chapter 25, section 2 (volume 3).

ALSO IN: _Thucydides, History, book 6, section 27-28._

_G. W. Cox, The Athenian Empire, chapter 5._

_G. Grote, History of Greece, part 2, chapter 58 (volume 7)._

ATHENS: B. C. 415-413. Fatal end of the expedition against Syracuse.

"Alkibiades was called back to Athens, to take his trial on a charge of impiety. ... He did not go back to Athens for his trial, but escaped to Peloponnesos, where we shall hear from him again. Meanwhile the command of the Athenian force in Sicily was left practically in the hands of Nikias. Now Nikias could always act well when he did act; but it was very hard to make him act; above all on an errand which he hated. One might say that Syracuse was saved through the delays of Nikias. He now went off to petty expeditions in the west of Sicily, under cover of settling matters at Segesta. ... The Syracusans by this time quite despised the invaders. Their horsemen rode up to the camp of the Athenians at Katanê, and asked them if they had come into Sicily merely to sit down there as colonists. ... The winter (B. C. 415-414) was chiefly spent on both sides in sending embassies to and fro to gain allies. Nikias also sent home to Athens, asking for horsemen and money, and the people, without a word of rebuke, voted him all that he asked. ... But the most important embassy of all was that which the Syracusans sent to Corinth and Sparta. Corinth zealously took up the cause of her colony and pleaded for Syracuse at Sparta. And at Sparta Corinth and Syracuse found a helper in the banished Athenian Alkibiadês, who was now doing all that he could against Athens. ... He told the Spartans to occupy a fortress in Attica, which they soon afterwards did, and a great deal came of it. But he also told them to give vigorous help to Syracuse, and above all things to send a Spartan commander. The mere name of Sparta went for a great deal in those days; but no man could have been better chosen than the Spartan who was sent. He was Gylippos, the deliverer of Syracuse. He was more like an Athenian than a Spartan, quick and ready of resource, which few Spartans were. ... And now at last, when the spring came (414) Nikias was driven to do something. ... The Athenians ... occupied all that part of the hill which lay outside the walls of Syracuse. They were joined by their horsemen, Greek and Sikel, and after nearly a year, the siege of Syracuse really began. The object of the Athenians now was to build a wall across the hill and to carry it down to the sea on both sides. Syracuse would thus be hemmed in. The object of the Syracusans was to build a cross-wall of their own, which should hinder the Athenian wall from reaching the two points it aimed at; This they tried more than once; but in vain. There were several fights on the hill, and at last there was a fight of more importance on the lower ground by the Great Harbour. ... The Syracusans were defeated, as far as fighting went; but they gained far more than they lost. For Lamachos was killed, and with him all vigour passed away from the Athenian camp. At the same moment the Athenian fleet sailed into the Great Harbour, and a Syracusan attack on the Athenian works on the hill was defeated. Nikias remained in command of the invaders; but he was grievously sick, and for once in his life his head seems to have been turned by success. He finished the wall on the south side; but he neglected to finish it on the north side also, so that Syracuse was not really hemmed in. But the hearts of the Syracusans sank. ... It was at this darkest moment of all that deliverance came. ... A Corinthian ship, under its captain Gongylos, sailed into the Little Harbour. He brought the news that other ships were on their way from Peloponnesos to the help of Syracuse, and, yet more, that a Spartan general was actually in Sicily, getting together a land force for the same end. As soon as the good news was heard, there was no more talk of surrender. ... And one day the Athenian camp was startled by the appearance of a Lacedæmonian herald, offering them a truce of five days, that they might get them out of Sicily with bag and baggage. {176} Gylippos was now on the hill. He of course did not expect that the Athenian army would really go away in five days. But it was a great thing to show both to the besiegers and to the Syracusans that the deliverer had come, and that deliverance was beginning. Nikias had kept such bad watch that Gylippos and his troops had come up the hill and the Syracusans had come out and met them, without his knowledge. The Spartan, as a matter of course, took the command of the whole force; he offered battle to the Athenians, which they refused; he then entered the city. The very next day he began to carry out his scheme. This was to build a group of forts near the western end of the hill, and to join them to the city by a wall running east and west, which would hinder the Athenians from ever finishing their wall to the north. Each side went on building, and some small actions took place. ... Another winter (B. C. 414-413) now came on, and with it much sending of envoys. Gylippos went about Sicily collecting fresh troops. ... Meanwhile Nikias wrote a letter to the Athenian people. ... This letter came at a time when the Lacedæmonian alliance had determined to renew the war with Athens, and when they were making everything ready for an invasion of Attica. To send out a new force to Sicily was simple madness. We hear nothing of the debates in the Athenian assembly, whether anyone argued against going on with the Sicilian war, and whether any demagogue laid any blame on Nikias. But the assembly voted that a new force equal to the first should be sent out under Dêmosthenês, the best soldier in Athens, and Eurymedon. ... Meanwhile the Syracusans were strengthened by help both in Sicily and from Peloponnesos. Their main object now was to strike a blow at the fleet of Nikias before the new force came. ... It had been just when the Syracusans were most downcast that they were cheered by the coming of the Corinthians and of Gylippos. And just now that their spirits were highest, they were dashed again by the coming of Dêmosthenês and Eurymedon. A fleet as great as the first, seventy-five ships, carrying 5,000 heavy-armed and a crowd of light troops of every kind, sailed into the Great Harbour with all warlike pomp. The Peloponnesians were already in Attica; they had planted a Peloponnesian garrison there, which brought Athens to great straits; but the fleet was sent out to Syracuse all the same. Dêmosthenês knew what to do as well as Lamachos had known. He saw that there was nothing to be done but to try one great blow, and, if that failed, to take the fleet home again. ... The attack was at first successful, and the Athenians took two of the Syracusan forts. But the Thespian allies of Syracuse stood their ground, and drove the assailants back. Utter confusion followed. ... The last chance was now lost, and Dêmosthenês was eager to go home. But Nikias would stay on. ... When sickness grew in the camp, when fresh help from Sicily and the great body of the allies from Peloponnesos came into Syracuse, he at last agreed to go. Just at that moment the moon was eclipsed. ... Nikias consulted his soothsayers, and he gave out that they must stay twenty-nine days, another full revolution of the moon. This resolve was the destruction of the besieging army. ... It was felt on both sides that all would turn on one more fight by sea, the Athenians striving to get out of the harbour, and the Syracusans striving to keep them in it. The Syracusans now blocked up the mouth of the harbour by mooring vessels across it. The Athenians left their position on the hill, a sign that the siege was over, and brought their whole force down to the shore. It was no time now for any skillful manoeuvres; the chief thing was to make the sea-fight as much as might be like a land-fight, a strange need for Athenians. ... The last fight now began, 110 Athenian ships against 80 of the Syracusans and their allies. Never before did so many ships meet in so small a space. ... The fight was long and confused; at last the Athenians gave way and fled to the shore. The battle and the invasion were over. Syracuse was not only saved; she had begun to take vengeance on her enemies. ... The Athenians waited one day, and then set out, hoping to make their way to some safe place among the friendly Sikels in the inland country. The sick had to be left behind. ... On the sixth day, after frightful toil, they determined to change their course. ... They set out in two divisions, that of Nikias going first. Much better order was kept in the front division and by the time Nikias reached the river, Dêmosthenês was six miles behind. ... In the morning a Syracusan force came up with the frightful news that the whole division of Dêmosthenês were prisoners. ... The Athenians tried in vain to escape in the night. The next morning they set out, harassed as before, and driven wild by intolerable thirst. They at last reached the river Assinaros, which runs by the present town of Noto. There was the end. ... The Athenians were so maddened by thirst that, though men were falling under darts and the water was getting muddy and bloody, they thought of nothing but drinking. ... No further terms were made; most of the horsemen contrived to cut their way out; the rest were made prisoners. Most of them were embezzled by Syracusans as their private slaves; but about 7,000 men out of the two divisions were led prisoners into Syracuse. They were shut up in the stone-quarries, with no further heed than to give each man daily half a slave's allowance of food and drink. Many died; many were sold; some escaped, or were set free; the rest were after a while taken out of the quarries and set to work. The generals had made no terms for themselves. Hermokratês wished to keep them as hostages against future Athenian attempts against Sicily. Gylippos wished to take them in triumph to Sparta. The Corinthians were for putting them to death; and so it was done. ... So ended the Athenian invasion of Sicily, the greatest attempt ever made by Greeks against Greeks, and that which came to the most utter failure."

_E. A. Freeman, The Story of Sicily, pages 117-137._

ALSO IN: _Thucydides, History; translated by B. Jowett, books 6-7 (volume 1)._

See, also, SYRACUSE: B. C. 415-413.

{177}

ATHENS: B. C. 413-412. Consequences of the Sicilian Expedition. Spartan alliance with the Persians. Plotting of Alcibiades. The Decelian War.

"At Athens, where, even before this, everyone had been in the most anxious suspense, the news of the loss of the expedition produced a consternation, which was certainly greater than that at Rome after the battle of Cannae, or that in our own days, after the battle of Jena. ... 'At least 40,000 citizens, allies and slaves, had perished; and among them there may easily have been 10,000 Athenian citizens, most of whom belonged to the wealthier and higher classes. The flower of the Athenian people was destroyed, as at the time of the plague. It is impossible to say what amount of public property may have been lost; the whole fleet was gone.' The consequences of the disaster soon shewed themselves. It was to be foreseen that Chios, which had long been wavering, and whose disposition could not be trusted, would avail itself of this moment to revolt; and the cities in Asia, from which Athens derived her large revenues, were expected to do the same. It was, in fact, to be foreseen, that the four islands of Lesbos, Chios, Samos, and Rhodes, would instantly revolt. The Spartans were established at Decelea, in Attica itself, and thence ravaged the country far and wide: so that it was impossible to venture to go to the coast without a strong escort. Although there were many districts in which no Spartan was seen from one year's end to the other, yet there was no safety anywhere, except in fortified places, 'and the Athenians were constantly obliged to guard the walls of their city; and this state of things had already been going on for the last twelve months.' In this fearful situation, the Athenian people showed the same firmness as the Romans after the battle of Cannae. Had they but had one great man among them, to whom the state could have been entrusted, even more might perhaps have been done; but it is astonishing that, although there was no such man, and although the leading men were only second or third-rate persons, yet so many useful arrangements were made to meet the necessities of the case. ... The most unfortunate circumstance for the Athenians was, that Alcibiades, now an enemy of his country, was living among the Spartans; for he introduced into the undertakings of the Spartans the very element which before they had been altogether deficient in, namely energy and elasticity: he urged them on to undertakings, and induced them now to send a fleet to Ionia. ... Erythrae, Teos, and Miletus, one after another, revolted to the Peloponnesians, who now concluded treaties with Tissaphernes in the name of the king of Persia--Darius was then king--and in his own name as satrap; and in this manner they sacrificed to him the Asiatic Greeks. ... The Athenians were an object of antipathy and implacable hatred to the Persians; they had never doubted that the Athenians were their real opponents in Greece, and were afraid of them; but they did not fear the Spartans. They knew that the Athenians would take from them not only the islands, but the towns on the main land, and were in great fear of their maritime power. Hence they joined the Spartans; and the latter were not ashamed of negotiating a treaty of subsidies with the Persians, in which Tissaphernes, in the king's name, promised the assistance of the Phoenician fleet; and large subsidies, as pay for the army. ... In return for this, they renounced, in the name of the Greeks, all claims to independence for the Greek cities in Asia."

_E. C. Niebuhr, Lectures on Ancient History,