Kitap 3
Meanwhile the troops from the city of Ambracia arrived at Idomene. Now it consists of two lofty hills, and of these the higher had already been seized unobserved during the night by the troops which Demosthenes had sent forward from his main army; but the lower had previously, as it chanced, been ascended by the Ambraciots, who spent the night there.
After dinner Demosthenes and the rest of the army set out immediately after nightfall, he himself with half of them making for the pass, while the rest took the road through the Amphilochian mountains.
And at dawn he fell upon the Ambraciots, who were still in their beds and had no knowledge at all of what had previously happened.
On the contrary, they supposed these troops to be their own men, for Demosthenes had purposely put the Messenians in front and directed them to accost the enemy in the Doric dialect, thus getting themselves trusted by the outposts; besides, they were indistinguishable to the sight, since it was still dark. So they fell upon the army of the Ambraciots and put them to rout, slaying the majority of them on the spot;
the rest took to flight over the mountains.
But as the roads had already been occupied, and as, moreover, the Amphilochians were well acquainted with their own country and were light infantry opposing heavy-armed troops, whereas the Ambraciots were ignorant of the country and did not know which way to turn, under these circumstances the fleeing men fell into ravines and into ambushes which had previously been set for them and perished.
And some of them, after resorting to every manner of flight, even turned to the sea, which was not far distant, and seeing the Athenian ships, which were sailing along the coast at the very time when the action was taking place, swam toward them, thinking in the panic of the moment that it was better for them to be slain, if slain they must be, by the crews of the ships than by the barbarian and detested Amphilochians.
In this manner, then, the Ambraciots suffered disaster, and but few out of many returned in safety to their city; the Acarnanians, on the other hand, after stripping the dead and setting up trophies, returned to Argos.
On the next day a herald came to the Athenians from the Ambraciots who had escaped from Olpae and taken refuge among the Agraeans, to ask for the bodies of those who had been slain after the first battle, at the time when unprotected by a truce these attempted to leave Olpae along with the Mantineans and the others who were included in the truce.
Now when the herald saw the arms taken from the Ambraciots who came from the city, he was amazed at their number; for he did not know of the recent disaster, but thought that the arms belonged to the men of his own division.
And someone asked him why he was amazed, and how many of his comrades had been slain, the questioner on his part supposing that the herald had come from the forces which had fought at Idomene.
The herald answered, “About two hundred.” The questioner said in reply, “These arms, though, are clearly not those of two hundred men, but of more than a thousand.” And again the herald said, “Then they are not the arms of our comrades in the battle.” The other answered, “They are, if it was you who fought yesterday at Idomene.” “But we did not fight with anyone yesterday;
it was the day before yesterday, on the retreat.” “And it is certain that we fought yesterday with these men, who were coming to your aid from the city of the Ambraciots.” When the herald heard this and realized that the force which was coming to their relief from the city had perished. he lifted up his voice in lamentation and, stunned by the magnitude of the calamity before him, departed at once, forgetting his errand and making no request for the dead.
Indeed this was the greatest calamity that befell any one Hellenic city in an equal number of days during the course of this whole war. The number of those who fell I have not recorded, seeing that the multitude reported to have perished is incredible when compared with the size of the city. I know, however, that if the Acarnanians and Amphilochians had been willing to hearken to the Athenians and Demosthenes and had made an attack upon Ambracia they would have taken it at the first onset; but as it was, they were afraid that the Athenians, if they had the town in their possession, would be more troublesome neighbours than the Ambraciots.
After this the Acarnanians apportioned a third of the booty to the Athenians and distributed the rest among their cities. The portion which fell to the Athenians was captured from them on the voyage home; but the dedicatory offerings now to be seen in the Athenian temples, consisting of three hundred panoplies, were set apart as Demosthenes' share, and were brought home by him when he returned. Furthermore, his return could now, in consequence of this exploit, be made with less apprehension after his earlier misfortune in Aetolia.
The Athenians in the twenty ships also departed, returning to Naupactus. As for the Acarnanians and Amphilochians, after the Athenians and Demosthenes had gone home, they concluded a truce with the Ambraciots and Peloponnesians who had taken refuge with Salynthius and the Agraeans, allowing them to withdraw from Oeniadae, whither they had gone after leaving Salynthius.
The Acarnanians and Amphilochians also concluded for the future a treaty of alliance with the Ambraciots to last for one hundred years, on the following terms: The Ambraciots were not to join the Acarnanians in any expedition against the Peloponnesians; nor were the Acarnanians to join the Ambraciots against the Athenians, but they were to give aid in defence of one another's territory; the Ambraciots were to restore all places or hostages belonging to the Amphilochians which they now held; and they were not to give aid to Anactorium, which was hostile to the Acarnanians.
On these terms of agreement they brought the war to an end. But after this the Corinthians sent to Ambracia a garrison of their own troops, consisting of about three hundred hoplites, under the command of Xenocleidas son of Euthycles, who, making their way with difficulty across he mainland, finally reached their destination. Such was the course of events at Ambracia.
During the same winter the Athenians in Sicily made a descent from their ships upon the territory of Himera, in concert with the Sicels from the interior who had invaded the extreme borderie. toward the interior. of Himeraea; and they also sailed against the islands of Aeolus.
Returning thence to Rhegium, they found that Pythodorus son of Isolochus, an Athenian general, had come to succeed Laches in command of the fleet.
For their allies in Sicily had sailed to Athens and persuaded them to aid them with a larger fleet; for though their territory was dominated by the Syracusans, yet since they were kept from the sea by only a few ships they were collecting a fleet and making preparations with the determination not to submit.
And the Athenians manned forty ships to send to them, partly because they believed that the war in Sicily could sooner be brought to an end in this way, and partly because they wished to give practice to their fleet.
Accordingly they despatched one of their generals, Pythodorus, with a few ships, and were planning later on to send Sophocles son of Sostratidas and Eurymedon son of Thucles with the main body of the fleet.
Pythodorus, now that he had taken over the command of Laches' ships, sailed toward the end of the winter against the Locrian fort which Laches had previously captured;cf. ch. xcix. but he was defeated in battle by the Locrians and returned to Rhegium.
At the beginning of the following spring425 B.C. the stream of fire burst from Aetna, as it had on
former occasions. And it devastated a portion of the territory of the Catanaeans who dwell on the slope of Mount Aetna, the highest mountain in Sicily. This eruption took place, it is said, fifty years after the last preceding one;The eruption of Aetna mentioned in the Parian Marble, lii. 67 f., as contemporaneous with the battle of Plataea (479 B.C.); so that the expression “fiftieth year” is not quiet exact. From his form of expression in what follows, it is clear that Thucydides, when he wrote this passage, could have had no knowledge of an eruption later than 425 B.C. He must therefore have died before that of 396 B.C. or, if he lived after that date, never revised this passage. and three eruptions all told are reported to have occurred since Sicily has been inhabited by
the Hellenes.ie. , since the eighth century; see the account at the beginning of Book vi. Such was the course of events in this winter, and therewith ended the sixth year of this war of which Thucydides composed the history.