Kitap 2
About the same time, in the end of summer, the Ambraciotes, both they themselves and divers barbarian nations by them raised, made war against Argos of Amphilochia and against the rest of that territory.
The quarrel between them and the Argives arose first from hence.
This Argos and the rest of Amphilochia was planted by Amphilochus the son of Amphiaraus after the Trojan war, who, at his return, misliking the then state of Argos, built this city in the Gulf of Ambracia and called it Argos after the name of his own country.
And it was the greatest city and had the most wealthy inhabitants of all Amphilochia.
But many generations after, being fallen into misery, they communicated their city with the Ambraciotes, bordering upon Amphilochia; and then they first learned the Greek language now used from the Ambraciotes that lived among them.
For the rest of the Amphilochians were barbarians.
Now the Ambraciotes in process of time drave out the Argives and held the city by themselves. Whereupon the Amphilochians submitted themselves to the Acarnanians, and both together called in the Athenians who sent thirty galleys to their aid and Phormio for general. Phormio, being arrived, took Argos by assault and, making slaves of the Ambraciotes, put the town into the joint possessions of the Amphilochians and Acarnanians.
And this was the beginning of the league between the Athenians and Acarnanians.
The Ambraciotes therefore, deriving their hatred to the Argives from this their captivity, came in with an army partly of their own and partly raised amongst the Chaonians and other neighboring barbarians now in this war. And coming to Argos, were masters of the field; but when they could not take the city by assault, they returned and disbanding went every nation to his own. These were the acts of the summer.
In the beginning of the winter the Athenians sent twenty galleys about Peloponnesus under the command of Phormio, who, coming to lie at Naupactus, guarded the passage that none might go in or out from Corinth and the Crisaean gulf. And other six galleys under the conduct of Melesander they sent into Caria and Lycia, as well to gather tribute in those parts as also to hinder the Peloponnesian pirates lying on those coasts from molesting the navigation of such merchant ships as they expected to come to them from Phaselis, Phoenicia, and that part of the continent.
But Melesander, landing in Lycia with such forces of the Athenians and their confederates as he had aboard, was overcome in battle and slain with the loss of a part of his army.
The same winter, the Potidaeans, unable any longer to endure the siege, seeing the invasion of Attica by the Peloponnesians could not make them rise and seeing their victual failed and that they were forced, amongst divers other things done by them for necessity of food, to eat one another, propounded at length to 70enophon the son of Euripides, Hestiodorus the son of Aristocleidas, and Phanomachus the son of Callimachus, the Athenian commanders that lay before the city, to give the same into their hands.
And they, seeing both that the army was already afflicted by lying in that cold place and that the state had already spent two thousand talents upon the siege, accepted of it. The conditions agreed on were these:
to depart, they and their wives and children and their auxiliary soldiers, every man with one suit of clothes and every woman with two, and to take with them everyone a certain sum of money for his charges by the way. Hereupon a truce was granted them to depart;
and they went, some to the Chalcideans and others to other places as they could get to. But the people of Athens called the commanders in question for compounding without them, conceiving that they might have gotten the city to discretion, and sent afterwards a colony to Potidaea of their own citizens. These were the things done in this winter. And so ended the second year of this war, written by Thucydides.
The next summer, the Peloponnesians and their confederates came not into Attica but turned their arms against Plataea, led by Archidamus the son of Zeuxidamus, king of the Lacedaemonians, who, having pitched his camp, was about to waste the territory thereof. But the Plataeans sent ambassadors presently unto him with words to this effect:
Archidamus, and you Lacedaemonians, you do neither justly nor worthy yourselves and ancestors in making war upon Plataea. For Pausanias of Lacedaemon, the son of Cleombrotus, having, together with such Grecians as were content to undergo the danger of the battle that was fought in this our territory, delivered all Greece from the slavery of the Persians, when he offered sacrifice in the market-place of Plataea to Jupiter the deliverer, called together all the confederates and granted to the Plataeans this privilege: that their city and territory should be free; that none should make any unjust war against them nor go about to subject them; and if any did, the confederates then present should to their utmost ability revenge their quarrel.
These privileges your fathers granted us for our valour and zeal in those dangers. But now do you the clean contrary; for you join with our greatest enemies, the Thebans, to bring us into subjection.
Therefore calling to witness the gods then sworn by and the gods both of your and our country, we require you that you do no damage to the territory of Plataea nor violate those oaths, but that you suffer us to enjoy our liberty in such sort as was allowed us by Pausanias.
The Plataeans having thus said, Archidamus replied and said thus: Men of Plataea, if you would do as ye say, you say what is just. For as Pausanias hath granted to you, so also be you free and help to set free the rest, who, having been partakers of the same dangers then and being comprised in the same oath with yourselves, are now brought into subjection by the Athenians. And this so great preparation and war is only for the deliverance of them and others, of which if you will especially participate, keep your oaths; at least (as we have also advised you formerly) be quiet and enjoy your own in neutrality, receiving both sides in the way of friendship, neither side in the way of faction. Thus said Archidamus.
And the ambassadors of Plataea, when they had heard him, returned to the city, and having communicated his answer to the people, brought word again to Archidamus: that what he had advised was impossible for them to perform without leave of the Athenians in whose keeping were their wives and children; and that they feared also for the whole city lest when the Lacedaemonians were gone, the Athenians should come and take the custody of it out of their hands; or that the Thebans, comprehended in the oath of receiving both sides, should again attempt to surprise it. But Archidamus, to encourage them, made this answer:
Deliver you unto us Lacedaemonians your city and your houses, show us the bounds of your territory, give us your trees by tale, and whatsoever else can be numbered; and depart yourselves whither you shall think good as long as the war lasteth: and when it shall be ended, we will deliver it all unto you again. In the meantime we will keep them as deposited and will cultivate your ground and pay you rent for it, as much as shall suffice for your maintenance.
Hereupon the ambassadors went again into the city and, having consulted with the people, made answer that they would first acquaint the Athenians with it, and if they would consent, they would then accept the conditions; till then, they desired a suspension of arms and not to have their territory wasted. Upon this he granted them so many days truce, as was requisite for their return, and for so long forebore to waste their territory.
When the Plataean ambassadors were arrived at Athens and had advised on the matter with the Athenians, they returned to the city with this answer:
The Athenians say thus: that neither in former times, since we were their confederates, did they ever abandon us to the injuries of any, nor will they now neglect us but give us their utmost assistance. And they conjure us by the oath of our fathers not to make any alienation touching the league.
When the ambassadors had made this report, the Plataeans resolved in their councils not to betray the Athenians but rather to endure, if it must be, the wasting of their territory before their eyes and to suffer whatsoever misery could befall them, and no more to go forth but from the walls to make this answer:
that it was impossible for them to do as the Lacedaemonians had required. When they had answered so, Archidamus, the king, first made a protestation to the gods and heros of the country, saying thus: All ye Gods and Heros, protectors of Plataeis, be witnesses that we neither invade this territory (wherein our fathers after their vows unto you overcame the Medes, and which you made propitious for the Grecians to fight in) unjustly now in the beginning because they have first broken the league they had sworn, nor what we shall further do will be any injury because, though we have offered many and reasonable conditions, they have yet been all refused; assent ye also to the punishment of the beginners of injury and to the revenge of those that bear lawful arms.
Having made this protestation to the gods, he made ready his army for the war. And first having felled trees, he therewith made a palisade about the town that none might go out. That done, he raised a mount against the wall, hoping with so great an army all at work at once, to have quickly taken it.
And having cut down wood in the hill Cithaeron, they built a frame of timber and wattled it about on either side to serve instead of walls to keep the earth from falling too much away and cast into it stones and earth and whatsoever else would serve to fill it up.
Seventy days and nights continually they poured on, dividing the work between them for rest in such manner as some might be carrying, whilst others took their sleep and food. And they were urged to labour by the Lacedaemonians that commanded the mercenaries of the several cities and had the charge of the work.
The Plataeans, seeing the mount to rise, made the frame of a wall with wood which, having placed on the wall of the city in the place where the mount touched, they built it within full of bricks taken from the adjoining houses for that purpose demolished, the timber serving to bind them together that the building might not be weakened by the height.
The same was also covered with hides and quilts both to keep the timber from shot of wildfire and those that wrought from danger.
So that the height of the wall was great on one side, and the mount went up as fast on the other. The Plataeans used also this device: they brake a hole in their own wall where the mount joined and drew the earth from it into the city.
But the Peloponnesians, when they found it out, took clay and therewith daubing hurdles of reeds cast the same into the chink, which mouldering not, as did the earth, they could not draw it away.
The Plataeans, excluded here, gave over that plot, and digging a secret mine, which they carried under the mount from within the city by conjecture, fetched away the earth again and were a long time undiscovered; so that still casting on, the mount grew still less, the earth being drawn away below and settling over the part where it was voided.
The Plataeans, nevertheless, fearing that they should not be able even thus to hold out, being few against many, devised this further. They gave over working at the high wall against the mount and, beginning at both ends of it where the wall was low, built another wall in form of a crescent, inward to the city; that if the great wall were taken, this might resist and put the enemy to make another mount, and by coming further in to be at double pains and withal more encompassable with shot.
The Peloponnesians, together with the rising of their mount, brought to the city their engines of battery. One of which, by the help of the mount, they applied to the high wall, wherewith they much shook it and put the Plataeans into great fear. And others to other parts of the wall, which the Plataeans partly turned aside by casting ropes about them and partly with great beams, which, being hung in long iron chains by either end upon two other great beams jetting over and inclining from above the wall like two horns, they drew up to them athwart; and where the engine was about to light, slacking the chains and letting their hands go, they let fall with violence to break the beak of it.
After this the Peloponnesians, seeing their engines availed not and thinking it hard to take the city by any present violence, prepared themselves to besiege it. But first they thought fit to attempt it by fire, being no great city, and when the wind should rise, if they could, to burn it;
for there was no way they did not think on to have gained it without expense and long siege.
Having therefore brought faggots, they cast them from the mount into the space between it and their new wall, which by so many hands was quickly filled, and then into as much of the rest of the city as at that distance they could reach and, throwing amongst them fire, together with brimstone and pitch, kindled the wood and raised such a flame, as the like was never seen before made by the hand of man.