Kitap 7
Meanwhile Gylippus and Sicanuscf. ch. xlvi. had returned to Syracuse. Sicanus had failed to win over Agrigentum, for while he was still at Gela the party at Agrigentum that was friendly to the Syracusans had been driven out; but Gylippus brought with him a large additional force from Sicily as well as the hoplites that had been sent on board the merchant-ships from the Peloponnesus the preceding spring,cf. 7.19.3. and had reached Selinus on their way from Libya. It seems that they had been driven out of their course to Libya, where the Cyrenaeans had given them two triremes and pilots for their voyage;
as they sailed along the shore of Libya they had joined forces with the Euesperitae, who were being besieged by the Libyans, and had defeated the latter; and sailing thence along the coast to Neapolis, an emporium of the Carthaginians, from which place the distance to Sicily is shortest—two days and one night—and from there crossing to Sicily, they arrived at Selinus.
As soon as these reinforcements arrived, the Syracusans began their preparations to attack the Athenians again on both elements—by sea and by land. The Athenian generals, on the other hand, seeing that the enemy had been reinforced by a fresh army, while their own situation was not only not improving, but on the contrary was daily growing worse in all respects, and especially through the distress caused by the sickness among the troops, repented that they had not moved away before. And since even Nicias no longer opposed as earnestly as before, but only urged that the matter be not openly put to a vote, they sent out word as secretly as possible to all the officers for a departure by sea from the camp, and that they should be ready whenever the signal should be given.
But after all was ready and when they were about to make their departure, the moon, which happened then to be at the full, was eclipsed.August 27, 413 B.C. And most of the Athenians, taking the incident to heart, urged the generals to wait. Nicias also, who was somewhat too much given to divination and the like, refused even to discuss further the question of their removal until they should have waited thrice nine days, as the soothsayers prescribed. Such, then, was the reason why the Athenians delayed and stayed on.
The Syracusans on their part, on learning about this, were far more aroused than before and determined not to give the Athenians any respite, seeing that these had now of their own act confessed themselves no longer superior either with their fleet or with their land-force, for otherwise they would not have laid plans for their departure; and at the same time, because they did not want them to settle down somewhere else in Sicily where it would be more difficult to carry on war against them, they were determined to force them to fight a sea-battle as quickly as possible on the spot, in a place that suited themselves.
Accordingly they regularly manned their ships and practised for as many days as they thought sufficient. Then, when the favourable moment came, they assaulted on the first day the Athenian walls, and when a small body of hoplites and of horsemen came out against them by certain gates, they cut off a number of the hoplites, and putting them to flight followed in pursuit; and as the entrance to the camp was narrow, the Athenians lost seventy horses and a few of the hoplites.
So on this first day the Syracusan army withdrew; but on the following day they sailed out with their ships, seventy-six in number, and at the same time advanced with their land-force against the walls. The Athenians put out to sea to meet them with eighty-six ships, and closing with them commenced the battle.
Eurymedon, who commanded the right wing of the Athenians, wished to surround the ships of the enemy, and had therefore steered his ships out from the line rather too near the shore, when the Syracusans and their allies, after they had defeated the Athenian centre, cut off him also in a recess of the inner bay of the harbour and destroyed both him and the ships that followed him; and after that they set about pursuing the entire Athenian fleet and driving them ashore.
Now Gylippus, when he saw the ships of the enemy being defeated and driven ashore at a point beyond the stockades and their own camp, wishing to destroy the men as they landed, and also that the Syracusans might more easily tow the ships away from a shore that would be friendly to them, came down to the causewayA quay which ran along by the swamp Lysimeleia toward the Athenian camp. with part of his army to assist them.
The Tyrrhenians, however, who were guarding the causeway for the Athenians, saw these troops rushing to the attack in disorder and went out against them, and falling upon the first comers put them to flight and drove them into the marsh called Lysimeleia.
But afterwards, when a larger force of the Syracusans and their allies had now arrived, the Athenian troops also went out against them and, fearing for their ships, engaged in battle with the enemy, whom they defeated and pursued, killing a few hoplites; and as for the ships, they saved most of them and assembled them at their camp, but eighteen were captured by the Syracusans and their allies and their crews slain to a man.
Against the ships also that remained the Syracusans, wishing to set them afire, turned loose an old merchant-ship which they had filled with faggots and pine-wood, after casting fire into it, the wind being in the direction of the Athenians. And the Athenians, alarmed for their ships, devised in their turn means for hindering and quenching the flames, and having stopped the fire and prevented the ship from coming near, escaped the danger.
After this the Syracusans set up a trophy, both for the sea-fight and for the cutting off of the hoplites at the wall—the engagement in which they had captured the horses;cf. 7.51.2. and the Athenians set up a trophy for the fight in which the Tyrrhenians drove the Syracusan infantry into the marsh, and also for their own victory with the main body of the army.
The victory of the Syracusans having now proved decisive by sea also—for before this they had always been afraid of the new fleet that had come with Demosthenes—the Athenians were in utter despondency. Great had been their miscalculation, and far greater still was their regret at having made the expedition. For of all the cities with which they had gone to war, these alone were at that time similar in character to their own, democratic in constitution like themselves, and strong in ships, cavalry and size.
And so, finding themselves unable either to bring about a change in their form of government,It was the usual policy of Athens to overthrow oligarchies and establish democracies as a means of extending their empire; but this resource was not open to them in democratic Syracuse. and thus introduce among them that element of discord by which they might have brought them over to the Athenian side, or to subdue them by means of a military force that was greatly superior, and having failed in most of their undertakings, they had even before this been at their wits' end, and now that they had suffered defeat even with their fleet, a thing that they could never have anticipated, they were in far greater perplexity still.
The Syracusans, on the other hand, began at once to sail fearlessly about the harbour and determined to close up the entrance to it, in order that the Athenians might no longer be able, even if they wished, to sail out unobserved.
For the Syracusans were no longer concerned with merely saving themselves, but also with preventing the Athenians from being saved, thinking, as indeed was the case, that in the present circumstances their own position was much superior, and that if they could defeat the Athenians and their allies both by land and by sea the achievement would appear a glorious one for them in the eyes of the Hellenes. All the other Hellenes, they reflected, would immediately be either liberated from subjection or relieved from fear, since the military forces that would remain to the Athenians would not be strong enough to sustain the war that would afterwards be brought against them; and they themselves, being regarded as the authors of all this, would be greatly admired not only by the world at large but also by posterity.
And indeed the struggle was a worthy one, both in these respects and because they were showing themselves superior, not to the Athenians only, but to their numerous allies as well, and that too not standing alone but associated with the friends who had come to their aid, thus taking their place as leaders along with the Corinthians and Lacedaemonians, having also given their own city to bear the brunt of the danger and taken a great step forward in sea-power.
Indeed, a larger number of nations than ever before had gathered together at this one city, if one except the vast throng of those who in this war rallied to the support of the city of Athens and the city of the Lacedaemonians.
For the following nations on either side had entered the war at Syracuse, coming against Sicily or in behalf of Sicily, to aid the Athenians to win the country or the Syracusans to save it; and they chose sides, not so much on the ground of right or even of kinship, but either out of regard for their own advantage or from necessity, according to the circumstances in which they each happened to be placed.Or, by adopting Heilmann's and Boehme's conjecture ὡς ἕκαστοι τῆς ξυντυχίας. . . εἶχον, “severally choosing their side, not so much from a sense of right or from obligations of kinship, as from the accident of compulsion or their own interest.”
The Athenians themselves, as Ionians, went of their own free will against the Syracusans, who were Dorians, and with them went as members of the expedition the Lemnians, the Imbrians,cf. 4.28.4. The occupation of Lemnos was effected by Miltiades a few years after the battle of Marathon (Herod. VI. 137-140), that of Imbros probably about the same time; of Aegina in 431 B.C. (2.27.1); of Hestiaea in 446 B.C. (1.114.5). and the Aeginetans, who at this time held Aegina, as also the Hestiaeans who inhabit Hestiaea in Euboea, all these being colonists of the Athenians and having the same language and institutions as they had.
Of the rest, some took part in the expedition as subjects, others in consequence of an alliance, although independent, and some were mercenaries.
The peoples that were subjects and tributaries were the Eretrians, Chalcidians, Styreans and Carystians from Euboea; from the islands the Ceans, Andrians and Tenians; and from Ionia the Milesians, Samians and Chians. Of these last, however, the Chians followed as independent allies, not subject to the payment of tribute but furnishing ships instead.cf. 6.85.2 Of the above-mentioned almost all were Ionians and colonists of Athens—except the Carystians, who are DryopiansAn aboriginal people, dwelling near Mount Oeta; cf. Herod. VIII. 43.—and although they followed as subjects and under compulsion, nevertheless they were Ionians going against Dorians. Besides these there were Aeolians: the Methymnaeans,cf. III, 1. 2; 6.85.2. who paid service with ships and not with tribute, and as tributaries the Tenedians and Aenians. These, though Aeolians, were constrained to fight against Aeolians, that is, the Boeotians, their founders, who were on the side of the Syracusans;
while the PlataeansThose who had escaped to Athens at the siege of Plataea (3.24.3), or those who had settled in Scione (5.32.1). were the only outright Boeotians who were opposed to Boeotians—as was natural considering their hatred. And there were the Rhodians and Cytherians, both Dorians; the Cytherians, although colonists of the Lacedaemonians, bore arms with the Athenians against the Lacedaemonians who were with Gylippus, while the Rhodians, Argives by descent, were compelled to make war not only upon the Syracusans, who were Dorians, but also upon the Geloans, their own colonists,cf. 6.4.3. who were serving with the Syracusans.
Of the inhabitants of the islands off the shores of the Peloponnesus, the Cephallenians and Zacynthianscf. 2.7.3; 7.31.2. went with the Athenians as independent allies, it is true, but on account of their insular position were under a measure of restraint, because the Athenians were masters of the sea.
The Corcyraeans, who were not only Dorians but confessedly Corinthians, were serving against the Corinthians and Syracusans, though colonists of the former and kinsmen of the latter, under the specious pretext indeed of compulsion, but really quite as much from choice, on account of their hatred of the Corinthians. Also the Messenians, as they are now called, who live in Naupactus,Settled by the Athenians at Naupactus since 462 B.C. (1.103.3). Some of them were employed in garrison duty at Pylos in 425 B.C. (4.41.2). as well as the Messenians at Pylos, which was now in the possession of the Athenians, were taken along as participants in the war.
Furthermore, there were a few exiles from Megara4.74.2; 6.43. who, because of their misfortune, were fighting against the Selinuntians,6.4.2. who were Megarians. So far as the rest were concerned, their part in the expedition was, as compared with the others, of a more voluntary character.
The Argives,Five hundred according to vi. 43. on the one hand, were led to take part, not so much by their alliance, as by their hatred of the Lacedaemonians, and out of regard each for his own immediate advantage, associating themselves, Dorians against Dorians, with the Athenians who were Ionians; the Mantineans, on the other hand, and other Arcadians went as mercenaries, for they were accustomed to go against any who at any time were pointed out to them as enemies, and at this time were led by desire of gain to regard as enemies the Arcadians who were with the Corinthians.cf. 7.19.4. The Cretans and the Aetolians were also induced by pay; and in the case of the Cretans it so fell out that, although they had assisted the Rhodians in the founding of Gela,cf. 6.4.3. they went, not with their colonists, but against them, and of their own free will, for hire. Some of the Acarnanians served, it is true, for gain, but the greater portion were moved by friendship for Demosthenes and goodwillcf. 3.7.1, 3.94.2, 3.105.3, 3.107.2, 3.114.1. toward the Athenians, whose allies they were, to come to their aid.
All these were within the boundary of the Ionian Gulf;
but of the Italiots the Thurians and Metapontians took part in the expedition, being reduced at this time to such straits by party crises that they could not do otherwise; and of the Siceliots the Naxians and the Catanaeans. Of Barbarians there were the Egestaeans, who had brought the Athenians to Sicily, and the greater part of the Sicels; and of those outside of Sicily a certain number of Tyrrhenians,cf. 6.88.6, 6.103.2. who had a quarrel with the Syracusans, and some Iapygian mercenaries.cf. 7.33.4. So many were the peoples who took part in the struggle on the side of the Athenians.
The Syracusans, on the other hand, were aided by the Camarinaeans,cf. 6.67.2; 7.33.1. who were their next neighbours, and the Geloans, who lived next to the Camarinaeans;
then, since the Agrigentines were neutral,cf. 7.33.2. by the Selinuntians,cf. 6.6.2, 6..1, 6.67.2. who were settled in the country beyond. All these occupied that part of Sicily which faces Libya, but the Himeraeanscf. 7.1.2; 7.1.3. came from the part which faces the Tyrrhenian Sea, where they were the only Hellenic inhabitants; and they alone from that region came to the aid of the Syracusans.
Such were the Hellenic peoples in Sicily, all Dorians and independent, that fought on their side; but of Barbarians, the Sicels alone—those, that is, that had not gone over to the side of the Athenians. Of the Hellenes outside of Sicily there were the Lacedaemonians, who furnished a Spartan as commander-in-chief, but no troops except NeodamodesSee on 7.19.3. and Helots; the Corinthians, who alone were at hand with both a fleet and a land-force; the Leucadians and Ambraciots, both induced by the tie of kinship;Syracuse (6.3.2), Leucas (1.30.2) and Ambracia (2.80.3) were sister states having Corinth as μητρόπολις. from Arcadiacf. 7.19.4. mercenaries sent by the Corinthians; the Sicyonians, who served under compulsion;Because since 418 B.C. an oligarchic constitution had been forced upon them (5.81.2). and, from outside the Peloponnesus, the Boeotians.cf. 7.19.3.
As compared with all these, who came from abroad, the Siceliots themselves supplied a greater number of troops of every kind, inasmuch as the cities they inhabited were large; and in fact the forces they collected comprised hoplites in large numbers, as well as ships, horses, and a miscellaneous horde of vast numbers. And again, in comparison with all the rest, speaking roughly, the Syracusans themselves provided the larger number, both on account of the greatness of their city and because they were in the greatest danger.
Such were the forces that had been brought together for the assistance of either side, and at this timeThe latter part of the summer of 413 B.C. both had all their contingents at hand, and no further reinforcements came to either.
The Syracusans and their allies, then, naturally conceived the thought that it would be a glorious achievement for them to crown the victory which they had won in the sea-fight by taking the whole vast armament of the Athenians and preventing their escape in either way, either by sea or by land.
Accordingly, they began at once to close the entrance to the Great Harbour, which was about eight stadia wide, with triremes ranged broadside and with large and small boats, mooring them at anchor; and they made other preparations in case the Athenians should still venture to fight at sea, and there was nothing small about any of the designs they formed.
But the Athenians, observing the closing of the harbour and being aware of the general plans of the enemy, thought it desirable to hold a council.
So the generals and the taxiarchs came together and took counsel with reference to the difficulties which now confronted them both in other ways, and especially owing to the fact that they no longer had supplies for their immediate needs—for in the expectation that they would sail away they had already sent word to Catana and stopped the bringing in of provisions—and were not likely to have them in the future, unless they should hold the mastery at sea. They determined, therefore, to abandon their upper walls,ie. the upper extremity of their lines, under the bluffs of Epipolae and furthest from the harbour. and cutting off by means of a cross-wall the smallest possible space, close to the ships, that would suffice for the stores and for the sick, to put a garrison in this: they would then take the rest of their land-force and man all their ships, not only those which were fit for service, but also the less seaworthy, putting aboard every available man, and fight the issue out at sea; if they won, they would proceed to Catana, but if not, they would burn their ships, and, forming in line of battle, make their retreat by land, taking whatever route would enable them soonest to reach some friendly place, whether Barbarian or Hellenic.
These plans having once been determined upon, they acted accordingly: they descended stealthily from the upper walls and manned all their ships, compelling everyone to embark who, provided lie was of military age, seemed to be at all fit for service.