Kitap 5
The summer following, the truce for a year, which was to last till the Pythian holidays, expired. During this truce, the Athenians removed the Delians out of Delos, because [though they were consecrated, yet] for a certain crime committed of old they esteemed them polluted persons; because also they thought there wanted this part to make perfect the purgation of the island, in the purging whereof, as I declared before, they thought they did well to take up the sepulchres of the dead. These Delians seated themselves afterwards, every one as he came, in Adramyttium in Asia, a town given unto them by Pharnaces.
After the truce was expired, Cleon prevailed with the Athenians to be sent out with a fleet against the cities lying upon Thrace. He had with him of Athenians twelve hundred men of arms and three hundred horsemen, of confederates more, and thirty galleys.
And first arriving at Scione, which was yet besieged, he took aboard some men of arms of those that kept the siege and sailed into the haven of the Colophonians, not far distant from the city of Torone.
And there, having heard by fugitives that Brasidas was not in Torone nor those within sufficient to give him battle, he marched with his army to the city and sent ten of his galleys about into the haven.
And first he came to the new wall, which Brasidas had raised about the city to take in the suburbs, making a breach in the old wall that the whole might be one city.
And Pasitelidas, a Lacedaemonian, captain of the town, with the garrison there present came to the defence and fought with the Athenians that assaulted it. But being oppressed, and the galleys which were before sent about being by this time come into the haven, Pasitelidas was afraid lest those galleys should take the town, unfurnished of defendants, before he could get back, and that the Athenians on the other side should win the wall and he be intercepted between them both;
and thereupon abandoned the wall and ran back into the city. But the Athenians that were in the galleys, having taken the town before he came, and the land-army following in after him without resistance and entering the city by the breach of the old wall, slew some of the Peloponnesians and Toronaeans on the place;
and some others, amongst whom was the captain Pasitelidas, they took alive.
Brasidas was now coming with aid towards Torone, but, advertised by the way that it was already lost, went back again, being about forty furlongs short of preventing it. Cleon and the Athenians erected two trophies, one at the haven, another at the wall. The women and children of the Toronaeans they made slaves; but the men of Torone and the Peloponnesians and such Chalcideans as were amongst them, in all about seven hundred, they sent away prisoners to Athens. The Peloponnesians were afterwards at the making of the peace dismissed; the rest were redeemed by the Olynthians by exchange of man for man.
About the same time the Boeotians took Panactum, a fort of the Athenians standing in their confines, by treason.
Cleon, after he had settled the garrison in Torone, went thence by sea about the mountain Athos [to make war] against Amphipolis.
About the same time Phaeax the son of Erasistratus, who with two others was sent ambassador into Italy and Sicily, departed from Athens with two galleys.
For the Leontines, after the Athenians upon the making of the peace were gone out of Sicily, received many strangers into the freedom of their city;
and the commons had a purpose also to have made division of the land. But the great men, perceiving it, called in the Syracusians and drave the commons out; and they wandered up and down, every one as he chanced;
and the great men, upon conditions agreed on with the Syracusians, abandoning and deserting that city, went to dwell with the privilege of free citizens in Syracuse. After this again, some of them upon dislike relinquished Syracuse and seized on Phoceae, a certain part of the city of the Leontines, and upon Bricinniae, a castle in the Leontine territory. Thither also came unto them most of the commons that had before been driven out, and settling themselves, made war from those places of strength.
Upon intelligence hereof the Athenians sent Phaeax thither to persuade their confederates there and, if they could, all the Sicilians jointly to make war upon the Syracusians, that were now beginning to grow great, to try if they might thereby preserve the common people of the Leontines.
Phaeax arriving prevailed with the Camarinaeans and Agrigentines; but the business finding a stop at Gela, he went unto no more, as conceiving he should not be able to persuade them. So he returned through the cities of the Siculi unto Catana, having been at Bricinniae by the way and there encouraged them to hold out; and from Catana he set sail and departed.
In his voyage to Sicily, both going and coming, he dealt as he went by with sundry cities also of Italy to enter into friendship with the Athenians. He also lighted on those Locrians which having dwelt once in Messana were afterwards driven out again, being the same men which, after the peace in Sicily, upon a sedition in Messana, wherein one of the factions called in the Locrians, had been then sent to inhabit there, [and now were sent away again]; for the Locrians held Messana for a while.
Phaeax, therefore, chancing to meet with these as they were going to their own city, did them no hurt, because the Locrians had been in speech with him about an agreement with the Athenians.
For when the Sicilians made a general peace, these only of all the confederates refused to make any peace at all with the Athenians. Nor indeed would they have done it now but that they were constrained thereunto by the war they had with the Itoneans and Melaeans, their own colonies and borderers. And Phaeax after this returned to Athens.
Cleon, who was now gone from Torone and come about to Amphipolis, making Eion the seat of the war, assaulted the city of Stageirus, a colony of the Andrians, but could not take it; but Galepsus, a colony of the Thasians, he took by assault.
And having sent ambassadors to Perdiccas to will him to come to him with his forces, according to the league, and other ambassadors into Thrace unto Polles, king of the Odomantians, to take up as many mercenary Thracians as he could, he lay still in Eion to expect their coming.
Brasidas upon notice hereof, sat down over against him at Cerdylium. This is a place belonging to the Argilians, standing high and beyond the river, not far from Amphipolis, and from whence he might discern all that was about him. So that Cleon could not but be seen if he should rise with his army to go against Amphipolis, which he expected he would do, and that in contempt of his small number he would go up with the forces he had then present.
Withal he furnished himself with fifteen hundred mercenary Thracians, and took unto him all his Edonians, both horsemen and targetiers. He had also of Myrcinians and Chalcideans a thousand targetiers, besides them in Amphipolis.
But for men of arms, his whole number was at the most two thousand, and of Grecian horsemen three hundred. With fifteen hundred of these came Brasidas and sat down at Cerdylium; the rest stood ready ordered with Clearidas, their captain, within Amphipolis.
Cleon for a while lay still, but was afterwards forced to do as was expected by Brasidas.
For the soldiers being angry with their stay there, and recounting with themselves what a command his would be, and with what ignorance and cowardice against what skill and boldness of the other, and how they came forth with him against their wills, he perceived their muttering, and being unwilling to offend them with so long a stay in one place, dislodged and led them forward.
And he took the same course there, which having succeeded well before at Pylus gave him cause to think himself to have some judgment. For he thought not that any body would come forth to give him battle, and gave out he went up principally to see the place, and stayed for greater forces, not to secure him in case he should be compelled to fight, but that he might therewith environ the city on all sides at once, and in that manner take it by force.
So he went up and set his army down on a strong hill before Amphipolis, standing himself to view the fens of the river Strymon and the situation of the city towards Thrace;
and thought he could have retired again at his pleasure, without battle. For neither did any man appear upon the walls nor come out of the gates, which were all fast shut. Insomuch as he thought he had committed an error in coming without engines, because he thought he might by such means have won the city, as being without defendants.
Brasidas, as soon as he saw the Athenians remove, came down also from Cerdylium and put himself into Amphipolis.
He would not suffer them to make any sally nor to face the Athenians in order of battle, mistrusting his own forces, which he thought inferior, not in number (for they were in a manner equal) but in worth (for such Athenians as were there were pure, and the Lemnians and Imbrians which were amongst them were of the very ablest); but prepared to set upon them by a wile.
For if he should have showed to the enemy both his number and their armour, such as for the present they were forced to use, he thought that thereby he should not so soon get the victory as by keeping them out of sight and out of their contempt till the very point.
Wherefore choosing to himself a hundred and fifty men of arms and committing the charge of the rest to Clearidas, he resolved to set suddenly upon them before they should retire, as not expecting to take them so alone another time if their succours chanced to arrive. And when he had called his soldiers together to encourage them and to make known unto them his design, he said as followeth:
Men of Peloponnesus, as for your country, how by valour it hath ever retained her liberty, and that being Dorians you are now to fight against Ionians, of whom you were ever wont to get the victory, let it suffice that I have touched it thus briefly.
But in what manner I intend to charge, that I am now to inform you of, lest the venturing by few at once, and not all together, should seem to proceed from weakness and so dishearten you.
I do conjecture that it was in contempt of us, and as not expecting to be fought withal, that the enemy both came up to this place, and that they have now betaken themselves carelessly and out of order to view the country.
But he that best observing such errors in his enemies shall also to his strength give the onset, not always openly and in ranged battle, but as is best for his present advantage, shall for the most part attain his purpose.
And these wiles carry with them the greatest glory of all, by which, deceiving most the enemy, a man doth most benefit his friends.
Therefore whilst they are secure without preparation, and intend, for aught I see, to steal away rather than to stay, I say, in this their looseness of resolution, and before they put their minds in order, I for my part with those I have chosen will, if I can, before they get away fall in upon the midst of their army running.