Book 6
"It will be necessary that I say something first concerning mine own accusation, lest through jealousy of me you bring a prejudicate ear to the common business.
My ancestors having on a certain quarrel renounced the office of receiving you, I was the man that restored the same again and showed you all possible respect, both otherwise and in the matter of your loss at Pylus. Whilst I persisted in my good will to you, being to make a peace at Athens, by treating the same with my adversaries, you invested them with authority and me with disgrace.
For which cause, if in applying myself afterwards to the Mantineans and Argives, or in anything else I did you hurt, I did it justly; and if any man here were causelessly angry with me then when he suffered, let him be now content again when he knows the true cause of the same. Or if any man think the worse of me for inclining to the people, let him acknowledge that therein also he is offended without a cause.
For we have been always enemies to tyrants; and what is contrary to a tyrant is called the people; and from thence hath continued our adherence to the multitude. Besides, in a city governed by democracy, it was necessary in most things to follow the present course; nevertheless we have endeavoured to be more moderate than suiteth with the now headstrong humour of the people.
But others there have been, both formerly and now, that have incited the common people to worse things than I; and they are those that have also driven out me.
But as for us, when we had the charge of the whole, we thought it reason, by what form it was grown most great and most free and in which we received it, in the same to preserve it. For though such of us as have judgment do know well enough what the democracy is, and I no less than another (insomuch as I could inveigh against it; but of confessed madness nothing can be said that is new), yet we thought it not safe to change it when you our enemies were so near us.
"Thus stands the matter touching my own accusation. And concerning what we are to consult of, both you and I, if I know anything which you yourselves do not, hear it now.
We made this voyage into Sicily, first (if we could) to subdue the Sicilians, after them the Italians, after them, to assay the dominion of Carthage, and Carthage itself.
If these or most of these enterprises succeeded, then next we should have undertaken Peloponnesus, with the accession both of the Greek forces there and with many mercenary barbarians, Iberians and others of those parts, confessed to be the most warlike of the barbarians that are now. we should also have built many galleys besides these which we have already (there being plenty of timber in Italy); with the which besieging Peloponnesus round, and also taking the cities thereof with our land forces, upon such occasions as should arise from the land, some by assault and some by siege, we hoped easily to have debelled it and afterwards to have gotten the dominion of all Greece.
As for money and corn to facilitate some points of this, the places we should have conquered there, besides what here we should have found, would sufficiently have furnished us.
"Thus, from one that most exactly knoweth it, you have heard what is the design of the fleet now gone; and which the generals there, as far as they can, will also put in execution. Understand next that unless you aid them, they yonder cannot possibly hold out.
For the Sicilians, though inexpert, if many of them unite may well subsist; but that the Syracusians alone, with their whole power already beaten and withal kept from the use of the sea, should withstand the forces of the Athenians already there is a thing impossible. And if their city should be taken, all Sicily is had, and soon after Italy also;
and the danger from thence which I foretold you would not be long ere it fell upon you. Let no man therefore think that he now consulteth of Sicily only but also of Peloponnesus, unless this be done with speed.
Let the army you send be of such as being aboard may row and landing presently be armed; and (which I think more profitable than the army itself) send a Spartan for commander, both to train the soldiers already there and to compel unto it such as refuse. For thus will your present friends be the more encouraged, and such as be doubtful come to you with the more assurance. It were also good to make war more openly upon them here, that the Syracusians, seeing your care, may the rather hold out, and the Athenians be less able to send supply to their army.
You ought likewise to fortify Deceleia in the territory of Athens, a thing which the Athenians themselves most fear, and reckon for the only evil they have not yet tasted in this war.
And the way to hurt an enemy most is to know certainly what he most feareth and to bring the same upon him. For in reason a man therefore feareth a thing most as having the precisest knowledge of what will most hurt him. As for the commodities which yourselves shall reap and deprive the enemy of by so fortifying, letting much pass, I will sum you up the principal. Whatsoever the territory is furnished withal will come most of it unto you, partly taken and partly of its own accord.
The revenue of the silver mines in Laurium and whatsoever other profit they have from their land or from their courts of justice will presently be lost; and, which is worse, their confederates will be remiss in bringing in their revenue and will care little for the Athenians if they believe once that you follow the war to the utmost. That any of these things be put in act speedily and earnestly, men of Lacedaemon, it resteth only in yourselves; for I am confident, and I think I err not, that all these things are possible to be done.
Now I must crave this: that I be neither the worse esteemed for that, having once been thought a lover of my country, I go now amongst the greatest enemies of the same against it, nor yet mistrusted as one that speaketh with the zeal of a fugitive.
For though I fly from the malice of them that drave me out, I shall not, if you take my counsel, fly your profit.
Nor are you enemies so much, who have hurt but your enemies, as they are that have made enemies of friends. I love not my country as wronged by it, but as having lived in safety in it.
Nor do I think that I do herein go against any country of mine, but that I far rather seek to recover the country I have not. And he is truly a lover of his country not that refuseth to invade the country he hath wrongfully lost, but that desires so much to be in it as by any means he can he will attempt to recover it.
I desire you therefore, Lacedaemonians, to make use of my service in whatsoever danger or labour confidently, seeing you know, according to the common saying, if I did hurt you much when I was your enemy, I can help you much when I am your friend. And so much the more in that I know the state of Athens and but conjectured at yours. And considering you are now in deliberation upon a matter of so extreme importance, I pray you think not much to send an army both into Sicily and Attica, as well to preserve the great matters that are there with the presence of a small part of your force, as also to pull down the power of the Athenians both present and to come, and afterwards to dwell in safety yourselves, and to have the leading of all Greece, not forced, but voluntary and with their good affection.
Thus spake Alcibiades. And the Lacedaemonians, though before this they had a purpose of their own accord to send an army against Athens but had delayed and neglected it, yet when these particularly were delivered by him, they were a great deal the more confirmed in the same, conceiving that what they had heard was from one that evidently knew it.
Insomuch as they had set their minds already upon the fortifying of Deceleia and upon the sending of some succours into Sicily for the present. And having assigned Gylippus, the son of Cleandridas, unto the Syracusian ambassadors for chief commander, they willed him to consider, both with them and the Corinthians, how best for their present means and with greatest speed some help might be conveyed unto them in Sicily.
He thereupon appointed the Corinthians to send him two galleys presently to Asine, and to furnish the rest they meant to send, and to have them ready to sail when occasion should serve.
This agreed upon, they departed from Lacedaemon. In the meantime the galley arrived at Athens which the generals sent home for money and horsemen. And the Athenians, upon hearing, decreed to send both provision and horsemen to the army. So the winter ended, and the seventeenth year of this war written by Thucydides.
In the very beginning of the next spring the Athenians in Sicily departed from Catana and sailed by the coast to Megara of Sicily. The inhabitants whereof, in the time of the tyrant Gelon, the Syracusians (as I mentioned before) had driven out and now possess the territory themselves. Landing here, they wasted the fields;
and having assaulted a certain small fortress of the Syracusians, not taking it, they went presently back, part by land and part by sea, unto the river Tereas. And landing again in the plain fields, wasted the same and burnt up their corn; and lighting on some Syracusians, not many, they slew some of them, and having set up a trophy, went all again on board their galleys.
Thence they returned to Catana and took in victual; then with their whole army they went to Centoripa, a small city of the Siculi, which yielding on composition, they departed, and in their way burnt up the corn of the Inessaeans and the Hyblaeans.
Being come again to Catana, they find there two hundred and fifty horsemen arrived from Athens, without horses, though not without the furniture, supposing to have horses there, and thirty archers on horseback, and three hundred talents of silver.
The same spring the Lacedaemonians led forth their army against Argos and went as far as to Cleonae; but an earthquake happening, they went home again. But the Argives invaded the territory of Thyrea, confining on their own, and took a great booty from the Lacedaemonians, which they sold for no less than twenty-five talents.
Not long after, the commons of Thespiae set upon them that had the government, but not prevailing, were part apprehended and part escaped to Athens, the Athenians having also aided them.
The Syracusians the same summer, when they heard that the Athenians had horsemen sent to them from Athens and that they were ready now to come against them, conceiving that if the Athenians gat not Epipolae, a rocky ground and lying just against the city, they would not be able, though masters of the field, to take in the city with a wall, intended therefore, lest the enemy should come secretly up, to keep the passages by which there was access unto it with a guard.
For the rest of the place is to the outside high and steep, falling to the city by degrees, and on the inside wholly subject to the eye. And it is called by the Syracusians Epipolae, because it lieth above the level of the rest.
The Syracusians, coming out of the city with their whole power into a meadow by the side of the river Anapus betimes in the morning (for Hermocrates and his fellow-commanders had already received their charge), were there taking a view of their arms; but first they had set apart seven hundred men of arms, under the leading of Diomilus, an outlaw of Andros, both to guard Epipolae and to be ready together quickly upon any other occasion wherein there might be use of their service.
The Athenians the day following, having been already mustered, came from Catana with their whole forces and landed their soldiers at a place called Leon, six or seven furlongs from Epipolae, unperceived, and laid their navy at anchor under Thapsus. Thapsus is almost an island, lying out into the sea and joined to the land with a narrow isthmus, not far from Syracuse, neither by sea nor land. And the naval forces of the Athenians, having made a pallisado across the said isthmus, lay there quiet.
But the land soldiers marched at high speed towards Epipolae and gat up by Euryelus before the Syracusians could come to them from out of the meadow where they were mustering.
Nevertheless they came on, every one with what speed he could, not only Diomilus with his seven hundred, but the rest also. They had no less to go from the meadow than twenty-five furlongs before they could reach the enemy.
The Syracusians, therefore, coming up in this manner and thereby defeated in battle at Epipolae, withdrew themselves into the city. But Diomilus was slain, and three hundred of the rest.
The Athenians after this erected a trophy and delivered to the Syracusians the bodies of their dead under truce, and came down the next day to the city. But when none came out to give them battle, they retired again, and built a fort upon Labdalum, in the very brink of the precipices of Epipolae, on the side that looketh towards Megara, for a place to keep their utensils and money in when they went out either to fight or to work.