Kitap 4
And therefore it were hard that you should now be otherwise minded and withstand your own and the rest of the Grecians' liberty,
not only in that yourselves resist us, but also because others whom I go to will be the less willing to come in, making difficulty because you to whom I came first, having a flourishing city and being esteemed wise, have refused us. For which I shall have no sufficient excuse to plead, but must be thought either to pretend to set up liberty unjustly, or to come weak and without power to maintain you against the Athenians.
And yet against this same army I now have, when I went to encounter the Athenians at Nisaea, though more in number they durst not hazard battle. Nor is it likely that the Athenians will send forth so great a number against you as they had in their fleet there at Nisaea.
"I come not hither to hurt, but to set free the Grecians; and I have the Lacedaemonian magistrates bound unto me by great oaths that whatsoever confederates shall be added to their side, at least by me, shall still enjoy their own laws; and that we shall not hold you as confederates to us brought in either by force or fraud, but on the contrary, be confederates to you that are kept in servitude by the Athenians.
And therefore I claim not only that you be not jealous of me (especially having given you so good assurance), or think me unable to defend you, but also that you declare yourselves boldly with me.
And if any man be unwilling so to do through fear of some particular man, apprehending that I would put the city into the hands of a few, let him cast away that fear;
for I came not to side, nor do I think I should bring you an assured liberty, if neglecting the ancient use here I should enthral either the multitude to the few, or the few to the multitude.
For to be governed so were worse than the domination of a foreigner; and there would result from it to us Lacedaemonians not thanks for our labours, but instead of honour and glory, an imputation of those crimes for which we make war amongst the Athenians, and which would be more odious in us than in them that never pretended the virtue.
For it is more dishonourable, at least to men in dignity, to amplify their estate by specious fraud than by open violence. For the latter assaileth with a certain right of power given us by fortune, but the other with the treachery of a wicked conscience.
But besides the oath which they have sworn already, the greatest further assurance you can have is this: that our actions weighed with our words, you must needs believe that it is to our profit to do as I have told you.
But if after these promises of mine you shall say you cannot, and yet, forasmuch as your affection is with us, will claim impunity for rejecting us, or shall say that this liberty I offer you seems to be accompanied with danger, and that it were well done to offer it to such as can receive it, but not to force it upon any, then will I call to witness the gods and heroes of this place that my counsel which you refuse was for your good, and will endeavour, by wasting of your territory, to compel you to it.
Nor shall I think I do you therein any wrong, but have reason for it for two necessities: one, of the Lacedaemonians, lest whilst they have your affections and not your society, they should receive hurt from your contributions of money to the Athenians; another, of the Grecians, lest they should be hindered of their liberty by your example.
For otherwise indeed we could not justly do it; nor ought we Lacedaemonians to set any at liberty against their wills if it were not for some common good. We covet not dominion [over you];
but seeing we haste to make others lay down the same, we should do injury to the greater part, if bringing liberty to the other states in general we should tolerate you to cross us.
Deliberate well of these things; strive to be the beginners of liberty in Greece, to get yourselves eternal glory, to preserve every man his private estate from damage, and to invest the whole city with a most honourable title.
Thus spake Brasidas. The Acanthians, after much said on either side, partly for that which Brasidas had effectually spoken and partly for fear of their fruits abroad, the most of them decreed to revolt from the Athenians, having given their votes in secret. And when they had made him take the same oath which the Lacedaemonian magistrates took when they sent him out, namely, that what confederates soever he should join to the Lacedaemonians should enjoy their own laws, they received his army into the city.
And not long after revolted Stageirus, another colony of the Andrians. And these were the acts of this summer.
In the very beginning of the next winter, when the Boeotian cities should have been delivered to Hippocrates and Demosthenes, generals of the Athenians, and Demosthenes should have gone to Siphae, and Hippocrates to Delium; having mistaken the days on which they should have both set forward, Demosthenes went to Siphae first, and having with him the Acarnans and many confederates of those parts in his fleet, [yet] lost his labour. For the treason was detected by one Nicomachus, a Phocean of the town of Phanotis, who told it unto the Lacedaemonians, and they again unto the Boeotians.
Whereby the Boeotians, concurring universally to relieve those places (for Hippocrates was not yet gone to trouble them in their own several territories), preoccupied both Siphae and Chaeroneia. And the conspirators, knowing the error, attempted in those cities no further.
But Hippocrates, having raised the whole power of the city of Athens, both citizens and others that dwelt amongst them and all strangers that were then there, arrived afterwards at Delium when the Boeotians were now returned from Siphae; and there stayed and took, in Delium, a temple of Apollo, with a wall, in this manner:
Round about the temple and the whole consecrated ground they drew a ditch; and out of the ditch, instead of a wall they cast up the earth; and having driven down piles on either side, they cast thereinto the matter of the vineyard about the temple, which to that purpose they cut down, together with the stones and bricks of the ruined buildings; and by all means heightened the fortification, and in such places as would give leave, erected turrets of wood upon the same.
There was no edifice of the temple standing, for the cloister that had been was fallen down. They began the work the third day after they set forth from Athens and wrought all the same day and all the fourth and the fifth day till dinner.
And then being most part of it finished, the camp came back from Delium about ten furlongs homewards. And the lightarmed soldiers went most of them presently away; but the men of arms laid down their arms there and rested. Hippocrates stayed yet behind and took order about the garrison and about the finishing of the remainder of the fortification.
The Boeotians took the same time to assemble at Tanagra; and when all the forces were come in that from every city were expected, and when they understood that the Athenians drew homewards, though the rest of the Boeotian commanders, which were eleven, approved not giving battle, because they were not now in Boeotia (for the Athenians, when they laid down their arms, were in the confines of Oropia); yet Pagondas, the son of Aioladas, being the Boeotian commander for Thebes, whose turn it was to have the leading of the army, was, together with Arianthidas, the son of Lysimachidas, of opinion to fight, and held it the best course to try the fortune of a battle; wherefore calling them unto him every company by itself, that they might not be all at once from their arms, he exhorted the Boeotians to march against the Athenians and to hazard battle, speaking in this manner:
Men of Boeotia, it ought never to have so much as entered into the thought of any of us the commanders that, because we find not the Athenians now in Boeotia, it should therefore be unfit to give them battle. For they out of a bordering country have entered Boeotia and fortified in it with intent to waste it, and are indeed enemies in whatsoever ground we find them, or whencesoever they come doing the acts of hostility.
But now if any man think it also unsafe, let him henceforth be of another opinion. For providence, in them that are invaded, endureth not such deliberation concerning their own as may be used by them who, retaining their own, out of desire to enlarge, voluntarily invade the estate of another.
And it is the custom of this country of yours, when a foreign enemy comes against you, to fight with him both on your own and on your neighbour's ground alike; but much more you ought to do it against the Athenians when they be borderers.
For liberty with all men is nothing else but to be a match for the cities that are their neighbours. With these, then, that attempt the subjugation not only of their neighbours, but of estates far from them, why should we not try the utmost of our fortune? We have for example the estate that the Euboeans over against us, and also the greatest part of the rest of Greece, do live in under them. And you must know that though others fight with their neighbours about the bounds of their territories, we, if we be vanquished, shall have but one bound amongst us all, so that we shall no more quarrel about limits.
For if they enter, they will take all our several states into their own possession by force. So much more dangerous is the neighbourhood of the Athenians than of other people. And such as upon confidence in their strength invade their neighbours, as the Athenians now do, use to be bold in warring on those that sit still, defending themselves only in their own territories; whereas they be less urgent to those that are ready to meet them without their own limits, or [also] to begin the war when opportunity serveth.
We have experience hereof in these same men. For after we had overcome them at Coroneia, at what time through our own sedition they held our country in subjection, we established a great security in Boeotia, which lasted till this present.
Remembering which, we ought now, the elder sort to imitate our former acts there, and the younger sort, who are the children of those valiant fathers, to endeavour not to disgrace the virtue of their houses; but rather with confidence that the god, whose temple fortified they unlawfully dwell in, will be with us, the sacrifices we offered him appearing fair, to march against them, and let them see that though they may gain what they covet when they invade such as will not fight, yet men that have the generosity to hold their own in liberty by battle, and not invade the state of another unjustly, will never let them go away unfoughten.
Pagondas with this exhortation persuaded the Boeotians to march against the Athenians, and making them rise led them speedily on, for it was drawing towards night. And when he was near to their army, in a place from whence by the interposition of a hill they saw not each other, making a stand he put his army into order and prepared to give battle.
When it was told Hippocrates, who was then at Delium, that the Boeotians were marching after them, he sends presently to the army, commanding them to be put in array. And not long after he came himself, having left some three hundred horse about Delium, both for a guard to the place if it should be assaulted, and withal to watch an opportunity to come upon the Boeotians when they were in fight.
But for these, the Boeotians appointed some forces purposely to attend them. And when all was as it should be, they showed themselves from the top of the hill, where they sat down with their arms in the same order they were to fight in, being about seven thousand men of arms, of light-armed soldiers above ten thousand, a thousand horsemen, and five hundred targetiers.
Their right wing consisting of the Thebans, and their partakers; in the middle battle were the Haliartians, Coronaeans, Copaeans, and the rest that dwell about the lake; in the left were the Thespians, Tanagraeans, and Orchomenians. The horsemen and light-armed soldiers were placed on either wing. The Thebans were ordered by twentyfive in file; but the rest, every one as it fell out.
This was the preparation and order of the Boeotians.
The Athenian men of arms, in number no fewer than the enemy, were ordered by eight in file throughout; their horse they placed on either wing. But for light-armed soldiers, armed as was fit, there were none; nor was there any in the city. Those that went out followed the camp for the most part without arms, as being a general expedition both of citizens and strangers; and after they once began to make homeward, there stayed few behind.
When they were now in their order and ready to join battle, Hippocrates, the general, came into the army of the Athenians and encouraged them, speaking to this effect:
Men of Athens, my exhortation shall be short, but with valiant men it hath as much force as a longer, and is for a remembrance rather than a command.
Let no man think, because it is in the territory of another, that we therefore precipitate ourselves into a great danger that did not concern us. For in the territory of these men, you fight for your own. If we get the victory, the Peloponnesians will never invade our territories again, for want of the Boeotian horsemen. So that in one battle you shall both gain this territory and free your own.