Book 7
In the meantime, Gylippus (the Athenians in Plemmyrium being now come down to the water side, and having their minds busied upon the fight of the galleys) betimes in the morning and on a sudden assaulted the fortifications before they could come back again to defend them, and possessed first the greatest and afterwards the two lesser; for they that watched in these, when they saw the greatest so easily taken, durst stay no longer.
They that fled upon the losing of the first wall and put themselves into boats and into a certain ship got hardly into the camp; for whilst the Syracusians in the great haven had yet the better in the fight upon the water, they gave them chase with one nimble galley. But by that time that the other two walls were taken, the Syracusians upon the water were overcome; and the Athenians which fled from those two walls got to their camp with more ease.
For those Syracusian galleys that fought before the haven's mouth, having beaten back the Athenians, entered in disorder, and falling foul one on another, gave away the victory unto the Athenians, who put to flight not only them, but also those other by whom they had before been overcome within the haven, and sunk eleven galleys of the Syracusians and slew most of the men aboard them, save only the men of three galleys, whom they took alive.
Of their own galleys they lost only three. When they had drawn to land the wreck of the Syracusian galleys and erected a trophy in the little island over against Plemmyrium, they returned to their camp.
The Syracusians, though such were their success in the battle by sea, yet they won the fortification in Plemmyrium, and set up three trophies, for every wall one. One of the two walls last taken they demolished; but two they repaired and kept with a garrison.
At the taking of these walls, many men were slain and many taken alive; and their goods, which altogether was a great matter, were all taken. For the Athenians using these works for their storehouse, there was in them much wealth and victual belonging unto merchants and much unto captains of galleys. For there were sails within it for forty galleys, besides other furniture, and three galleys drawn to land.
And this loss of Plemmyrium was it that most and principally impaired the Athenians' army. For the entrance of their provision was now no longer safe; for the Syracusians lying against them there with their galleys kept them out, and nothing could be brought in unto them but by fight; and the army besides was thereby otherwise terrified and dejected.
After this the Syracusians sent out twelve galleys under the command of Agatharchus, a Syracusian. Of which one carried ambassadors into Peloponnesus to declare what hope they had now of their business and to instigate them to a sharper war in Attica. The other eleven went into Italy, upon intelligence of certain vessels laden with commodities coming to the Athenian army, which also they met with and destroyed most of them;
and the timber, which for building of galleys the Athenians had ready framed, they burned in the territory of Caulonia. After this they went to Locri;
and riding here, there came unto them one of the ships that carried the men of arms of the Thespians, whom the Syracusians took aboard and went homeward by the coast.
The Athenians that watched for them with twenty galleys at Megara took one of them and the men that were in her, but could not take the rest, so that they escaped through to Syracuse.
There was also a light skirmish in the haven of Syracuse, about the piles which the Syracusians had driven down before their old harbour, to the end that the galleys might ride within and the Athenians not annoy them by assault. The Athenians, having brought to the place a ship of huge greatness, fortified with wooden turrets and covered against fire, caused certain men with [little] boats to go and fasten cords unto the piles, and so broke them up with craning.
Some also the divers did cut up with saws. In the meantime the Syracusians from the harbour and they from the great ship shot at each other, till in the end the greatest part of the piles were by the Athenians gotten up. But the greatest difficulty was to get up those piles which lay hidden.
For some of them they had so driven in as that they came not above the water, so that he that should come near was in danger to be thrown upon them as upon a rock. But these also, for reward, the divers went down and sawed asunder. But the Syracusians continually drave down other in their stead.
Other devices they had against each other, as was not unlikely between armies so near opposed; and many light skirmishes passed, and attempts of all kinds were put in execution.
The Syracusians moreover sent ambassadors, some Corinthians, some Ambraciotes, and some Lacedaemonians, unto the cities about them to let them know that they had won Plemmyrium and that in the battle by sea they were not overcome by the strength of the enemy, but by their own disorder; and also to show what hope they were in in other respects, and to entreat their aid both of sea and land forces; forsomuch as the Athenians expecting another army, if they would send aid before it came whereby to overthrow that which they had now there, the war would be at an end. Thus stood the affairs of Sicily.
Demosthenes, as soon as his forces which he was to carry to the succour of those in Sicily were gotten together, put to sea from Aegina, and sailing into Peloponnesus, joined with Charicles and the thirty galleys that were with him. And having taken aboard some men of arms of the Argives, came to Laconia, and first wasted part of the territory of Epidaurus Limera.
From thence going to that part of Laconia which is over against the island Cythera, where there is a temple of Apollo, they wasted a part of the country and fortified an isthmus there, both that the Helotes might have a refuge in it running away from the Lacedaemonians and that freebooters from thence, as from Pylus, might fetch in prizes from the territory adjoining.
As soon as the place was taken in, Demosthenes himself went on to Corcyra, to take up the confederates there, with intent to go thence speedily into Sicily. And Charicles, having stayed to finish and put a garrison into the fortification, went afterwards with his thirty galleys to Athens; and the Argives also went home.
The same winter also came to Athens a thousand and three hundred targetiers, of those called Machaerophori of the race of them that are called Dii, and were to have gone with Demosthenes into Sicily.
But coming too late, the Athenians resolved to send them back again into Thrace, as being too chargeable a matter to entertain them only for the war in Deceleia; for their pay was to have been a drachma a man by the day.
For Deceleia, being this summer fortified first by the whole army and then by the several cities maintained with a garrison by turns, much endamaged the Athenians and weakened their estate, both by destroying their commodities and consuming of their men, so as nothing more.
For the former invasions, having been short, hindered them not from reaping the benefit of the earth for the rest of the time. But now, the enemy continually lying upon them, and sometimes with greater forces, sometimes of necessity with the ordinary garrison making incursions and fetching in booty, Agis, the king of Lacedaemon, being always there in person and diligently prosecuting the war, the Athenians were thereby very grievously afflicted.
For they were not only deprived of the fruit of the land, but also above twenty thousand of their slaves fled over to the enemy, whereof the greatest part were artificers; besides they lost all their sheep and oxen. And by the continual going out of the Athenian horsemen, making excursions to Deceleia and defending the country, their horses became partly lamed through incessant labour in rugged grounds and partly wounded by the enemy.
And their provision, which formerly they used to bring in from Euboea by Oropus the shortest way, through Deceleia by land, they were now forced to fetch in by sea at great cost about the promontory of Sunium. And whatsoever the city was wont to be served withal from without, it now wanted, and instead of a city was become as it were a fort.
And the Athenians, watching on the battlements of the wall, in the day time by turns, but in the night, both winter and summer, all at once (except the horsemen), part at the walls and part at the arms, were quite tired.
But that which pressed them most was that they had two wars at once. And yet their obstinacy was so great as no man would have believed till now they saw it. For being besieged at home from the fortification of the Peloponnesians, no man would have imagined that they should not only not have recalled their army out of Sicily, but have also besieged Syracuse there, a city of itself no less than Athens; and therein so much have exceeded the expectation of the rest of the Grecians both in power and courage (who in the beginning of this war conceived that if the Peloponnesians invaded their territory, some of them, that they might hold out two years, others three, no man more), as that in the seventeenth year after they were first invaded they should have undertaken an expedition into Sicily, and being every way weakened already by the former war, have undergone another, not inferior to that which they had before with the Peloponnesians.
Now their treasure being by these wars and by the detriment sustained from Deceleia and other great expenses that came upon them at a very low ebb, about this time they imposed on such as were under their dominion a twentieth part of all goods passing by sea for a tribute, by this means to improve their comings in. For their expenses were not now as before, but so much greater by how much the war was greater, and their revenue besides cut off.
The Thracians, therefore, that came too late to go with Demosthenes, they presently sent back, as being unwilling to lay out money in such a scarcity, and gave the charge of carrying them back to Diitrephes, with command as he went along those coasts (for his way was through the Euripus), if occasion served, to do somewhat against the enemy.
He accordingly landed them by Tanagra and hastily fetched in some small booty. Then going over the Euripus from Chalcis in Euboea, he disbarked again in Boeotia and led his soldiers towards Mycalessus, and lay all night at the temple of Mercury undiscovered, which is distant from Mycalessus about sixteen furlongs.
The next day he cometh to the city, being a very great one, and taketh it; for they kept no watch nor expected that any man would have come in and assaulted them so far from the sea. Their walls also were but weak, in some places fallen down, and in others low-built, and their gates open through security.
The Thracians, entering into Mycalessus, spoiled both houses and temples, slew the people without mercy on old or young, but killed all they could light on, both women and children, yea, and the labouring cattle, and whatsoever other living thing they saw. For the nation of the Thracians, where they dare, are extreme bloody, equal to any of the barbarians. Insomuch as there was put in practice at this time, besides other disorder, all forms of slaughter that could be imagined;
they likewise fell upon the schoolhouse, which was in the city a great one, and the children newly entered into it; and killed them every one. And the calamity of the whole city, as it was as great as ever befell any, so also was it more unexpected and more bitter.
The Thebans, hearing of it, came out to help them, and overtaking the Thracians before they had gone far, both recovered the booty and chased them to the Euripus and to the sea, where the galleys lay that brought them. Some of them they killed;
of those most in their going aboard, for swim they could not, and such as were in the [small] boats, when they saw how things went a-land, had thrust off their boats, and lay without the Euripus. In the rest of the retreat, the Thracians behaved themselves not unhandsomely against the Theban horsemen, by whom they were charged first; but running out, and again rallying themselves in a circle, according to the manner of their country, defended themselves well and lost but few men in that action. But some also they lost in the city itself, whilst they stayed behind for pillage. But in the whole of thirteen hundred there were slain [only] two hundred and fifty.
Of the Thebans and others that came out to help the city, there were slain, horsemen and men of arms, one with another about twenty; and amongst them Scirphondas of Thebes, one of the governors of Boeotia: and of the Mycallesians there perished a part. Thus went the matter at Mycalessus, the loss which it received being, for the quantity of the city, no less to be lamented than any that happened in the whole war.
Demosthenes, going from Corcyra after his fortifying in Laconia, found a ship lying in Pheia of Elis, and in her certain men of arms of Corinth, ready to go into Sicily. The ship he sunk; but the men escaped, and afterwards, getting another ship, went on in their voyage.
After this, Demosthenes, being about Zacynthus and Cephallenia, took aboard their men of arms and sent to Naupactus for the Messenians. From thence he crossed over to the continent of Acarnania, to Alyzea and Anactorium, which belonged to the Athenians.
Whilst he was in these parts, he met with Eurymedon out of Sicily, that had been sent in winter unto the army with commodities, who told him amongst other things how he had heard by the way after he was at sea that the Syracusians had won Plemmyrium.
Conon also, the captain of Naupactus, came to them and related that the twenty-five galleys of Corinth that lay before Naupactus would not give over war and yet delayed to fight, and therefore desired to have some galleys sent him, as being unable with his eighteen to give battle to twenty-five of the enemy.