whereupon the Athenians also delivered unto the Argive people those hostages which they held of theirs in the islands to be slain.
And there were presumptions against Alcibiades on all sides. Insomuch, as purposing by law to put him to death, they sent, as I have said, the galley called Salaminia into Sicily both for him and the rest with him that had been accused;
but gave command to those that went not to apprehend him, but to bid him follow them to make his purgation, because they had a care not to give occasion of stir either amongst their own or their enemy's soldiers, but especially because they desired that the Mantineans and the Argives, who they thought followed the war by his persuasion, might not depart from the army.
So he and the rest accused with him in his own galley, in company of the Salaminia, left Sicily and set sail for Athens. But being at Thurii they followed no further, but left the galley and were no more to be found, fearing indeed to appear to the accusation.
They of the Salaminia made search for Alcibiades and those that were with him for a while, but not finding him, followed on their course for Athens. Alcibiades, now an outlaw, passed shortly after in a small boat from Thurii into Peloponnesus; and the Athenians, proceeding to judgment upon his not appearing, condemned both him and them to death.
After this, the Athenian generals that remained in Sicily, having divided the army into two and taken each his part by lot, went with the whole towards Selinus and Egesta with intention both to see if the Egestaeans would pay them the money and withal to get knowledge of the designs of the Selinuntians and learn the state of their controversy with the Egesteans.
And sailing by the coast of Sicily, having it on their left hand, on that side which lieth to the Tyrrhene gulf, they came to Himera, the only Grecian city in that part of Sicily;
which not receiving them, they went on, and by the way took Hyccara, a little town of the Sicanians enemy to the Egestaeans, and a sea-town; and having made the inhabitants slaves, delivered the town to the Egestaeans, whose horse-forces were there with them. Thence the Athenians with their landsmen returned through the territory of the Siculi to Catana; and the galleys went about with the captives.
Nicias going with the fleet presently from Hyccara to Egesta, when he had dispatched with them his other business and received thirty talents of money, returned to the army. The captives they ransomed, of which they made one hundred and twenty talents more.
Then they sailed about to their confederates of the Siculi, appointing them to send their forces; and with the half of their own they came before Hybla in the territory of Gela, an enemy city, but took it not. And so ended this summer.
The next winter the Athenians fell presently to make preparation for their journey against Syracuse; and the Syracusians, on the other side, prepared to invade the Athenians.
For seeing the Athenians had not presently, upon the first fear and expectation of their coming, fallen upon them, they got every day more and more heart. And because they went far from them into those other parts of Sicily, and assaulting Hybla could not take it, they contemned them more than ever, and prayed their commanders (as is the manner of the multitude when they be in courage), seeing that the Athenians came not unto them, to conduct them to Catana.
And the Syracusian horsemen, which were ever abroad for scouts, spurring up to the camp of the Athenians, amongst other scorns asked them whether they came not rather to dwell in the land of another than to restore the Leontines to their own.
The Athenian generals, having observed this and being desirous to draw forth the Syracusians' whole power as far as might be from the city, to be able in the meantime without impeachment, going thither in the night by sea, to seize on some convenient place to encamp in; for they knew they should not be able to do it so well in the face of an enemy prepared, nor if they were known to march by land, for that the Syracusian horsemen being many would greatly annoy the light-armed and other multitude, they themselves having no horsemen there; whereas thus they might possess themselves of a place where the horse could not do them any hurt at all to speak of (now the Syracusian outlaws that were with them had told them of a place near the temple Olympieium, which also they seized); I say, the Athenian generals, to bring this their purpose to effect contrived the matter thus:
They send a man, of whose fidelity they were well assured, and in the opinion of the Syracusian commanders no less a friend of theirs. This man was a Catanaean and said he came from Catana, from such and such, whose names they knew, and knew to be the remnant of their well-willers in that city.
He told them that the Athenians lay every night within the town and far from their arms; and that if with the whole power of their city, at a day appointed betimes in a morning they would come to their camp, those friends of the Syracusians would shut the Athenians in and set on fire their galleys, by which means the Syracusians, assaulting the pallisado, might easily win the camp, and that the Catanaeans that were to help them herein were many, and those he came from already prepared for it.
The Syracusian commanders, having been also otherwise encouraged, and having intended a preparation to go against Catana thought this messenger had not come, did so much the more unadvisedly believe the man, and straightways being agreed of the day on which they were to be there, sent him away. These commanders (for by this time the Selinuntians and some other their confederates were come in) appointed the Syracusians universally to set forwards by a day. And when all their necessaries were in readiness and the day at hand on which they were to be there, they set forwards towards Catana and encamped the night following upon the banks of the river Simaethus in the territory of the Leontines.
The Athenians, upon advertisement that they were set forth, rising with their whole army, both themselves and such of the Siculi and others as went with them, and going aboard their galleys and boats, in the beginning of the night set sail for Syracuse.
In the morning betimes the Athenians disbarked over against Olympieium to make their camp. And the Syracusian horsemen, who were at Catana before the rest, finding the camp risen, came back to the foot and told them; whereupon they went all together back to the aid of the city.
In the meantime, the way the Syracusians had to go being long, the Athenians had pitched their camp at leisure in a place of advantage, wherein it was their own power to begin battle when they list, and where both in and before the battle the Syracusian horsemen could least annoy them. For on one side there were walls and houses and trees and a lake that kept them off; on the other side steep rocks;
and having felled trees hard by and brought them to the seaside, they made a pallisado both before their galleys and towards Dascon. And on that part that was most accessible to the enemy, they made a fort with stone (the best they could find, but unwrought) and with wood, and withal pulled down the bridge of the river Anapus.
Whilst this was doing, there came none to empeach them from the city. The first that came against them were the Syracusian horsemen, and by and by after, all the foot together. And though at first they came up near unto the camp of the Athenians, yet after, seeing the Athenians came not out against them, they retired again, and crossing to the other side of the Helorine highway, stayed there that night.
The next day the Athenians and their confederates prepared to fight, and were ordered thus: The Argives and the Mantineans had the right wing, the Athenians were in the middle, and the rest of their confederates in the other wing. That half of the army which stood foremost was ordered by eight in file; the other half towards their tents, ordered likewise by eights, was cast into the form of a long square and commanded to observe diligently where the rest of the army was in distress and to make specially thither. And in the midst of these so arranged were received such as carried the weapons and tools of the army.
The Syracusians arranged their men of arms, who were Syracusians of all conditions and as many of their confederates as were present, by sixteen in file (they that came to aid them, were chiefly the Selinuntians, and then the horsemen of the Geloans, about two hundred, and of the Camarinaeans, about twenty horsemen and fifty archers); the cavalry they placed in the right point of the battle, being in all no less than a thousand two hundred, and with them the darters.