Kitap 6
But the Athenians intending to begin the battle, Nicias went up and down the army, from one nation to another, to whom and to all in general he spake to this effect:
What need I, sirs, to make a long exhortation when this battle is the thing for which we all came hither? For in my opinion, the present preparation is more able to give you encouragement than any oration how well soever made, if with a weak army.
For where we are together, Argives, Mantineans, Athenians, and the best of the islanders, how can we choose among so many and good confederates, but conceive great hope of the victory; especially against tag and rag, and not chosen men, as we are ourselves, and against Sicilians, who though they contemn us, cannot stand against us, their skill not being answerable to their courage?
It must be remembered also that we be far from our own and not near to any amicable territory but such as we shall acquire by the sword. My exhortation to you, I am certain, is contrary to that of the enemy. For they say to theirs, 'You are to fight for your country.' I say to you, You are to fight out of your country, where you must either get the victory, or not easily get away; for many horsemen will be upon us.
Remember therefore every man his own worth, and charge valiantly; and think the present necessity and strait we are in to be more formidable than the enemy.
Nicias, having thus exhorted the army, led it presently to the charge. The Syracusians expected not to have fought at that instant; and the city being near, some of them were gone away; and some for haste came in running; and though late, yet every one, as he came, put himself in where was the greatest number. For they wanted neither willingness nor courage, either in this or any other battle, being no less valiant, so far forth as they had experience, than the Athenians; but the want of this made them, even against their wills, to abate also somewhat of their courage. Nevertheless though they thought not the Athenians would have begun the battle, and were thereby constrained to fight upon a sudden, yet they resumed their arms and came presently forward to the encounter.
And first, the casters of stones and slingers and archers of either side skirmished in the midst between the armies, mutually chasing each other, as amongst the light-armed was not unlikely. After this, the soothsayers brought forth their sacrifices according to the law of the place; and the trumpets instigated the men of arms to the battle.
And they came on to fight, the Syracusians for their country and their lives for the present, and for their liberty in the future; on the other side, the Athenians to win the country of another and make it their own and not to weaken their own by being vanquished; the Argives and other free confederates, to help the Athenians to conquer the country they came against and to return to their own with victory; and their subject confederates came also on with great courage, principally for their better safety, as desperate if they overcame not, and withal upon the by, that by helping the Athenians to subdue the country of another, their own subjection might be the easier.
After they were come to hand-strokes, they fought long on both sides. But in the meantime there happened some claps of thunder and flashes of lightning together with a great shower of rain; insomuch as it added to the fear of the Syracusians, that were now fighting their first battle and not familiar with the wars; whereas to the other side that had more experience, the season of the year seemed to expound that accident;
and their greatest fear proceeded from the so long resistance of their enemies, in that they were not all this while overcome. When the Argives first had made the left wing of the Syracusians to give ground, and after them the Athenians had also done the like to those that were arranged against them, then the rest of the Syracusian army was presently broken and put to flight.
But the Athenians pursued them not far, because the Syracusian horsemen, being many and unvanquished, whensoever any men of arms advanced far from the body of the army, charged upon them and still drave them in again;
but having followed as far as safely they might in great troops, they retired again and erected a trophy. The Syracusians, having rallied themselves in the Helorine way and recovered their order as well as they could for that time, sent a guard into Olympieium, lest the Athenians should take the treasure there, and returned with the rest of the army into the city.
The Athenians went not to assault the temple, but gathering together their dead, laid them upon the funeral fire, and stayed that night upon the place. The next day they gave truce to the Syracusians to take up their dead, of whom and of their confederates were slain about two hundred and sixty; and gathered up the bones of their own. Of the Athenians and their confederates there died about fifty. And thus, having rifled the bodies of their dead enemies, they returned to Catana.
For it was now winter; and to make war there, they thought it yet unpossible before they had sent for horsemen to Athens and levied other amongst their confederates there in Sicily, to the end they might not be altogether over-mastered in horse; and before they had also both levied money there and received more from Athens and made league with certain cities, which they hoped after this battle would the more easily hearken thereunto, and before they had likewise provided themselves of victuals and other things necessary, as intending the next spring to undertake Syracuse again.
With this mind they went to winter at Naxos and Catana. The Syracusians, after they had buried their dead, called an assembly;
and Hermocrates, the son of Hermon, a man not otherwise second to any in wisdom, and in war both able for his experience and eminent for his valour, standing forth gave them encouragement and would not suffer them to be dismayed with that which had happened. Their courage, he said, was not overcome, though their want of order had done them hurt.
And yet in that they were not so far inferior as it was likely they would have been, especially being (as one may say) homebred artificers, against the most experienced in the war of all the Grecians.
That they had also been hurt by the number of their generals and commanders—for there were fifteen that commanded in chief—and by the many supernumerary soldiers under no command at all. Whereas if they would make but a few and skilful leaders, and prepare armour this winter for such as want it, to increase as much as might be the number of their men of arms, and compel them in other things to the exercise of discipline, in all reason they were to have the better of the enemy. For valour they had already, and to keep their order would be learnt by practice; and both of these would still grow greater: skill, by practising with danger; and their courage would grow bolder of itself, upon the confidence of skill.
And for their generals, they ought to choose them few and absolute, and to take an oath unto them to let them lead the army wheresoever they thought best. For by this means, both the things that require secrecy would the better be concealed and all things would be put in readiness with order and less tergiversation.
The Syracusians, when they had heard him, decreed all that he advised and elected three generals, him, Heracleides, the son of Lysimachus, and Sicanus, the son of Exekestus.
They sent also ambassadors to Corinth and Lacedaemon, as well to obtain a league with them as also to persuade the Lacedaemonians to make a hotter war against the Athenians and to declare themselves in the quarrel of the Syracusians, thereby either to withdraw them from Sicily or to make them the less able to send supply to their army which was there already.
The Athenian army at Catana sailed presently to Messana to receive it by treason of some within; but the plot came not to effect. For Alcibiades, when he was sent for from his charge, being resolved to fly and knowing what was to be done, discovered the same to the friends of the Syracusians in Messana, who with those of their faction slew such as were accused, and being armed upon occasion of the sedition, obtained to have the Athenians kept out.
And the Athenians, after thirteen days' stay, troubled with tempestuous weather, provision also failing and nothing succeeding, returned again to Naxos; and having fortified their camp with a pallisado, they wintered there, and dispatched a galley to Athens for money and horsemen to be with them early in the spring.
The Syracusians this winter raised a wall before their city, all the length of the side towards Epipolae, including Temenites, to the end, if they chanced to be beaten, they might not be so easily enclosed as when they were in a narrower compass. And they put a guard into Megara and another into Olympieium, and made pallisadoes on the seaside at all the places of landing.
And knowing that the Athenians wintered at Naxos, they marched with all the power of the city unto Catana, and after they had wasted the territory and burnt the cabins and camp where the Athenians had lodged before, returned home.
And having heard that the Athenians had sent ambassadors to Camarina, according to a league made before in the time of Laches, to try if they could win them to their side, they also sent ambassadors to oppose it. For they suspected that the Camarinaeans had sent those succours in the former battle with no great good will; and that now they would take part with them no longer, seeing the Athenians had the better of the day, but would rather join with the Athenians upon the former league.
Hermocrates, therefore, and others being come to Camarina from the Syracusians, and Euphemus and others from the Athenians, when the assembly was met, Hermocrates, desiring to increase their envy to the Athenians, spake unto them to this effect:
"Men of Camarina, we come not hither upon fear that the forces of the Athenians here present may affright you, but lest their speeches which they are about to make may seduce you before you have also heard what may be said by us.
They are come into Sicily with that pretence indeed which you hear given out, but with that intention which we all suspect; and to me they seem not to intend the replantation of the Leontines, but rather our supplantation. For surely it holdeth not in reason that they who subvert the cities yonder should come to plant any city here; nor that they should have such a care of the Leontines, because Chalcideans, for kindred's sake, when they keep in servitude the Chalcideans themselves of Euboea, of whom these here are but the colonies.
But they both hold the cities there and attempt those here in one and the same kind. For when the Ionians and the rest of the confederates, their own colonies, had willingly made them their leaders in the war to avenge them of the Medes, the Athenians, laying afterwards to their charge, to some the not sending of their forces, to some their war amongst themselves, and so to the rest the most colourable criminations they could get, subdued them all to their obedience.
And it was not for the liberty of the Grecians that these men, nor for the liberty of themselves that the Grecians made head against the Medes; but the Athenians did it to make them serve not the Medes but them, and the Grecians to change their master, as they did, not for one less wise, but for one worse wise.
"But in truth we come not to accuse the Athenian state, though it be obnoxious enough, before you that know sufficiently the injuries they have done, but far rather to accuse ourselves, who, though we have the examples before our eyes of the Grecians there brought into servitude for want of defending themselves, and though we see them now, with the same sophistry of replanting the Leontines and their kindred and aiding of their confederates the Egestaeans, prepare to do the like unto us, do not yet unite ourselves and with better courage make them to know that we be not Ionians nor Hellespontines nor islanders, that changing serve always the Mede or some other master, but that we are Dorians and freemen, come to dwell here in Sicily out of Peloponnesus, a free country.
Shall we stand still till we be taken city after city when we know that that only way we are conquerable; and when we find them wholly bent to this, that by drawing some from our alliance with their words, and causing some to wear each other out with war upon hope of their confederacy, and winning others by other fit language, they may have the power to do us hurt? But we think, though one of the same island perish, yet if he dwell far off, the danger will not come to us; and before it arrive, we count unhappy only him that suffereth before us.
"If any therefore be of this opinion, that it is not he but the Syracusian that is the Athenian's enemy, and thinketh it a hard matter that he should endanger himself for the territory that is mine, I would have him to consider that he is to fight not chiefly for mine, but equally for his own in mine, and with the more safety for that I am not destroyed before and he thereby destitute of my help, but stand with him in the battle. Let him also consider that the Athenians come not hither to punish the Syracusians for being enemies to you, but by pretence of me to make himself the stronger by your friendship.
If any man here envieth or also feareth us (for the strongest are still liable unto both), and would therefore wish that the Syracusians might be weakened to make them more modest, but not vanquished for their own safety's sake, that man hath conceived a hope beyond the power of man. For it is not reasonable that the same man should be the disposer both of his desires and of his fortune.
And if his aim should fail him, he might, deploring his own misery, peradventure wish to enjoy my prosperity again. But this will not be possible to him that shall abandon me and not undertake the same dangers, though not in title, yet in effect the same that I do. For though it be our power in title, yet in effect it is your own safety you defend.
And you men of Camarina, that are borderers and likely to have the second place of danger, you should most of all have foreseen this and not have aided us so dully. You should rather have come to us; and that which, if the Athenians had come first against Camarina, you should in your need have implored at our hands, the same you should now also have been seen equally to hearten us withal to keep us from yielding. But as yet, neither you nor any of the rest have been so forward.
"Perhaps, upon fear, you mean to deal evenly between us both and allege your league with the Athenians. You made no league against your friends, but against your enemies, in case any should invade you; and by it you are also tied to aid the Athenians when others wrong them; but not when, as now, they wrong their neighbour. For even the Rhegians, who are also Chalcideans, refuse to help them in replanting the Leontines, though these also be Chalcideans.
And then it were a hard case if they, suspecting a bad action under a fair justification, are wise without a reason; and you, upon pretence of reason, should aid your natural enemies and help them that most hate you to destroy your more natural kindred. "But this is no justice;
to fight with them is justice, and not to stand in fear of their preparation. Which, if we hold together, is not terrible, but is, if contrarily (which they endeavour) we be disunited. For neither when they came against us, being none but ourselves, and had the upperhand in battle, could they yet effect their purpose; but quickly went their ways.