READING HALL

THE DOORS OF WISDOM

ATHENS . 478—401 B.C.

CHAPTER X

THE ATHENIAN EXPEDITION TO SICILY

I

THE DESIGNS OF ATHENS IN THE WEST

IN 416 b.c. the situation in Sicily again demanded the attention of Athens. For a second time since the peace of Gela (424 b.c.) an Athenian ally felt the heavy hand of Syracuse. Earlier it had been Leontini. Now it was Segesta. A war had arisen between Segesta, a hellenized Elymian city with its outlet to the sea on the north, and Selinus, the most westerly Greek city on the south coast. Though the two places were fully thirty miles apart, their territories were contiguous, and trouble as to frontier lands and mixed marriages brought on the struggle. It became unequal when Syracuse, summoned as an ally, joined Selinus. Hence the Segestans, hard pressed by land and sea, were forced to look outside for assistance. Acragas and Carthage rejected their appeal. With Athens they had not only a treaty of long standing but a recent alliance. They knew, too, how reluctant the Athenians had been to withdraw from the island in 424 b.c. Accordingly they sent an embassy thither in the winter of 416 b.c. and called on Athens in its own interest to intervene in the West to checkmate the dangerous projects of the Syracusans.

The argument of which they made most use was that, if Syracuse were permitted to become mistress of Sicily, it would some day lead thence vast armaments to aid the Peloponnesians in a renewed effort to destroy the Empire of Athens. The embassy affirmed the ability of Segesta to meet the expenses of the war. On this point Athens desired confirmation, and accordingly voted to send envoys who should see for themselves the treasures alleged to be stored in the temples of Segesta. They were also to ascertain the exact state of the war between Segesta and Selinus. Thus far the Athenians acted circumspectly; but privately they were de­bating in a spirit of adventure, aggrandizement and greed the chances of a war of aggression in the West.

Generally they had little knowledge of the magnitude of Sicily and the number of its inhabitants. They were quite unaware that it was larger in extent than the Peloponnese, and that it possessed a Greek population not much less than that of the League headed by Sparta. And even when well-informed Athenians knew that Syracuse was comparable in size with Athens and the world in which it moved with the Athenian Empire, they were not always deterred thereby. Was it not by greatly daring that their fathers had acquired and maintained their dominions? At this particular moment the youth of Athens were fretting at the ineffectiveness to which the state seemed condemned by the cautious healing policy of Nicias. Diverted from enterprises near at hand, in the Peloponnese or Thrace for example, by the quarrels of evenly-matched parties, they saw in Sicily a chance to do something spectacular.

The possible scope of operations in Sicily was conceived differently by different groups of the Athenians. Of the aims of the expansionists we need not speak; but there were those who favoured the dispatch of a strong fleet, yet had no thought either of conquering the whole island or of besieging Syracuse. To them the real object of Athenian interference was to keep alive local opposition to the imperial projects of Syracuse, and, by showing that Athens was still a factor in the West, to create more favour­able conditions for the trade of the Piraeus and the Empire. None imagined that even if they engaged in a blockade of Syracuse they could not withdraw from the island, as in 424 b.c., when it should seem wise to do so. Many thought of the enterprise simply in terms of wages to be earned, spoils to be brought back or sold on the spot, and possible increase of tribute to be enjoyed in the future.

The masses in Athens were thus favourably predisposed to policy of western expansion, to which, too, their triumph over Corinth in the Archidamian War logically looked, so that its powerful advocacy by Alcibiades (desirous primarily of securing an occasion for the display of his own conspicuous ability) served but to make its acceptance more unanimous. Hence when the envoys returned from Segesta with sixty talents in hand (a month’s pay for sixty ships) and the report, which proved to be inaccurate, that the money to defray the cost of the entire expedition was actually in the possession of the Segestans, the Athenians voted to send to Sicily a fleet of sixty ships and to put in charge of it, not, as was proposed, one commander with full powers, i.e, Alcibiades, but three generals, to wit, Nicias, Alcibiades, and Lamachus. The instructions given them were: specifically, to aid Segesta against Selinus and restore Leontini; generally, in case of success, to use their own judgment in settling matters on the island to the best interest of the Athenians.

Neither in the constitution of the command nor in the formu­lation of the instructions did the Athenians make their mind clear. Nicias it was who brought out the fact that at any rate they were thinking of something big. His real desire was to get the whole enterprise abandoned, and at a meeting called five days later to consider details he pleaded for the reversal of what he termed a hasty decision taken on the prompting of the young to satisfy the desire for vainglory of a youth who also sought, at the peril of the state, to rehabilitate a fortune wasted on horses and ex­travagant living. Nor did he confine himself to an attack on Alcibiades. He restated succinctly the arguments that condemned the project: the unwisdom of engaging in a great war in Sicily while powerful enemies at home, restrained merely by a temporary or discredited treaty, and chafing under defeat, were planning to fall upon Athens, if not at the moment its forces became divided, certainly in case of a reverse; the folly of seeking new subjects far afield while old subjects near at hand were still in revolt, especially since the latter, when subdued, could be held, whereas even if the Siceliotes were conquered, they could be kept in sub­jection only with great difficulty, or not at all; the unsoundness of the assumption that forces from Sicily would be more likely to join in an effort to tear down the Athenian Empire if they were controlled by Syracuse than if they were free to move individually, whereas precisely the opposite was to be inferred from the considerations that it would not be to the interest of one empire to attack another, and that nature itself had laid down boundaries between the two worlds in the Ionian and Sicilian Seas upon the observance of which the Athenians should insist, and which they should recognize themselves.

The reasoning was cogent. There was indeed no answer to the contention that even if Athens conquered Sicily, it lacked the forces to keep it conquered. But to see that this was so implied a calculation of their strength on the part of the Athenians which they were in no mood to make. The rebuttal of Alcibiades was characteristic. In a strain of mingled insolence and candour he justified his right to lead by his exceptional abilities, and his princely outlays at home and abroad by the glory and prestige they brought both to him and to Athens. Deprecating the effort of Nicias to set the young against the old, he pleaded for union in action, and declared that a people with an empire could not rest on its oars as other peoples could, but must always forge ahead, preserving its superiorities by practising them, striking down enemies before they declared themselves, making every call for help an opportunity for expansion. Tn Sicily, he averred, the citizen populations, made up of new and old elements as yet unfused, lacked national spirit, and were thus both amenable to corrosive propaganda and destitute of the preparation requisite for war. Beyond the immediate undertaking, which the navy rendered safe (for without imperilling its maritime superiority at home Athens could send out ships enough to defeat the combined fleets of Sicily), Alcibiades opened out prospects of vastly increased armaments, of an assault on the Peloponnesians with irresistible strength, and of dominion over all Greece.

Nicias was worsted. But he did not give up. He made a move by which, like an unwitting figure in a tragedy, he implicated himself and Athens more deeply in the calamity he sought to avert. He tried to deter the Athenians from the enterprise by magnifying the equipment of soldiers and ships, transports and stores, required for its successful prosecution. And the Athenians forthwith accepted his estimates of at least 100 triremes and 5000 hoplites, and voted to give him and his colleagues full power as to the size and despatch of the armament. Three thousand talents—the balance in the treasury in 421 b.c. plus the savings of six years—were set aside for the expedition to be appropriated as needed.

II.

THE FIRST EXPEDITION

There was now no turning back. With an enthusiasm and energy commensurate with the exaltation of spirit under which they were acting the Athenians went ahead with their preparations, putting their triremes into sea trim, mobilizing the naval and land forces required of their allies, selecting the quotas of heavy-armed troops from their own citizen-regiments, assembling ample supplies of grain and the personnel of an extensive commissariat as well as the merchant ships needed for their transport. For the following three or four months the city was full of the bustle of preparation.

Shortly before the time fixed for departure nearly all the busts of Hermes which, carved on square pillars of stone, stood in large numbers in shrines and at the entrances to private houses were mutilated during a single night. The occurrence was a sign of the times—a manifestation of the irreverence for sacred things which had made its appearance as a by-product of the contemporary enlightenment, and it evoked an outburst of exasperation and fanaticism that was even uglier than the outrage itself. Who the perpetrators were would perhaps have been a matter for the police and not for the historian, had not the enemies of Alcibiades, by widening the scope of the investigation instituted so as to include in it other similar acts of impiety, implicated him in charges of having burlesqued in a private house the sacred Mysteries of Eleusis. Nor did they hesitate to interpret in a political sense the number, prominence, and affiliations of the persons denounced by mercenary informers, so as to plant in the heated minds of the populace the conviction that they had to do with a conspiracy widely ramified in fashionable society to overthrow the demos.

Alcibiades demanded an immediate trial, fearing the campaign of calumny certain to be conducted against him during his absence. But his enemies, the most active of whom were the demagogues Peisander and Androcles, prevented it. When the army, which was friendly to him, was gone, and there was no longer any danger of losing the Argive and Mantinean con­tingents, which he had procured, the chances of having him condemned were infinitely better. Merely to be able to have him recalled at the right moment was to make them, not him, the master of his military career. To have set sail under such conditions was a hard blow to Alcibiades; but he could neither win consent for a hasty trial nor detain the expedition for a searching one. Besides, there was always the hope that the frenzy would die down.

The battle-fleet for Sicily was ready in the Piraeus in June 415 b.c. The ships were appointed regardless of expense, manned with the best crews attainable, and perfected for speed and manoeuvring. The soldiers were picked men, young and often well-born. There had been rivalry among trierarchs as to vessels, and among hoplites as to arms, each individual striving to make his the best; and neither publicly nor privately had money or effort been stinted to make the expedition equal in all respects to its mission. An impressive ceremony marked the starting. When the ships were in the water, the rowers at their oars, and the soldiers at their posts, a trumpeter gave the signal, and amid a solemn silence, as the officers and marines poured libations from gold and silver cups, all together, led by a herald, repeated the prayer that was customary before putting out to sea, which in turn was taken up by the immense throng that had gathered on the shore from all Attica (anxious at once and exultant) to see their friends and relatives off. This done, the battle-cry was sounded and the ships, filing one after another out of the harbour, raced at full speed as far as Aegina, there to settle down to the long haul that was to take them to Corcyra.

At Corcyra they picked up the sailing vessels that had gone ahead with supplies, and then the whole armament put off for Italy. It comprised 134 triremes, and 130 supply boats. Of the triremes 100 were Athenian, 40 of them being used to convey troops. The other triremes were furnished by the allies. The army consisted of 5100 hoplites, of whom 2200 were Athenians, of 30 Athenian cavalry, and 1300 light armed troops (400 being Athenians). The crews of the triremes may be reckoned at 20,000, and the total of all forces at 27,000. It was a huge and formidable armada—so huge that it seemed wise to divide it into three squadrons so as not to overburden the facilities of the ports en route; so formidable that on its arrival in Italy the cities of Magna Graecia were afraid to admit it, and until it reached Rhegium, except for water and anchorage, it received no hospitality, and even these were refused by Tarentum and Locri. At Rhegium the Athenians were permitted to land and stretch their weary legs, and a market was set up for them outside the walls; but this was the only concession made by the people to their comradeship with Athens in the former war and their kinship with the Leontinians, for they kept their gates closed and affirmed their intention of remaining neutral in the war. Coming on top of the coolness or hostility of the other Italiotes, with whom the Rhegines said that they meant to act in concert, this rebuff was extremely disappointing to the Athenian generals, and it augured badly for their success in winning allies in Sicily. Nor did it help matters that at this point a squadron of three triremes, sent forward from Corcyra, returned from Segesta with the news that except for thirty talents there was no money there, the envoys despatched from Athens having been made the victims of an elaborate hoax. So a council of war was held to decide what to do next.

And it was not before time. For there were as many opinions as there were generals. Nicias was for dismissing all larger projects and moving at once on Selinus; Lamachus favoured a brusque assault on Syracuse; and Alcibiades pleaded for securing by negotiations all the support they could in Sicily before attacking either place. Too unimportant politically to win his powerful colleagues for his own plan, Lamachus rejected the programme of Nicias, which seemed faint-hearted, and inclined the balance in favour of opening the campaign with a struggle for allies. So the Athenians approached Messana, which would have nothing to do with them; Naxos, which admitted them; Catana, into which their soldiers broke by a postern gate while the citizens were gathered in assembly intent on hearing what Alcibiades had to say; and Camarina, which drew back after making friendly overtures. Messana Alcibiades had tried to win by argument alone: to the other cities he and his colleagues went accompanied by a battle-fleet of sixty triremes; and from Camarina all returned to Catana, which they had made their base of operations in Sicily. As yet they had few results to show for the loss of so much time and credit. And now they were to lose the driving force, not only of their diplomacy, but of the entire enterprise; for at Catana they found waiting for them a despatch-boat from Athens sum­moning Alcibiades home to stand trial for sacrilege.

By this time the mutilation of the Hermae had been traced (to the satisfaction at least of the Athenian courts) to an oligarchic club, of which Euphiletus was the head and Andocides a member. The information on which this conclusion rested had been given by a resident alien named Teucer; but, though the accused were condemned, credence was none the less given to the later tale of a certain Diocleides implicating a party of about 300, whom he professed to have seen at the work, and 42 persons named by him, among them a brother of Nicias, were indicted. At this moment a small Lacedaemonian force advanced to the Isthmus and simultaneously a movement of soldiers occurred in Boeotia; whereupon the whole city was called to arms in the belief that a coup d’état was imminent. Nothing came of it, but the air re­mained charged with suspicion, and many innocent persons would certainly have perished, had not Andocides confirmed by confession, at least in a general way, the information of Teucer, adding the quieting explanation that the outrage was conceived in drink. The case was therewith settled; but the facts were as obscure as ever. Meanwhile charges of burlesquing the Mysteries had been laid yet twice against groups of which Alcibiades was the centre. Why should he alone escape punishment? All the accusations of conspiracy, too, which were flying loose without a destination were seized upon to corroborate the belief, founded on his general behaviour, that the goal of his ambition was tyranny. There was hardly a politician in Athens who did not dread for himself or the city the predominance that awaited Alcibiades should he return victorious from Sicily. Cimon’s son, Thessalus, was found to bring the indictment against him; and lest he should make a disturbance in the army, the emissaries who went to Sicily for him were instructed not to arrest him but to let him accompany them home in his own ship. Alcibiades seemed to have acquiesced, but at Thurii he gave his guards the slip and reached Elis shortly after. From there he went on a safe conduct to Sparta. In Athens he was condemned to death in absentia.

The recall of Alcibiades enabled Nicias to conduct the campaign more on his own lines. So he embarked on an expedition to the west of Sicily in the course of which he visited Segesta. The armada made a display of force on the north coast, and the army caused unrest among the Sicels by marching back through the centre of the island; but otherwise they had nothing to show to offset a rebuff at Himera and the loss of much precious time, except the spoils of the petty Sicanian town of Hyccara and the thirty talents of the Segestans. Then they tried to take Hybla by storm, but without success; so that the Syracusans now viewed the expedition not with consternation but with contempt.

III.

THE SIEGE OF SYRACUSE

Like Athens, Syracuse was ruled by the people. Hence it too lacked a ‘government’ in the modern sense of the term, by which reports from abroad could be appraised authoritatively. Neither there nor elsewhere in Greece did state organs exist for collecting and forwarding trustworthy information from other political centres. It was a poor substitute for official reports that leaders of parties had private correspondents and contacts abroad by which they were rendered in a measure independent of the news which, transmitted by traders and travellers from one to the other arrived ordinarily in the form of unauthentic rumours. For information reaching the people through political channels was suspect, oftentimes (especially in Syracuse) deservedly so. Thus it happened that even whilst the Athenians were already in Corcyra the Syracusans were unconvinced that their city was the object of the expedition. To the leader of the popular party, Athenagoras, it seemed incredible that Athens should commit an act of such great folly as to attack Syracuse; and from the facility with which (as he thought) an Athenian force could be repelled he inferred that the report of its coming was spread abroad by the oligarchs with the sinister design of stampeding the people into entrusting extraordinary power to military authorities hostile to democracy. His opponent Hermocrates, on the other hand, was much better informed. He appreciated justly the scope of Athenian ambition and the need for immediate action to thwart it; but he rather welcomed the coming of the Athenians on the consideration that it could not but promote the union of all Sicily under the patronage of Syracuse—his favourite political conception. His proposal was to arouse the Greeks on the island and in Magna Graecia to a sense of their common danger; and, by concentrating all available warships at Tarentum, to force the Athenians to fight, while still suffering from the effects of their long voyage, at the very threshold of the West. Whatever may be said for its military wisdom, the scheme was politically impracticable. Hermocrates was unable to convince the Syracusans of the imminence of danger, much less the others. The generals, of whom they had no less than fifteen, professed to have the situation well in hand.

And so matters rested till the Athenians arrived at Rhegium. Then there were hurried dealings with the Sicels, dispatch of garrisons to frontier-posts, and inspection of the arms and horses to be used in operations based on the city. The likely and dreaded thing was that the Athenians would arrive at the heels of the news of their approach. Such, however, proved not to be the case. The great fleet finally hove in sight off the city, but when the Syracusans prudently kept their ships in port, it simply sent a squadron into the Great Harbour to reconnoitre and issue a negligible pro­clamation. They then began to feel that they had been needlessly scared. A little later their cavalry drew first blood while ejecting an Athenian landing-party from Syracusan territory. And when week after week passed and they remained unmolested, passing from panic to temerity, they made up their minds themselves to attack the Athenians at their base in Catana, and thus gave Nicias a chance to show that he could strike as well as threaten.

Apprised of the fact that the Syracusans had fallen into a trap he had set for them, and were on the march to Catana with their entire army, he sailed during the night to Syracuse, and, without meeting any opposition, put his whole force on shore at daybreak within the Great Harbour opposite the Olympieum. The enemy did not return till evening, and by then he had increased the natural strength of the position (it had cliffs on one side and on the other walls, houses, woods, and a marsh) by throwing up a wall at Dascon where it was most accessible, destroying the bridge over the Anapus river, and planting a wooden stockade on the beach by the ships. Nicias had no intention of suffering a disaster in case he proved the weaker in the field. Nor could he take any chances with the enemy’s cavalry, which outnumbered his little detachment forty to one. A secure base was thus essential; but so was a prompt trial of strength with the Syracusan army. Hence the very next morning he advanced into the plain, where the enemy had bivouacked behind the Helorine road, and forced on a general engagement before they had got their minds set for it or their ranks consolidated. But they did not flinch. With their cavalry on their right and their phalanx sixteen men deep they sustained with courage the onset of their more experienced adversaries. A thunderstorm occurring in the midst of the fighting terrified particularly the less seasoned troops. The Syracusan left gave way and the rout spread along the entire line. Only the presence of the cavalry prevented a disaster. As it was, the army regained its initial position with a loss of only 260 men, and, after garrisoning the Olympieum, withdrew within the fortifications.

Nicias seemingly was now free to occupy the entire plain. Instead, he at once put his army on board ship and sailed back to Catana. The reasons for this disconcerting move have been given fully by Thucydides, whose account of the Sicilian expedition, here as throughout, we can do little but paraphrase: it was now, he tells us, winter; to carry on the war across the plain required strength in cavalry; the victory afforded prospects of gaining new allies, the delay, opportunity to prepare additional material, with which to push the attack with greater vigour in the spring. Since all these reasons for withdrawing were visible before landing, it is probable that Nicias was acting in the hope of creating, without the waste and risk of besieging Syracuse, a situation in Sicily with which the Athenians at home would be satisfied. Nor was such a hope groundless now that the moving spirit for war a Foutrance was out of the way. But seeing that Nicias himself was rendered politically ineffective by absence, and the men now most prominent at Athens, Androcles and Peisander, belonged to the war-party, the Athenians, far from being content with defeating the Syracusans, voted the money (300 talents) and cavalry (250 horsemen and 30 mounted archers) requested for continuing the siege.

The Syracusans, too, had as yet no thought but to prepare themselves to make resistance successful. After being beaten in the open field they had to envisage the certainty that the Athenians would try to enclose their city by a wall of circumvallation. If they could not prevent this they must surrender, since their population of 100,000 could not subsist on the supplies which might elude the vigilance of the Athenian fleet. A wall of cir­cumvallation, however, must cross Epipolae, a triangular plateau with precipitous edges, which, sloping gradually down from the west, was accessible from the plain below at two points only, its apex, Euryalus, and where it fell off less abruptly to form a broad bridge-head for the neck of land connecting Ortygia with the mainland. The land-wall of Syracuse ran from sea to sea across the base of this plateau, including in the section known as Achradina the portion of the bridge-head on which Ortygia abutted directly. The rest, designated Temenites, extended for some distance outside the fortifications to the west. By building an advance wall so as to cover this area the Syracusans secured for themselves all the easy passages between the heights above and the plain of the Anapus and at the same time lengthened appreciably the distance from sea to sea which would have to be covered by the Athenians with a wall of circumvallation.

With this they occupied themselves during the winter (415—4 b.c.), but they did not neglect other matters. Attributing their defeat to lack of discipline and of unity of command, they decided to substitute for their fifteen generals a board made up of Hermocrates and two others with more strictly military authority; and, besides working with diplomacy and arms to counter the moves made by the Athenians to win allies among the Greeks (notably at Camarina, and at Messana, where the treachery of Alcibiades proved fatal to his friends) and to stir up insurrection among the Sicels, they dispatched envoys to Corinth and Sparta to get aid if possible and to persuade the Lacedaemonians to renew the war with Athens. These found the Corinthians eager to help— they were already at war with Athens—the Spartans, on the other hand, hesitant. They did not want to recommence hostilities until Athens, not they, incurred the anger of the gods by breaking the treaty, and until they saw some reasonable prospect of success. Waging war so far afield as Sicily had no attractions for them.

But they could not escape the conclusion that they must do something to help Syracuse. As to its peril there was agreement between its envoys and Alcibiades, whose bitterness against his native land lent weight to the authority with which he disclosed the expectations, plans, and fears of the Athenians: once Syracuse had been starved into submission, all Sicily and Italy would be mobilized for a grand attack by sea and land on the Peloponnese. This should be forestalled by sending to Syracuse, if not Spartan soldiers, at least a Spartan general; and it would especially help to keep the Athenians from dispatching further troops to Sicily and to bring them into a frame of mind to accept terms, should Sparta do what Athens above all else dreaded—seize Decelea in Attica. To the one of these suggestions which committed them least the Spartans at once acceded and nominated Gylippus, son of Cleandridas, to take command both of the Syracusans them­selves and of an expedition to be set on foot from Corinth for their relief. A better choice could not have been made.

During the winter of 415—4 b.c. neither Syracuse nor Athens had much success in stirring up the Siceliote Greeks to take a hand in the war. The record of both for unfair dealing with allies was against them. The idea uppermost on the island was to be on good terms with the victor. Hence the Athenians profited little in this particular by the winter’s delay. And an effort to capitalize the ancient enmities toward Syracuse existing in the West outside Sicily yielded them only three shiploads of troops from ‘Etruria.’ Carthage refused to aid them. When, too, spring came the Athe­nians were still unready. The cavalry from Athens was not yet there. The interval of waiting they filled in with unimportant expeditions. Then, when the Athenian horsemen finally reached Catana and mounts had been secured for them and they were about to be augmented by 300 cavalry from Segesta and 100 from Naxos and elsewhere, Nicias and Lamachus concluded that they were in a position to strike (May, 414 b.c.).

The Syracusans had long since put a garrison at the Olympieum and lined the shore of the Great Harbour with a stockade on the chance that the Athenians would try again to land where they had landed before. The importance attached by their adversaries to cavalry suggested, however, an alternative—an advance on Epipolae from the north. For this Hermocrates and his colleagues set about arranging a defence—the constitution of a picked force of 600 men to guard the approaches to the heights. But they had waited too long and were caught napping. For on the very morning on which they assembled the troops on the meadow by the Anapus for the purpose, in connection with a general review, of selecting the men and organizing them in a special detachment, Nicias and Lamachus, having come, not by land, but by sea during the night, disembarked their entire force at Leon, and rushed it forward so rapidly that it had mastered the ascent at Euryalus and debouched on the highest point of the plateau before even the 600 guards, who had a slightly greater distance to traverse, had come up to dispute their passage. In the battle which ensued the Syracusans, attacking in the disorder of their approach, were defeated, and retired within their walls leaving the Athenians in possession of the key position to the defence of the city.

With a celerity in action that contrasted strangely with the hesitancy of their decisions Nicias and Lamachus next fortified a base at Labdalum ‘on the verge of the bluffs looking towards Megara,’ and bringing up all their cavalry advanced to Syke, where they built with staggering speed the first section of the ‘circle,’ which with one wall facing out and another facing in and a passage between was planned to run for a distance of more than three miles across the heights and down on each side to Trogilus on the north and the Great Harbour on the south. The progress of this work the Syracusans sought first to impede by bringing their mounted troops into action, but these too the Athenians worsted by using in conjunction with their cavalry a regiment of foot. Then they sought to stop it by constructing a counter-wall out from the city below the southern cliffs across its projected line, the course selected being so situated that they could protect the approaches to it from the heights by palisades and force the Athenians to divide their army dangerously should they intervene.

But the Athenians went on with their own job extending the circle toward the north and laying down wood and stone in the direction of Trogilus. They waited till the Syracusans had finished and had resumed their various stations. Then choosing the time of the midday siesta when their adversaries were off their guard, a picked Athenian corps rushed the counter-wall at its end, driving the Syracusan garrison before it, while one Athenian army advanced to contain the enemy’s troops in Achradina and another to assail his works at a point near the postern gate leading into Temenites. The latter was unable to intercept the garrison, but it entered Temenites simultaneously, and, though it was immediately thrown out again with losses, the main purpose of the attack was achieved. The cross-wall was destroyed and its materials appropriated by the Athenians to their own uses.

With this incident is doubtless to be connected the fact that on resuming operations on the circle next day it was no longer with its extension toward the north that they busied themselves but with the carrying of it to and over the southern bluffs to the low-lying land that ran thence for over half a mile to the Great Harbour. While they were thus employed the Syracusans set to work to head them off a second time, and this they did by constructing a stockade and digging a ditch through the middle of the marsh across their path. And a second time the Athenians bided their time and then intervened. Having ordered the fleet to sail forward from Thapsus into the Great Harbour, they advanced, Lamachus leading, across the marsh at daybreak by the aid of doors and planks which they carried with them, and mastered the enemy’s works and defeated his army. But the enterprise was not completed without incidents. The Syracusan right was thrown back on the city, but the left, repulsed on the Anapus, made for the bridge to escape toward the Olympieum. An Athenian regiment, which tried to head them off, was itself cut to pieces by the Syracusan cavalry, and w’hile stemming the panic that ensued Lamachus exposed himself rashly and was slain. Simultaneously the Athenians narrow escaped losing their other general. For, taking advantage of the crisis below, the Syracusans w’ho had fled to the city launched an attack on the heights above, which were now denuded of defenders, and Nicias, who had not participated in that day’s offensive because of illness, kept them at bay till help arrived only by setting fire to the engines and timber that lay in front of the circle. At this moment the Athenian fleet appeared in the Great Harbour; whereupon the Syracusans, extricating their left wing somehow, retired everywhere within the city, gave up the struggle, and let the Athenians—sailors reinforcing soldiers—go ahead with the envelopment. The circle was soon carried to within a short distance of the shore, and, since in the case of the two-mile stretch between Syke and Trogilus, the materials were for the most part in place and some sections were already finished, the complete circumvallation of Syracuse was now only a question of time.

Of the two methods by which at that epoch walled cities were wont to fall—blockade and betrayal—it was not clear, however, that the Syracusans would chose the sterner; for a party within the city was conducting private negotiations with Nicias; and the citizens collectively were debating, both among themselves and with him, the possibilities of peace. A symptom of pro­found dissatisfaction and distrust appeared in the dismissal of Hermocrates and his colleagues and the appointment of other generals in their place.

IV.

GYLIPPUS AND THE SIEGE OF NICIAS

The essence of the matter was time, and this the Athenians had squandered. But even yet, at the height of their fortunes, when at the eleventh hour help was about to reach Syracuse, they might have remained master of the situation if they had been reasonably vigilant. Lamachus was sorely missed. It was a curious accident that a man who disbelieved in the ultimate utility of capturing Syracuse should have been left alone to prosecute its siege. Yet how much depended upon personality in warfare was shown no less in Gylippus’ case than in his. For without waiting for the thirteen ships of which his relief expedition mainly consisted, this able and enterprising man put off from Leucas for Italy with four vessels only, notwithstanding that he was in receipt of false news from which he judged that his mission was hopeless. The Italian Greeks refused to back an enterprise so weakly equipped. Nor did Nicias treat it seriously till it had arrived at Locri, when he sent against it four triremes, which, however, arrived too late to prevent it from passing through the straits. Gylippus thus arrived at Himera, where he scored a remarkable success. The Himeraeans embraced his cause wholeheartedly, furnished arms, by which he transformed 700 of his sailors into soldiers, and put 1000 of their own infantry and 100 of their cavalry at his disposal. The masterful way in which he lived up to his reputation as a Spartan won the interest of the Sicels of the neighbourhood; so that, when he set out across country for Syracuse, he took with him 1000 ‘barbarians’ in addition to the troops already mentioned and some small con­tingents from Selinus and Gela—about 3000 men in all.

The speed of warships propelled by oars was so slight that even in the coastal areas of their action large spaces remained beyond eyesight in the daytime. Hence Nicias cannot fairly be blamed for letting one of Gylippus’ ships from Leucas reach Syracuse at this moment with the much-needed news that twelve others were on their way, and that Gylippus, sent by Sparta to direct the defence, was not far off. A similar excuse does not exist in the case of an army coming by land. That Gylippus found Euryalus unguarded was apparently a surprise to himself, for he drew near it prepared for battle. But he made the ascent unnoticed, and once on the top of Epipolae nothing could prevent him from joining hands across the line of the Athenian circle with the Syracusans, who by pre-arrangement had come out of Achradina in full force to meet him. For a moment he thought of attacking the Athenians in their positions before they had recovered from their surprise, but, thinking better of it when he saw in what disarray the Syracusans advanced, he stood on the defensive. Nor despite his advantage in numbers did he try to relieve the city by driving off the Athenians; but, after first capturing Labdalum by a surprise attack, he set to work building a single wall from the city up Epipolae in a westerly direction. It was designed to intersect the Athenian circle to the north of the point to which this was finished and to reach the edge of the plateau at or south of Euryalus, thus adding, virtually, a new quarter to the city and excluding altogether the possibility of a circumvallation.

Nicias did not interfere prematurely. Before coming up to the high ground he completed the section to the Great Harbour; and, being dependent, as never before, on his water communications now that the Syracusan cavalry was at large; aw’are, too, of the necessity of keeping a closer watch on the comings and goings in the Syracusan ports now that relief was on its way by sea and the Syracusans were taking renewed interest in their fleet, he occupied Plemmyrium (the projecting headland by which the entrance into the Great Harbour was narrowed down on the south to three-quarters of a mile) with a chain of forts, and transferred his navy and his naval base thither. This took time; and in the meanwhile Gylippus had carried his counter-wall close to its point of intersection with the Athenian circle, on the extension northward of which the Athenians were again busy. This brought matters to a head. Gylippus had more spirit for the offensive, Nicias greater need to attack. In the first battle the Syracusans found the Athenian army in a position between the walls where they could not use their cavalry, and being still inferior in infantry-fighting, they were repulsed. In the second battle Nicias, attacking in turn, found the Syracusans drawn up with their right wing, in which their cavalry and javelin-men were posted, well outside the corner of the two walls. And to this he owed his defeat. For the enemy’s mobile troops routed his left, which thereupon carried his whole line with it in headlong flight within the fortifications.

That night Gylippus built his wall past the critical point; and, not content with this advantage, he employed thereafter all avail­able man-power in completing the wall to the distant point selected. Syracuse was saved—as it proved, definitely.

It was now Nicias’ turn to be besieged. Already Gylippus had posted one-third of his mounted troops at a hamlet near the Olympieum, from which they so harassed and confined the crews of the ships at Plemmyrium that they could get water, firewood, and forage only with the greatest difficulty and danger. The soldiers, too, had henceforth to live cramped in their bleak camp by the edge of the Great Harbour and in the narrow passage-way which ran thence across the unhealthy lowlands to Syke on the wind-swept heights, nailed down to their stations in their elon­gated fortress by the enemy’s cavalry and the ever-present menace of an attack in force from the city.

The sea was of course still open; but the twelve triremes from Corinth had made Syracuse in safety, and, combining their own vessels with these and manning them with men whom they could not use advantageously in their army, the Syracusans were busy, in full view of the Athenians, practising manoeuvres with a sea fight in mind. They counted on not being inferior in numbers, and their ships were less run down and waterlogged than those of Nicias. Nor was it the smart, confident, battle-trained crews that had left the Piraeus sixteen months before with whom the Syracusans had now to measure themselves. The moment doubts as to ultimate success were justified, the morale of the Athenian seamen fell. The foreign conscripts among them took every opportunity to slip off for home, and the foreign mercenaries to desert to the enemy or to find employment elsewhere in Sicily. Since new drafts were not to be had, and the citizens, upon whom in these circumstances the fatigue duties mainly devolved—for the slaves, too, tended to run away and could no longer be trusted—were being decimated by the enemy’s cavalry, the triremes generally came more and more to fall short of their full complements and the men that were left to lose their edge through sickness and excessive drudgery. Of course it was only during the chill winter months that these evils progressed sufficiently to put so many ships out of commission as to endanger the naval superiority of the Athenians, but they were already apparent to Nicias in October (414 b.c.); and since the siege could no longer be prosecuted, he at once sent a long despatch to Athens explaining his situation fully and recommending that the expedition be aban­doned altogether or reinforced by another equally large. He asked too that he be relieved of the command on account of illness.

V.

THE SECOND EXPEDITION

Neither he nor any other general, ancient or modern, could have taken the responsibility of abandoning outright an expedition on which his country set such store and which had come so near succeeding. Could it have entered into the calculations of the Athenians that, if they sent a second expedition, the com­bined force would be unable to withdraw when it pleased; that is to say, could they have been as wise to the issue as we are, they doubtless would have cut their losses and evacuated Sicily forthwith. But being a proud, plucky people, solicitous for their prestige, and not omniscient, they resolved to see the war through. They continued Nicias in the command, designating two officers then on the spot to share provisionally his burdens, and they put Eurymedon, whose knowledge of western affairs was second to none, and Demosthenes, their most energetic general, in charge of a second expedition, which, like the first, was to comprise both fleet and army—a selective draft of citizens and contingents from the allies. The task of organizing the new enterprise was entrusted to Demosthenes. Eurymedon sailed at once to Sicily with 120 talents, spreading the news of Athens’ intentions (December, 414 b.c.). His arrival during the winter gave Nicias ten new ships and 2000 fresh seamen, a welcome addition for the sea fight that was due in the spring.

That strong reinforcements would come to Nicias was anti­cipated everywhere. It must therefore be the aim of Sparta, if it should do its part, to detain the Athenians at home; of Gylippus, to destroy the enemy’s forces in Sicily, or at least complete their investment, before a new armada could arrive. Accordingly, taking up the gage which Athens, at the insistence of the Argives, had thrown down the previous summer, the Spartans re-opened the Peloponnesian War in the early spring (middle of March) of 413 b.c. by an invasion of Attica in which they and their allies, under the leadership of Agis, not only ravaged the country, but seized Decelea and proceeded systematically to fortify it. But they did more than thus point a gun at the heart of the Athenian Empire. They set to work sending soldiers on merchant ships from various points in the Peloponnese across the open sea to Sicily, masking the operation by threatening the Athenian patrol at Naupactus with a fleet of 25 triremes manned for the purpose by Corinth. Gylippus, for his part, spent the winter canvassing Sicily for allies, men, and ships. But he, too, failed to move the Siceliote Greeks very profoundly. They were interested rather to save Syracuse than to enable it to triumph. Notably they held back their warships. If the Syracusans were to get the better of the Athenians on the sea it must therefore be with the resources they already had.

They had obviously possessed a considerable fleet when the Athenians first arrived; for they now got ready for action 67 triremes in addition to the thirteen that came from Corinth. The crews, accustomed to regard the Athenians as their masters in the art of seamanship, found it difficult to estimate favourably their chances of success in naval warfare. The work of mental preparation was mainly taken in hand by Hermocrates, now as ever clear-sighted, resolute, patriotic, who developed an aggressive spirit among them by insisting that their adversaries had taken to the sea, not from instinct, but, like themselves, under pressure, and would lose their superiority if subjected unexpectedly to the same sort of bold attack with which they were wont to overwhelm others.

Plemmyrium was indicated as the first objective of Syracusan operations by two considerations: it was the key to the harbour in the same way as Euryalus was the key to Epipolae and the city; and it was the depot in which the Athenians kept their stock of food, goods, and naval stores, and the station in which their fleet was moored. Under cover of night Gylippus marched his whole army into positions where, screened by cavalry, they could wait in readiness to assail Plemmyrium from the land side at the right moment. The signal was to come from the fleet. This advanced in two squadrons, one of 45 triremes outside Ortygia from the Little Harbour, the other of 35 triremes from the naval station within the Great Harbour. But before they could join to press home the attack, the Athenians were able, notwithstanding the suddenness of the onset and the double threat, to meet the larger squadron entering the harbour’s mouth with 35 ships and the other with a force likewise smaller by 10 ships than that opposed to it. The struggle was long drawn out, but eventually the Athenians had to give way in both areas; and, since at the right moment, when its defenders were gathered on the beach watching the sea fight, Gylippus assaulted the largest of the chain of forts protecting Plemmyrium, he took it by storm. The Athenians were then face to face with irreparable disaster. But, as Thucydides says, the Syracusans ‘made them a present of their victory.’ The squadron that had forced its way into the Great Harbour was somehow thrown into disorder, the ships falling foul of one another; so that the Athenians, alert in their desperation to seize every advantage, were able to put it to flight and then to rout the other division also.

But in the meantime Gylippus had occupied all Plemmyrium. Most of the guards escaped, those of the main fort with difficulty; but the stores, notably the sails and tackle of 40 triremes, were captured. The casualties of the sea fight were appreciably larger on the side of the Syracusans—eleven ships and their crews against three ships only;—but these losses were more than balanced by the moral effect produced on friends and foes alike by the demonstration that the Athenian Beet was no longer unbeatable.

The chief gain of the Syracusans, however—one from whose consequences the Athenians never escaped—was the occupation of Plemmyrium. For this left the Athenians no option but to shift their naval station to the only part of the Great Harbour now theirs—the strand in front of their camp, a shallow beach with muddy bottom on which the east wind rolls up a considerable surf. Thereafter, except when they won a passage by fighting, it was not they but the Syracusans who controlled the entrance of supplies of food and material, which, too, were further curtailed by a squadron of Syracusan ships sent to Italy to intercept them at their source. The pressure thus exerted on their line of com­munications and retreat was a great evil and a greater menace; and the constant activity required to ensure provisions and avoid surprise put a fearful strain on the endurance and vigilance of the Athenian crews, already stale from overwork. But what injured the Athenians most was that henceforth their fleet had to operate in waters so circumscribed as to destroy the possibility for the execution of the manoeuvres of backing, enveloping, and breaking through on which its superiority mainly depended; so land­locked that the Syracusans could use skiffs and methods of attack that would have been quite inapplicable on the open sea.

Naturally Nicias did his utmost to exploit his naval success—the last perhaps of the eight victories gained by the Athenians when, according to Euripides, the gods were impartial—by destroying the Syracusan fleet. After its defeat this had taken refuge in the old dockyards directly across the Great Harbour from the new Athenian naval station. But all Nicias’ efforts to come at the enemy’s ships were frustrated by the Syracusans who put a stockade of piles in front of their positions and replaced it again as often as the Athenians removed it. Thus protected they carried through a project for remodelling their triremes. Being, as they saw, safeguarded against flank and rear attacks by the narrow field within which alone the Athenians could fight—for they dared not range widely since thus they would imperil their retreat to their narrow base between the Anapus and Lysimeleia—the Syracusans sacrificed speed to strength of prow and produced a type of vessel that was distinctly better for head-on fighting.

Meanwhile Gylippus was busy bringing up reinforcements. Those from Selinus and Himera were denied passage through its territory by Acragas (which persisted in its neutrality to the last), and while following the alternative route through the land of the Sicels, they fell into an ambuscade laid for them, at Nicias’ instigation, by the people of Centuripa and Halicyae, and of the 2300 men who started only 1500 arrived at Syracuse. Succours from Camarina and Gela, lent more freely now that Syracuse had mastered one attack and feared another, did not have a neutral or hostile barrage to encounter, and came up safely: 500 hoplites, 700 javelin-men, 500 horsemen and a squadron of five ships. Of the 1600 hoplites on their way in merchant ships across the open sea from the Peloponnese only the 300 Boeotians had been heard from as yet. Of the rest the 600 Helots and Neodamodes from Sparta, storm-driven to the coast of Africa, were to turn up at Selinus, but only in August, while the 700 from Corinth and Sicyon were late in starting. But the reinforcements actually on hand were very considerable—enough to give them numerical superiority in hoplites, cavalry, light-armed troops, and ships. Gylippus could not wait for the rest if he wanted to destroy the force of Nicias before that of Demosthenes arrived. In fact he had waited too long already.

He opened the engagement by advancing in full force both from the city and the Olympieum across the lowlands against the Athenian lines. This, however, was merely a feint and it deceived the enemy only for a moment. The real attack came from the sea. The interval separating the two lines of piles behind which the fleets lay was little more than a mile. But by quick work the Athenians got their triremes manned and free in time to deploy before the Syracusans were upon them. Nothing, there­fore, came of the surprise. Nor was the fighting in any way conclusive. Numerically the fleets differed but slightly (80 Syracusan ships against 75 Athenian), and, except that they sank one or two of the enemy’s triremes, the attackers derived little advantage from changing the prows of their vessels. Two days later the battle was renewed in identical circumstances, and again the struggle on land petered out and the struggle on sea was prolonged in indecisive skirmishing. Then the Syracusans, on the initiative of their best pilot, Ariston, son of Pyrrhicus, a Corin­thian, staged a stratagem that was the undoing of the Athenians.

They backed away as if breaking off for the day, but it was in reality to take food, which was ready for them on the shore. Then, returning suddenly, they faced the Athenians anew, taken thus by surprise and supperless. Again the Syracusans fell to skirmishing with the evident intention of tiring the Athenians out. Perceiving this, the latter, abandoning the defensive role thus far assumed, brought the matter to an issue by a swift attack, and fighting began in earnest. Now it was that the remodelling of the Syracusan warships proved its value. Trireme after trireme of the Athenians had its slender prow stove in and became incapacitated. Nor was this the only particular in which the Athenians fought at a disadvantage. For Syracusan javelin-men, brought up on skiffs, which darted under the banks of oars, reached the rowers through the oar-holes and did them great damage. Tired and discouraged, the Athenians took to flight, with seven ships a total loss and many others unfit for action; and it was small compensation that the victors in their pursuit approached too near the merchantmen which Nicias had anchored the day before at intervals of 200 feet in front of his stockade, and had two of their vessels destroyed by the ‘dolphins’ with which these auxiliaries were equipped. The Athenians were driven off the sea, and even if they could withstand the renewed attack that was imminent on land and water, they could not hold out long through lack of provisions. At this juncture Demosthenes and Eurymedon arrived.

The Spartans occupied Decelea when the Athenians could not have abandoned the second expedition even had they wished. For then, to enable Nicias to evacuate Sicily with safety, he needed from them reinforcements not orders. They were of course both inconvenienced and injured by the constant proximity of a strong garrison impregnably established on the south slope of Parnes, less than fourteen miles from the city, at a point whence it overlooked the entire plain of the Cephisus and dominated the road leading from Athens to Euboea. But so long as the sea was theirs they were in no danger. For their commitments in Sicily did not involve more than one-quarter of their field army. They were, indeed, taking chances with their maritime supremacy, but only in the contingency, which seemed excluded, that the 210 warships, implicated first and last in Sicily, would be a total loss. Their retort to the occupation of Decelea was in kind: they themselves seized a post in Laconia, opposite Cythera, whence they hoped to menace Sparta’s hold on the Helots more effectively than from Pylos. This lodgement was effected by joint action between the fleet of 60 Athenian and five Chian ships which Demosthenes was taking to Syracuse and a home fleet of 30 ships, the crews of which, reinforced by hoplites taken aboard at Argos, stayed on after Demosthenes’ departure to complete the fortifications.

At Zacynthus and Cephallenia and from Naupactus Demosthenes was joined by fresh hoplites. At Acarnania he was met by Eurymedon, back from Syracuse with word that Plemmyrium had fallen; and from there they dispatched ten ships to strengthen the patrol at Naupactus, which, even so, sustained a moral defeat in a dubious victory which it shortly afterwards gained over the Corinthians. Acarnania furnished light-armed troops, both slingers and javelin-men, Corcyra hoplites and fifteen triremes, the former requisitioned by Demosthenes, the latter by Eurymedon. Then the two crossed to Italy. There Tarentum and Locri remained hostile and Rhegium neutral, but from Metapontum, Thurii, and the Messapians they received two ships, 600 hoplites, and 750 javelin-men. It was accordingly with a splendid armament of 73 triremes (51 Athenian), 5000 hoplites (1200 Athenian), 3000 bowmen, slingers, and javelin­men, and an adequate commissariat and equipment—at least 15,000 men of all forces—that Demosthenes and Eurymedon sailed into the Great Harbour in July 413 b.c. to the joy and relief of the Athenians and the utter consternation of the Syracusans. It would have been better for Athens had Nicias and all his men perished before they arrived.

Nicias being ill and discredited by defeat and Eurymedon a colourless personality, the conduct of Athenian operations was at once assumed by Demosthenes. He was clear on two points: the necessity of acting at once while the impression of his arrival was fresh, and the impossibility of continuing the siege without mastering the counter-wall constructed by Gylippus longitudinally across Epipolae. Accordingly, he first secured elbow­room by driving the enemy out of the plain of the Anapus, and then launched a resolute frontal attack on the wall in question; but, since the Syracusans burned the engines with which he sought to break through and repulsed at all points the assaults made simultaneously, he had perforce to adopt the alternative—an enveloping movement. The aim of such an operation, however, was the possession of Euryalus, through which alone an entrance existed into Epipolae in the rear of the Syracusan line. This weak point was now defended by an advance fort with three fortified camps in its rear; so that if an attempt were made to force it in broad daylight, it had, Demosthenes thought, little chance of success. He, therefore, proposed, and his colleagues accepted, the hazardous plan of engaging his entire army in a night-attack, in the course of which Euryalus was to be overwhelmed and the Syracusans swept back on Achradina, so that Gylippus’ wall could be breached and work on the circle resumed.

The first part of this programme was carried out successfully: the fort that guarded the approach was surprised and captured, and as the Athenians debouched on the heights they routed the troops specially allocated for the defence of Epipolae, and also drove before them the guards of the cross-wall, which they pro­ceeded to dismantle. The real struggle began when the main Syracusan army came up. At the outset this too was thrust back. But first the Boeotian detachment, and then other Syracusan corps, stood their ground, or even threw back their assailants; so that the two lines became dove-tailed, so to speak, into one another, and a scene of indescribable confusion ensued. The light—for the moon was full—favoured the defenders; so did the homogeneity of their speech, battle-cries, and paeans. They were thus able to fight to better purpose and more compactly. Finally panic overtook the Athenians; and in their flight many threw themselves or were forced over the bluffs. Demosthenes’ turning movement had failed, and failed disastrously, with great losses.

His design in this contingency was to depart immediately, especially since illness, due to the season and the marsh, was prostrating the soldiers. Nicias agreed with him that they could make no further headway by attacking, but he feared to accept the responsibility of withdrawing altogether without a vote of the people; and as for withdrawing to Thapsus or Catana, whence, as Demosthenes urged, they could continue the war both on land and sea much more advantageously and without the risk of being cut off completely, he argued that there was time enough to do this later when the enemy would be expecting it less, and when they themselves were quite sure that the Syracusans, who (he professed to know) were suffering greater hardships than they were and had reached the end of their financial resources, would not come to terms. Obstinate, timorous of responsibility, selfish, such Nicias showed himself at this time; but so great was the influence he still possessed, and so contagious the confidence he expressed that a revolution was imminent in Syracuse, by which his correspondents there would put the city into his hands, that he had his way even though Eurymedon was against him as well as Demosthenes.

VI.

THE ATHENIAN DISASTER

So for the greater part of a month the departure was deferred. And disease raged in the camp; and the treason hoped for did not appear. Nor did the hired soldiers of Syracuse desert when their pay fell in arrears. Thus the grounds for remaining fell away; and eventually an argument for leaving came which even Nicias could not resist—the arrival in Syracuse of the Peloponnesian troops from Selinus and of further large reinforcements, which Gylippus, indefatigable as ever, had collected. The day for withdrawing was set and, in all secrecy, plans for the evacuation of the great army were matured. ‘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,’ says Thucydides, ‘was the reason why the Athenians delayed and stayed on.’

After the disaster the Athenians were enraged at all their practitioners of the mantic art who by giving them assurances of success had sent them confidently to Sicily. Their anger was misplaced. The objects of their wrath had simply conformed to the traditions of their craft in harmonizing the signs from heaven with the political and military exigencies of the hour. The seers who were at fault were the soothsayers of Nicias who had not wit enough—or was it courage that was lacking?—to turn an eclipse to the account of a move so imperative as was departure on this occasion. The fact was that Nicias desired to remain. He could not believe that the gods would let him fail. Athens had already suffered because its general was too loyal a parliamentarian: it was now to have deep cause to regret that he was so complete a pattern of all the conventional virtues.

It was at once reported to the Syracusans that the Athenians had been on the point of withdrawing. Hence Gylippus did not give them a second chance to shift the scene of fighting to an arena of their own choosing. His preparations completed, he engaged the Athenian fleet again. He had only 76 ships to his opponents 86; but, favoured by the wind, he pressed the fighting, with the same elements of superiority as before, close to the Athenian base. Eurymedon, who commanded the Athenian left tried to get freedom for manoeuvring by sailing round the Syracusan flank; but, failing to swing out from the land inside Dascon, and, hence, detached from his centre, which the enemy broke, he was thrown back into the southern extension of the harbour and perished together with his entire squadron. The Athenian ships were everywhere driven towards the shore, some of them outside the stockade to the north. Most of these the army saved, inflicting in the process a severe defeat on the troops with which Gylippus, coming from the city along the causeway, tried to capture them. The Syracusans failed, too, to rid themselves of their enemy by the use of a fire-ship.

But they were again masters of the sea; and, anticipating that the next effort of the Athenians would be to force their way out of the harbour at all costs, they narrowed down its mouth by a line of boats—triremes placed sidewise, merchant ships, craft of all kinds, anchored and chained together. They pictured them­selves enshrined in the memory of the Hellenes as the destroyers of the tyrant state that for two generations had carried terror across the waters to all liberty-loving Greeks. The position of the Athenians was indeed desperate. They could not remain where they were because of lack of provisions. On the land side the country for a great radius was all hostile, difficult to traverse, and infested with the enemy’s cavalry. Retreat in this direction was obviously a last resort. A break-through by sea in the opening left between Ortygia and Plemmyrium must be attempted.

To make this with a maximum of strength they shortened the lines on land to a circuit by the shore which a garrison could hold. With the troops thus set free and the crews that remained fit they manned all the triremes they had, loading them down in a way that lessened speed but converted them into floating fortresses, swarming with missile-throwers and boarding-parties, the general idea being to seize the enemy’s ships with grappling-irons and thus fight a land battle on shipboard. Nicias left nothing undone to increase the confidence of the fighters and bring home to each man individually the seriousness of the struggle both for himself and for Athens. Personally he chose the harder part and stayed behind with the garrison, which he spread out along the beach so as to enlarge as much as possible the area on which the ships might fall back with safety when hard pressed. Demosthenes shared with Menander and Euthydemus the responsibility of leading the fleet into action, which, with its 110 ships in battle order, rowed straight for the harbour’s mouth (c. September io, 413 b.c.). They found the Corinthians under Pythen ready to meet them. The rest of the Syracusan fleet, commanded by Sicanus and Agatharchus, was stationed in a semi­circle on either wing, and behind the ships the Syracusan army was distributed along the shore to intervene with help to save or destroy according as the vessels that came within its reach were friends or foes. The Syracusan ships (76 in all) were less numerous but more stoutly built and in much better repair.

The battle that ensued opened advantageously for the Athenians, who thrust the Corinthians back and reached the barrier of boats; but before they had mastered this obstacle, the Syracusans bore in upon them from all directions and forced them to fight at once on several fronts. At this point Thucydides fails even to suggest the factors that determined the outcome. Instead, he dwells on certain typical incidents in the confused fighting that followed, and then turns our attention to the spectators on the shore, and leaves us to infer the manifold vicissitudes of the protracted struggle from the agony of fear, joy, anxiety; the actual bodily swaying this way and that: the intense excitement breaking out in cries and lamentations, prayers and objurgations, with which both sets of eye-witnesses followed the action. A wail from the entire Athenian army announced the final triumph of the Syracusans.

Of the 110 Athenian ships that entered the engagement only 60 escaped in a seaworthy condition, but as the Syracusans could now launch still less—50 at most—Demosthenes and Nicias re­solved to man the survivors at once and try again to force a passage out; but the sailors preferred to face the unknown perils of a retreat by land, and refused to embark. Had they set out for Catana that same night they might have escaped; but, tricked by Hermocrates into thinking that the way was blocked, they waited 36 hours to arrange their forces and pack up. Then they started westward for the Sicel country, leaving behind the sick and the wounded, the war-material and what remained of the fleet. With the men in a hollow square, Nicias in command of the front half and Demosthenes of the rear, they forced the crossing of the Anapus, and, in a swarm of attacking cavalry and light-armed troops, covered a distance of forty stadia (3’7/10 miles). Next day, twenty stadia (1’7/8 miles) farther on, they reached a valley near a village (Floridia), where they stopped overnight for food and water; but, on resuming their march, they found the approach (Cava di Culatrcllo) to the elevated, ravine-flanked crest of Acraean Scaur, over which the advance lay, so strongly held by enemy troops, and the crest itself so effectually fortified, that resolute attacks on two successive days yielded only heavy casualties and no passage. Nor did a third attempt by a different approach bring them farther forward. There was no alternative bur to alter their route. They determined to make a detour to the south and seek their destination by ascending the river Cacvparis (Cassibili). And in order to evade the enemy, whose Parthian tactics made headway almost impossible, they left numerous camp-fires burning and used the night for marching. The Syracusans failed to notice their departure; and at dawn the Athenians reached the coastal road to Helorum unmolested, Nicias in good order and a long way ahead, Demosthenes, who had been slow in starting, with the rear in much confusion. Since Nicias pushed rapidly on, while Demosthenes stopped to re­arrange his ranks, the two halves of the retreating army were fifty stadia apart when at noon, not far beyond the Cacyparis (which the army crossed by fighting but did not ascend), the rear was overhauled by the Syracusan cavalry. Thus it happened that the two sections of the Athenian army made their fate doubly sure by meeting it separately.

Demosthenes was quickly surrounded on the ‘Homestead of Polyzelus,’ in a walled enclosure among olive trees, where his exhausted men were not sufficiently covered to escape the enemy’s storm of missiles, to which, thus crowded together, they presented the best of targets. Though offered freedom if they would desert, the ‘allied’ troops from the islands of the Aegean Sea for the most part refused—a creditable proof of loyalty to their comrades if not of devotion to Athens. But the situation was utterly hopeless; and, on receiving a guarantee that they would not be put to death, the whole force surrendered. The survivors numbered 6000.

Except that it was in a river instead of an olive orchard, disaster overtook Nicias in almost identical circumstances. When he had verified for himself the fate of his colleague—it was the morning after, while he was encamped on a hill just beyond the river Erineus (Fiume di Noto or Falconara), which now he purposed ascending,—he offered to pay the Syracusans their entire war expenses of more than 2000 talents if they would let his army go. But the Syracusans refused. They had him hemmed in, and all day long they pelted him with missiles. Unable to stay longer through lack of food and water, and failing to slip off undetected during the darkness, he had no alternative but to fight his way aimlessly along the Helorine road. At the end of three miles, already practically in flight, the army reached the Assinarus river (Tellaro or Atiddaru), into the bed and current of which the men rushed, forgetting discipline and danger in the agony of their thirst. A horrible butchery ensued, to which Nicias eventually put an end by surrendering himself to Gylippus; but not before a majority of the survivors had been taken prisoners privately by the Syracusans and their allies (September 20, 413 b.c.). Those captured officially numbered only 1000.

Two generals and 7000 men were all that now remained to enter Syracuse of the 45—50,000 soldiers and sailors whom Athens had sent against the city. The rest had been spared this ignominy by death, desertion, or enslavement. Generosity to prisoners was not to be expected on the part of the victors; for they would not have experienced it themselves if they had been vanquished. Yet we cannot help regretting that they did not rise to the occasion for clemency as they had risen to the successive needs of the war remodelling their government and their triremes, pouring out their treasure and their blood, pertinacious alike in their diplomacy and their fighting, showing no less than their adversaries how large, varied, and flexible were the resources of a free people. But at the end of it all they were exhausted and revengeful. Though Hermocrates and Gylippus would have saved Demosthenes and Nicias, the one from magnanimity the other to grace his own triumph, the Syracusans had no compunction about putting them to death and confining their perplexing mass of captives in their stone quarries—secure prisons, ready-made, but cold at night hot by day and hence unhealthy,—where they kept them crowded together, dying of wounds, disease, and under-nourishment, without opportunity to remove their own filth or their dead, till December, when they picked out all but their most hated enemies—the Athenians and the Siceliote and Italian Greeks—and sold them. The rest dwindled away under this atrocious regime for six months longer. ‘This,’ says Thucydides, ‘proved to be the most important event in the entire war, and, indeed, as it seems to me, in the whole history of Greece, unequalled alike in the glory it brought to the victors and the catastrophe it entailed for the vanquished; for there was no department in which the beaten were not utterly beaten, no misery from which they were spared. Their destruction was total in the fullest sense of the word. Ships, army, everything was lost. Of the many that went forth few re­turned home,’ though this mercy was vouchsafed to stragglers and runaways who from time to time reached Catana, and (according to Plutarch, Nicias, 29) to some Athenians who won their liberty by teaching their Syracusan masters snatches from the choruses of Euripides.

CHAPTER XI