Kitap 4
The town stood not close to the river, nor was there a fort at the bridge then as there is now; but they kept it only with a small guard of soldiers. Having easily forced this guard, both in respect of the treason and of the weather, and of his own unexpected approach, he passed the bridge and was presently master of whatsoever the Amphipolitans had that dwelt without.
Having thus suddenly passed the bridge, and many of those without being slain, and some fled into the city, the Amphipolitans were in very great confusion at it; and the rather because they were jealous one of another.
And it is said that if Brasidas had not sent out his army to take booty, but had marched presently to the city, he had in all likelihood taken it then. But so it was that he pitched there and fell upon those without;
and seeing nothing succeeded by those within, lay still upon the place.
But the contrary faction to the traitors being superior in number, whereby the gates were not opened presently, both they and Eucles the general, who was then there for the Athenians to keep the town, sent unto the other general, Thucydides, the son of Olorus, the writer of this history, who had charge in Thrace, and was now about Thasos (which is an island and a colony of the Parians, distant from Amphipolis about half a day's sail), requiring him to come and relieve them.
When he heard the news, he went thitherwards in all haste with seven galleys, which chanced to be with him at that time. His purpose principally was to prevent the yielding up of Amphipolis; but if he should fail of that, then to possess himself of Eion [before Brasidas' coming].
Brasidas, in the meantime, fearing the aid of the galleys to come from Thasos, and having also been informed that Thucydides possessed mines of gold in the parts of Thrace thereabouts, and was thereby of ability amongst the principal men of the continent, hasted by all means to get Amphipolis before he should arrive, lest otherwise at his coming the commons of Amphipolis, expecting that he would levy confederates both from the sea-side and in Thrace, and relieve them, should thereupon refuse to yield.
And to that end offered them a moderate composition, causing to be proclaimed that whosoever, Amphipolitan or Athenian, would, might continue to dwell there and enjoy his own, with equal and like form of government; and that he that would not, should have five days' respite to be gone and carry away his goods.
When the commons heard this, their minds were turned; and the rather, because the Athenians amongst them were but few, and the most were a promiscuous multitude; and the kinsmen of those that were taken without flocked together within. And in respect of their fear, they all thought the proclamation reasonable; the Athenians thought it so because they were willing to go out, as apprehending their own danger to be greater than that of the rest, and withal, not expecting aid in haste; and the rest of the multitude, as being thereby both delivered of the danger, and withal to retain their city with the equal form of government.
Insomuch that they which conspired with Brasidas now openly justified the offer to be reasonable; and seeing the minds of the commons were now turned and that they gave ear no more to the words of the Athenian general, they compounded, and upon the conditions proclaimed received him.
Thus did these men deliver up the city. Thucydides with his galleys arrived in the evening of the same day at Eion.
Brasidas had already gotten Amphipolis, and wanted but a night of taking Eion also; for if these galleys had not come speedily to relieve it, by next morning it had been had.
After this Thucydides assured Eion, so as it should be safe both for the present, though Brasidas should assault it, and for the future; and took into it such as, according to the proclamation made, came down from Amphipolis.
Brasidas with many boats came suddenly down the river to Eion and attempted to seize on the point of the ground lying out from the wall into the sea, and thereby to command the mouth of the river; he assayed also the same at the same time by land, and was in both beaten off; but Amphipolis he furnished with all things necessary.
Then revolted to him Myrcinus, a city of the Edonians, Pittacus, the king of the Edonians, being slain by the sons of Goaxis and by Braures his own wife. And not long after Gapselus also, and Oesyme, colonies of the Thasians. Perdiccas also, after the taking of these places, came to him and helped him in assuring of the same.
After Amphipolis was taken, the Athenians were brought into great fear, especially for that it was a city that yielded them much profit, both in timber which is sent them for the building of galleys and in revenue of money, and because also, though the Lacedaemonians had a passage open to come against their confederates, the Thessalians convoying them, as far as to Strymon, yet if they had not gotten that bridge, the river being upwards nothing but a vast fen, and towards Eion well guarded with their galleys, they could have gone no further; which now they thought they might easily do, and therefore feared lest their confederates should revolt.
For Brasidas both showed himself otherwise very moderate, and also gave out in speech that he was sent forth to recover the liberty of Greece.
And the cities which were subject to the Athenians, hearing of the taking of Amphipolis, and what assurance he brought with him, and of his gentleness besides, were extremely desirous of innovation, and sent messengers privily to bid him draw near, every one striving who should first revolt.
For they thought they might do it boldly, falsely estimating the power of the Athenians to be less than afterwards it appeared, and making a judgment of it according to [blind] wilfulness rather than safe forecast; it being the fashion of men, what they wish to be true to admit even upon an ungrounded hope, and what they wish not, with a magistral kind of arguing to reject.
Withal, because the Athenians had lately received a blow from the Boeotians, and because Brasidas had said (not as was the truth, but as served best to allure them) that when he was at Nisaea the Athenians durst not fight with those forces of his alone, they grew confident thereon, and believed not that any man would come against them.
But the greatest cause of all was that for the delight they took at this time to innovate, and for that they were to make trial of the Lacedaemonians, not till now angry, they were content by any means to put it to the hazard. Which being perceived, the Athenians sent garrison soldiers into those cities, as many as the shortness of the time and the season of winter would permit. And Brasidas sent unto Lacedaemon to demand greater forces, and in the meantime prepared to build galleys on the river Strymon.
But the Lacedaemonians, partly through envy of the principal men, and partly because they more affected the redemption of their men taken in the island and the ending of the war, refused to furnish him.
The same winter the Megareans, having recovered their long walls holden by the Athenians, razed them to the very ground. Brasidas, after the taking of Amphipolis, having with him the confederates, marched with his army into the territory called Acte.
This Acte is that prominent territory which is disjoined from the continent by a ditch made by the king; and Athos, a high mountain in the same, determineth at the Aegean sea.
Of the cities it hath, one is Sane, a colony of the Andrians, by the side of the said ditch on the part which looketh to the sea towards Euboea;
the rest are Thyssus, Cleone, Acrothoi, Olophyxus, and Dion, and are inhabited by promiscuous barbarians of two languages. Some few there are also of the Chalcidean nation; but the most are Pelasgic, of those Tyrrhene nations that once inhabited Athens and Lemnos, and of the Bisaltic and Chrestonic nations, and Edonians, and dwell in small cities.
The most of which yielded to Brasidas; but Sane and Dion held out, for which cause he stayed with his army and wasted their territories.
But seeing they would not hearken unto him, he led his army presently against Torone of Chalcidea, held by the Athenians. He was called in by the few, who were ready withal to deliver him the city; and arriving there a little before break of day, he sat down with his army at the temple of Castor and Pollux, distant about three furlongs from the city.
So that to the rest of the city and to the Athenian garrison in it, his coming was unperceived. But the traitors, knowing he was to come (some few of them being also privily gone to him), attended his approach; and when they perceived he was come, they took in unto them seven men armed only with daggers (for of twenty appointed at first to that service, seven only had the courage to go in; and were led by Lysistratus of Olynthus); which, getting over the wall towards the main sea unseen, went up (for the town standeth on a hill's side) to the watch that kept the upper end of the town, and having slain the watchmen brake open the postern gate towards Canastraea.
Brasidas this while with the rest of his army lay still, and then coming a little forward, sent a hundred targetiers before, who, when the gates should be opened and sign agreed on be set up, should run in first.
These men, expecting long and wondering at the matter, by little and little were at length come up close to the city. Those Toronaeans within, which helped the men that entered to perform the enterprise, when the postern gate was broken open, and the gate leading to the market-place opened likewise by cutting asunder the bar, went first and fetched some of them about to the postern, to the end that they might suddenly affright such of the town as knew not the matter, both behind and on either side; and then they put up the sign appointed, which was fire, and received the rest of the targetiers by the gate that leadeth to the market-place.
Brasidas, when he saw the sign, made his army rise, and with a huge cry of all at once, to the great terror of those within, entered into the city running.
Some went directly in by the gate, and some by certain squared timber-trees, which lay at the wall (which having been lately down was now again in building) for the drawing up of stone.
Brasidas, therefore, with the greatest number, betook himself to the highest places of the city to make sure the winning of it by possessing the places of advantage. But the rest of the rabble ran dispersed here and there without difference.
When the town was taken, the most of the Toronaeans were much troubled, because they were not acquainted with the matter; but the conspirators, and such as were pleased with it, joined themselves presently with those that entered.
The Athenians (of which there were about fifty men of arms asleep in the market-place), when they knew what had happened, fled all, except some few that were slain upon the place, some by land, some by water in two galleys that kept watch there, and saved themselves in Lecythus, which was a fort which they themselves held, cut off from the rest of the city to the seaward in a narrow isthmus.
And thither also fled all such Toronaeans as were affected to them.
Being now day, and the city strongly possessed, Brasidas caused a proclamation to be made that those Toronaeans which were fled with the Athenians might come back, as many as would, to their own and inhabit there in security. To the Athenians he sent a herald, bidding them depart out of Lecythus under truce with all that they had, as a place that belonged to the Chalcideans.
The Athenians denied to quit the place, but the truce they desired for one day for the taking up of their dead. And Brasidas granted it for two, in which two days he fortified the buildings near; and so also did the Athenians theirs.
He also called an assembly of the Toronaeans and spake unto them as he had done before to the Acanthians, adding that there was no just cause why either they that had practised to put the city into his hands should be the worse thought of or accounted traitors for it, seeing that they did it with no intent to bring the city into servitude, nor were hired thereunto with money, but for the benefit and liberty of the city; or that they which were not made acquainted with it should think that themselves were not to reap as much good by it as the others;