Kitap 4
Advance to meet them, therefore, in a spirit worthy both of that state, the foremost in Hellas, which every one of you is proud to claim as his fatherland, and of the fathers who under Myronides vanquished these men at Oenophyta,456 B.C. and became at one time masters of Boeotia.”
Hippocrates was thus exhorting his men and had got as far as the centre of the army, but no further, when the Boeotians, after they too had again been briefly harangued by Pagondas, raised the paean and came on from the hill. And the Athenians also advanced against them and met them on a run.
The extremities of the line on either side never came to close quarters, for both had the same difficulty-they were hindered by swollen torrents. The rest were engaged in stubborn conflict, with shield pressed against shield.
And the Boeotian left, as far as the centre, was worsted by the Athenians, who pressed hard upon all the rest in that quarter, and especially upon the Thespians. For when they saw that the ranks on either side had given way and that they were surrounded, those of the Thespians who perished were cut down fighting hand to hand.
And some also of the Athenians, getting into confusion owing to their surrounding the enemy, mistook and killed one another. Here, then, the Boeotians were defeated and fled to the part of their army which was still fighting;
but the right wing, where the Thebans were, had the better of the Athenians, and pushing them back step by step at first followed after them. It happened also that Pagondas, when their left was in distress, sent two squadrons of cavalry round the hill from a point out of sight, and when these suddenly appeared, the victorious wing of the Athenians, thinking that another army was coming on, was thrown into a panic.
At this time, consequently, owing both to this manoeuvreie. the attack of the two squadrons of cavalry. and to the Thebans following them up and breaking their line, a rout of the whole Athenian army ensued.
Some hastened to Delium and the sea, others toward Oropus, others to Mt. Parnes, others wherever each had any hope of safety.
And the Boeotians, especially their cavalry and that of the Locrians who had come up just as the rout began, followed after and slew them; but when night closed down upon the action the mass of the fugitives escaped more easily.
On the next day the troops from Oropus and those from Delium, leaving a garrison at the latter place, which they still held, were conveyed home by sea.It is interesting to know that Socrates fought in the battle of Delium and saved Alcibiades' life (Plato, Symp. 221 e).
The Boeotians set up a trophy and took up their own dead; then, having stripped the dead of the enemy and left a guard over them, they retired to Tanagra, and there planned an assault upon Delium.
Meanwhile a herald from Athens, coming to ask for their dead, met a Boeotian herald, who turned him back, telling him he would accomplish nothing until he himself returned.ie. to the Boeotian camp from the Athenian, to which he was carrying a message. The latter then came before the Athenians and gave them the message from the Boeotians: that they had not done right in transgressing the usages of the Hellenes;
for it was an established custom of them all, when invading one another's country to abstain from the sanctuaries therein, whereas the Athenians had fortified Delium and now dwelt in it, doing there whatsoever men do in a profane place, even drawing for common use the water which was untouched by themselves except for use in lustrations connected with the sacrifices.
Wherefore the Boeotians, in behalf of the god and of themselves, invoking the deities worshipped at the common altars and also Apollo, gave them notice to come out themselves from the temple and carry off what belonged to them.ie. their dead.
When the herald had spoken, the Athenians sent a herald of their own to the Boeotians, saying that they had done no injury to the temple, and would not damage it wilfully in the future; for they had not entered it at the outset with any such intent, but rather that from it they might defend themselves against those who were wronging them.
And the law of the Hellenes was, they said, that whosoever had dominion over any country, be it larger or smaller, to them tile sanctuaries also always belonged, to be tended, so far as might be possible, with whatsoever rites had hitherto been customary.Or, reading πρὸς τοῖς εἰωθόσι with the MSS., “to be tended, besides the usual rites, with such others as they might be able to use.”
Indeed the Boeotians, and most others who had driven out any people and taken forcible possession of their country, had at first attacked the temples as alien but now possessed them as their own.
And they themselves, if they had been able to conquer more of the Boeotian territory, would have held it; but as it was, they would not depart from that portion in which they were, at least of their free will, considering it their own.
The water, moreover, they had disturbed in their sore need, which they had not wantonly brought upon themselves; they had been forced to use the water while defending themselves against the Boeotians who had first invaded their land.
And anything done under the constraint of war and danger might reasonably meet with some indulgence, even from the god. For altars were a refuge in cases of involuntary misdeeds, and transgression was a term applied to those who do evil without compulsion and not to those who are driven by misfortunes to some act of daring.
Moreover, the Boeotians in presuming to give up the bodies of the dead in return for temples were impious in a much higher degree than they who refused by the exchange of temples to procure that which they had a right to recover.
And they bade the Boeotians plainly tell them they might take up their dead, not “on condition of quitting Boeotia”—for they were no longer in Boeotian territory, but in land which they had won by the spear,—but “on making a truce according to ancestral custom.”
The Boeotians made answer, if they were in Boeotia, they might carry off their dead on quitting their land; but if they were in their own territory, they could determine themselves what to do. For they thought that though Oropia, in which the bodies happened to be lying—for the battle occurred on the boundaries—belonged to the Athenians by right of its subjection, yet that they could not get possession of the bodies without their leave (nor indeed were they going to make a truce, forsooth, about territory belonging to the Athenians); but they thought it was fair to answer, “when they had quitted Boeotian territory they could get back what they asked for.” And the herald of the Athenians, on hearing this, went away without accomplishing his object.
The Boeotians sent off at once for darters and slingers from the Maliac Gulf, and with two thousand Corinthian hoplites, who reinforced them after the battle, as well as the Peloponnesian garrison which had evacuated Nisaea, and some Megarians also, made an expedition against Delium and attacked the fortification. After trying other forms of assault they took it by bringing up an engine made in the following manner.
Having sawed in two a great beam they hollowed it throughout, and fitted it together again nicely like a pipe; then they hung a cauldron at one end of it with chains, and into the cauldron an iron bellows-pipe was let down in a curveie. it was bent into the cauldron. from the beam, which was itself in great part plated with iron.
This engine theybrought up from a distance on carts to the part of the wall where it was built chiefly of vines and wood; and when it was near, they inserted a large bellows into the end of the beam next to them and blew through it.
And the blast passing through the air-tight tube into the cauldron, which contained lighted coals, sulphur, and pitch, made a great blaze and set fire to the wall, so that no one could stay on it longer, but all left it and took to flight;
and in this way the fortification was taken. Of the garrison some were slain, and two hundred were captured; but most of the rest got on board their ships and were conveyed home.
So Delium was taken seventeen days after the battle, and when the Athenian herald, who knew nothing of what had happened, came back not long after to ask for the dead, the Boeotians did not again make the same answer but gave them up.
And there were slain in the battle, of the Boeotians a little more than five hundred, of the Athenians a little less than one thousand, including Hippocrates their general, besides a great number of light-armed troops and baggage-carriers.
Not long after this battle Demosthenes, since he had failed in his negotiations about the betrayal of Siphae, when he sailed thither at the time mentioned above,cf. 4.89.1 took on his ships his force of Acarnanians and Agraeans and four hundred Athenian hoplites and made a descent upon the territory of Sicyon.
But before all his ships had come to shore the Sicyonians came to the rescue, and routing those who had disembarked pursued them to their ships, killing some and taking others alive.
Then setting up a trophy they gave up the dead under truce. Sitalces,cf. lxvii., xcv., ci. too, king of the Odrysians, was killed about the same time as the events at Delium, having made an expedition against the Triballi,cf. xcvi. who defeated him in battle. Seuthescf. 2.101.5. son of Sparadocus, his nephew, now became king of the Odrysians and of the rest of Thrace over which Sitalces had reigned.
During the same winter, Brasidas, with his allies in Thrace, made an expedition against Amphipolis, the Athenian colony on the river Strymon.
This place, where the city now stands, Aristagorascf. Hdt. v. 126. the Milesian had tried to colonize before,497 B.C. when fleeing from the Persian king, but he had been beaten back by the Edonians. Thirty-two years afterwards the Athenians also made another attempt, sending out ten thousand settlers of their own citizens and any others who wished to go; but these were destroyed by the Thracians at Drabescus.
Again, twenty-nine years later, the Athenians, sending out Hagnon son of Nicias as leader of the colony, drove out the Edonians and settled the place, which was previously called Ennea-Hodoi or Nine-Ways. Their base of operations was Eion, a commercial seaport which they already held, at the mouth of the river, twenty-five stadia distant from the present city of Amphipolis,The name means “a city looking both ways.” to which Hagnon gave that name, because, as the Strymon flows round it on both sides, he cut off the site by a long wall running from one point of the river to another, and so established a city which was conspicuous both seaward and landward.
Against this place Brasidas marched with his army, setting out from Arnae in Chalcidice. Arriving about dusk at Aulon and Bromiscus,According to tradition, the scene of the death of Euripides. where the lake Bolbe has its outlet into the sea, he took supper and then proceeded by night.
The weather was bad and somewhat snowy, and for this reason he made the more haste, wishing to escape the notice of the people in Amphipolis, except those who were to betray it.
For there were in the place some settlers from Argilus, an Andrian colony; these and some others were his accomplices in this intrigue, some instigated by Perdiccas, others by the Chalcidians.
But the chief plotters were the Argilians, who dwelt near by, were always suspected by the Athenians, and were secret enemies of the place; now that opportunity offered and Brasidas had come, they had some time before negotiated with their countrymen who resided in Amphipolis with a view to the surrender of the place. So at this time they received Brasidas into their town, revolted from the Athenians that same night, and before dawn brought his army down to the bridge over the river, which is some distance from the town and not connected with it by walls as now.