Book 7
Meanwhile Gylippus, noticing that the Athenians on Plemmyrium had gone down to the sea and were giving their attention to the sea-fight, surprised them by making a sudden attack at daybreak upon the forts; and first he captured the largest, and afterwards the two smaller ones also, their garrisons not awaiting the attack when they saw the largest so easily taken.
Of the garrison of the fort that was taken first, all that succeeded in escaping to the boats and to a certain merchant ship were rescued and brought to camp, but it was with difficulty; for the Syracusans were at the time having the best of the fight with their ships in the Great Harbour, and a trireme, and that a fast sailer, was sent in pursuit. But when the other two forts were taken, the Syracusans, as it chanced, were by this time losing the fight, and those who fled from these forts had less difficulty in sailing past them.
For the Syracusan ships that were fighting in front of the entrance, after they had forced back the Athenian ships, sailed into the harbour in disorder, and falling foul of one another made a present of their victory to the Athenians, who routed not only this squadron but also the ships by which they were at first being beaten inside the harbour.
And they sank eleven of the Syracusan ships, slaying most of the men, except only the crews of three ships, whom they took alive; but of their own ships three were destroyed. And drawing up on shore the wrecks of the Syracusan ships and setting up a trophy on the little island that faces Plemmyrium, they withdrew to their own camp.
The Syracusans had fared thus in the sea-fight, but they held possession of the forts on Plemmyrium and set up three trophies for these. One of the two forts last taken they demolished, but the other two they repaired and garrisoned.
In the capture of the forts many men were killed or made prisoners, and much property in all was taken; for since the Athenians used the forts as a warehouse, there were in them many wares belonging to merchants as well as food, and also much property belonging to the trierarchsThe trierarchs, appointed yearly from a selected list of well-to-do citizens, received from the state at the beginning of their year of service the bare ship, without rigging or equipment, which each had to provide for himself.—in fact the sails and other tackle of forty triremes were taken there, as well as three triremes that had been drawn up on shore.
But the greatest and most serious blow suffered by the Athenian army was the taking of Plemmyrium; for the work of bringing in provisions through the entrance to the harbour could no longer be carried on with safety (since the Syracusans lying in wait there with ships hindered this, and from now on the convoys could only make their entrance by fighting), and in general this event brought consternation and discouragement to the army.
After this the Syracusans sent out twelve ships under the command of Agatharchus, a Syracusan. One of these headed for the Peloponnesus, having on board some envoys who were to explain the situation in Sicily, that they were full of hope, and to urge the still more vigorous prosecution of the war on the continent of Greece. The other eleven ships sailed to Italy,In Thucydides the term is used only of the part of the peninsula south of the river Laüs and Metapontum. since they heard that boats laden with supplies for the Athenians were approaching. And falling in with these boats, they destroyed most of them;
and they also burned some timber in the territory of Caulonia, which was lying there ready for the Athenians to use in ship-building.
After this they went to Locri, and while they were lying there at anchor, one of the merchant-ships that had sailed from the Peloponnesus arrived in port, bringing some Thespian hoplites.
Taking these on board their ships, the Syracusans sailed along the coast toward home. But the Athenians, who were watching for them at Megara with twenty ships, captured one ship together with its crew, but they could not take the rest, which escaped to Syracuse. Skirmishing also occurred in the harbour about the piles which the Syracusans drove down in the sea in front of their old dockyards with the object that the ships might lie moored inside the piles and the Athenians might not sail up and ram their ships.
The Athenians brought up against the piles a ship of ten thousand talentsAbout 250 tons. burden on whose deck were wooden towers and bulwarks;
then from small boats they attached ropes to the piles and pulled them up with windlasses or broke them off, or else they dived down and sawed them off. Meanwhile the Syracusans kept hurling missiles at them from the dockyards, and they returned the fire from the merchant-ship; and finally the Athenians destroyed most of the piles. But the most troublesome part of the stockade was that which was out of sight;
for there were some of the piles which they had driven down so that they did not project above the surface of the water, and consequently it was dangerous to approach the stockade, for any one if he did not look out might impale his ship as on a sunken rock. But these also were disposed of by divers, who dived down and sawed them off for pay. But nevertheless the Syracusans drove their piles down again.
And they contrived many other devices against one another, as might be expected when the two armies were in hostile array so near to each other;
and they resorted to skirmishing and to stratagems of every sort. The Syracusans also sent to the Sicilian cities Corinthian, Ambraciot and Lacedaemonian envoys, to report the capture of Plemmyrium and to explain in regard to the sea-fight that they had been defeated, not so much by the strength of the enemy, as by their own confusion; and in general they were to declare that they were full of hope and to beg the cities to give them aid against the enemy with both ships and land-forces, seeing that the Athenians on their part were expecting another army, and, if the Syracusans could forestall them by destroying the present army before the new one came, the war would be at an end. The forces in Sicily were thus occupied.
But as for Demosthenes,Resuming the narrative at 7.20.3. when the army was collected with which he was to bring aid to Sicily, he set out from Aegina, and sailing to the Peloponnesus effected a junction with Charicles and the Athenian fleet of thirty ships. Then taking on board some Argive hoplites, they sailed against Laconia, ravaging first a part of Epidaurus Limera;
then landing on the coast of Laconia opposite Cythera, where the sanctuary of Apollo is, they ravaged portions of the land and fortified a place shaped like an isthmus, in order that the Helots of the Lacedaemonians might desert thither and that at the same time marauders might make it, as they had made Pylos, a base for their operations.
Immediately afterwards, when he had taken part in occupying this place, Demosthenes sailed on toward Corcyra, in order that he might first take aboard some allied troops there, and then make the voyage to Sicily as quickly as possible. As for Charicles, he waited until he had completed the fortification of the place, and then, leaving a garrison there, sailed back home with his thirty ships, as did the Argives also at the same time.
During this same summer there arrived at Athens thirteen hundred peltasts of the dirk-bearing Thracians of the tribe of Dii, who were to have sailed to Sicily with Demosthenes. But since they came too late, the Athenians were disposed to send them back to Thrace whence they had come.
To keep them for the war that was being carried on from Deceleia seemed too expensive, since each received as pay a drachma a day.
It should be explained regarding Deceleia that, from the time when it was first fortified during this summer by the entire army and was then regularly occupied for the annoyance of the country by garrisons furnished by the several allied states and succeeding each other at fixed intervals of time, its occupation did much harm to the Athenians, and by destruction of property and wastage of men was one of the chief causes that brought ruin to their cause.
For before this summer the enemy's invasions, being of short duration, did not prevent the Athenians from making full use of the land during the rest of the year; but at this time, the occupation being continuous, the enemy sometimes invading the country with a larger force and at others the regular garrison overrunning the country, as it was compelled to do, and carrying off booty, while Agis, the king of the Lacedaemonians, who was present in person, carried on the war in no desultory fashion, the Athenians were suffering great damage.
For they were deprived of their whole territory, more than twenty thousand slaves had already deserted, a large proportion of these being artisans, and all their small cattle and beasts of burden were lost; and now that the cavalry were sallying forth every day, making demonstrations against Deceleia and keeping guard throughout the country, some horses were constantly going lame because of the rocky ground and the incessant hardships they had to endure, and some were continually being wounded.
There was this further disadvantage: the bringing in of provisions from Euboea, which had formerly been managed more expeditiously by way of Oropus overland through Deceleia, now became expensive, the route being by sea round Sunium. Everything alike which the city needed had to be imported, and Athens ceased to be a city and became a garrisoned fortress.
For the Athenians had to keep guard at the battlements, during the day by relays, but at night everybody except the cavalry, some doing duty at the watch-posts, others upon the wall, both summer and winter, and so suffered great hardships. But what weighed most heavily upon them was that they had two wars on their hands at the same time;
and yet they had been brought to such a pitch of determination as no one would have credited before it happened, if he had heard of it. That they, who were themselves being besieged by the Peloponnesians by means of a fortress in their country, should not even thus abandon Sicily, but should in turn be there besieging Syracuse in the same manner, a city which taken by itself is not smaller than the city of Athens; and that they should have caused the Hellenic world to make so amazing a miscalculation of their power and daring —inasmuch as at the beginning of the war some thought that they could hold out one year, others two years, others longer but never more than three years, if the Peloponnesians should invade their country—that in the seventeenth year after the first invasion of Attica they should have gone to Sicily, when already war-worn in all respects, and should have undertaken another war no whit less serious than that which was already being waged with the Peloponnesus—this, I say, was incredible.
For all these reasons, and because at that time Deceleia was doing them much injury and the general expenses which were accruing were very great, they became crippled in the matter of money; and it was at this time that they imposed upon their subjects, instead of a tribute, a duty of five per cent. on all commodities imported or exported by sea, thinking that in this way they should derive more revenue. For their expenses were not on the same scale as before, but had become far heavier, in proportion as the war had become greater, and their revenues were steadily failing.
As for the Thracians,cf. xxvii. 1. then, who had come too late for Demosthenes, the Athenians immediately sent them back, being unwilling on account of the present shortage of money to incur expense; and they commissioned Dieitrephes to conduct them, giving him instructions to use them, as he sailed along the coast (for they would go by way of the Euripus), in doing whatever damage he could to the enemy.
So he disembarked them in the territory of Tanagra and made a hasty raid; then he sailed immediately after nightfall from Chalcis in Euboea across the Euripus and landing the Thracians in Boeotian territory led them against Mycalessus.
During the night he bivouacked unobserved near the sanctuary of Hermes, about sixteen stadia distant from Mycalessus, but at daybreak assaulted the town, which was not large, and took it; for he fell upon the people off their guard and not expecting that anybody would ever march so far inland from the sea and attack them; furthermore, their wall was weak, and at some points had even fallen down, while elsewhere it had been built low, and at the same time the gates were open because of their feeling of security.
So the Thracians burst into Mycalessus and fell to plundering the houses and the temples and butchering the people, sparing neither old nor young, but killing all whom they met just as they came, even children and women, aye, pack-animals also and whatever other living things they saw. For the Thracian race, like the worst barbarians, is most bloodthirsty whenever it has nothing to fear. And so on this occasion:
in addition to the general confusion, which was great, every form of destruction ensued, and in particular they fell upon a boys' school, the largest in the town, which the children had just entered, and cut down all of them. And this was a calamity inferior to none that had ever fallen upon a whole city, and beyond any other unexpected and terrible.
When the Thebans heard of this event they hastened to the rescue, and overtaking the Thracians before they had advanced far they took away their booty and putting them to flight pursued them to the Euripus, where the boats which had brought them lay at anchor.
And most of those who fell were slain by the Thebans during the embarkation, for they could not swim, and the crews of the boats, when they saw what was happening on shore, anchored the boats beyond bowshot; for elsewhere as they were retreatingThucydides explains why their chief loss was “during the embarkation.” the Thracians made their defence against the Theban cavalry, which was the first to attack them, not unskilfully, dashing out against them and closing up their ranks again after the manner of fighting peculiar to their country, and in this few of them perished. And a certain number also were slain in the town itself, being caught there while engaged in plundering. All together there were slain of the Thracians two hundred and fifty out of thirteen hundred.
Of the Thebans and the others who took part in the rescue, in all about twenty horsemen and hoplites perished, and among them Scirphondas, one of the Theban Boeotarchs; and of the population of Mycalessus a considerable portion lost their lives. Such was the fate of Mycalessus, which suffered a calamity that, for the size of the city, was not less deplorable than any of the events of this war.
At this time Demosthenes had finished building the fort in Laconia and was on his way to Corcyra;cf. 7.26.3. at PheiaThe port of Olympia. in Elis he found lying at anchor a merchant-ship in which the Corinthian hoplitescf. 7.17.3; 7.19.4. were about to be carried across to Sicily, and destroyed it; but the crew and the hoplites, having escaped, afterwards found another vessel, and continued their voyage.
After this Demosthenes arrived at Zacynthus and Cephallenia, where he took on board some hoplites and sent to the Messenians of Naupactus for others; he then crossed over to the opposite mainland of Acarnania,The scene of his campaign in the summer of 426 B. C. (iii. 94 ff.) to the ports of Alyzeia and Anactorium, which the Athenians held.
While he was attending to these matters, he was met by Eurymedon, who was returning from Sicily, whither he had been sent during the preceding wintercf. 7.16.2. with the money for the army; and he reported, among other things, that when he was already on his return voyage he had heard of the capture of Plemmyrium by the Syracusans.
These two were joined by Conon,Prominent toward the end of the Peloponnesian War and, later, restorer of the walls of Athens. who was in command at Naupactus and brought word that the twenty-five Corinthian shipscf. 7.17.4; 7.19.5. which were lying at anchor opposite them did not abandon their hostile attitude, but were intending to fight. He therefore begged them to send him some ships, on the ground that his own eighteen ships were too few to contend against the twenty-five of the enemy.