Kitap 6
Falling on them therefore, under these circumstances, in considerable disorder, and being defeated in an engagement at Epipolae, the Syracusans returned into the city, Diomilus being killed, and about three hundred of the rest.
After this, the Athenians having erected a trophy, and restored to the Syracusans their dead under a truce, came down the next day to the city itself; but when they did not come out against them, they returned, and built a fort on Labdalum, on the highest point of the cliffs of Epiolae, looking towards Megara, to be a magazine for their baggage and treasures, whenever they advanced either to fight or to work at the wall.
Not long after, there came to them from Segesta three hundred cavalry, and about a hundred from the Sicels, Naxians, and some others, while there were already two hundred and fifty from Athens, for whom they had received some horses from the Segestans and Catanaeans, and had bought others; so that altogether a body of six hundred and fifty cavalry was mustered.
Having established a garrison in Labdalum, the Athenians advanced to Syca, where they posted themselves. and built with all speed ἐτειχισαν τὸν κύκλον] To avoid appearing to assert that the whole line of circumvallation was at once completed, I have rendered κύκλον in this passage by one of the terms applied to it in Arnold's note; where he says that ὁ κύκλος which is spoken of as finished, was on the one hand a part of the circumvallation, but was also a complete work in itself,—something, that is, of an entrenched camp, which was to be the point of junction and key of the two lines which were to run respectively to the sea by Trogilus, and to the great harbour, etc. the central point of their wall of circumvallation. They struck the Syracusans with consternation by the rapidity of their building; and consequently they resolved to march out against them and give them battle, and not allow them to proceed with the work.
When they were now being drawn up in battle-array against each other, the Syracusan generals, perceiving that their forces were broken, and did not easily fall into line, led them back again into the city, excepting some part of their cavalry.
These, staying behind, prevented the Athenians from carrying their stones, or dispersing to any great distance; until We learn from Herodotus, VI. 111. 2, that the soldiers belonging to the different tribes at Athens, were not mixed together in an engagement, but were kept separate; an arrangement which appears from ch. 100. 1, to have been observed by the Syracusans also. One tribe of the Athenian heavy-armed, with all their cavalry, charged and routed the Syracusan horse, killed some of them, and erected a trophy for this cavalry action.
The next day some of the Athenians were building the wall to the north of the central point, while others were collecting stones and timber, and laying them along the line, to the point called Trogilus; keeping in the direction in which their wall of circumvallation would be completed in the shortest distance from the great harbour to the sea.
The Syracusans meanwhile, at the suggestion of Hermocrates, more than of their other generals, were no longer disposed to run the risk of general actions with the Athenians, but thought it better to build a counterwall in the direction in which they intended to carry their works; thinking that if they anticipated them with this, there would be an interruption to their lines; and that, if at that time they should come to oppose them, they themselves would send a part of their forces against them, and have time to occupy the approaches beforehand with their palisade, while the Athenians would cease from their work, and all turn their attention to them.
They went out, therefore, and proceeded to build, beginning from their city, and carrying a cross wall below the Athenian lines, cutting down the olives of the sacred ground, and erecting wooden towers.
The ships of the Athenians had not yet sailed round from Thapsus into the great harbour, but the Syracusans still commanded the sea-shore, and the Athenians conveyed their provisions from Thapsus by land.
When the Syracusans thought that those parts of their counter-work which had been completed by means of palisades and masonry were sufficient, and when the Athenians did not come out to stop them, as they feared that the enemy would more easily contend with them when they were divided, and at the same time were hurrying to complete their own wall of circumvallation; the Syracusans, having left one tribe to guard the building, returned into the city. The Athenians, in the mean time, destroyed their pipes which ran under ground into the city, carrying water for drinking; and having watched when the rest of the Syracusans were in their tents at mid-day, and some of them had even gone away into the city, while those in ἐν τῷ σταυρώματι] Apparently a stockade in advance of the cross wall, ὑποτείχισμα, and covering the approach to it. —Arnold. the stockade were keeping but a careless guard, they appointed three hundred picked men of themselves, and a chosen body of the light troops, armed for the purpose, to run suddenly at full speed to the counter-work, while the rest of the army advanced in two divisions, one with one of the generals to the city, in case they should come to the rescue, the other with the other general to the stockade near the postern.
Accordingly the three hundred assaulted and took the stockade, the guard evacuating it, and taking refuge in the outworks around Temenites. Their pursuers also burst in with them, but, after getting in, were forcibly driven out again by the Syracusans, and some few of the Argives and Athenians were slain there.
And now the whole army having returned, threw down the wall, tore up the palisades, transferred the pales to their own lines, and erected a trophy.
The next day the Athenians, setting out from their lines, began to build at the cliffs over the marsh, which on this side of Epipolae looks towards the great harbour, and in which direction their wall of circumvallation would be finished in the shortest distance by their going down over the plain and the marsh to the harbour.
The Syracusans meanwhile went out, and on their part also began again to interrupt the line by a palisade, commencing from the city across the middle of the marsh;
and at the same time dug a ditch parallel with it, that it might not be possible for the Athenians to carry their wall of circumvallation as far as the sea. They, after their work at the cliff was completed, again assaulted the palisade and ditch of the Syracusans. They had ordered their fleet to sail round from Thapsus to the great harbour of Syracuse, while they themselves descended at dawn from Epipolae into the plain, and laying doors and planks over the marsh, where Literally, where it was muddy and most firm the mud was most firm, crossed it upon them, and in the morning carried the palisade, excepting a small part of it, and the ditch, and afterwards the remaining part.
On this occasion a battle was fought, in which the Athenians were victorious, those of the Syracusans posted on the right wing flying to the city, those on the left, to the river. Wishing to intercept the passage of these, the three hundred chosen troops of the Atheniaes pressed on at full speed to the bridge;
but the Syracusans were alarmed, and, as the greater part of their forces were there, closed on these three hundred, routed them, and drove them in on the right wing of the Athenians. By their charge the tribe posted first on the wing was also thrown into panic;
on observing which, Lamachus came to their assistance from their left, with a few archers and the Argives, and having crossed a ditch in advance, and being cut off from the rest, with only a few who had crossed with him, was killed with five or six of his men. These the Syracusans immediately snatched up, and had time to get over the river into a place of security; while their own troops retreated, as the rest of the Athenian force was now coming against them.
Meanwhile, those of them who had at first fled for refuge to their city, when they saw what was going on, resumed their courage, and coming thence, themselves drew up against the Athenians in front of them, and sent a part of their numbers to the lines on Epipolae, thinking they should take them while unguarded.
And they did, indeed, take and destroy their τὸ δεκάπλεθρον προτείχισμα.] Arnold supposes this to have been a sort of redoubt, or covering outwork, raised before that part of the line on which the Athenians were at work, to protect the workmen, and to cover the stones, timber, cranes, scaffoldings, and other things used for the building. But the expression seems more suitable for a stationary outwork, than for one which, according to this description, would be moved about as the building progressed; and the last passage in which the building operations are mentioned, transfers them from Epipolae to the cliff, which formed the southern extremity of the high ground above the valley of the Anapus. (See ch. 101. 1, with Arnold's note on it.) It would therefore be better, perhaps, to consider the outwork in question to have been intended as an additional defence for the central point of the lines, τὸν κύκλον in which Nicias might naturally have been left, as the place of greatest security. The engines and timber which were not required for immediate use, might have been kept near the redoubt for the same reason. outwork of a thousand feet in length, but the lines themselves Nicias prevented their taking, as he happened to have been left behind in them through illness. He ordered the servants to set fire to the engines, and all the timber that had been thrown down in front of the wall; as he knew that for want of men they could not escape in any other way.
And such was the result; for the Syracusans no longer came against them on account of the fire, but withdrew again. Indeed, by this time succours had gone up to the lines from the Athenians below, who had repulsed the enemy in that part; and at the same time their ships from Thapsus were sailing, as they had been ordered, into the great harbour.
At the sight of this, those on the heights retreated with all speed, and the whole army of the Syracusans retired into the city, thinking that they would no longer be able with their present force to prevent the building of the wall down to the sea.
After this, the Athenians erected a trophy, restoring their dead to the Syracusans under a truce, and receiving back those who had fallen with Lamachus, as well as himself. And as they now had with them their whole force, both naval and military, they began from Epipolae and the cliffs, and circumvallated the Syracusans down to the sea with a double wall.
Provisions were now brought for the armament from all parts of Italy. Many of the Sicels too, who before were looking to see how things went, came as allies to the Athenians; as did also three fifty-oared galleys from Tyrrhenia. And every thing else was prospering, so as to give them hope.
For the Syracusans no longer thought that they could escape by military measures, since no assistance had reached them from the Peloponnese; but were proposing terms of capitulation, both among themselves and to Nicias: for he alone held the command since the death of Lamachus.
No decision, indeed, was come to; but, as was natural for men who were in difficulties, and besieged more closely than before, many discussions were held with him, and still more in the city. For they also entertained some suspicion of one another, in consequence of their present misfortunes, and deposed the generals under whose command these things had befallen them—thinking that it was either through their bad fortune, or treason, that they were suffering—and chose others in their stead, namely, Heraclides, Eucles, and Tellias.
In the mean time, Gylippus, the Lacedaemonian, and the ships from Corinth, were now off Leucas, wishing to come to the aid of Sicily with all speed. When therefore tidings were carried to them of an alarming nature, and all concurring in the same falsehood, namely, that Syracuse was by this time entirely circumvallated, Gylippus had no longer any hope of Sicily; but wishing to save Italy, he himself, and Pythen the Corinthian, with two Laconian and two Corinthian ships, crossed the Ionian Sea as quickly as possible to Tarentum; while the Corinthians having manned, in addition to their own ten, two Leucadian and three Ambracian vessels, were to sail after them.
Gylippus, then, having first gone on an embassy from Tarentum to Thuria, on the ground of his father's having formerly been presented with the franchise there, and not being able to bring them over, weighed anchor, and coasted along Italy. Having been caught, when opposite the Terinaean gulf, by a wind which in this quarter blows violently and steadily from the north, he was carried out to sea, and after enduring exceedingly foul weather, again made Tarentum, and there drew up and refitted such of his ships as had suffered from the tempest.
Nicias on hearing of his approach, despised the number of his ships, (as had been the feeling of the Thurians also,) and thought that they were sailing more like a piratical armament than any thing else; and so at present he took no precautions against him.
About the same period of this summer, the Lacedaemonians invaded Argos, themselves and their allies, and ravaged the greater part of the country. The Athenians went to the assistance of the Argives with thirty ships; and it was these that broke their treaty with the Lacedaemonians in a most decisive manner.
For before this they only joined in hostilities with the Argives and Mantineans by plundering excursions from Pylus, and by landing on the other coasts around the Peloponnese, rather than on the Laconian; and though the Argives often desired them only to touch at Laconia with their heavy-armed, and to withdraw after devastating it with them ever so little, they would not do it. But at that time, having landed under the command of Pythodorus, Laespodias, and Demaratus, at Epidaurus Limera, Prasiae, and other places, they ravaged part of the territory, and so rendered the excuse of the Lacedaemonians more plausible now for defending themselves against the Athenians.
After the Athenians had with their fleet withdrawn from Argos, and the Lacedaemonians also, the Argives having made an irruption into the Phiasian territory, ravaged part of their land, killed some of their men, and returned home.