Book 7
There happened withal some claps of thunder and a shower of rain, as usually falleth out at this time of the year, being now near autumn, which further disheartened the Athenians, who thought that also this did tend to their destruction.
Whilst they lay still, Gylippus and the Syracusians sent part of their army to raise a wall at their backs, in the way they had come; but this the Athenians hindered by sending against them part of theirs.
After this, the Athenians retiring with their whole army into a more champaign ground, lodged there that night, and the next day went forward again. And the Syracusians with their darts, from every part round about, wounded many of them; and when the Athenians charged, they retired, and when they retired, the Syracusians charged, and that especially upon the hindmost, that by putting to flight a few they might terrify the whole army.
And for a good while the Athenians in this manner withstood them; and afterwards, being gotten five or six furlongs forward, they rested in the plain; and the Syracusians went from them to their own camp.
This night it was concluded by Nicias and Demosthenes, seeing the miserable estate of their army, and the want already of all necessaries, and that many of their men in many assaults of the enemy were wounded, to lead away the army as far as they possibly could; not the way they purposed before, but toward the sea, which was the contrary way to that which the Syracusians guarded.
Now this whole journey of the army lay not towards Catana, but towards the other side of Sicily, Camarina and Gela, and the cities, as well Grecian as barbarian, that way. When they had made many fires accordingly, they marched in the night;
and (as usually it falleth out in all armies, and most of all in the greatest, to be subject to affright and terror, especially marching by night and in hostile ground, and the enemy near) were in confusion. The army of Nicias, leading the way, kept together and got far afore;
but that of Demosthenes, which was the greater half, was both severed from the rest and marched more disorderly.
Nevertheless, by the morning betimes they got to the seaside, and entering into the Helorine way they went on towards the river Cacyparis, to the end when they came thither to march upwards along the river's side through the heart of the country. For they hoped that this way the Siculi, to whom they had sent, would meet them.
When they came to the river, here also they found a certain guard of the Syracusians stopping their passage with a wall and with piles. When they had quickly forced this guard, they passed the river and again marched on to another river, called Erineus; for that was the way which the guides directed them.
In the meantime the Syracusians and their confederates, as soon as day appeared and that they knew the Athenians were gone, most of them accusing Gylippus as if he had let them go with his consent, followed them with speed the same way, which they easily understood they were gone, and about dinner time overtook them.
When they were come up to those with Demosthenes, who were the hindmost and had marched more slowly and disorderly than the other part had done, as having been put into disorder in the night, they fell upon them and fought. And the Syracusian horsemen hemmed them in and forced them up into a narrow compass, the more easily now because they were divided from the rest.
Now the army of Nicias was gone by this time one hundred and fifty furlongs further on. For he led away the faster because he thought not that their safety consisted in staying and fighting voluntarily, but rather in a speedy retreat, and then only fighting when they could not choose.
But Demosthenes was both in greater and more continual toil, in respect that he marched in the rear and consequently was pressed by the enemy; and seeing the Syracusians pursuing him, he went not on but put his men in order to fight, till by his stay he was encompassed and reduced, he and the Athenians with him, into great disorder. For being shut up within a place enclosed round with a wall, and which on either side had a way [open] amongst abundance of olive trees, they were charged from all sides at once with the enemy's shot.
For the Syracusians assaulted them in this kind, and not in close battle, upon very good reason. For to hazard battle against men desperate was not so much for theirs as for the Athenians' advantage. Besides, after so manifest successes, they spared themselves somewhat, because they were loth to wear themselves out before the end of the business, and thought by this kind of fight to subdue and take them alive.
Whereupon, after they had plied the Athenians and their confederates all day long from every side with shot and saw that with their wounds and other annoyance they were already tired, Gylippus and the Syracusians and their confederates first made proclamation that if any of the islanders would come over to them, they should be at liberty. And the men of some few cities went over.
And by and by after, they made agreement with all the rest that were with Demosthenes that they should deliver up their arms, and none of them be put to death, neither violently, nor by bonds, nor by want of the necessities of life.
And they all yielded, to the number of six thousand men; and the silver they had, they laid it all down, casting it into the hollow of targets, and filled with the same four targets. And these men they carried presently into the city. Nicias, and those that were with him, attained the same day to the river Erineus, which passing, he caused his army to sit down upon a certain ground more elevate than the rest.
Where the Syracusians the next day overtook and told him, that those with Demosthenes had yielded themselves, and willed him to do the like. But he, not believing it, took truce for a horseman to enquire the truth.
Upon return of the horseman and word that they had yielded, he sent a herald to Gylippus and the Syracusians, saying that he was content to compound on the part of the Athenians to repay whatsoever money the Syracusians had laid out, so that his army might be suffered to depart, and that till payment of the money were made, he would deliver them hostages, Athenians, every hostage rated as a talent.
But Gylippus and the Syracusians, refusing the condition, charged them, and having hemmed them in, plied them with shot, as they had done the other army, from every side till evening.
This part of the army was also pinched with the want both of victual and other necessaries. Nevertheless, observing the quiet of the night, they were about to march. But no sooner took they their arms up than the Syracusians perceiving it gave the alarm.
Whereupon the Athenians, finding themselves discovered, sat down again, all but three hundred, who breaking by force through the guards, marched as far as they could that night.
And Nicias, when it was day, led his army forward, the Syracusians and their confederates still pressing them in the same manner, shooting and darting at them from every side.
The Athenians hasted to get the river Asinarus, not only because they were urged on every side by the assault of the many horsemen and other multitude and thought to be more at ease when they were over the river, but out of weariness also and desire to drink.
When they were come unto the river, they rushed in without any order, every man striving who should first get over. But the pressing of the enemy made the passage now more difficult. For being forced to take the river in heaps, they fell upon and trampled one another under their feet; and falling amongst the spears and utensils of the army, some perished presently; and others, catching hold one of another, were carried away together down the stream.
And [not only] the Syracusians standing along the farther bank, being a steep one, killed the Athenians with their shot from above as they were many of them greedily drinking and troubling one another in the hollow of the river;
but the Peloponnesians came also down and slew them with their swords, and those especially that were in the river. And suddenly the water was corrupted; nevertheless they drunk it, foul as it was with blood and mire; and many also fought for it.
In the end, when many dead lay heaped in the river, and the army was utterly defeated, part at the river, and part (if any gat away) by the horsemen, Nicias yielded himself unto Gylippus (having more confidence in him than in the Syracusians) to be for his own person at the discretion of him and the Lacedaemonians, and no further slaughter to be made of the soldiers.
Gylippus from thenceforth commanded to take prisoners. So the residue, except such as were hidden from them (which were many), they carried alive into the city. They sent also to pursue the three hundred which brake through their guards in the night, and took them.
That which was left together of this army to the public was not much; but they that were conveyed away by stealth were very many;
and all Sicily was filled with them, because they were not taken, as those with Demosthenes were, by composition. Besides, a great part [of these] were slain; for the slaughter [at this time] was exceeding great, none greater in all the Sicilian war. They were also not a few that died in those other assaults in their march. Nevertheless, many also escaped, some then presently and some by running away after servitude; the rendezvous of whom was Catana.
The Syracusians and their confederates, being come together, returned with their prisoners, all they could get, and with the spoil into the city.
As for all the other prisoners of the Athenians and their confederates, they put them into the quarries as the safest custody. But Nicias and Demosthenes they killed, against Gylippus' will. For Gylippus thought the victory would be very honourable if, over and above all his other success, he could carry home both the generals of the enemy to Lacedaemon.
And it fell out that one of them, Demosthenes, was their greatest enemy for the things he had done in the island and at Pylus; and the other, upon the same occasion, their greatest friend. For Nicias had earnestly laboured to have those prisoners which were taken in the island to be set at liberty by persuading the Athenians to the peace.
For which cause the Lacedaemonians were inclined to love him; and it was principally in confidence of that that he rendered himself to Gylippus. But certain Syracusians, as it is reported, some of them for fear (because they had been tampering with him) lest being put to the torture he might bring them into trouble, whereas now they were well enough; and others, especially the Corinthians, fearing he might get away by corruption of one or other, being wealthy, and work them some mischief afresh, having persuaded their confederates to the same, killed him.
For these, or for causes near unto these, was he put to death; being the man that, of all the Grecians of my time, had least deserved to be brought to so great a degree of misery.
As for those in the quarries, the Syracusians handled them at first but ungently. For in this hollow place, first the sun and suffocating air (being without roof) annoyed them one way; and on the other side, the nights coming upon that heat, autumnal and cold, put them, by reason of the alteration, into strange diseases;
especially doing all things, for want of room, in one and the same place, and the carcasses of such as died of their wounds or change [of air] or other like accident lying together there on heaps. Also the smell was intolerable; besides that they were afflicted with hunger and thirst. For for eight months together, they allowed no more but to every man a cotyle of water by the day and two cotyles of corn. And whatsoever misery is probable that men in such a place may suffer, they suffered.
Some seventy days they lived thus thronged. Afterwards, retaining the Athenians, and such Sicilians and Italians as were of the army with them, they sold the rest.