Kitap 6
Not long afterwards there came from Egesta three hundred horsemen, and from the Sicels, Naxians, and some others about one hundred; and the Athenians had already two hundred and fifty, for whom they received some horses from the Egestaeans and Catanaeans and purchased others; so that altogether six hundred and fifty cavalry were mustered.
Placing a garrison at Labdalum, the Athenians advanced to Syce, where they took position and built the round fortSyke (ie. a place set with fig-trees; see Steph. s. v συκαί)is probably to be located in the middle of the plateau of Epipolae. Here the Athenians built first a circular fort, which later was the starting-point for the wall of circumvallation extending northward towards Trogilus and southward to the Great Harbour. See Map, and also Holm ii. 387 and Freeman, Sic. iii. 662 ff. with all speed. The Syracusans were struck with consternation by the rapidity of their building; and they went out against them, determined to give battle and not look on idly.
And when they were already drawing up for the conflict the generals of the Syracusans, seeing that their own army had become disordered and did not readily get into line, led them back to the city, all save a part of the cavalry. These remained behind and tried to prevent the Athenians from bringing stones and scattering to any great distance.
But one tribalφυλή is here used for τάξις, the term being borrowed from the civil classification. Each of the ten tribes furnished a division (τάξις). division of the Athenian hoplites, and with these all their cavalry, attacked and routed the Syracusan cavalry, killed some, and set up a trophy of the cavalry fight.
On the next day some of the Athenians proceeded to build the wall to the north of the round fort, while others brought together stones and wood and began to lay these down along the line towards the place called Trogilus, in which direction the line of circumvallation would be shortest from the Great Harbour to the outer sea.
But the Syracusans, at the suggestion of their generals, and especially of Hermocrates, were no longer inclined to risk pitched battles with their whole force against the Athenians. It seemed better to build a wall across the line where the Athenians were going to bring their wall, so that if they got ahead of them the Athenians would be blocked off, and they decided at the same time, if the Athenians should attack them while at this work, to send a part of the army against them;
and they expected that they would get ahead of the Athenians in occupying the approaches with their stockades, and that they would cease from their work and all turn against them. Accordingly they went out and proceeded to build, starting from the city and carrying a cross-wall below the round fort of the Athenians, chopping down the olive-trees of the precinct and setting up wooden towers.
The Athenian ships had not yet sailed round from Thapsus into the Great Harbour, but the Syracusans were still masters of the parts about the sea, and the Athenians brought their supplies from Thapsus by land.
When it seemed to the Syracusans that enough of their counter-wall had been constructed with stone-work and stockade,The ὑποτείχισμα seems to have consisted partly of palisading and partly of stone-work. and the Athenians did not come to hinder them—for they feared that the enemy might more easily deal with them if their forces were divided, and at the same time they were pushing on their own wall of circumvallation—leaving one division as a guard for their cross-wall, they withdrew to the city. Meanwhile the Athenians destroyed their pipes which ran underground into the city and supplied it with drinking-water. Then watching when most of the Syracusans were in their tents at midday—some of them having even gone to their homes in the city—and when those at the stockade were guarding the place carelessly, they stationed in front three hundred picked Athenians and a chosen body of the light-armed troops in heavy armour to go at a run suddenly against the counter-wall; while the rest of the army advanced in two divisions, one with one general against the city, in case they should come to the rescue, the other with the other general to that part of the stockade which is by the postern gate.
The three hundred attacked and took the stockade, the guards leaving it and fleeing to the outwork around Temenites.cf. 6.75.1. And their pursuers burst in with them; but these, after getting in, were forced out again by the Syracusans, some of the Argives and a few of the Athenians being slain there.
Then the whole army withdrew and pulled down the counter-wall and tore up the stockade, bringing the stakes over to their own lines, and set up a trophy.
The next day the Athenians, starting from the round fort, began to fortify the bluff which is above the marsh,The Lysimeleia. where on this side of Epipolae it looks toward the Great Harbour, and where they would find the line of circumvallation shortest as they came down through the level ground and the marsh to the harbour.
The Syracusans meanwhile also went out and proceeded to build another stockade, starting from the city, through the middle of the marsh;
and they dug at the same time a ditch alongside, that it might not be possible for the Athenians to complete their wall to the sea. But the latter, when their wall to the bluff was finished, again attacked the stockade and ditch of the Syracusans, having ordered their ships to sail around from Thapsus into the Great Harbour at Syracuse and themselves gone down about daybreak from Epipolae to the level ground. Laying down doors and planks through the marsh where the soil was clayey and firmest and crossing over on these, they took at daylight the ditch, and all but a little of the stockade, and later the remaining part.
A battle occurred also, in which the Athenians were victorious, those of the Syracusans on the right wing fleeing to the city, those on the left along the river. Wishing to cut off the latter from the crossing, the three hundred picked men of the Athenians pushed on at a run to the bridge.
But the Syracusans became alarmed, and, as most of their cavalry was there, closed with these three hundred, routed them, and attacked the right wing of the Athenians. On their charge the first division of this wing also became involved in the panic.
And Lamachus, seeing this, came to their aid from his own place on the left wing, with a few bowmen and the Argives, whom he took with him; and advancing across a ditch and being cut off with a few of those who had crossed with him, he was killed himself and five or six of his followers. These the Syracusans at once hastily snatched up and succeeded in carrying over the river to safety, themselves retreating when the rest of the Athenian army began now to advance.
Meanwhile those of them who had fled at first to the city, seeing what was going on, themselves took courage, and coming back from the city drew up against the Athenians in front of them; and they sent a part of their number against the round fort on Epipolae, thinking that they would find it without defenders and be able to take it.
And they did indeed take and demolish their outwork of one thousand feet in length, but the round fort itself Nicias prevented their taking; for he happened to have been left behind there on account of illness. He ordered the attendants to set fire to the engines and wood that had been thrown down before the wall, seeing that they would be unable through lack of men to be saved in any other way.
And it turned out so; for the Syracusans, coming no nearer because of the fire, now retreated. And, besides, reinforcements were already coming up to the round fort from the Athenians below, who had chased away the enemy there, and their ships at the same time were sailing down, as they had been ordered, from Thapsus into the Great Harbour.
Seeing these things, the men on the heights and the main army of the Syracusans hastily withdrew into the city, thinking that with the force they then had at their disposal they could no longer prevent the building of the wall to the sea.
After this the Athenians set up a trophy and restored their dead to the Syracusans under truce, themselves getting back the bodies of Lamachus and his men. The whole of their armament being now present, both fleet and land-force, starting from the bluff of Epipolae they proceeded to cut off the Syracusans by a double wall down to the sea.
Provisions were coming in for the army from all quarters of Italy. And there came also as allies to the Athenians many of the Sicels, who before had been hesitating, and from Tyrrhenia three fifty-oared galleys. And other matters were progressing according to their hopes.
For the Syracusans no longer thought they could win at war, as no aid had come to them even from the Peloponnesus; and indeed they were discussing terms of agreement, not only among themselves, but even with Nicias, who now since the death of Lamachus had sole command.
No decision was reached; but, as is natural when men are in perplexity and more straitly besieged than before, many proposals were made to him, and still more were discussed in the city. For under their present evils they had some suspicion even of one another; and the generals under whose lead these things had happened were deposed, on the ground that their disasters were due to their ill-luck or treachery, and in their stead were chosen Heracleides, Eucles, and Tellias.
Meanwhile Gylippus the Lacedaemonian and the ships from Corinthcf. 6.93.3. were already at Leucas, proposing to bring aid to Sicily in all haste. As the reports that were coming to them were alarming and all to the same false purport, that Syracuse had already been completely walled off, Gylippus no longer had any hope of Sicily, but wishing to save Italy, he himself and Pythen the Corinthian, with two Laconian vessels and two Corinthian, crossed the Ionian gulf to Tarentum as quickly as possible; while the Corinthians, after manning, in addition to their own ten, two Leucadian and three Ambracian ships, were to sail later.
From Tarentum, Gylippus, after first going on a mission to Thuria, on account of his father having been once a citizen there,Or, reading, with BH, καὶ τὴν τοῦ πατρὸς ἀναιεωσάμενος, “and having revived the sometime citizenship of his father.” and failing to win them over, weighed anchor and sailed along the coast of Italy. Caught by a wind, which settling in the north blows violently in that region, he was carried out to sea, and then after a most violent storm again reached Tarentum; and there hauling ashore all of his ships that had suffered from the storm he set to repairing them.
But Nicias, although he heard that he was sailing up, despised the small number of his ships, just as the Thurians had done, and thinking they were coming equipped rather as privateers than as men-of-war, he took as yet no precautions.
About the same time in this summer, the Lacedaemonians and their allies invaded Argos and ravaged most of the country. And the Athenians brought succour to the Argives with thirty ships, an act which violated their treaty with the Lacedaemonians in the most overt manner.
For before this they waged the war, in cooperation with the Argives and Mantineans, by predatory excursions from Pylos and by making landings round the rest of the Peloponnesus rather than in Laconia; and although the Argives frequently urged them only to make a landing with arms on Laconian territory, devastate in concert with them even the least part, and then go away, they refused. But at this time, under the command of Pythodorus, Laespodias, and Demaratus, they landed at Epidaurus Limera, Prasiae, and other places, and laid waste some of their territory, and so gave the Lacedaemonians from now on a more plausible excuse for defending themselves against the Athenians.
After the Athenians had withdrawn from Argos with their ships, and the Lacedaemonians also had retired, the Argives made an incursion into Phliasia, ravaging part of their land and killing some of the inhabitants, and then returned home.