Book 6
But when they saw one of their accomplices talking familiarly with Hippias, who was accessible to all, they took fright, thinking that they had been informed upon and would in a moment be arrested.
So wishing first to take vengeance, if they could, upon the one who had aggrieved them and because of whom they were risking all, they rushed, just as they were, within the gates and came upon Hipparchus at the place called Leocorium.The sanctuary of the daughters of Leos, an ancient Attic king, who in a famine were sacrificed for the state. It was in the Inner Cerameicus, near the temple of Apollo Patrous. And at once falling upon him recklessly and as men will in extreme wrath, the one inflamed by jealousy, the other by insult, they smote and slew him.
Aristogeiton, indeed, escaped the guards for the moment, as the crowd ran together, but afterwards was caught and handled in no gentle manner; but Harmodius perished on the spot.
When the news was brought to Hippias in the Cerameicus, he went at once, not to the scene of action, but to the hoplites in the procession, before they, being some distance away, had become aware of what had happened, and, disguising his looks so as to betray nothing in regard to the calamity, pointed to a certain place and ordered them to go thither without their arms.
So they withdrew, thinking that he had something to say to them; while he, ordering the mercenaries to take up the arms of the others, immediately picked out those whom he held guilty, and anyone besides who was found with a dagger; for it was customary to march in the processions armed with shield and spear only.
It was in such wise, for an affront in love, that the plot of Harmodius and Aristogeiton was first conceived and their reckless attempt made under the influence of their momentary alarm.
After this the tyranny became harsher for the Athenians, and Hippias, being now in greater apprehension, not only put to death many of the citizens, but also began to look abroad, to see if in any quarter he might find any door of safety open to him in case of a revolution.
At any rate after this he gave his own daughter Archedice in marriage to Aeantides son of Hippocles, tyrant of Lampsacus—an Athenian to a Lampsacene!—perceiving that this family had great influence with King Darius. And there is at Lampsacus a monument of her bearing this inscription:Ascribed to Simonides of Ceos (Aristotle, Rhet. i. 9).This dust covers Archedice daughter of Hippias, Who was foremost in Hellas among the men of his time: Her father and husband, her brothers and children were tyrants, Yet was not her mind lifted up to vainglory. Hippias, however, after being tyrant for three years more at Athens, was then deposed510 B.C. in the fourth year by the Lacedaemonians and the exiled Alcmaeonidae, and retired under truce to Sigeium, from there to Aeantides at Lampsacus, and thence to the court of King Darius;
whence twenty years later, being already an old man, he went with the Persians on the expedition to Marathon.
With these events in mind and recalling all that they knew of them by report, the Athenian people were in an ugly temper at this time and suspicious towards those who had incurred blame in the matter of the mysteries; and the whole thing seemed to them to have been done in connection with a conspiracy that aimed at an oligarchy or a tyranny.
So when, in consequence of their anger on this account, many noteworthy men were already imprisoned and there seemed to be no end of the matter, but day by day they were growing more savage and still more men were being arrested, then at last one of the men in confinement,The orator Andocides, who gives his account of the matter in his speech De Mysteriis. The man who persuaded him was, according to Andocides, his cousin Charmides; according to Plutarch (Alcib. ii,), it was Timaeus. the one in fact who was regarded as the most guilty, was persuaded by one of his fellow-prisoners to make a confession, which may have been true or not; for there are conjectures both ways, but no one has been able, either then or afterwards, to tell the truth with reference to those who did the deed.
At any rate, the other prisoner persuaded this man that, even if he had not done the deed, he ought, having first secured immunity,ie. promise of a free pardon. to save himself and free the state from the prevailing suspicion; for, he said, he had a surer chance of saving his life by confessing, with the promise of immunity, than by denying the charge and undergoing trial.
Accordingly he informed against himself and others in the affair of the Hermae; and the people, delighted at getting the truth, as they thought, and already making much ado that they should not discover those who were plotting against the democracy, at once set free the informer and with him all the rest whom he had not denounced; but with regard to those who were accused they instituted trials and put to death all who had been arrested, while on those who had fled they passed sentence of death, offering a reward in money to anyone who killed them.
And in all this it was uncertain whether those who suffered had not been punished unjustly; the city at large, however, at the time was clearly benefited.
With regard to Alcibiades, the Athenians took the matter seriously, being urged on by his enemies, the men who had attacked him before he sailed. And thinking now that they had the truth about the Hermae, they were far more convinced that the profanation of the mysteries also, in which he was implicated, had been committed by him with the same intent, that is of conspiring against the people.
For it so happened that a small Lacedaemonian force, at the moment when they were in commotion about these matters, had come as far as the Isthmus in pursuance of some arrangement with the Boeotians. The opinion prevailed,, therefore, that it had come on agreement at his instigation, and not in the interest of the Boeotians; and that, if they had not themselves been beforehand in arresting the men on the strength of the information given, the city would have been betrayed. And once for a whole night they lay under arms in the precinct of Theseus within the walls.
Furthermore, the friends of Alcibiades at Argos were at the same time suspected of a design to attack the people; and on this account the Argive hostages who had been deposited in the islandscf. v. lxxxiv. 1. were at that time delivered by the Athenians to the Argive people to be put to death.
Thus from all sides suspicion had gathered about Alcibiades. And so, wishing to bring him to trial and put him to death, they had sent the Salaminia to Sicily for him and for the others who had been informed upon.
And the orders were to give him formal summons to follow, that he might make his defence, but not to arrest him; for they were solicitous about both their own soldiers in Sicily and the enemy, not wishing to stir up excitement among them, and they were especially desirous that the Mantineans and Argives should remain with them, thinking that it was through him that they had been persuaded to join in the expedition.
So he, in his own ship, and those who were accused with him, sailed off in company with the Salaminia from Sicily, as if for Athens.
When, however, they reached the territory of the Thurians, they followed no further, but left their ship and disappeared, being afraid to sail home for trial in the face of the existing prejudice. The crew of the Salaminia sought for Alcibiades and his companions for some time; but when these were nowhere to be found, they sailed home. Alcibiades, however, being now an outlaw, not long afterwards crossed over by boat from Thurii to the Peloponnesus; and the Athenians through a judgment by defaultGiven in cases where the person indicted failed to appear for trial. sentenced him and his companions to death.
After this the two generals who were left in Sicily, making two divisions of the army and each taking one by lot, sailed with the whole force for Selinus and Egesta, wishing to know whether the Egestaeans would give the promised money, and to look into the affairs of the Selinuntians and learn their points of contention with the Egestaeans.
So sailing along the coast, with Sicily-that is, the part of it which faces the Tyrrhenian gulf-on their left hand, they put into Himera, which is the only Hellenic city in that part of Sicily; and as Himera would not receive them, they proceeded along the coast.
On their passage they took Hyccara, a petty town by the seaside, which, though Sicanian, was yet hostile to the Egestaeans. They enslaved the inhabitants, and turned the town over to the Egestaeans, some of whose cavalry had joined them, but themselves went back with their land-force through the territory of the Sicels until they came to Catana, while the ships sailed round to Catana with the captives.
Nicias, however, had sailed at onceie. without waiting for Hyccara to be reduced and its inhabitants disposed of. from Hyccara for Egesta, and after transacting his other business and receiving thirty talents had rejoined the army. Their slaves they sold, receiving for them one hundred and twenty talents.
They sent round also to their allies among the Sicels, bidding them send troops; and with half of their own force went against Hybla Geleatis, a hostile town, but failed to take it. And so the summer ended.
The following winter the Athenians began at once to prepare for the advance upon Syracuse, and the Syracusans also, on their side, to go against them.
For when the Athenians did not, in accordance with their first alarm and expectation, at once attack them, with each successive day their courage revived; and when the Athenians sailed along the opposite coast of Sicily and showed themselves only at a distance from Syracuse, and going against Hybla failed in the attempt to take it by storm, the Syracusans had still greater contempt for them, and, as a crowd is wont to do when it has become elated, demanded that their generals should lead them against Catana, since the Athenians would not come against them.
Moreover, mounted Syracusan scouts constantly rode up to the Athenian army and amongst other insults asked them: “Are you come to settle yourselves here with us, on land which belongs to other people, instead of resettling the Leontines on their own?”
The Athenian generals were aware of all this and purposed to draw the whole of the Syracusan force as far as possible away from the city, and themselves meanwhile to sail down under cover of night and undisturbed to occupy a camp at a suitable place, knowing that they would not be able to do this so well if they should disembark from their ships in the face of an enemy prepared to meet them, or should be detected going by land. For being without horsemen themselves, their own light-armed troops and their mob of camp-followers would, they thought, suffer great harm at the hands of the numerous Syracusan cavalry; but in the way proposed they would take a position where they would not suffer any harm worth mentioning from the cavalry; and certain Syracusan exiles who were with them gave them information as to the position close to the Olympieium, which in fact they subsequently occupied. So then, in furtherance of their plan, the generals devised some such scheme as this:
They sent a man loyal to themselves, but in the opinion of the Syracusan generals no less a friend of theirs. The man was a Catanaean, and said that he had come from men at Catana whose names they recognized and whom they knew to be the remnant of those who were still loyal to them in the city.
He said that the Athenians were in the habit of passing the night in the city away from their arms, and if the Syracusans would come in full force at dawn on an appointed day against their army, they would close the gates on the Athenians in their city and set fire to the ships, and the Syracusans could attack the stockade and easily take the whole army; for there were many Catanaeans who would help them in this undertaking, and the men from whom he himself had come were ready now.
And the Syracusan generals, who were already confident as to the general situation, and intended even without this help to go against Catana, trusted the fellow much too incautiously, and at once, agreeing upon a day on which they would be there, sent him back; and themselves—the Selinuntians and some others of their allies being already present—made proclamation for the whole force of the Syracusans to take the field. And when their preparations were made and the days were near on which they had agreed to come, they proceeded towards Catana and bivouacked at the River Simaethus in the territory of Leontini.
But the Athenians, when they learned of their approach, took all their own army and such of the Sicels or others as had joined them, and embarking on their ships and boats sailed under cover of night against Syracuse.
And they disembarked at daybreak at a point opposite the Olympieium, where they proposed to occupy a camping-place; but the Syracusan horsemen, who were the first to reach Catana and found there that the whole army was gone, turned about and announced this to the infantry, and all then turned back at once and hastened to bring aid to the city.
Meanwhile the Athenians, undisturbed, as the Syracusans had a long way to go, settled their army in a suitable position, where they could begin a battle whenever they wished and the Syracusan horsemen would annoy them the least either in the actual fighting or before; for on one side walls and houses and trees and a swamp furnished a barrier, on the other side a line of cliffs.
They also cut down the trees near at hand and bringing them down to the sea built a stockade by the ships; and at Dascon, where the place was most accessible to the enemy, they quickly erected a bulwark of stones picked up in the fields and of timbers, and pulled down the bridge over the Anapus.
While they were making these preparations nobody came out from the city to hinder them; the first that came against them were the horsemen of the Syracusans, but afterwards the infantry also gathered in full force. And at first they drew near the Athenian camp, but later, when these did not come out against them, they withdrew across the Elorine road and spent the night.
On the next day the Athenians and their allies made preparations for battle, and were drawn up in the following order: On the right were the Argives and Mantineans, the Athenians had the centre, the other allies the rest of the line. Half of their army was in the van, arrayed eight deep; the other half near their sleeping-places, formed in a hollow square, these too arrayed eight deep; and the orders of the latter were, to be on the alert to support any part of the army that was most in distress. And the baggage-carriers they put inside the body of reserves. The Syracusans;
on the other hand, arranged all their hoplites sixteen deep, that is, the whole force of the Syracusans and as many of their allies as were present; for they had received some reinforcements, chiefly from the Selinuntians, but next to them some cavalry from the Geloans, about two hundred in all, and also from the Camarinaeans about twenty horsemen and fifty bowmen. Their cavalry, which was not less than twelve hundred in number, they placed on the right, and on its flank the javelin-men.