Book 3

Chapter 1

1 The following summer, when the grain was ripening, the Peloponnesians and their allies invaded Attica. Their commander was Archidamus son of Zeuxidamus, king of the Lacedaemonians.

2 They established themselves and ravaged the land. The Athenian cavalry made their customary attacks wherever opportunity offered, preventing the mass of light-armed troops from advancing beyond the hoplites to damage the country near the city.

3 After remaining as long as their provisions lasted, they withdrew and dispersed to their several cities.

Chapter 2

1 Immediately after the Peloponnesian invasion, Lesbos, except for Methymna, revolted from Athens. They had wished to do so even before the war, but the Lacedaemonians had refused to receive them; and now too they were forced to revolt earlier than they intended.

2 They were waiting for the completion of their harbor moles, the building of walls and the construction of ships, and for the arrival from the Black Sea of the archers, grain, and other supplies they had sent for.

3 But the Tenedians, who were at odds with them, the Methymnaeans, and certain Mytilenaeans themselves—men of the opposing faction who served as Athens' representatives—reported to the Athenians that they were forcibly uniting Lesbos under Mytilene and pressing forward all their preparations for revolt in concert with the Lacedaemonians and their Boeotian kinsmen. Unless someone forestalled them at once, Athens would lose Lesbos.

Chapter 3

1 The Athenians, worn down by the plague and by the war, which had only just begun and was already at its height, thought it a formidable undertaking to add Lesbos to their enemies, with its fleet and its strength unimpaired. At first they would not accept the accusations, giving greater weight to their wish that they should not be true. But when the envoys they sent could not persuade the Mytilenaeans to abandon either the unification or their preparations, alarm made them resolve to strike first.

2 They suddenly dispatched forty ships which happened to be ready for a voyage around the Peloponnese. Cleippides son of Deinias was in command, with two other generals.

3 For they had been informed of a festival of Apollo Maloeis outside the city, celebrated by the entire Mytilenaean population, and hoped, by making haste, to fall upon them unawares. If the attempt succeeded, their purpose would be achieved; if not, they were to order the Mytilenaeans to surrender their ships and demolish their walls, and to make war if they refused.

4 The ships sailed. Meanwhile, the Athenians detained the ten Mytilenaean triremes which happened to be with them as an allied contingent, and put their crews under guard.

5 But a man crossed from Athens to Euboea, made his way overland to Geraestus, and found a merchant ship putting to sea. He took passage and reached Mytilene on the third day after leaving Athens, bringing news of the approaching fleet.

6 The Mytilenaeans therefore did not go out to the sanctuary of Maloeis. They also barricaded the unfinished portions of their walls and harbors and kept guard.

Chapter 4

1 The Athenians sailed in not long afterward. Finding this state of affairs, the generals delivered their instructions; when the Mytilenaeans would not obey, they began hostilities.

2 Unprepared and suddenly forced into war, the Mytilenaeans took their ships a short distance outside the harbor as though to offer battle, but were chased back by the Athenian fleet. They then approached the generals with proposals, wishing, if possible, to secure some reasonable agreement that would send the ships away for the present.

3 The Athenian generals accepted their proposals, being themselves afraid that their force might not be sufficient to make war on all Lesbos.

4 A truce was concluded, and the Mytilenaeans sent to Athens one of their accusers, who had already repented, together with other envoys, to see whether they could persuade the Athenians to withdraw the ships on the grounds that they were planning no revolt.

5 Meanwhile they also dispatched envoys to Lacedaemon in a trireme, escaping the notice of the Athenian fleet, which lay at anchor at Malea, north of the city. They had no confidence that their negotiations at Athens would succeed.

6 The envoys to Lacedaemon made a difficult passage across the open sea and worked to obtain some assistance for their people.

Chapter 5

1 When the envoys returned from Athens without having achieved anything, the Mytilenaeans and the rest of Lesbos, except Methymna, entered upon war. The Methymnaeans had come to the Athenians' aid, as had the Imbrians, the Lemnians, and a few of their other allies.

2 The Mytilenaeans made a sortie in full force against the Athenian camp. A battle followed in which they held their own, but they neither bivouacked on the field nor trusted their strength, and withdrew. Afterward they remained quiet, wishing to take their risks with additional preparations and whatever reinforcements might arrive from the Peloponnese. Indeed, Meleas the Laconian and Hermaeondas the Theban had reached them. These men had been sent out before the revolt, but had failed to arrive ahead of the Athenian fleet; they now slipped into harbor in a trireme after the battle. They urged the Mytilenaeans to send another trireme and envoys back with them, and these were dispatched.

Chapter 6

1 Greatly encouraged by the Mytilenaeans' inaction, the Athenians summoned their allies, who came much more readily when they saw no vigorous action from the Lesbians. Moving their anchorage around to the south of the city, they fortified two camps, one on either side, and maintained a naval blockade of both harbors.

2 Thus they denied the Mytilenaeans the use of the sea. On land, however, the Mytilenaeans and the other Lesbians, who had now come to their assistance, controlled the rest of the country; the Athenians held only a small area around their camps. Malea served them chiefly as a station for their ships and a market. Such was the course of the war around Mytilene.

Chapter 7

1 At about the same time that summer, the Athenians also sent thirty ships around the Peloponnese under the command of Asopius son of Phormio. The Acarnanians had asked them to send a son or some other kinsman of Phormio to lead them.

2 As the ships sailed along the Laconian coast, they ravaged its coastal settlements.

3 Asopius then sent most of the ships home, while he himself reached Naupactus with twelve. Later he called out the whole Acarnanian population and campaigned against Oeniadae, sailing with the ships along the Achelous while his land army ravaged the country.

4 When the inhabitants would not submit, he dismissed the land forces, sailed to Leucas, and made a landing at Nericus. During his withdrawal he and part of his army were killed by the local people who had come to the defense, together with a few garrison troops.

5 Later the Athenians sailed to recover their dead from the Leucadians under a truce.

Chapter 8

1 The Mytilenaean envoys sent out in the first ship reached Olympia, having been told by the Lacedaemonians to attend there so that the other allies too could hear them and deliberate. This was the Olympiad in which Dorieus of Rhodes won his second victory.

2 When they were admitted to speak after the festival, they said the following.

Chapter 9

1 “Lacedaemonians and allies, we know the established custom among the Greeks. Those who receive men who revolt during a war and abandon their former alliance welcome them for the benefit they bring, but think less of them as traitors to their former friends.

2 “And this judgment is not unjust, if those who revolt and those from whom they part have been equal in their intentions and goodwill toward one another, matched in resources and strength, and if no reasonable ground for revolt exists. But that was not the case between us and Athens.

3 “Let no one think less of us, then, because, though honored by them in peace, we revolt in their hour of danger.

Chapter 10

1 “For our first words must concern justice and good faith, especially since we are asking for an alliance. We know that neither lasting friendship between individuals nor effective partnership between cities can exist unless each believes in the other's integrity and their ways are otherwise alike. Divergence of purpose produces differences in action.

2 “Our alliance with the Athenians first arose when you withdrew from the war against the Persians, while they remained to complete the tasks still unfinished.

3 “We became allies, however, not of the Athenians for the enslavement of the Greeks, but of the Greeks for their liberation from the Persian.

4 “As long as they led us as equals, we followed willingly. But when we saw them relaxing their hostility toward the Persian and advancing toward the enslavement of their allies, we no longer felt secure.

5 “Divided among many voices and unable to unite in resistance, the allies were enslaved, except for ourselves and the Chians. We continued to campaign with them, autonomous, supposedly, and free in name.

6 “But we no longer trusted the Athenians as leaders, judging by the examples before us. It was not likely that, after subduing those who had entered the treaty alongside us, they would refrain from doing the same to the survivors if ever they could.

Chapter 11

1 “Had we all remained autonomous, we would have had firmer assurance that they would make no move against us. But with the majority in subjection, and ourselves still dealing with them as equals, they were naturally going to find this harder to bear: they were already yielding to the pull of their greater power, while our state alone still stood on equal terms. This was all the more so as their own strength increased and we became more isolated.

2 “Only a balance of fear makes an alliance secure. A man wishing to violate it is deterred by knowing that he would have no superiority in an attack.

3 “We were left autonomous for no other reason than that they thought their empire could be secured through plausible language and the advances of policy rather than force.

4 “For one thing, they used us as evidence that men with equal votes would not join their campaigns unwillingly unless those they attacked were in the wrong. At the same time, they first brought the strongest against the weaker states, leaving the strongest until last, when, with the rest stripped away, they would find them weaker.

5 “Had they begun with us, while all the allies still possessed their own strength and a point around which to rally, they would not have subdued us so easily.

6 “Our fleet also caused them some fear: united with yours, or attached to some other power, it might one day endanger them.

7 “We also owed our survival in part to courting both their people as a body and their successive leaders.

8 “Yet, judging by their treatment of the others, we did not think we could have held out for long had this war not broken out.

Chapter 12

1 “What friendship was this, then, or what dependable freedom, when we welcomed one another against our true feelings? In war they courted us out of fear, and in peace we did the same to them. The security that goodwill above all establishes for other men was supplied to us by fear: held together more by dread than friendship, we remained allies. Whichever side first gained confidence from a sense of safety would also be the first to break the bond.

2 “So anyone who thinks us wrong to have revolted before they carried out the harm they were delaying against us, instead of waiting to learn for certain whether any of it would come, judges wrongly.

3 “If we had been equally able to plot against them in return and to delay in our turn, what need would there have been, on equal terms, to put ourselves at their mercy? But since the power to attack always rests with them, the right to forestall the attack must rest with us.

Chapter 13

1 “Such, Lacedaemonians and allies, were the grounds and reasons for our revolt: clear enough for our hearers to understand that we acted reasonably, and grave enough to alarm us and turn us toward some means of safety. We had wished to do this long ago, when we sent to you about revolt while peace still lasted, but your refusal to receive us prevented it. Now, when the Boeotians invited us, we answered at once. We believed our secession would serve two ends: toward the Greeks, that we should no longer join the Athenians in harming them, but join in liberating them; toward the Athenians, that we should not ourselves be destroyed by them later, but act first.

2 “Our revolt, however, has come sooner than intended and before we were prepared. All the more reason for you to receive us as allies and send help quickly, so that you may be seen defending those you ought to defend and at the same time injuring your enemies.

3 “The opportunity is without precedent. The Athenians have been devastated by plague and the drain on their funds; their ships are either off your coasts or stationed against us.

4 “They are therefore unlikely to have ships to spare if you invade for a second time this summer, by sea and land together. Either they will not resist your fleet as it approaches, or they will withdraw from both your country and ours.

5 “Let no one imagine that he will face danger himself for the sake of another's land. Whoever thinks Lesbos far away will find its benefits close at hand. For the war will turn not on Attica, as some suppose, but on what sustains Attica.

6 “Its revenue comes from its allies, and that revenue will grow still greater if they subdue us: no one else will revolt, our resources will be added to theirs, and we may suffer more terribly than those already enslaved.

7 “But if you help us with vigor, you will gain a city with a great fleet, the very thing you most need; you will more easily overthrow the Athenians by drawing away their allies, since everyone will come over with greater confidence; and you will escape the charge you have incurred of failing to help those who revolt. If you show yourselves liberators, you will hold a firmer mastery of the war.

Chapter 14

1 “Respect, then, both the hopes the Greeks place in you and Olympian Zeus, in whose sanctuary we stand as suppliants in all but name: become allies of the Mytilenaeans and defend us. Do not abandon us, who put our own lives alone at risk but will share the benefit of success with everyone—and spread the injury still more widely if, through your refusal, we fall.

2 “Show yourselves the men the Greeks believe you to be and our fear needs you to be.”

Chapter 15

1 Such was the Mytilenaeans' speech. The Lacedaemonians and their allies heard and accepted their arguments, and admitted the Lesbians to their alliance. Intending to invade Attica, they instructed the allies present to come quickly to the Isthmus with two-thirds of their forces. They themselves arrived first and prepared hauling equipment at the Isthmus for the ships, intending to carry them across from Corinth into the sea facing Athens and attack by land and sea together.

2 They pursued these preparations eagerly, but the other allies assembled slowly: they were occupied with bringing in the harvest and had little appetite for campaigning.

Chapter 16

1 The Athenians realized that these preparations rested on a conviction of their weakness. Wishing to show that this judgment was mistaken, and that without moving their fleet from Lesbos they could easily repel the force advancing from the Peloponnese, they manned a hundred ships. The citizens themselves embarked, except for the cavalry and the five-hundred-measure property class, together with the resident foreigners. They sailed up to the Isthmus, displaying their strength and making landings wherever they chose in the Peloponnese.

2 The Lacedaemonians, seeing how far events had confounded their expectations, thought the Lesbians' account untrue. They saw no way forward: their allies had not assembled, and reports were also coming in that the thirty Athenian ships cruising around the Peloponnese were ravaging the country of their perioeci. They therefore withdrew home.

3 Later they began fitting out a fleet to send to Lesbos. They ordered the cities to furnish a total of forty ships and appointed Alcidas admiral to command the expedition.

4 The Athenians too withdrew with their hundred ships when they saw the Lacedaemonians depart.

Chapter 17

1 [At the time when these ships were sailing, the ships they had simultaneously in active service were among their most numerous and finest; at the beginning of the war they had had a comparable number, indeed even more.

2 For a hundred guarded Attica, Euboea, and Salamis, while another hundred operated around the Peloponnese, besides those at Potidaea and elsewhere. Thus in a single summer their ships in simultaneous service numbered two hundred and fifty.

3 This, together with Potidaea, did most to drain their funds.

4 For the hoplites maintaining the siege of Potidaea received two drachmas a day—one for each man himself and one for his attendant. There were the original three thousand, whose numbers never fell below that throughout the siege, and sixteen hundred with Phormio, who left earlier. The crews of all the ships received the same rate of pay. Such was the initial depletion of their funds, and this was the greatest number of ships they ever manned.]

Chapter 18

1 While the Lacedaemonians were at the Isthmus, the Mytilenaeans and their auxiliaries marched overland against Methymna, expecting it to be betrayed to them. They attacked the city, but when events did not unfold as they expected, they went off to Antissa, Pyrrha, and Eresus. After placing affairs in these cities on a firmer footing and strengthening their walls, they returned home in haste.

2 When they had withdrawn, the Methymnaeans in their turn marched against Antissa. The Antissaeans and their auxiliaries made a sortie and defeated them, killing many; the survivors retreated hurriedly.

3 On learning of these events, and that the Mytilenaeans controlled the countryside while their own soldiers were too few to prevent it, the Athenians sent out Paches son of Epicurus as general with a thousand of their own hoplites, when autumn was already beginning.

4 They rowed their own ships on the passage, reached Mytilene, and enclosed it with a single circuit of wall. At certain strong positions forts were built into it.

5 Mytilene was now firmly blockaded on both sides, by land and by sea, and winter was coming on.

Chapter 19

1 Needing more money for the siege, the Athenians now for the first time contributed a levy of two hundred talents themselves, and also sent twelve money-collecting ships to their allies under Lysicles and four other generals.

2 Lysicles sailed about collecting money at various places. Advancing inland from Myus in Caria through the plain of the Maeander as far as the hill of Sandius, he was attacked by the Carians and Anaeans, and was killed along with many of his soldiers.

Chapter 20

1 That same winter, the Plataeans, still besieged by the Peloponnesians and Boeotians, were hard pressed by failing provisions. With no hope of relief from Athens and no other prospect of deliverance, they and the Athenians besieged with them planned at first to break out all together and cross the enemy walls, if they could force their way. The attempt was proposed by Theaenetus son of Tolmides, a seer, and Eupompidas son of Daimachus, who was also their general.

2 Afterward about half lost their resolve, judging the danger too great. But some two hundred and twenty men remained willing to make the escape, in the following manner.

3 They made ladders equal in height to the enemy wall, measuring it by the courses of bricks at a point facing them where the wall happened not to have been plastered. Many counted the courses at the same time: some would be mistaken, but most would arrive at the true reckoning, especially as they counted repeatedly and were not far away, but could readily see the portion of the wall they needed.

4 In this way they obtained the dimensions for their ladders, calculating the height from the thickness of a brick.

Chapter 21

1 The Peloponnesians' wall was constructed as follows. It had two circuits, one facing Plataea, the other facing any force that might approach from Athens outside. The circuits stood about sixteen feet apart.

2 This intervening space [the sixteen feet] had been built up with quarters allotted to the guards, all continuous, so that the whole appeared to be a single thick wall with battlements on both sides.

3 At intervals of ten battlements stood great towers, as broad as the wall and extending across it from its inner face to its outer. There was therefore no passage beside a tower; the men passed through the middle of the towers themselves.

4 On nights of rain and storm the guards left the battlements and kept watch from the towers, which stood close together and were roofed above. Such was the wall that held the Plataeans enclosed.

Chapter 22

1 When their preparations were complete, they waited for a moonless night of storm, rain, and wind, and went out, led by the very men who had devised the attempt. First they crossed the ditch that surrounded them; then they approached the enemy wall unnoticed by the guards, who could not see them in the darkness or hear the sound of their approach above the wind's answering roar.

2 They also advanced at wide intervals, so that their weapons would not clash together and betray them. They were lightly equipped and wore a shoe only on the left foot, to give them a firmer hold in the mud.

3 They approached the battlements between two towers, knowing them to be deserted. First came the men carrying the ladders, which they set in place; then twelve lightly armed men with short swords and breastplates climbed up. Their leader was Ammeas son of Coroebus, who was the first to ascend. His followers climbed up after him, six toward each tower. Other lightly armed men with short spears followed, while others behind carried their shields to make the climb easier for them, intending to hand them over when they were close to the enemy.

4 When more men had reached the top, the guards in the towers became aware of them. One of the Plataeans, taking hold of the battlements, had dislodged a tile, which fell with a crash.

5 At once a shout went up, and the army rushed toward the wall. But in the darkness and storm they did not know where the danger lay. At the same time the Plataeans left in the city came out and attacked the Peloponnesian wall on the side opposite to that where their men were crossing, to distract attention from them as much as possible.

6 The guards remained at their posts in confusion. No one dared leave his own station to give assistance, and they could not make out what was happening.

7 The three hundred assigned to give help wherever it was needed moved outside the wall toward the shouting. Fire signals warning of an enemy were raised toward Thebes.

8 But the Plataeans in the city raised many answering fire signals from their wall, prepared beforehand for this very purpose: to confuse the enemy's reading of the signals, so that they would mistake what was happening for something else and not come to help before the men making their escape had got clear and reached safety.

Chapter 23

1 Meanwhile, as the Plataeans were crossing the wall, their leading men, once they had climbed up, killed the guards in both towers and secured them. They stationed themselves in the passageways through the towers, guarding against anyone bringing help by that route; then they set ladders against the towers from the wall and sent more men up. Some, throwing missiles from the towers, held off reinforcements both below and above, while the greater number meanwhile set up many ladders, pushed away the battlements, and crossed the stretch of wall between the towers.

2 Each man, as he crossed, took his stand on the edge of the ditch; from there they shot arrows and hurled javelins at anyone who came to help along the wall and threatened to obstruct the crossing.

3 When all had made their way over, the men from the towers, the last to descend, struggled down and moved toward the ditch. At this moment the three hundred advanced against them carrying torches.

4 The Plataeans, standing in the darkness on the edge of the ditch, could see these men more clearly and shot arrows and javelins at their exposed bodies; they themselves remained concealed and were harder to make out because of the torches. Thus even the last Plataeans crossed the ditch before the enemy reached them, though with difficulty and strenuous effort.

5 For ice had formed in it, not firm enough to walk on, but rather slushy, as it is with an east [or north] wind; and the snow falling that night with such a wind had filled the ditch with water, which they crossed with barely their heads above it. Indeed, it was chiefly the violence of the storm that made their escape possible.

Chapter 24

1 Leaving the ditch, the Plataeans moved in a body along the road toward Thebes, keeping the hero-shrine of Androcrates on their right. They thought their enemies would least suspect them of taking this road, which led toward the enemy; at the same time they could see the Peloponnesians pursuing with torches along the road toward Cithaeron and Dryoscephalae, the road to Athens.

2 The Plataeans followed the Theban road for six or seven stades, then turned back and took the road toward the mountain, to Erythrae and Hysiae. Reaching the mountains, they escaped to Athens: two hundred and twelve men out of a larger number. Some had turned back into the city before crossing the wall, and one archer was captured at the outer ditch.

3 The Peloponnesians abandoned their pursuit and returned to their stations. The Plataeans in the city knew nothing of what had happened, but those who had turned back reported that no one had survived. At daybreak they therefore sent out a herald and made a truce to recover the dead; when they learned the truth, they desisted. In this way these Plataean men crossed the wall and were saved.

Chapter 25

1 As the same winter drew to its end, Salaethus the Lacedaemonian was sent from Lacedaemon to Mytilene in a trireme. He sailed to Pyrrha, then went on foot along a ravine where the surrounding siege wall could be crossed, and entered Mytilene undetected. He told the presiding magistrates that there would be an invasion of Attica and, at the same time, the arrival of the forty ships that were to assist them; he himself had been sent ahead for this purpose and also to attend to the other arrangements.

2 The Mytilenaeans took courage and were less inclined to come to terms with the Athenians. This winter ended, and with it ended the fourth year of this war, which Thucydides wrote.

Chapter 26

1 The following summer, after dispatching the forty-two ships to Mytilene under Alcidas, whom they appointed to command as their admiral, the Peloponnesians and their allies themselves invaded Attica. Their purpose was to distract the Athenians on both sides and leave them less able to act against the ships sailing to Mytilene.

2 This invasion was led by Cleomenes in place of Pausanias, son of Pleistoanax, who was king but still too young; Cleomenes was his father's brother.

3 They ravaged the parts of Attica laid waste before, [and] whatever had sprouted again, as well as everything left untouched in the earlier invasions. After the second invasion, this was the most grievous for the Athenians.

4 For they kept waiting to hear from Lesbos of some action by the ships, which they supposed had already completed the crossing, and meanwhile ranged through the land, laying waste most of it. But when none of their expectations was fulfilled and their food had run out, they withdrew and dispersed to their cities.

Chapter 27

1 Meanwhile the Mytilenaeans, whose ships from the Peloponnese had not arrived but were long delayed, and whose food had run out, were compelled to come to terms with the Athenians in the following circumstances.

2 Salaethus, himself no longer expecting the ships, equipped the people, who had previously been without heavy arms, intending to march out against the Athenians.

3 Once they had received arms, however, they no longer obeyed the authorities. Gathering in groups, they demanded that the powerful bring out their grain for all to see and distribute it to everyone; otherwise, they declared, they would themselves reach an agreement with the Athenians and hand over the city.

Chapter 28

1 Those in power realized that they could not prevent this and that they would be in danger if excluded from the agreement. They therefore made a settlement on behalf of all with Paches and his army: the Athenians were to have the right to decide whatever they wished concerning the Mytilenaeans, who were to admit the army into the city; the Mytilenaeans were to send an embassy to Athens to plead their case; and until its return Paches was neither to imprison nor enslave nor kill any Mytilenaean.

2 Such was the agreement. Yet those Mytilenaeans who had dealt most closely with the Lacedaemonians were terrified, and when the army entered they could not hold their ground: despite the agreement they took refuge at the altars. Paches persuaded them to rise with a promise to do them no harm, and placed them in custody on Tenedos until the Athenians should reach a decision.

3 He also sent triremes to Antissa and brought it over, and arranged the other affairs of the army as he thought best.

Chapter 29

1 The Peloponnesians in the forty ships, who should have arrived with all speed, had lingered on the voyage around the Peloponnese itself and made the rest of their passage at leisure. They escaped the notice of the Athenians in the city until they put in at Delos; sailing from there to Icarus and Myconus, they first learned that Mytilene had fallen.

2 Wishing to establish the truth, they sailed into Embatum in the territory of Erythrae. Mytilene had fallen about seven days before they reached Embatum. Once they had confirmed the news, they deliberated in the light of their circumstances, and Teutiaplus, an Elean, addressed them as follows.

Chapter 30

1 “Alcidas, and all of us Peloponnesians here who command the force, I propose that we sail for Mytilene just as we are, before our presence becomes known.

2 “For, as is natural with men who have only just taken a city, we shall probably find much left unguarded, above all on the seaward side, where they would never expect an enemy to appear and where our strength chiefly lies. Their infantry, too, is likely to be scattered carelessly among the houses, as happens with victors.

3 “If, then, we strike suddenly and by night, I hope that, with the help of those inside—if any friend of ours still remains—we may gain control of the situation.

4 “Let us not shrink from the danger, but recognize that this is precisely the unguarded moment in war: the general who guards against it in himself and strikes when he sees it in his enemy will achieve the greatest successes.”

Chapter 31

1 These words failed to persuade Alcidas. Some of the Ionian exiles and the Lesbians sailing with him urged that, if he feared this risk, he should seize one of the Ionian cities or Cyme in Aeolis. From a city as their base they could bring Ionia into revolt—there was hope of this, for no one had been unwilling to see them arrive—and deprive the Athenians of this, their greatest source of revenue, while also putting them to expense if they established a blockade against them. They thought they could persuade Pissuthnes, too, to join in the war.

2 But he would not accept these proposals either. Having come too late for Mytilene, his overriding intention was to reach the Peloponnese again as quickly as possible.

Chapter 32

1 Putting out from Embatum, he sailed along the coast; on touching at Myonnesus in Teian territory, he slaughtered most of the prisoners he had taken on the voyage.

2 When he anchored at Ephesus, envoys came from the Samians at Anaea and told him that he was not going the right way about liberating Greece if he killed men who neither raised a hand against him nor were his enemies, but were allies of Athens under compulsion. Unless he stopped, they said, he would win over few of his enemies as friends, but turn far more of his friends into enemies.

3 He was persuaded and released all the Chians he still held, along with some of the others. For on seeing the ships, people had not fled but rather approached, taking them for Athenian vessels; they had not the faintest expectation that, with Athens mistress of the sea, Peloponnesian ships would ever reach Ionia.

Chapter 33

1 From Ephesus Alcidas sailed in haste, making his voyage a flight. For the Salaminia and the Paralus had sighted him while he was still at anchor near Clarus—they happened to be sailing from Athens—and, afraid of pursuit, he struck out across the open sea, determined to touch willingly at no land except the Peloponnese.

2 News reached Paches and the Athenians from Erythraean territory and came in from every quarter. Since Ionia was unfortified, there was great fear that the Peloponnesians, even if they had no intention of remaining, might descend on the cities as they sailed past and plunder them. The Paralus and the Salaminia, having themselves seen him at Clarus, brought an eyewitness report.

3 Paches pursued with the greatest urgency, following him as far as the island of Patmos; when capture no longer seemed possible, he turned back. Since he had not encountered the ships at sea, he counted it a gain that they had not been trapped anywhere and forced to establish a camp, leaving the Athenians to guard and blockade them.

Chapter 34

1 On his return along the coast he also put in at Notium, belonging to the Colophonians. Colophonians had settled there after their upper city was captured by Itamanes and the barbarians, who had been brought in during their own civil strife. Its capture took place about the time of the Peloponnesians' second invasion of Attica.

2 Those who had fled to Notium and settled there now fell into civil strife again. One party brought in Arcadian and barbarian mercenaries from Pissuthnes and kept them within a dividing wall; joined by the Colophonians from the upper city who had sided with the Medes, they governed together. The other party, which had withdrawn before them and was in exile, called in Paches.

3 He invited Hippias, commander of the Arcadians inside the dividing wall, to a conference, on the understanding that, if nothing said proved satisfactory, he would bring him back inside the wall safe and sound. Hippias came out to him; Paches held him under guard, though not in chains, and himself suddenly attacked the fortification. Taking its defenders by surprise, he captured it and killed the Arcadians and all the barbarians inside. He then brought Hippias back within the wall, as he had agreed, and once he was inside seized him and had him shot down with arrows.

4 He handed Notium over to the Colophonians, except those who had sided with the Medes. Later the Athenians sent founders and settled Notium under their own laws, gathering together all the Colophonians who were to be found in any of the cities.

Chapter 35

1 On reaching Mytilene, Paches secured the submission of Pyrrha and Eresus. He also captured Salaethus the Lacedaemonian, who was hiding in the city, and sent him to Athens, along with the Mytilenaeans he had placed in custody on Tenedos and anyone else he considered responsible for the revolt.

2 He sent away the greater part of the army as well; remaining with the rest, he arranged affairs in Mytilene and the rest of Lesbos as he thought best.

Chapter 36

1 When these men and Salaethus arrived, the Athenians immediately put Salaethus to death, although among other offers he undertook to have the Peloponnesians withdraw from Plataea, which was still under siege.

2 They deliberated over the other men, and in their anger resolved to kill not only those present but every adult male Mytilenaean, and to enslave the women and children. Their grievance against the revolt was sharpened by the fact that the Mytilenaeans had undertaken it without being subject to their rule like the other allies; and no small addition to their fury came from the Peloponnesian ships, which had dared to venture into Ionia to assist them. For the revolt seemed to have been no hastily conceived design.

3 They therefore sent a trireme to Paches to announce their decision, ordering him to dispose of the Mytilenaeans without delay.

4 The very next day, however, they felt some change of heart and began to reflect that their decision had been savage and momentous: to destroy a whole city rather than only the guilty.

5 When the Mytilenaean envoys present in Athens and their Athenian supporters perceived this, they induced the authorities to reopen the question for debate. They persuaded them the more easily because the authorities themselves could plainly see that most of the citizens wanted someone to give them another opportunity to deliberate.

6 An assembly was called at once, and various speakers put forward their opinions. Cleon son of Cleaenetus, who had carried the previous motion for the executions, came forward again and spoke as follows. In other respects too he was the most violent of the citizens, and at that time by far the most persuasive with the people.

Chapter 37

1 “Often before now I have recognized that a democracy is incapable of ruling others, but never more clearly than in your present change of heart over the Mytilenaeans.

2 “Because in daily life you have no fear or suspicion of one another, you take the same attitude toward your allies. Whenever their words mislead you into error or pity makes you yield, you do not see that your weakness endangers yourselves without winning your allies' gratitude. You fail to consider that your empire is a tyranny, exercised over men who plot against you and submit unwillingly; they obey you not for the favors you grant at your own expense, but because you prevail by strength rather than by their goodwill.

3 “Most alarming of all would be that nothing we once decide should stand firm, and that we should fail to recognize that a city with inferior laws which remain unshaken is stronger than one with good laws which have no authority; that ignorance joined with self-restraint is more useful than cleverness joined with license; and that, as a rule, ordinary men administer their cities better than their more intelligent fellows.

4 “For the latter wish to appear wiser than the laws and to defeat every argument made in public, as though they could find no more important field in which to display their judgment; and this is how they generally bring their cities to ruin. The others, distrusting their own intelligence, acknowledge that they know less than the laws and are less capable of finding fault with a well-delivered argument; acting as impartial judges rather than contestants, they generally reach sound decisions.

5 “We too must act in this way, and not, carried away by eloquence and a contest of intelligence, advise your multitude against our own convictions.

Chapter 38

1 “For my part, I stand by my opinion. I am astonished both at those who have reopened debate about the Mytilenaeans and so caused delay, which favors the wrongdoers—for the injured man pursues the offender with blunted anger, whereas retaliation, following as closely as possible upon the injury and answering it in kind, most fully exacts redress—and at whoever will rise to oppose me and claim to show that the Mytilenaeans' offenses benefit us, while our misfortunes bring harm to our allies.

2 “Plainly, either he will trust in his eloquence and strive to show that what seems perfectly clear has not been established, or, spurred by gain, he will elaborate a specious argument and try to lead you astray.

3 “From contests of this kind the city awards the prizes to others, but bears the dangers itself.

4 “You are to blame, for you preside badly over these contests: you habitually become spectators of words and listeners to deeds. You judge the feasibility of future actions by the eloquence of their advocates, and actions already accomplished by the eloquence of their critics, trusting what you hear more than the evidence of what you have seen done.

5 “No one is better at being deceived by a novel argument, or less willing to follow one that has been tested; you are slaves to each new paradox and scornful of what is familiar.

6 “Each of you wishes above all to be able to speak himself; failing that, you rival the speakers by trying not to appear slow in following their thought, applauding a sharp remark before it is fully spoken. You are eager to anticipate what is being said, but slow to foresee what will follow from it.

7 “You seek, one might say, a world other than the one in which we live, yet cannot even judge our present circumstances adequately. In short, you surrender to the pleasure of listening and sit more like an audience at a display by sophists than men deliberating on their city's affairs.

Chapter 39

1 “To turn you from these habits, I declare that no single city has wronged you more than Mytilene.

2 “For I can pardon those who revolt because they cannot endure your rule or are compelled by the enemy. But these men possessed an island protected by walls; they had to fear our enemies only by sea, where their own fleet of triremes afforded no small defense; they lived under their own laws and received the highest honors from us. When men in such a position acted as they did, what was it but a plot and an insurrection rather than a revolt—for revolt is the act of those suffering oppression—and an attempt to destroy us by joining our bitterest enemies? This is more terrible than if they had acquired strength on their own and made war against us.

3 “They took no warning from the disasters of their neighbors who had already revolted from us and been subdued; nor did their present prosperity make them hesitate to enter upon danger. Reckless in the face of the future, with hopes that outran their strength but fell short of their desire, they took up war, choosing to set force before justice. For it was when they thought they would prevail that they attacked us, not when they were being wronged.

4 “Cities to which unexpected good fortune comes most suddenly and abundantly tend to turn to arrogance. Success that accords with reasonable expectation is usually safer for men than success beyond their hopes; and, broadly speaking, they find it easier to drive away adversity than to preserve prosperity.

5 “We should never have honored the Mytilenaeans above the rest, and they would not have grown so insolent. For it is human nature in general to despise those who court us and admire those who refuse to yield.

6 “Even now let their punishment match their offense. Do not lay the blame on the few and acquit the people. They all alike attacked you, although, had they turned to us, they could now be back in their city. Instead, judging it safer to share the danger with the few, they joined in the revolt.

7 “Consider your allies: if you impose the same penalties on those forced into revolt by the enemy and those who revolt of their own will, which of them, do you think, will not revolt on the slightest pretext, when success brings freedom and failure no irreparable suffering?

8 “Against each city we shall stake our money and our lives. If successful, you will take over a ruined city and be deprived thereafter of the revenue that gives us strength; if we fail, we shall have more enemies in addition to those we have already, and spend the time in which we ought to resist our existing enemies at war with our own allies.

Chapter 40

1 “You must therefore hold out no hope, whether made persuasive by argument or purchased with money, that they will receive pardon for having erred as human beings do. They did not harm us unwillingly, but plotted with full knowledge; it is the involuntary act that deserves pardon.

2 “Both when we first debated and now, I insist that you must not reverse your earlier decision, or fall into error through the three things most harmful to an empire: pity, pleasure in words, and leniency.

3 “For compassion is justly exchanged between those who feel alike, not bestowed on men who will show none in return and are necessarily our enemies forever. Speakers who delight us with words will have their contest on other, less important occasions, not on one where the city will pay heavily for a brief pleasure, while they reap a handsome reward for their fine speaking. And leniency is better granted to those who will remain our friends in the future than to men who will remain unchanged and no less our enemies.

4 “To sum it up in a word: if you follow me, you will do what is both just toward the Mytilenaeans and advantageous to yourselves; if you decide otherwise, you will win no gratitude from them, but rather pass sentence against yourselves. For if they were right to revolt, you must be wrong to rule. Yet if, even without a right, you claim to exercise that rule, these men too must be punished against strict justice for your advantage; otherwise you must abandon your empire and practice virtue free of danger.

5 “Resolve to exact in return the same punishment they would have inflicted, and, having escaped, do not show yourselves more indifferent than those who plotted against you. Consider what they would probably have done had they overcome you, especially since they were the first to commit injustice.

6 “Indeed, those who wrong others without cause are the most determined to pursue them to destruction, fearing the danger from an enemy left alive. For the man who has suffered an injury without deserving it, if he escapes, is a fiercer enemy than one whose hostility began on equal terms.

7 “Do not, then, betray yourselves. Bring your minds as close as possible to the moment of suffering, and remember how you would have valued above everything the chance to subdue them. Repay them now, without yielding to the feelings of the immediate present or forgetting the terror that once hung over you.

8 “Punish these men as they deserve, and set a clear example to your other allies that whoever revolts will pay with his life. Once they know this, you will be less often forced to neglect your enemies and fight your own allies.”

Chapter 41

1 Such were Cleon's words. After him Diodotus son of Eucrates, who in the previous assembly had most strongly opposed putting the Mytilenaeans to death, came forward again and spoke as follows.

Chapter 42

1 “I neither blame those who have reopened the question of the Mytilenaeans nor praise those who object to repeated deliberation on matters of the greatest importance. I believe that sound judgment has two chief enemies: haste and anger. The one is commonly joined with folly, the other with lack of education and narrowness of mind.

2 “Anyone who contends that words cannot teach us about actions is either without understanding or has some private interest at stake: without understanding, if he thinks that the future, which is not yet visible, can be explained by any other means; privately interested, if, wishing to persuade you to something shameful, he thinks he cannot speak well on behalf of what is wrong, but can, by skillful slander, intimidate both his opponents and his audience.

3 “Most dangerous of all are those who add the charge that a speaker is making a display for money. If the accusation were ignorance, a man who failed to persuade would retire with a reputation for being more foolish than dishonest. But when dishonesty is alleged, success leaves him under suspicion, and failure makes him both foolish and dishonest.

4 “The city gains nothing from this: fear robs it of its counselors. Indeed, its affairs would prosper most if citizens of this kind were powerless to speak, for then it would be least often persuaded into error.

5 “The good citizen should prove himself the better speaker not by frightening his opponents but by meeting them on equal terms. A wise city should neither add to the honor of the man whose counsels most often succeed nor diminish what he already enjoys; and the man whose judgment fails should not be punished, or even disgraced.

6 “In this way the successful speaker would be least tempted to say something against his judgment merely to please you and win still greater honors; nor would the unsuccessful one seek, by the same appeal to your pleasure, to win the multitude over to himself.

Chapter 43

1 “We do the opposite. Worse still, if a man is suspected of speaking for profit, even though his advice is the best, our resentment at the uncertain prospect of his gains deprives the city of a manifest benefit.

2 “We have reached the point where good advice plainly spoken is no less suspect than bad: the man who wishes to persuade you to the most terrible course must win over the multitude by deceit, and the man who gives better counsel must likewise lie to make himself believed.

3 “Ours is the only city whose excessive cleverness makes it impossible to do it an open service without deception. For anyone who openly bestows a benefit is suspected, in return, of secretly securing something more for himself.

4 “Yet even under these conditions, when the greatest matters are at stake, we should claim the right to speak with a longer view than yours, who look at things only briefly—especially since our advice is subject to account, while your hearing of it is not.

5 “For if the man who persuaded and the man who followed suffered equally, you would judge more soberly. As it is, when you sometimes go wrong, you punish, in whatever anger happens to seize you, the single judgment of the man who persuaded you, but not your own judgments, numerous though they were, which shared in the mistake.

Chapter 44

1 “I have come forward neither to defend the Mytilenaeans nor to prosecute them. If we are sensible, our contest is not over their wrongdoing but over our own good judgment.

2 “For even if I prove them guilty of the gravest wrong, I shall not therefore urge their death unless it is to our advantage; nor, if they have some claim to pardon, shall I urge it if it would bring the city no good.

3 “I believe we are deliberating more about the future than the present. Cleon's strongest contention is that it will benefit us hereafter to prescribe death as the penalty, making revolt less frequent. I too rest my case on our future welfare, but reach the opposite conclusion.

4 “And I ask you not to reject the usefulness of my argument for the fair appearance of his. His argument, being the more just, may well appeal to your present anger against the Mytilenaeans. But we are not conducting a lawsuit against them, with a need to establish justice; we are deliberating about them, to determine how they may serve our interests.

Chapter 45

1 “In the cities, then, death is prescribed for many offenses, not merely as grave as this one, but less grave. Yet men are carried away by hope and take the risk; no one has ever embarked on a dangerous conspiracy after condemning his own design to failure.

2 “And what city has ever attempted revolt believing its resources, whether its own or those supplied by its allies, inadequate to the task?

3 “All men, in private and in public alike, are by nature prone to wrongdoing, and no law will restrain them. Indeed, men have run through the whole range of penalties, increasing them in the hope of suffering less at the hands of criminals. It is likely that in ancient times the penalties for the greatest offenses were milder, but as these were transgressed, most penalties in time rose to death. Yet even this is transgressed.

4 “Either, then, we must discover some terror greater than death, or admit that death at least is no restraint. Poverty, giving boldness through necessity; power, giving greed through arrogance and pride; and the other conditions of human life, each possessed by some overpowering, incurable passion—all drive men into danger.

5 “Hope and desire are present in every venture, desire leading and hope following: desire devises the plot, hope suggests that fortune will furnish the means. They do the greatest harm, and, invisible themselves, are stronger than the terrors before our eyes.

6 “Fortune, too, contributes no less to men's elation. Sometimes she appears unexpectedly and encourages a man to take risks even with inferior resources. Cities are no less affected, since their stakes are the greatest—freedom or dominion over others—and each man, with everyone beside him, unreasoningly forms an exaggerated opinion of himself.

7 “In short, there is no turning human nature back, once it is eagerly bent on some action, by the force of law or any other terror; and it is great simplicity to think there is.

Chapter 46

1 “We must not, then, make worse decisions by trusting in the death penalty as a sure guarantee; nor must we deprive those who have revolted of all hope that they may change their minds and end their offense in the shortest possible time.

2 “Consider: as things stand, a city that has revolted, if it recognizes that it cannot prevail, may come to terms while it is still able to repay our expenses and pay tribute in the future. But under the other policy, what city do you think would fail to prepare better than now and hold out under siege to the last, if a late surrender and an early one bring the same result?

3 “And how can it fail to harm us to sit there spending money because agreement is impossible, and, if we capture the city, to take it over in ruins, deprived thereafter of its revenue? It is this revenue that gives us strength against our enemies.

4 “Thus we must not injure ourselves by acting as exacting judges of offenders. Rather, by punishing moderately, we must see that in future we can make use of cities still strong in their financial resources. And we must seek our safeguard not in the severity of our laws but in the care we take over our actions.

5 “At present we do the reverse: if we subdue a free people, ruled by force, who have naturally revolted in pursuit of self-government, we think that we ought to punish them harshly.

6 “But with free peoples we should not punish fiercely after they revolt; we should guard fiercely before they revolt, forestalling them so that they never even conceive the thought. And once we have prevailed, we should hold as few as possible responsible.

Chapter 47

1 “Consider also how great a mistake you would make in this further respect by following Cleon.

2 “At present the people in every city are well disposed toward you. Either they do not join the oligarchs in revolt, or, if compelled to do so, they are from the outset enemies of those who brought about the revolt; and when you go to war with a city opposing you, you have its multitude as your ally.

3 “But if you destroy the people of Mytilene, who took no part in the revolt and, as soon as they gained possession of arms, voluntarily surrendered the city, you will first commit a wrong by killing your benefactors; then you will give the powerful precisely what they most desire. For when they bring cities into revolt, they will immediately have the people as allies, since you will have demonstrated beforehand that the same penalty awaits the guilty and the innocent alike.

4 “Even if they have done wrong, we must pretend not to notice, so that the one ally still left to us does not become an enemy.

5 “For the preservation of our empire I consider it far more advantageous that we should willingly suffer wrong than justly destroy those whom we ought not to destroy. And Cleon's claim that the punishment is at once just and advantageous proves impossible to realize in the same act.

Chapter 48

1 “Recognize that this is the better course, and, giving no greater weight to pity or to leniency—motives to which I too forbid you to yield—be persuaded by the counsel itself and follow me: judge at leisure those Mytilenaeans whom Paches sent here as guilty, and leave the rest to inhabit their city.

2 “For this will be good for the future and will alarm our enemies now. The man who judges wisely against his opponents is stronger than the man who attacks without understanding, though his deeds are backed by force.”

Chapter 49

1 Such were Diodotus' words. Although these were the two proposals most directly opposed to each other, the Athenians nevertheless remained divided in judgment, and the show of hands was nearly equal; but Diodotus' proposal prevailed.

2 They immediately dispatched another trireme in all haste, lest the first should arrive ahead of them and they find the city destroyed. It had a lead of about a day and a night.

3 The Mytilenaean envoys furnished the ship with wine and barley meal, promising great rewards if they arrived in time. So urgent was the voyage that the men ate as they rowed, taking barley meal kneaded with wine and oil, and slept in turns while the others rowed.

4 By good fortune no wind opposed them. The first ship sailed without enthusiasm on its dreadful errand, while the second pressed forward in this fashion. The first arrived only so far ahead that Paches had read the decree and was about to carry out its orders when the second put in behind it and prevented the destruction. So close did Mytilene come to destruction.

Chapter 50

1 The other men whom Paches had sent away as chiefly responsible for the revolt—a little more than a thousand—the Athenians put to death on Cleon's proposal. They also demolished the Mytilenaeans' walls and took possession of their ships.

2 Later they imposed no tribute on the Lesbians, but divided their land, except that of the Methymnaeans, into three thousand allotments. Three hundred they set apart as sacred to the gods; to the rest they sent allotment-holders from among themselves, chosen by lot. The Lesbians agreed to pay these men two minas a year for each allotment and cultivated the land themselves.

3 The Athenians also took over all the small towns on the mainland under Mytilenaean control, and these thereafter became subjects of Athens. Such was the course of events on Lesbos.

Chapter 51

1 In the same summer, after the capture of Lesbos, the Athenians, under the command of Nicias son of Niceratus, made an expedition against the island of Minoa, which lies off Megara. The Megarians had built a tower on it and used it as a fortified post.

2 Nicias wanted the Athenians to keep watch from there at closer range, rather than from Budorum and Salamis. He also wished to prevent the Peloponnesians from slipping out unobserved, either with triremes, as they had done before, or by dispatching privateers, and at the same time to stop anything from sailing in to the Megarians.

3 First, then, using siege engines from the sea, he captured two towers projecting from Nisaea and cleared the entrance to the channel between the island and the mainland. He also began walling off the approach from the mainland, where reinforcements reached the island by a bridge across a marsh, for the island lay only a short distance from the mainland.

4 When they had completed this in a few days, he then left a fortification and a garrison on the island itself and withdrew with his army.

Chapter 52

1 At about the same time that summer, the Plataeans, with no food left and no longer able to endure the siege, came to terms with the Peloponnesians in the following way.

2 The Peloponnesians were attacking their wall, and they could not defend themselves. The Lacedaemonian commander recognized their weakness, but did not wish to take the city by force: he had received instructions from Lacedaemon to ensure that, if a treaty should ever be made with the Athenians and both sides agreed to restore the places they held through warfare, Plataea should not have to be restored, since its inhabitants would have come over voluntarily. He therefore sent a herald to ask whether they were willing to surrender their city voluntarily to the Lacedaemonians and accept them as judges, who would punish the guilty, but no one contrary to justice.

3 This was the herald's message, and the Plataeans, already reduced to the utmost weakness, surrendered the city. The Peloponnesians fed them for some days, until the five men appointed as judges arrived from Lacedaemon.

4 When they arrived, no charge was brought forward. They summoned the Plataeans and asked them this question alone: whether they had done any good [at all] to the Lacedaemonians and their allies in the present war.

5 The Plataeans asked leave to speak at greater length and appointed two of their number to speak for them: Astymachus son of Asopolaus and Lacon son of Aeimnestus, who was a proxenus of the Lacedaemonians. These came forward and spoke as follows.

Chapter 53

1 “Lacedaemonians, we surrendered our city because we trusted you, expecting to undergo not a trial of this kind but one more in keeping with established law. Nor would we have consented to stand, as we now do, before any other judges [than you], believing that from you above all we would receive impartial treatment.

2 “Now we fear that we have been mistaken in both respects. We have good reason to suspect that the gravest issues are at stake in this trial and that you may prove not to be impartial. Our evidence is that no prior accusation has been brought against us for us to answer—we ourselves had to ask leave to speak—and that your brief question is one to which a truthful answer tells against us, while a false one can be exposed.

3 “Hemmed in on every side, we are compelled to speak, and think it safer to face the danger after saying something. For men in our position might reproach themselves for a speech left unspoken, thinking that, had it been made, it might have saved them.

4 “Besides our other difficulties, persuasion itself is hard for us. If we were strangers to one another, we might benefit by presenting evidence of things unknown to you. As it is, we shall address men who know everything; and our fear is not that, having already judged our merits inferior to your own, you will make that a charge against us, but that, to gratify others, you are bringing us before a court whose judgment has already been decided.

Chapter 54

1 “Nevertheless, we shall present the grounds of justice we possess, both in our quarrel with the Thebans and in our relations with you and the other Greeks; we shall recall our good deeds and try to persuade you.

2 “To your brief question, whether we have done any good to the Lacedaemonians and their allies in this war, we reply: if you question us as enemies, you have suffered no wrong in receiving no benefit; but if you regard us as friends, then those who marched against us are themselves the ones at fault.

3 “In the peace and against the Mede we proved ourselves worthy: we were not the first to break the peace now, and then we alone of the Boeotians joined in the attack upon him for the freedom of Greece.

4 “For though we were an inland people, we fought at sea off Artemisium, and at the battle fought in our own land we stood beside you and Pausanias. In whatever other peril befell the Greeks at that time, we took a share beyond our strength.

5 “And to you in particular, Lacedaemonians, when the greatest terror threatened Sparta after the earthquake, with the Helots in revolt at Ithome, we sent a third of our own people to your aid. It is not right to forget these things.

Chapter 55

1 “Such was the part we thought ourselves bound to play in those great events of the past. Later we became your enemies; but you were responsible. When the Thebans used force against us and we asked for an alliance, you rejected us and told us to turn to the Athenians, who were near, while you lived far away.

2 “Yet in this war you have neither suffered anything exceptional at our hands nor had any prospect of doing so.

3 “If we refused to abandon the Athenians at your command, we committed no wrong. They came to our aid against the Thebans when you held back, and it was no longer honorable to betray them—especially men whom we had sought as allies in our own need, from whom we had received benefits and a share in their citizenship. It was only right that we should readily answer their summons.

4 “As for the courses that each of you prescribes to your allies, if anything has been done amiss, the blame rests not with those who follow, but with those who lead them into what is wrong.

Chapter 56

1 “The Thebans have wronged us in many other ways, but you yourselves know their latest offense, which has brought our present sufferings upon us.

2 “For when they tried to seize our city during a truce, and in a sacred month besides, we rightly punished them according to the law established among all men: that it is lawful in the sight of the gods to defend oneself against an attacking enemy. It would not now be reasonable for us to suffer on their account.

3 “For if you measure justice by your immediate advantage and their hostility to us, you will show yourselves not true judges of what is right, but servants rather of expediency.

4 “And yet, if they seem useful to you now, we and the other Greeks were far more useful then, when you stood in greater danger. Now it is you who advance, formidable, against others; but in that hour, when the barbarian brought slavery upon everyone, these men were at his side.

5 “It is only just to set our zeal of that time against our present fault, if indeed any fault has been committed. You will find great things weighed against small, and done at a time when it was rare for any Greek to set his valor against Xerxes' might. Praise went rather to those who, instead of securing their own advantage and safety against the invasion, were willing to risk danger and dare the noblest course.

6 “We were among those men and received the highest honors; yet now we fear that the same principles will bring our destruction, because we chose the Athenians honorably rather than you for gain.

7 “Yet you should show yourselves consistent in judging the same matters by the same standards. You should consider nothing else advantageous than that your worthy allies always have an assured return of gratitude for their valor, while your own immediate interests are also served.

Chapter 57

1 “Consider further that most Greeks now regard you as a model of manly virtue. But if you pass an unreasonable judgment upon us—this trial will not be hidden, and you are men of high repute, while we too are free from reproach—take care lest they refuse to approve an unworthy verdict upon worthy men from men still worthier, or the dedication at the common sanctuaries of spoils taken from us, the benefactors of Greece.

2 “It will seem a terrible thing that Lacedaemonians have laid Plataea waste: that your fathers inscribed our city's name upon the tripod at Delphi for its valor, but you, for the sake of the Thebans, have wiped it and every household within it from the whole Greek world.

3 “For this is the depth of misfortune we have reached: we were doomed if the Medes prevailed, and now, before you who were once our dearest friends, we are losing our case to the Thebans. We have undergone two struggles of the gravest kind: then, to perish of hunger unless we surrendered our city; now, to stand trial for our lives.

4 “We Plataeans, whose zeal for the Greeks exceeded our strength, have been cast aside by everyone, abandoned and without defenders. None of our former allies helps us; and we fear that you, Lacedaemonians, our only hope, may prove unworthy of our trust.

Chapter 58

1 “Yet we ask you, by the gods who once witnessed our alliance and by our service to the Greeks, to relent and change your minds if the Thebans have persuaded you otherwise. Ask of them this gift in return: that you should not kill men whom it would dishonor you to kill. Secure credit for wisdom rather than shame, and do not purchase others' pleasure with your own disgrace.

2 “For it is a brief task to destroy our bodies, but a labor to efface the infamy of it. You cannot reasonably punish us as enemies: we are men well disposed toward you who fought against you under compulsion.

3 “Thus by granting us safety for our lives you would judge in accordance with divine law, remembering also that you received us in voluntary surrender, with hands outstretched—and Greek law forbids the killing of such men—and that we have been your benefactors throughout.

4 “Look at the tombs of your fathers, who died at the hands of the Medes and were buried in our land. Every year we have publicly honored them with garments and the other customary rites, bringing first offerings of all the seasonal produce of our soil, as friends from a friendly land and allies to men who once fought beside us. You would do the reverse if you judged wrongly.

5 “Consider: Pausanias buried them believing that he was laying them in friendly soil and among men such as we are. But if you kill us and turn Plataean territory into Theban, what else will you do but leave your fathers and kinsmen in hostile soil, among their killers, deprived of the honors they now enjoy? Moreover, you will enslave the land where the Greeks won their freedom, desolate the sanctuaries of the gods to whom they prayed before defeating the Medes, and take away the ancestral sacrifices from those who established and founded them.

Chapter 59

1 “Such conduct does not befit your reputation, Lacedaemonians: neither to offend against the common laws of the Greeks and against your ancestors, nor to destroy us, your benefactors, for another's enmity, when you yourselves have suffered no wrong. Rather, spare us and let your judgment yield to a wise compassion, considering not only the horror of what we shall suffer, but the character of those who will suffer it, and how incalculable misfortune is, falling as it may upon anyone, however undeserving.

2 “And we, as befits us and as necessity compels, beg you to be persuaded by these pleas, invoking the gods whose altars the Greeks share in common. We appeal to the oaths your fathers swore and ask you not to forget them; we become suppliants at your ancestral tombs and call upon the dead not to let us fall under Theban power, nor allow their dearest friends to be handed over to their bitterest enemies. We remind you of that day when we joined them in their most glorious deeds, while on this day we face the danger of the most terrible suffering.

3 “Yet we must do what is both necessary and hardest for men in our plight: end our speech, since with its end the peril to our lives draws near. In closing, then, we say that we did not surrender our city to the Thebans—for before that we would have chosen to perish by starvation, the most shameful of deaths—but approached you in trust. And if we fail to persuade you, it is only just that you restore us to our former position and let us choose for ourselves the danger we must face.

4 “At the same time we solemnly entreat you: do not let us, the Plataeans, who showed the greatest zeal for the Greeks, be delivered to the Thebans, our bitterest enemies, from your hands and from the security of your pledge, when we are your suppliants, Lacedaemonians. Become our saviors, and do not, while liberating the other Greeks, destroy us.”

Chapter 60

1 Such was the Plataeans' speech. The Thebans, fearing that their words might cause the Lacedaemonians to relent, came forward and said that they too wished to speak, since, contrary to their own expectation, the Plataeans had been granted a speech extending beyond an answer to the question. Given permission, they spoke as follows.

Chapter 61

1 “We would not have asked to speak if they too had answered the question briefly, instead of turning upon us with accusations and offering a lengthy defense of themselves on matters outside the issue and not even charged against them, and praise for actions no one had censured. As it is, we must answer some of their statements and expose the falsehood of others, so that neither our supposed wickedness nor their reputation may profit them, but you may hear the truth about both sides and judge.

2 “Our first quarrel with them arose because, after we had founded Plataea later than the rest of Boeotia, along with other places which we took into our possession after driving out their mixed populations, these men refused to accept our leadership, as had originally been ordained. They stood apart from the other Boeotians and transgressed ancestral custom; when pressure was brought upon them, they went over to the Athenians and, with them, did us much harm, for which they suffered in return.

Chapter 62

1 “When the barbarian invaded Hellas, they say that they alone among the Boeotians did not side with the Medes, and on this above all they pride themselves and revile us.

2 “We say that they did not side with the Medes because the Athenians did not either; yet when the Athenians later advanced against the Greeks in the same fashion, these men, alone again among the Boeotians, sided with Athens.

3 “Consider, however, the form of government under which each of us acted. Our city at that time was governed neither by an oligarchy with equality before the law nor by a democracy. Power lay with a narrow ruling clique—the arrangement most hostile to law and to sound government, and nearest to tyranny.

4 “These men, hoping to strengthen their own power still further if the Mede prevailed, held the people down by force and brought him in. The city as a whole acted without being its own master, and cannot justly be reproached for offenses committed when it was not governed by law.

5 “But once the Mede had withdrawn and the city had recovered its laws, you must consider whether, when the Athenians later advanced and tried to bring the rest of Hellas and our own country under their rule, already holding most of our country through civil strife, we did not fight and defeat them at Coronea and liberate Boeotia; and whether we are not now zealously helping to liberate the others, providing cavalry and resources on a scale unequaled by any of the allies.

Chapter 63

1 “So much we offer in defense of our siding with the Medes. We shall now try to show that you have done the Greeks greater wrong and deserve every punishment far more.

2 “You became allies and fellow citizens of the Athenians, you say, to secure their protection against us. Then you ought to have called them in only against us, and not joined them in attacking others. If the Athenians were leading you somewhere against your will, you had a choice: your alliance with these Lacedaemonians had already been made against the Mede—the very alliance you chiefly invoke. It was sufficient to keep us from you and, most important, to let you deliberate without fear. Instead, willingly and under no further compulsion, you preferred the Athenian cause.

3 “You say it would have been shameful to betray your benefactors. Yet it was far more shameful and unjust to betray all the Greeks, to whom you were bound by oath, than the Athenians alone, when the latter were enslaving Hellas and the former were liberating it.

4 “Nor was your repayment of their favor either equivalent or free of shame. For you called them in, you say, when you were suffering injustice, but became their accomplices when they inflicted injustice on others. Yet failure to repay a favor in kind is more shameful than failure to repay a debt justly incurred when its repayment would mean injustice.

Chapter 64

1 “You have also made it clear that even then you alone refused to side with the Medes not for the Greeks' sake, but because the Athenians refused: you wished to act in concert with them and in opposition to us.

2 “And now you claim the benefit of worthy deeds whose merit you owed to others. That is unreasonable. You chose the Athenians: fight beside them, and do not invoke the sworn alliance of that time as grounds for your salvation now.

3 “For you abandoned it; in breach of it, you helped enslave the Aeginetans and certain others who had sworn it, instead of preventing their enslavement. And you did this willingly, under the same laws that you have retained to this day, with no one forcing you as we were forced. Nor did you accept our last invitation, before you were walled in, to remain at peace and support neither side.

4 “Who, then, could more justly be hated by all the Greeks than you, who displayed your valor to their injury? The deeds in which you once proved yourselves worthy, as you claim, you have now shown to be foreign to you; what your nature always desired has been revealed in truth, for you joined the Athenians on their unjust course.

5 “Such is what we have to show concerning our unwilling support for the Medes and your willing support for Athens.

Chapter 65

1 “As for the latest wrong you claim to have suffered—that we unlawfully entered your city during a truce and a sacred festival—we do not believe that even here we were more at fault than you.

2 “For if we had come of our own accord to fight against your city and ravage your land as enemies, we would have been in the wrong. But if your foremost men in wealth and birth freely invited us, wishing to end your alliance with outsiders and restore you to the ancestral institutions common to all Boeotians, what wrong did we do? Those who lead the way break the law more than those who follow.

3 “But in our judgment neither they nor we broke it. Citizens like yourselves, and risking more, they opened their own walls and brought us into their own city as friends, not enemies. They wished the worse men among you to cease gaining the upper hand, and the better to receive their due. They sought to discipline your judgment, not to deprive the city of its people, but to unite it with its kindred, making you enemies to no one and at peace with all alike.

Chapter 66

1 “Here is proof that our actions were not hostile: we harmed no one, and proclaimed that anyone who wished to live under the ancestral institutions of all the Boeotians should join us.

2 “You gladly came over, made an agreement, and at first remained quiet. Later, when you realized how few we were—even if you thought we had acted somewhat unfairly in entering without the consent of your people—you did not repay us in kind, refraining from violence and seeking by words to persuade us to leave. Instead you attacked us in breach of the agreement. We do not grieve in the same way for those you killed in the fighting, for they suffered under a certain law of war. But those who stretched out their hands, whom you took alive and afterwards promised us not to kill, you unlawfully murdered: how can such deeds be anything but monstrous?

3 “And though you committed three wrongs in a short span—the agreement you broke, the men's subsequent execution, and your false promise to us not to kill them if we did no harm to your property in the countryside—you nevertheless say that we broke the law, and claim exemption from punishment yourselves. No, not if these men judge rightly: you will be punished for all of them.

Chapter 67

1 “We have gone through these matters, Lacedaemonians, for your sake and ours, so that you may know that your condemnation of them will be just, and we that our vengeance will be still more righteous.

2 “Do not relent on hearing of their ancient virtues, if indeed they ever possessed any. Such virtues should assist those who suffer injustice, but double the punishment of those who do something shameful, since their offenses belie what was expected of them. Nor let lamentation and pity profit them, as they invoke your fathers' tombs and their own abandonment.

3 “For against these we can show the far more terrible suffering of our young men whom they destroyed. Some of their fathers died at Coronea while bringing Boeotia over to you; others, left in old age, and their desolate households, make a far juster supplication to you for punishment of these men.

4 “Those who suffer what they do not deserve have the greater claim to men's pity; those who suffer justly, as these do, deserve on the contrary to have men rejoice at their fate.

5 “For their present abandonment they have themselves to blame: they willingly rejected the better allies. They broke the law without first suffering at our hands, judging by hatred rather than justice. Nor is the penalty they now pay an equal return: they will suffer lawfully, and not, as they claim, as men stretching out their hands in surrender after battle, but as men who handed themselves over for judgment under an agreement.

6 “Defend, then, Lacedaemonians, the law of the Greeks which these men have violated; and to us, who have suffered unlawfully, render a just return for the zeal we have shown. Do not let their words thrust us aside in your esteem, but set an example to the Greeks, making the contest turn not on words but on deeds. When deeds are good, a brief account suffices; when they are wrong, speeches adorned with fine phrases become screens to hide them.

7 “But if those who lead, as you do now, reduce the issues to their essentials and give judgment for all accordingly, men will be less inclined to seek fine words for unjust deeds.”

Chapter 68

1 Such was the Thebans' speech. The Lacedaemonian judges thought it proper to ask whether the Plataeans had done them any service in the war. For they maintained that, in the preceding period, the Plataeans ought to have remained at peace under the old treaty made by Pausanias after the Mede's invasion; and later, when they had offered them neutrality on those terms before walling them in, they had refused. The judges therefore held that their own intentions had been just, while the Plataeans had put themselves outside the treaty and done them harm. Bringing them forward one by one, they asked the same question again: had they done any service to the Lacedaemonians and their allies in the war? Whenever a man said no, they led him away and killed him, making no exception.

2 They killed no fewer than two hundred of the Plataeans themselves and twenty-five Athenians who had shared the siege with them; the women they enslaved.

3 For about a year [the Thebans] gave the city over for habitation to Megarians exiled through civil strife and to the surviving Plataeans who favored their cause. Later they razed the entire city to its foundations and built beside Hera's sanctuary a lodging house two hundred feet along each side, with rooms all around on the lower and upper floors. They used the Plataeans' roofs and doorframes, and from the other furnishings within the walls—the bronze and iron—they made couches and dedicated them to Hera. They also built her a stone temple a hundred feet long. Making the land public property, they leased it out for ten years, and Thebans farmed it.

4 Indeed, the Lacedaemonians' estrangement from the Plataeans in this whole affair was almost entirely for the Thebans' sake: they thought them useful for the war, which was then only just getting under way.

5 Such was the end of Plataea, in the ninety-third year after its people became allies of the Athenians.

Chapter 69

1 The forty Peloponnesian ships which had gone to aid Lesbos, after fleeing across the open sea, pursued by the Athenians, had been caught in a storm off Crete and driven from there in scattered groups to the Peloponnese. At Cyllene they found thirteen triremes of the Leucadians and Ambraciots, and Brasidas son of Tellis, who had arrived as adviser to Alcidas.

2 Having failed at Lesbos, the Lacedaemonians wished to enlarge their fleet and sail against Corcyra, where civil strife was raging. The Athenians had only twelve ships in the neighborhood of Naupactus, and the Lacedaemonians hoped to forestall the arrival of any larger naval force from Athens. Brasidas and Alcidas were making preparations for this.

Chapter 70

1 The Corcyraeans had been engaged in civil strife since the return of the prisoners taken in the sea battles over Epidamnus and released by the Corinthians. In word, their proxenoi had stood surety for eight hundred talents; in deed, the prisoners had been won over to bring Corcyra into the Corinthian interest. They approached the citizens one by one, working to detach the city from Athens.

2 When an Athenian ship and a Corinthian ship arrived, each carrying envoys, discussions were held, and the Corcyraeans voted to remain allies of the Athenians under their agreement, but friends of the Peloponnesians as before.

3 There was a certain Peithias, a voluntary proxenos of the Athenians and leader of the people. These men brought him to trial, charging that he was enslaving Corcyra to Athens.

4 Acquitted, he prosecuted the five richest of them in turn, alleging that they cut stakes from the sacred precincts of Zeus and Alcinous. The penalty for each stake was one stater.

5 When they were convicted, they seated themselves as suppliants at the sanctuaries, asking, because of the size of the fine, to pay it in agreed installments. But Peithias, who also happened to be a member of the council, persuaded it to enforce the law.

6 Barred by the law from securing this relief, and learning at the same time that Peithias intended, while still a council member, to persuade the people to recognize the same friends and enemies as the Athenians, they conspired together. Armed with daggers, they suddenly entered the council and killed Peithias and about sixty others, both council members and private citizens. A few of those who shared Peithias's views escaped to the Athenian trireme, which was still there.

Chapter 71

1 After this deed they assembled the Corcyraeans and declared that what had happened was for the best, and would keep them most securely from enslavement by Athens. In future, they should receive neither side except when coming peacefully in a single ship; anything more should be regarded as hostile. Having spoken, they compelled the people to ratify their proposal.

2 They also immediately sent envoys to Athens to explain that their actions had been for the city's good, and to persuade those who had taken refuge there to do nothing hostile, so that no counterstroke might follow.

Chapter 72

1 When they arrived, the Athenians arrested the envoys as revolutionaries, along with those they had persuaded, and detained them on Aegina.

2 Meanwhile, after a Corinthian trireme and Lacedaemonian envoys had arrived, those who held power in Corcyra attacked the people and defeated them in battle.

3 At nightfall the people took refuge in the citadel and the higher parts of the city, where they gathered and established themselves; they also held the Hyllaic harbor. The others occupied the marketplace, where most of them lived, and the harbor beside it, facing the mainland.

Chapter 73

1 The following day there was a little skirmishing, and both sides sent throughout the countryside, calling upon the slaves and promising them freedom. Most of the household slaves joined the people as allies, while eight hundred mercenaries from the mainland joined the other side.

Chapter 74

1 After a day had intervened, battle broke out again, and the people won, having the advantage both in the strength of their positions and in numbers. The women too boldly joined in, throwing roof tiles from the houses and enduring the tumult in defiance of their nature.

2 The rout came late in the afternoon. Fearing that the people might rush forward, seize the dockyard at the first onset, and destroy them, the oligarchs set fire to the houses and apartment buildings around the marketplace to block the approach, sparing neither their own property nor anyone else's. Much merchandise belonging to traders was burned, and the entire city was at risk of destruction if a wind arose to carry the flames toward it.

3 The fighting ceased, and both sides remained quiet and kept watch through the night. With the people victorious, the Corinthian ship slipped out to sea, and most of the mercenaries crossed secretly to the mainland.

Chapter 75

1 On the following day Nicostratus son of Diitrephes, an Athenian general, arrived from Naupactus with twelve ships and five hundred Messenian hoplites to give assistance. He worked for a settlement and persuaded the two sides to agree that the ten men chiefly responsible should stand trial—they no longer remained—and that the rest should live in the city, having made a treaty with one another and with the Athenians, recognizing the same enemies and friends.

2 Having arranged this, he was about to sail away. But the leaders of the people persuaded him to leave five of his ships with them, to discourage their opponents from making any move, while they themselves would man an equal number with their own people and send them with him.

3 He agreed, and they began enrolling their enemies for the ships. Fearing that they would be sent to Athens, these men seated themselves in the sanctuary of the Dioscuri.

4 Nicostratus tried to make them rise, reassuring them. When he failed to persuade them, the people took up arms, alleging that their distrustful refusal to sail showed that they had no honest intentions. They seized their weapons from their houses and would have killed some of the men they encountered had Nicostratus not prevented it.

5 Seeing what was happening, the others seated themselves as suppliants in Hera's sanctuary, no fewer than four hundred in all. Fearing that they might attempt a revolution, the people persuaded them to rise and conveyed them to the island in front of the sanctuary, sending provisions across to them there.

Chapter 76

1 While the civil strife stood at this point, on the fourth or fifth day after the men had been conveyed to the island, the Peloponnesian ships arrived from Cyllene, where they had lain at anchor after their voyage from Ionia. There were fifty-three of them. Alcidas commanded, as before, and Brasidas sailed with him as adviser. They put in at Sybota, a harbor on the mainland, and at dawn sailed against Corcyra.

Chapter 77

1 The Corcyraeans, in great confusion and alarm both at events within the city and at the approaching fleet, began preparing sixty ships, sending each one out against the enemy as soon as it was manned. The Athenians urged them instead to let the Athenian ships sail out first and then follow with all their own together.

2 As their ships approached the enemy in scattered order, two immediately deserted, while on others the men aboard fought one another. There was no order in anything they did.

3 Seeing the confusion, the Peloponnesians deployed twenty ships against the Corcyraeans and the rest against the twelve Athenian ships, two of which were the Salaminia and the Paralus.

Chapter 78

1 The Corcyraeans, attacking badly and a few ships at a time, were hard pressed in their part of the battle. The Athenians, fearing the enemy's numbers and the danger of encirclement, did not attack the ships arrayed against them as a whole or at their center, but struck at one wing and sank a ship. After this, when the enemy formed a circle, they sailed around it, trying to throw them into confusion.

2 Those engaged against the Corcyraeans saw what was happening and, fearing a repetition of events at Naupactus, came to the rescue. The ships united and advanced together against the Athenians.

3 The Athenians now began to withdraw, backing water, and at the same time sought to give the Corcyraean ships the fullest possible opportunity to reach safety first, by retreating slowly themselves and keeping the enemy drawn up against them.

4 Such was the course of the sea battle, which ended at sunset.

Chapter 79

1 The Corcyraeans feared that the victorious enemy might sail against the city and either recover the men on the island or attempt some other upheaval. They therefore conveyed the men from the island back to Hera's sanctuary and kept guard over the city.

2 But despite their victory at sea, the enemy did not dare sail against the city. Taking thirteen Corcyraean ships with them, they sailed back to the mainland from which they had put out.

3 The following day they were no more inclined to sail against the city, despite the great confusion and fear of its inhabitants and although Brasidas, it is said, urged Alcidas to do so; he had no equal vote in the decision. Instead they landed at the promontory of Leucimme and ravaged the countryside.

Chapter 80

1 Meanwhile the Corcyraean people, terrified that the ships would attack, entered into discussions with the suppliants and the others about how the city might be saved, and persuaded some of them to go aboard the ships. For they nevertheless manned thirty, awaiting the attack.

2 The Peloponnesians ravaged the land until midday and sailed away. Toward nightfall beacon signals informed them that sixty Athenian ships were approaching from Leucas. The Athenians had sent them, with Eurymedon son of Thucles as general, on learning of the civil strife and that the ships under Alcidas intended to sail against Corcyra.

Chapter 81

1 The Peloponnesians therefore set off home at once that night, making all speed along the coast. They carried their ships across the Leucadian isthmus, so that they would not be seen sailing around it, and withdrew.

2 When the Corcyraeans learned that the Attic ships were approaching and those of the enemy had gone, they brought into the city the Messenians who had previously been outside. They ordered the ships they had manned to sail around to the Hyllaic harbor, and while these were making the circuit, killed any of their enemies they could catch. They also took off the ships all those they had persuaded to embark and put them to death. Going to the sanctuary of Hera, they persuaded some fifty of the suppliants to submit to trial, and condemned every one of them to death.

3 The greater number of the suppliants, who had not been persuaded, saw what was happening and killed one another there in the sanctuary. Some hanged themselves from the trees; others ended their lives however they could.

4 For seven days, while Eurymedon remained after arriving with his sixty ships, the Corcyraeans murdered those of their fellow citizens whom they regarded as enemies. The charge they brought was an attempt to overthrow the democracy, but some died for private enmities, and others were killed by men who had borrowed money from them.

5 Death assumed every form; as commonly happens in such times, there was no horror that did not occur, and worse still. Fathers killed their sons; men were dragged from sanctuaries and slain beside them; some were even walled up in the sanctuary of Dionysus and died there.

Chapter 82

1 To such savagery did civil strife advance; and it seemed the more savage because it was among the first of these outbreaks. Later, virtually the whole Greek world was convulsed, with divisions everywhere: the leaders of the people sought to bring in the Athenians, the oligarchs the Lacedaemonians. In peace they would have had neither a pretext nor the readiness to call them in; but now that the two powers were at war, and an alliance offered either faction the means both to injure its opponents and, by the same act, to gain strength for itself, those who desired revolution could readily secure their intervention.

2 Many grievous sufferings fell upon the cities through civil strife, such as occur and always will occur as long as human nature remains the same, though more violent or more temperate, and varying in their forms, as successive changes of circumstance bring them on. In peace and prosperity, cities and individuals alike have better dispositions because they do not fall under necessities imposed against their will. But war, stripping away the easy provision of daily life, is a violent teacher, and brings the passions of the multitude into accord with their circumstances.

3 So civil strife spread through the cities, and those in which it came later, hearing of what had happened before, carried innovation in their designs much further, both in the ingenuity of their attacks and in the monstrous character of their reprisals.

4 They altered the customary judgments that words conveyed about actions, to suit their own justifications. Unreasoning daring was counted courage loyal to one's party; prudent hesitation, cowardice in a respectable guise; self-restraint, a cloak for unmanliness; intelligence alive to every side of a question, incapacity to act on any. Impetuous violence was assigned to the manly character, while plotting with an eye to safety was a plausible excuse for holding back.

5 The man who raged was always trustworthy; whoever contradicted him was suspect. A successful plotter was clever, but a man who detected a plot was cleverer still. Anyone who took thought to ensure that neither should be needed was a breaker of party ties and terrified of his opponents. In short, praise went to the man who forestalled someone about to do an injury, and to the man who urged someone who had never intended injury to commit it.

6 Kinship itself became a less intimate bond than party fellowship, because party members were readier for reckless action without excuse. Such associations did not exist to seek advantage under the established laws, but to grasp more in defiance of them. Their pledges to one another were secured less by divine law than by complicity in some breach of law.

7 Fair proposals from opponents were received, when the recipients had the advantage, with vigilance in action, not with generosity of spirit. Revenge upon another mattered more than escaping injury oneself. If oaths of reconciliation were ever exchanged, they held good for the immediate crisis, each side giving them because it was at a loss and had no strength to draw upon elsewhere. But when opportunity came, whichever side first regained confidence, if it saw the other unguarded, took greater pleasure in vengeance through a breach of trust than in an open attack. It reckoned both on its safety and on the prize for cleverness it won by prevailing through deceit. Most people more readily accept being called skillful scoundrels than honest fools: they are ashamed of the latter and proud of the former.

8 The cause of all this was the pursuit of power through greed and ambition; from these, once rivalry had taken hold, came the zeal for victory. The leaders in each city, on either side, adopted a respectable name: the one professed to prefer political equality for the people, the other a temperate aristocracy. In word they served the public interest; in fact they made it the prize of their contest. Struggling by every means to overcome one another, they dared the most terrible deeds and pursued still greater reprisals, setting no limit at justice or the city's good, but always at whatever would give either side pleasure. Whether by an unjust vote of condemnation or by force, they were ready to seize mastery and satisfy their immediate rivalry. Neither side paid any regard to piety; those who managed to accomplish something hateful under a respectable cloak of words won the better reputation. Citizens in the middle were destroyed by both, either for refusing to join their struggle or from envy that they should survive.

Chapter 83

1 Thus every form of moral corruption took root in the Greek world through civil strife. The simplicity in which nobility has so large a share was laughed out of existence, while a spirit of mutual distrust and antagonism everywhere prevailed.

2 For there was nothing to reconcile them, no word secure enough, no oath formidable enough. All, convinced by their calculations that lasting security was hopeless, looked rather to protecting themselves from harm than to finding the capacity for trust.

3 And those of lesser intelligence generally prevailed. Fearful of their own inadequacy and their opponents' cleverness—lest they should be worsted in debate and forestalled by the plots of more versatile minds—they went boldly into action.

4 The others, contemptuously confident that they would foresee the danger, and that they had no need to secure by action what intelligence could secure, were more often caught unguarded and destroyed.

Chapter 84

1 [In Corcyra, then, most of these outrages were first ventured: all that men taking revenge might do when those who had given them cause for retaliation had ruled them with arrogance rather than moderation; all the unjust designs of men seeking release from their accustomed poverty, passionately craving above all the possessions of their neighbors; and all the cruel and merciless attacks of those who acted not for gain, but chiefly against their equals, carried to extremes by the undisciplined force of anger.

2 When the city's life had been thrown into confusion at this crisis, human nature, accustomed to wrongdoing even in defiance of the laws, now triumphed over them and gladly showed itself powerless over passion, stronger than justice, and hostile to everything above it. Otherwise men would not have preferred revenge to piety and gain to innocence, had envy not wielded a destructive power.

3 In taking vengeance upon others, men presume to overthrow in advance the common laws that govern such matters, on which all rest their hope of preservation should they themselves suffer disaster. They will not leave those laws standing against a time when one of them, in danger, may need their help.]

Chapter 85

1 Such were the passions the Corcyraeans in the city first unleashed against one another. Eurymedon and the Athenians sailed away with their fleet.

2 Later the Corcyraean exiles—some five hundred of them had survived—seized the forts on the mainland and controlled their own territory across the water. Making this their base, they plundered those on the island and did great damage, and a severe famine arose in the city.

3 They also sent embassies to Lacedaemon and Corinth to seek their restoration. When they achieved nothing, after some time they equipped ships and hired mercenaries, and crossed to the island, about six hundred in all.

4 They burned their ships, to extinguish every hope but that of mastering the country, and went up to Mount Istone. There they built a fort, ravaged those in the city, and held the countryside.

Chapter 86

1 At the close of the same summer the Athenians sent twenty ships to Sicily, under the command of Laches son of Melanopus and Charoeades son of Euphiletus.

2 The Syracusans and Leontines had gone to war with one another. Allied with the Syracusans were all the other Dorian cities except Camarina, the same cities that had ranged themselves with the Lacedaemonian alliance when the war first began, though they had not actually taken part in the fighting. The Chalcidian cities and Camarina were allied with the Leontines. In Italy, Locri sided with the Syracusans, while Rhegium, through kinship, sided with the Leontines.

3 The allies of the Leontines therefore sent to Athens and, invoking an ancient alliance and their Ionian descent, persuaded the Athenians to send them ships; for the Syracusans were excluding them from both land and sea.

4 The Athenians sent them, professedly on the grounds of kinship, but wishing in reality to prevent grain from being carried from there to the Peloponnese, and to make a first trial of whether they could bring affairs in Sicily under their control.

5 They established themselves at Rhegium in Italy and carried on the war with their allies. And the summer ended.

Chapter 87

1 In the following winter the disease fell upon the Athenians a second time. It had never entirely disappeared, though there had been some respite.

2 This later outbreak lasted no less than a year, the earlier one fully two years, so that nothing pressed harder upon the Athenians or did more to cripple their strength.

3 For no fewer than four thousand four hundred hoplites from the ranks died, and three hundred cavalry, while the number among the rest of the population was beyond discovery.

4 It was also at this time that the many earthquakes occurred, in Athens, Euboea, and Boeotia, and especially at Orchomenus in Boeotia.

Chapter 88

1 During the same winter the Athenians in Sicily and the Rhegians made an expedition with thirty ships against the islands called the Islands of Aeolus; in summer the lack of water made an expedition impossible.

2 The Liparaeans, who are colonists of Cnidus, possess these islands. They live on one small island, called Lipara, and from it they go out to cultivate the others, Didyme, Strongyle, and Hiera.

3 The people there believe that Hephaestus works at his forge on Hiera, because it is seen to send up a great blaze at night and smoke by day. These islands lie opposite the territory of the Sicels and the Messenians, and were allies of the Syracusans.

4 The Athenians ravaged their land, but as they would not come over, sailed away to Rhegium. And the winter ended, and the fifth year of this war, which Thucydides wrote, came to an end.

Chapter 89

1 In the following summer the Peloponnesians and their allies advanced as far as the Isthmus, intending to invade Attica, under Agis son of Archidamus, king of the Lacedaemonians. But frequent earthquakes made them turn back, and no invasion took place.

2 About this time, while the earthquakes continued, the sea at Orobiae in Euboea withdrew from what was then the shoreline, rose into a wave, and swept over part of the city. Some of the water submerged the land and some receded, and what was formerly land is now sea. All who could not run to higher ground in time were killed.

3 A similar inundation occurred around Atalanta, the island off the coast of the Opuntian Locrians. It carried away part of the Athenian fort and shattered one of two ships that had been hauled ashore.

4 At Peparethus too there was a withdrawal of the sea, though no inundation followed; an earthquake brought down part of the wall, the town hall, and a few other houses.

5 In my judgment, the cause of such an event is that, at the point where the earthquake is strongest, it drives the sea back, and the sea, suddenly drawn in again, produces a more violent flood. Without an earthquake, I do not think anything of this kind could happen.

Chapter 90

1 During the same summer others too carried on the war in Sicily as circumstances befell them, both the Sicilian Greeks campaigning against one another and the Athenians with their own allies. I shall record those actions most worthy of mention, whether performed by the allies in concert with the Athenians or by their enemies against them.

2 Charoeades, the Athenian general, had by now been killed in battle by the Syracusans. Laches, holding sole command of the fleet, therefore campaigned with the allies against Mylae in Messenian territory. Two Messenian tribes happened to be garrisoning Mylae, and had also laid an ambush for the troops coming from the ships.

3 The Athenians and their allies routed the ambushing force and killed many of them. Then, attacking the fort, they compelled the defenders to agree both to surrender the citadel and to join the expedition against Messene.

4 After this, when the Athenians and their allies advanced, the Messenians themselves also came over, giving hostages and providing the other guarantees required.

Chapter 91

1 In the same summer the Athenians sent thirty ships around the Peloponnese under the command of Demosthenes son of Alcisthenes and Procles son of Theodorus, and sixty ships with two thousand hoplites to Melos, under Nicias son of Niceratus.

2 They wished to bring the Melians to submission, since, though islanders, they refused either to obey them or to enter their alliance.

3 But when the Melians would not come over despite the ravaging of their land, the Athenians put out from Melos and sailed to Oropus in Graice. Landing toward nightfall, the hoplites immediately marched inland from the ships to Tanagra in Boeotia.

4 At an agreed signal the Athenians from the city marched out with their full force to meet them at the same place, under Hipponicus son of Callias and Eurymedon son of Thucles.

5 They encamped that day in Tanagraean territory, ravaged it, and spent the night there. On the following day they defeated in battle the Tanagraeans who came out against them, together with some Thebans who had come to their aid. They took arms from the defeated and set up a trophy, then withdrew, some to the city and the others to the ships.

6 Nicias sailed along the coast with his sixty ships, ravaged the coastal districts of Locris, and returned home.

Chapter 92

1 About this time the Lacedaemonians founded Heraclea in Trachinia as a colony, for the following reasons.

2 The Malians as a whole are divided into three groups: the Paralians, the Irians, and the Trachinians. Of these, the Trachinians, worn down by war with their neighbors the Oetaeans, at first contemplated attaching themselves to the Athenians. But fearing that these might not prove trustworthy, they sent to Lacedaemon, choosing Tisamenus as their ambassador.

3 The Dorians, whose country is the motherland of the Lacedaemonians, joined in the embassy with the same request, for they too were suffering at the hands of the Oetaeans.

4 After hearing them, the Lacedaemonians resolved to send out the colony. They wished to aid the Trachinians and Dorians, and at the same time thought the city's position advantageous for their war against Athens. A fleet could be equipped there against Euboea, making the crossing a short one, and the site would be useful for the passage toward Thrace. On all grounds they were eager to settle the place.

5 First, then, they questioned the god at Delphi, and, receiving his approval, sent out settlers from among themselves and the perioeci. They also invited any other Greeks who wished to accompany them, except Ionians, Achaeans, and certain other peoples. Three Lacedaemonians led them as founders: Leon, Alcidas, and Damagon.

6 On arriving, they built the walls of the city, now called Heraclea, on a new site, about forty stades from Thermopylae and twenty from the sea. They also prepared dockyards and walled off the approach toward Thermopylae at the narrow pass itself, so that it could be easily guarded.

Chapter 93

1 When this city was being settled, the Athenians were at first alarmed, believing that it was being founded chiefly against Euboea, since the crossing to Cenaeum in Euboea is short. Yet the outcome belied their expectations: no danger came to them from it.

2 The reason was that the Thessalians, who held power in these parts and on whose land the colony was founded, feared the presence of a powerful new neighbor. They ravaged the settlers and made unremitting war upon them, until they wore them down, though their numbers at first had been very great: with the Lacedaemonians founding the city, everyone went there confidently, believing its security assured. Not least, however, the Lacedaemonian governors themselves who came out ruined its affairs and reduced its population, driving most people away in fear by harsh and sometimes dishonest administration, so that their neighbors could now master them more readily.

Chapter 94

1 In the same summer, about the time when the Athenians were detained at Melos, the Athenians aboard the thirty ships around the Peloponnese first ambushed and killed some of the garrison at Ellomenus in Leucadian territory. Later they came against Leucas with a larger force: all the Acarnanians, who followed with their full strength except for the Oeniadae, together with Zacynthians, Cephallenians, and fifteen Corcyraean ships.

2 The Leucadians, overwhelmed by numbers, kept quiet while their territory was ravaged both outside the isthmus and inside it, where Leucas itself and the sanctuary of Apollo stand. The Acarnanians urged Demosthenes, the Athenian general, to cut them off with a wall, believing that they could easily reduce them by siege and rid themselves of a city perpetually hostile to them.

3 At this point, however, the Messenians persuaded Demosthenes that, with so large an army assembled, it would be a fine opportunity to attack the Aetolians, who were enemies of Naupactus; and that, if he defeated them, he would readily win over the rest of the mainland in that region to the Athenians.

4 For although the Aetolians were a large and warlike people, they lived in unwalled villages far apart from one another and used only light equipment. The Messenians declared that it would not be difficult to subdue them before they could combine for mutual defense.

5 They urged him to attack the Apodotians first, then the Ophioneans, and after them the Eurytanians, who form the largest division of the Aetolians, speak a most unintelligible language, and are said to eat raw flesh. Once these were taken, the rest too would readily come over.

Chapter 95

1 Demosthenes was persuaded by his regard for the Messenians, and above all by the belief that, without calling on the Athenian forces, he could march overland against the Boeotians with the mainland allies and the Aetolians. His route would pass through the Ozolian Locrians to Cytinium in Doris, keeping Parnassus on his right, until he descended into Phocian territory. The Phocians, he thought, would readily join the expedition because of their longstanding friendship with Athens, or could at least be compelled to do so; and Boeotia already borders on Phocis. He therefore put out from Leucas with his entire army, against the will of the Acarnanians, and sailed along the coast to Sollium.

2 He shared his plan with the Acarnanians, but they rejected it because he had not walled off Leucas. With the rest of his army—the Cephallenians, Messenians, and Zacynthians, and the three hundred Athenian marines from his own ships—he marched against the Aetolians; for the fifteen Corcyraean ships had sailed away.

3 His base was Oeneon in Locris. These Ozolian Locrians were allies, and were to meet the Athenians inland with their whole force. As neighbors of the Aetolians, equipped in the same manner, they were expected to be of great service on the expedition through their familiarity both with Aetolian warfare and with the country.

Chapter 96

1 After spending the night with his army in the sanctuary of Nemean Zeus, where the poet Hesiod is said to have been killed by the local inhabitants—an oracle had foretold that he would meet this fate at Nemea—he set out at dawn and marched into Aetolia.

2 On the first day he took Potidania, on the second Crocyleum, and on the third Tichium. He stayed there and sent the booty away to Eupalium in Locris. His intention was to subdue the other places, return to Naupactus, and then campaign later against the Ophioneans if they would not come to terms.

3 The Aetolians had not been unaware of these preparations even when the plan was first being laid; and once the army had invaded, they all came to the defense in great strength. Even the remotest Ophioneans, the Bomians and Callians, whose territory reaches toward the Malian Gulf, came to help.

Chapter 97

1 The Messenians gave Demosthenes much the same advice as before. Repeating their original assurance that the Aetolians could easily be conquered, they urged him to advance against the villages as quickly as possible, without waiting for the whole people to assemble and oppose him, but always trying to capture whichever village lay immediately before him.

2 He was persuaded by them, and trusted his good fortune, since nothing had yet opposed him. Without waiting for the Locrians who were to come to his aid—his greatest need was for lightly armed javelin throwers—he advanced against Aegitium and took it by storm. The inhabitants had withdrawn and taken their station on the hills above the town, which stood on high ground about eighty stades from the sea.

3 The Aetolians, who had by now come to the relief of Aegitium, attacked the Athenians and their allies, running down from the hills at different points and hurling javelins. When the Athenian army advanced they withdrew, and when it retired they pressed upon it. For a long time the fighting continued in this fashion, in pursuits and retreats, in both of which the Athenians were at a disadvantage.

Chapter 98

1 As long as their archers had arrows and were able to use them, the Athenians held out, for the lightly armed Aetolians were checked by the shooting. But when the commander of the archers was killed and his men scattered, and the Athenians themselves were exhausted by prolonged endurance of the same struggle, while the Aetolians pressed them hard and showered them with javelins, they finally broke and fled. Plunging into ravines from which there was no escape and into unfamiliar country, they perished; for Chromon the Messenian, their guide along the roads, had also been killed.

2 The Aetolians, swift of foot and lightly armed, caught many of them in close pursuit and killed them with javelins there in the rout. The greater number lost their way and rushed into woodland from which there were no paths out; the Aetolians brought fire and burned it around them.

3 Every form of flight and destruction befell the Athenian army. The survivors barely escaped to the sea and to Oeneon in Locris, the very place from which they had set out.

4 Many of the allies died, and about one hundred and twenty hoplites from the Athenians themselves. Of all the bodies of men of like number and age, these were the finest lost by the city of Athens in this war. Procles, the other general, was also killed.

5 They recovered their dead from the Aetolians under a truce and withdrew to Naupactus, later returning by ship to Athens. Demosthenes, however, remained behind around Naupactus and the neighboring places, afraid of the Athenians because of what had happened.

Chapter 99

1 At about the same time, the Athenians operating around Sicily sailed to Locris, defeated the Locrians who came to oppose one of their landings, and captured a small fort on the river Halex.

Chapter 100

1 During the same summer the Aetolians, who had already sent ambassadors to Corinth and Lacedaemon—Tolophus the Ophionean, Boriades the Eurytan, and Tisander the Apodotian—persuaded them to send an army against Naupactus, because the Athenians had been brought in against them.

2 Around autumn the Lacedaemonians sent out three thousand allied hoplites. Five hundred of these came from Heraclea in Trachis, a city newly founded at the time. Eurylochus, a Spartan, commanded the army, accompanied by the Spartans Macarius and Menedaius.

Chapter 101

1 When the army had assembled at Delphi, Eurylochus opened negotiations through heralds with the Ozolian Locrians: the road to Naupactus ran through their country, and he also wanted to detach them from the Athenians.

2 Of the Locrians, the Amphissians cooperated most readily with him, being afraid because of their hostility with the Phocians. They were the first to give hostages themselves, and persuaded the others, who feared the approaching army, to do the same: first their neighbors the Myonians, since Locris was hardest to enter at this point; then the Ipnians, Messapians, Tritaeans, Chalaeans, Tolophonians, Hessians, and Oeantheans. All these also joined the expedition. The Olpaeans gave hostages but did not follow; the Hyaeans gave none until a village of theirs called Polis had been captured.

Chapter 102

1 When everything was ready and he had deposited the hostages at Cytinium in Doris, he advanced with his army through the Locrian country toward Naupactus. On the march he captured their towns of Oeneon and Eupalium, which had refused to join him.

2 On reaching the territory of Naupactus, with the Aetolians now also there to support them, they ravaged the land and captured the unwalled suburb. They also marched against and captured Molycreum, a Corinthian colony but a subject of Athens.

3 The Athenian Demosthenes, who happened still to be near Naupactus after the events in Aetolia, learned in advance of the army's approach and feared for the city. He went to the Acarnanians and persuaded them to come to its aid, though only with difficulty, because of the withdrawal from Leucas.

4 They sent a thousand hoplites with him by ship, and their entry saved the place. For there was a grave fear that, with so extensive a wall and so few defenders, the city would fail to hold out.

5 When Eurylochus and his companions learned that the force had entered and that the city could not be taken by assault, they withdrew, not toward the Peloponnese, but into Aeolis—the district now called Calydon and Pleuron—and the surrounding country, and to Proschium in Aetolia.

6 For the Ambraciots came to them and persuaded them to join in an attack on Amphilochian Argos, the rest of Amphilochia, and Acarnania as well, saying that, if they mastered these places, the whole mainland would become allied to the Lacedaemonians.

7 Eurylochus agreed, dismissed the Aetolians, and kept his army inactive in these districts until the Ambraciots should march against Argos and require his support. And the summer ended.

Chapter 103

1 In the following winter the Athenians in Sicily advanced against Inessa, a Sicel town whose citadel the Syracusans held, together with their Greek allies and those Sicels who had been either under the absolute rule of the Syracusans or their allies, but had revolted [from the Syracusans] and were fighting alongside the Athenians. They assaulted the town, but, unable to take it, withdrew.

2 During the retreat, the Syracusans from the fort attacked the allies as they withdrew behind the Athenians; falling upon them, they routed part of the army and killed a considerable number.

3 After this Laches and the Athenians made several landings from their ships in Locris. By the river Caicinus they defeated in battle about three hundred Locrians who came to oppose them under Proxenus son of Capaton, and withdrew with the captured arms.

Chapter 104

1 In the same winter the Athenians also purified Delos, in accordance with an oracle. Pisistratus the tyrant had purified it before, though not the whole island, but only as much as could be seen from the sanctuary. This time the purification extended to the whole island, and was carried out as follows.

2 They removed all the graves of the dead on Delos and proclaimed that in future no one was to die or give birth on the island, but that people in either condition were to be taken across to Rhenea. Rhenea lies so close to Delos that Polycrates, the tyrant of Samos, who for a time was powerful at sea and ruled other islands as well, on capturing Rhenea dedicated it to Delian Apollo by fastening it to Delos with a chain. After the purification the Athenians then first celebrated the Delia as a four-yearly festival.

3 Long ago there had also been a great gathering at Delos of the Ionians and the inhabitants of the neighboring islands. They came to attend the festival with their wives and children, as the Ionians now go to the Ephesia; athletic and musical contests were held there, and the cities brought choruses.

4 Homer gives the clearest evidence that this was so in the following verses, from his prelude to Apollo: / “But when on Delos, Phoebus, your heart found its greatest delight, / there the Ionians in trailing robes gather / with their children and wives along your sacred way; / there with boxing and dancing and song / they honor and delight you, whenever they establish a contest.”

5 That there was also a musical contest, and that people came to compete, he makes clear again in these lines from the same prelude. After praising the Delian chorus of women, he ended his praise with the following verses, in which he also mentioned himself: / “Come, may Apollo be gracious, and Artemis with him; / farewell to all of you. And in days to come / remember me, whenever another of earth's men, / a much-traveled stranger, comes here and asks: / ‘Girls, who is the sweetest singer of all / who visit you here, and in whom do you most delight?’ / Then all of you answer without prompting: / ‘A blind man, who lives on rugged Chios.’”

6 Such is Homer's testimony that even in ancient times there was a great gathering and festival at Delos. Later the islanders and the Athenians continued to send choruses with sacrificial offerings, but the contests and most other observances fell away, presumably through misfortunes, until the Athenians then restored the contest and added horse races, which had not been held before.

Chapter 105

1 In the same winter the Ambraciots, whose promises had kept Eurylochus and his army waiting, marched against Amphilochian Argos with three thousand hoplites. Invading the territory of Argos, they occupied Olpae, a strong fort on a hill by the sea, which the Acarnanians had once fortified and used as a common court of justice. It lies about twenty-five stades from the city of Argos, which is itself on the coast.

2 Some of the Acarnanians assembled to help at Argos; others encamped at the place in Amphilochia called Crenae, watching to prevent the Peloponnesians under Eurylochus from slipping through to the Ambraciots undetected.

3 They also sent for Demosthenes, who had commanded the Athenians in Aetolia, to become their leader, and for the twenty Athenian ships which happened to be off the Peloponnese under Aristoteles son of Timocrates and Hierophon son of Antimnestus.

4 The Ambraciots at Olpae also sent a messenger to their city, urging the whole population to come to their aid. They feared that Eurylochus and his men might be unable to pass through the Acarnanians, leaving them to fight alone or making any attempt to withdraw unsafe.

Chapter 106

1 When the Peloponnesians with Eurylochus learned that the Ambraciots had arrived at Olpae, they broke camp at Proschium and hurried to their aid. Crossing the Achelous, they marched through Acarnania, which was deserted because its men had gone to assist Argos, keeping the city of Stratus and its garrison on their right and the rest of Acarnania on their left.

2 After passing through the territory of Stratus, they marched through Phytia and then along the outskirts of Medeon, and next through Limnaea. They then entered the territory of the Agraeans, no longer Acarnanian land, but friendly to them.

3 Reaching Mount Thyamus, which belongs to the Agraeans, they crossed it and descended into the territory of Argos when night had already fallen. They passed undetected between the city of Argos and the Acarnanian guard at Crenae, and joined the Ambraciots at Olpae.

Chapter 107

1 Their forces now united, at daybreak they took up a position at the place called Metropolis and made camp. Not much later the Athenians arrived in the Ambracian Gulf with their twenty ships to help the Argives, and Demosthenes arrived with two hundred Messenian hoplites and sixty Athenian archers.

2 The ships blockaded the hill at Olpae from the sea. The Acarnanians and a few Amphilochians—the majority were forcibly held back by the Ambraciots—had already assembled at Argos and were preparing to engage the enemy. They elected Demosthenes commander of the entire allied force, alongside their own generals.

3 He brought them up close to Olpae and encamped, with a deep ravine separating the armies. For five days they remained inactive; on the sixth both sides drew up for battle. The Peloponnesian army was larger and its line extended beyond the enemy's, so Demosthenes, fearing encirclement, placed about four hundred men, hoplites and light troops together, in ambush in a sunken road overgrown with brush. These were to spring up at the very moment of engagement and fall on the rear of the projecting enemy line.

4 When both sides were ready, they came to close quarters. Demosthenes held the right wing with the Messenians and a few Athenians; the Acarnanians, each contingent in its assigned position, held the rest of the line, together with the Amphilochian javelin throwers who were present. The Peloponnesians and Ambraciots were drawn up intermingled, except for the Mantineans: these were massed together toward the left, though not at the extreme wing. Eurylochus and his men held the far left, facing the Messenians and Demosthenes.

Chapter 108

1 When the fighting was already at close quarters and the Peloponnesians' wing extended beyond the enemy and began to encircle their right, the Acarnanians rose from ambush, fell upon their rear, and routed them. They would not stand to resist, and their panic brought most of the army into flight as well: the others were all the more terrified when they saw the force with Eurylochus, their strongest part, being destroyed. The Messenians, who were on this side with Demosthenes, did the greater part of the fighting.

2 The Ambraciots and the troops on the right wing, however, defeated those facing them and pursued them toward Argos; indeed, they are the most warlike people in those parts.

3 As they returned, they saw that the greater part of their army had been defeated, and the other Acarnanians pressed them hard. They struggled to reach safety at Olpae, and many were killed, since they crowded back in disorder and without any formation, except for the Mantineans. These withdrew in better order than any other part of the army. The battle ended late in the day.

Chapter 109

1 On the following day Menedaius, who had taken command himself after the deaths of Eurylochus and Macarius, was at a loss after so great a defeat: how could he endure a siege if he stayed, cut off by land and by the Athenian ships at sea, or reach safety if he withdrew? He approached Demosthenes and the Acarnanian generals about a truce and withdrawal, and at the same time about recovering the dead.

2 They gave back the dead, erected a trophy themselves, and recovered their own fallen, about three hundred. They would not openly grant a truce allowing the whole force to withdraw; secretly, however, Demosthenes and his Acarnanian fellow generals made an agreement with the Mantineans, Menedaius, the other Peloponnesian commanders, and the most important men among them, allowing them to depart quickly. He wished to strip the Ambraciots and the body of mercenaries [the foreign troops] of their support, but above all he wanted to discredit the Lacedaemonians and Peloponnesians among the Greeks of that region, as men who had betrayed their allies and put their own interest first.

3 They recovered their dead and hastily buried them, as the agreement permitted; and those who had been given leave to withdraw secretly planned their departure.

Chapter 110

1 Meanwhile Demosthenes and the Acarnanians received word that the whole Ambraciot force from the city, responding to the first message from Olpae, was marching through Amphilochia to their aid. They intended to join the men at Olpae and knew nothing of what had happened.

2 He immediately sent a detachment of the army ahead to lay ambushes along the roads and occupy the strong positions, while preparing to advance against them with the rest of his force.

Chapter 111

1 Meanwhile the Mantineans and those covered by the agreement went out on the pretext of gathering greens and firewood, and slipped away in small groups, collecting as they went the things they had supposedly come out for. Once they were well away from Olpae, they quickened their retreat.

2 The Ambraciots and the others who happened to have come out together in a body, when they realized that these men were leaving, set off themselves at a run, eager to catch them.

3 At first the Acarnanians thought that all alike were leaving without a truce, and pursued the Peloponnesians too. Someone even threw a javelin at some of their own generals who tried to stop them and declared that an agreement had been made with these men, believing that they themselves were being betrayed. Afterward, however, they let the Mantineans and Peloponnesians pass, but killed the Ambraciots.

4 There was much dispute and uncertainty over whether a man was an Ambraciot or a Peloponnesian. They killed about two hundred of them; the rest escaped into the neighboring territory of the Agraeans, where Salynthius, their king and a friend of the fugitives, received them.

Chapter 112

1 The Ambraciots coming from the city reached Idomene, which consists of two high hills. At nightfall the men Demosthenes had sent ahead from the camp occupied the larger one first, without being detected, and bivouacked there; the Ambraciots had already happened to climb the smaller.

2 After supper, as soon as evening came, Demosthenes set out with the rest of the army. He himself led half the force by the pass, while the other half went through the Amphilochian mountains.

3 At dawn he fell upon the Ambraciots, who were still in their beds and had no advance knowledge of what had happened; indeed, they were much more inclined to suppose that the newcomers were their own men.

4 For Demosthenes had deliberately placed the Messenians in front and ordered them to address the enemy: speaking the Doric dialect, they would reassure the outposts, while the darkness that still lingered kept them from being clearly seen.

5 When he fell upon their army, his men routed it and destroyed most of them on the spot; the survivors took to flight over the mountains.

6 But the roads had already been occupied, and the Amphilochians knew their own country and were lightly armed against hoplites, whereas the fugitives were strangers to the land and had no idea where to turn. They plunged into ravines and the ambushes already laid for them, and were destroyed.

7 They tried every form of flight. Some even turned toward the sea, which was not far away, and, seeing the Athenian ships, which happened to be sailing past during the action, swam out to them. In their immediate terror they thought it better, if they must die, to be killed by the men in the ships than by the Amphilochians, barbarians and their bitterest enemies.

8 Such was the destruction of the Ambraciots: out of their great number only a few reached the city alive. The Acarnanians stripped the dead, erected trophies, and withdrew to Argos.

Chapter 113

1 On the following day a herald came to them from the Ambraciots who had escaped from Olpae into Agraean territory. He was to ask for the recovery of those killed after the first battle, when, without a truce themselves, they had come out with the Mantineans and the men protected by the agreement.

2 When the herald saw the arms of the Ambraciots who had come from the city, he was astonished at their number. He knew nothing of the disaster and thought they belonged to the men of his own force.

3 Someone asked him why he was astonished and how many of his men had died, supposing in turn that the herald had come from the men at Idomene. He said about two hundred. The questioner replied, “These arms look to be those not of so few men,

4 “but of more than a thousand.” The herald said in turn, “Then they are not from the men who fought with us.” The other answered, “They are, if you fought at Idomene yesterday.” “But we fought no one yesterday; it was the day before, during the withdrawal.” “Well, it was these men we fought yesterday, who had come to help from the city of Ambracia.”

5 When the herald heard this and understood that the relieving force from the city had been destroyed, he broke into lamentation. Stunned by the magnitude of the calamity, he left at once without accomplishing his purpose, and no longer asked for the dead.

6 This was, indeed, the greatest disaster to befall a single Greek city within a comparable span of days during this war. I have not recorded the number of the dead, because the losses reported are incredible in proportion to the city's size. Yet I know that, had the Acarnanians and Amphilochians wished to follow the advice of the Athenians and Demosthenes and take Ambracia, they could have captured it at the first assault. As it was, they feared that the Athenians, if they possessed it, would be more troublesome neighbors to them.

Chapter 114

1 After this they allotted a third of the spoils to the Athenians and divided the rest among their cities. The Athenians' share was captured at sea; the three hundred complete suits of armor now dedicated in the Attic sanctuaries were set aside for Demosthenes, who sailed home with them. This success also made his return less hazardous after the disaster in Aetolia.

2 The Athenians in the twenty ships also went back to Naupactus. After the departure of the Athenians and Demosthenes, the Acarnanians and Amphilochians made a truce allowing the Ambraciots and Peloponnesians who had taken refuge with Salynthius and the Agraeans to withdraw from Oeniadae, to which they had moved from Salynthius' country.

3 For the future, the Acarnanians and Amphilochians made a treaty and alliance with the Ambraciots for a hundred years, on these terms: the Ambraciots were not to campaign with the Acarnanians against the Peloponnesians, nor the Acarnanians with the Ambraciots against the Athenians, but each was to aid the other's territory; the Ambraciots were to restore whatever Amphilochian places or hostages they held, and were not to send aid to Anactorium, which was at war with the Acarnanians.

4 Having agreed to these terms, they ended the war. Afterward the Corinthians sent a garrison of about three hundred of their own hoplites to Ambracia, under Xenoclides son of Euthycles. They traveled overland and arrived with difficulty. Such were the events at Ambracia.

Chapter 115

1 In the same winter the Athenians in Sicily landed from their ships in the territory of Himera, together with the Sicels who had invaded its outer districts from the interior; they also sailed to the islands of Aeolus.

2 On returning to Rhegium, they found Pythodorus son of Isolochus, an Athenian general, who had come to succeed Laches in command of the ships.

3 For the allies in Sicily had sailed to Athens and persuaded the Athenians to send more ships to help them. The Syracusans controlled their land, but were kept from the sea by only a few ships, and were gathering a fleet in preparation, determined not to tolerate this.

4 The Athenians were fitting out forty ships to send to them, both because they believed that the war there would be brought to an end more quickly and because they wished to give their fleet practice.

5 They therefore sent out one of the generals, Pythodorus, with a few ships, and intended to dispatch Sophocles son of Sostratides and Eurymedon son of Thucles with the greater number.

6 Pythodorus, now holding Laches' command of the ships, sailed at the close of winter against the Locrian fort which Laches had previously captured. Defeated in battle by the Locrians, he withdrew.

Chapter 116

1 At about the beginning of this same spring, the stream of fire flowed from Etna, as it had before, and devastated part of the land of the Catanaeans, who live beneath Mount Etna, the highest mountain in Sicily.

2 This flow is said to have occurred in the fiftieth year after the previous one, and there are said to have been three eruptions in all since Sicily was settled by Greeks.

3 These events took place during this winter, and the sixth year of this war, which Thucydides wrote, came to an end.

Chapter 1

1 The next summer, when the grain was ripening, the Peloponnesians and their allies invaded Attica. Their commander was Archidamus son of Zeuxidamus, king of the Lacedaemonians.

2 They set up camp and devastated the land. As usual, the Athenian cavalry attacked wherever an opportunity arose. They kept most of the enemy's lightly armed troops from moving ahead of the hoplites and damaging the land near the city.

3 They stayed as long as their food lasted, then withdrew and dispersed to their own cities.

Chapter 2

1 Immediately after the Peloponnesian invasion, Lesbos revolted from Athens, except for Methymna. The Lesbians had wanted to revolt even before the war, but the Lacedaemonians had refused to accept them. Now, too, they were forced to revolt earlier than they had intended.

2 They were waiting for work on building barriers at their harbors, building walls, and constructing ships to be completed. They were also waiting for things that had to arrive from the Black Sea, including archers and grain, and for the other supplies they had sent for.

3 But the Tenedians, who were their enemies, and the Methymnaeans informed the Athenians of their plans. So did some individual Mytilenaeans, who were supporters of Athens in the city's civil strife and served as Athens' official local representatives. They reported that the Mytilenaeans were forcibly uniting Lesbos under Mytilene. With the Lacedaemonians and their relatives the Boeotians, they were rushing all their preparations for a revolt. Unless someone acted at once to stop them, the Athenians would lose Lesbos.

Chapter 3

1 The Athenians were worn down by the plague and by the war, which had only recently begun and was now at its height. They thought it would be a major undertaking to start another war against Lesbos, which had a fleet and its strength still intact. At first they did not accept the accusations, largely because they did not want them to be true. But they sent envoys and still could not persuade the Mytilenaeans to abandon their plan to unite the island or their military preparations. They became alarmed and decided to act before the Mytilenaeans could do so.

2 They suddenly sent out forty ships that happened to be ready for a voyage around the Peloponnese. Cleippides son of Deinias was in command, with two other generals.

3 They had been told that a festival of Apollo Maloeis was held outside the city, and that all the Mytilenaeans took part. If they hurried, there was a chance of taking them by surprise. If the attempt succeeded, that would settle the matter. If not, they were to order the Mytilenaeans to hand over their ships and tear down their walls, and to wage war if they refused.

4 The ships sailed off. Meanwhile, the Athenians seized ten Mytilenaean triremes that happened to be with them as reinforcements under the alliance, and imprisoned their crews.

5 But a man crossed from Athens to Euboea and went overland to Geraestus. There he found a merchant ship about to sail and took passage on it. On the third day after leaving Athens, he reached Mytilene and reported that the fleet was coming.

6 The Mytilenaeans therefore did not go out to the sanctuary of Maloeis. They also blocked the unfinished parts of their walls and harbors and kept guard.

Chapter 4

1 The Athenians arrived by sea not long afterward and saw the situation. The generals delivered their orders. When the Mytilenaeans refused to comply, hostilities began.

2 The Mytilenaeans were unprepared and had been forced into war without warning. They sent their ships a short way out of the harbor as if to fight a naval battle. But the Athenian ships drove them back, and they then opened talks with the generals. They wanted, if possible, to get the fleet to leave for the time being by reaching some reasonable agreement.

3 The Athenian generals accepted the offer of talks. They too were afraid that their force was not strong enough to fight all Lesbos.

4 They agreed to a truce. The Mytilenaeans then sent envoys to Athens, including one of their accusers, who was now regretting his actions. They hoped to persuade the Athenians to withdraw the ships on the grounds that the Mytilenaeans were not planning a revolt.

5 Meanwhile, they also sent envoys to Lacedaemon in a trireme. They slipped past the Athenian fleet, which was anchored at Malea, north of the city. They did not trust their approach to the Athenians to succeed.

6 The envoys bound for Lacedaemon made a difficult crossing of the open sea. Once there, they worked to secure some help for their people.

Chapter 5

1 When the envoys returned from Athens without achieving anything, the Mytilenaeans and the rest of Lesbos, except Methymna, went to war. The Methymnaeans had come to help the Athenians, as had the people of Imbros and Lemnos and a few of their other allies.

2 The Mytilenaeans marched out with their full force against the Athenian camp, and a battle followed. Although the Mytilenaeans did no worse than their opponents, they neither camped on the battlefield nor trusted their own strength, but withdrew. After that they stayed quiet. They wanted to wait for help from the Peloponnese and further preparations before risking another battle. Meleas, a Laconian, and Hermaeondas, a Theban, also arrived. They had been sent out before the revolt but had not managed to get there before the Athenian fleet. They slipped into the harbor in a trireme after the battle. They urged the Mytilenaeans to send another trireme and envoys back with them, and the Mytilenaeans did so.

Chapter 6

1 The Mytilenaeans' inactivity gave the Athenians much more confidence. They called in allies, who came much faster when they saw that the Lesbians were offering no strong resistance. The Athenians sailed around to the south side of the city and fortified two camps, one on either side of the city. They stationed ships off both harbors to blockade them.

2 They prevented the Mytilenaeans from using the sea. But the Mytilenaeans and the other Lesbians, who had now come to their aid, controlled the rest of the land. The Athenians held only a small area around their camps. Malea served mainly as a station for their ships and a market. This was how the war around Mytilene was being fought.

Chapter 7

1 At the same time that summer, the Athenians also sent thirty ships around the Peloponnese, with Asopius son of Phormio as general. The Acarnanians had asked them to send either a son or another relative of Phormio to command them.

2 As the ships sailed past Laconia, they devastated the settlements along the coast.

3 Asopius then sent most of the ships home, but took twelve himself to Naupactus. Later, he called out the entire Acarnanian force and marched against Oeniadae. He sailed his ships up the Achelous, while the land army devastated the countryside.

4 When the people of Oeniadae refused to come over to his side, he dismissed the land army. He himself sailed to Leucas and landed at Nericus. During his retreat, he and part of his force were killed by local people who had come to the defense and by a small number of garrison troops.

5 The Athenians later sailed back and recovered their dead from the Leucadians under a truce.

Chapter 8

1 The Mytilenaean envoys sent out in the first ship went to Olympia. The Lacedaemonians had told them to come there so that the other allies could also hear them and discuss the matter. This was the Olympic festival at which Dorieus of Rhodes won his second victory.

2 When they were given a hearing after the festival, they spoke as follows.

Chapter 9

1 “We know the usual attitude among Greeks, Lacedaemonians and allies. When people revolt during a war and abandon their previous alliance, those who take them in are pleased to gain their help. But they also think less of them because they see them as traitors to their former friends.

2 “This judgment is fair if those who revolt and those they break away from have the same aims and goodwill toward one another, are evenly matched in military resources and strength, and have no reasonable grounds for breaking apart. But that was not the situation between us and the Athenians.

3 “And no one should think less of us because we are leaving them in a time of danger after being treated with honor by them in peacetime.

Chapter 10

1 “We will begin by talking about justice and honest conduct, especially since we are asking for an alliance. We know that neither friendship between individuals nor cooperation between cities can be lasting or achieve anything unless each side believes in the other's good character and they are alike in other respects too. Differences in outlook lead to differences in action.

2 “Our alliance with the Athenians first began when you withdrew from the Persian war, while they stayed on to complete the work that remained.

3 “But we did not ally ourselves with the Athenians to help them enslave the Greeks. We allied ourselves with the Greeks to free them from the Persians.

4 “As long as the Athenians led us as equals, we followed willingly. But when we saw them relaxing their hostility toward the Persians and moving toward the enslavement of their allies, we no longer felt safe.

5 “With so many separate votes, the allies were divided and could not defend themselves one by one. They were enslaved, except for us and the Chians. We continued to campaign alongside the Athenians, supposedly self-governing and free in name.

6 “But we no longer trusted the Athenians as leaders. We judged them by what had already happened. It was not likely that they would conquer the people who had joined the treaty along with us, yet leave the rest untouched if they ever had the power to do the same to them.

Chapter 11

1 “If we had all still been self-governing, we could have trusted them more not to change the arrangement. But with most of the allies under their control, they would naturally find it harder to deal with us as equals. They were already giving way to the desire for greater power, while we alone still stood on equal terms. This was especially true as their own strength kept growing and we became more isolated.

2 “Only fear on both sides, evenly balanced, makes an alliance secure. Anyone who wants to break the agreement is held back by the knowledge that he would have no advantage if he attacked.

3 “We were left self-governing for one reason only. They thought they could gain control more easily through a respectable explanation and careful planning than by force, and keeping us independent helped them build their empire in this way.

4 “For one thing, they used us as evidence. They argued that people with an equal vote would not join their campaigns against their will unless the people being attacked had done something wrong. At the same time, they first took the strongest allies along against the weaker ones. By leaving the strongest until last, after the rest had been taken away, they expected to find them weaker.

5 “If they had started with us, when all the allies still had their own strength and a side to rally to, they would not have brought them under control so easily.

6 “Our fleet also caused them some fear. It might one day unite with yours or someone else's and pose a danger to them.

7 “We also survived by cultivating both their people as a whole and whoever happened to be leading them.

8 “But judging from the examples of their treatment of the others, we did not think we could have gone on doing this for long if this war had not broken out.

Chapter 12

1 “What sort of friendship was this? How could we trust our freedom when neither side meant what it said in welcoming the other? They treated us well during the war because they feared us. We did the same to them during peacetime. Goodwill is what usually gives people the strongest grounds for trusting one another. In our case, fear provided that security. We remained allies more because of fear than friendship. Whichever side first felt safe enough to act boldly was going to be the first to break the agreement.

2 “So anyone who thinks we are wrong to have revolted before they harmed us is not seeing things clearly. They were delaying their attack on us, and we did not wait in turn until we knew for certain whether it would happen.

3 “If we had been equally able to plot against them and to delay in our turn, why should we, as their equals, have been at their mercy? But since they have always had the choice of when to attack, we too must have the right to defend ourselves in advance.

Chapter 13

1 “Those are our grounds and reasons for revolting, Lacedaemonians and allies. They are clear enough for anyone listening to see that our action was reasonable. They were also enough to frighten us and make us look for some way to stay safe. We had wanted to act long ago, when we sent envoys to you about a revolt while peace still lasted. But your refusal to accept us prevented it. Now, when the Boeotians invited us, we responded at once. We thought we would be making a break on two fronts. In our relations with the Greeks, we would stop helping the Athenians harm them and instead help to free them. In our relations with the Athenians, we would act first instead of waiting to be destroyed by them later.

2 “But our revolt has come sooner than planned, before we were ready. That makes it all the more necessary for you to accept us as allies and send help quickly. Then you will show that you defend those you should defend, while harming your enemies at the same time.

3 “The opportunity is better than ever before. The Athenians have been worn down by the plague and by spending their money. Some of their ships are off your coast, and the others are stationed against us.

4 “So they are unlikely to have ships to spare if you invade a second time this summer, with a fleet and an army together. Either they will fail to resist your fleet as it approaches, or they will withdraw from both places.

5 “No one should think that he will be risking his own safety for someone else's land. Anyone who thinks Lesbos is far away will find that the benefit it brings him is close to home. The war will not be fought in Attica, as some people think, but in the territory from which Attica gets its strength.

6 “It is the allies who supply its revenue. That revenue will be even greater if they conquer us. No one else will revolt, our resources will be added to theirs, and we will suffer worse treatment than those who were enslaved before us.

7 “But if you give us your full support, you will gain a city with a large fleet, which is what you need most. You will defeat the Athenians more easily by taking their allies away from them, since everyone will feel more confident about joining you. You will also escape the accusation made against you that you do not help those who revolt. If you show yourselves to be liberators, you will have a firmer hold on victory in the war.

Chapter 14

1 “So respect the hopes the Greeks have placed in you, and respect Olympian Zeus, in whose sanctuary we stand as people seeking his protection. Become our allies and defend the Mytilenaeans. Do not abandon us. We are risking our own lives, but if we succeed, everyone will share the benefit. If we fail because you have refused to listen, the harm will be shared even more widely.

2 “Prove yourselves to be the men the Greeks expect you to be, and the men we, in our fear, need you to be.”

Chapter 15

1 That was what the Mytilenaeans said. After hearing them, the Lacedaemonians and their allies accepted their arguments and made the Lesbians their allies. They planned an invasion of Attica and told the allies present to send two-thirds of their forces to the Isthmus as quickly as possible. The Lacedaemonians themselves arrived first. They began preparing equipment at the Isthmus to haul ships across from Corinth to the sea facing Athens, so that they could attack by land and sea together.

2 They set to work eagerly. But the other allies assembled slowly. They were busy gathering their crops and had little enthusiasm for going on campaign.

Chapter 16

1 The Athenians realized that these preparations were being made because the enemy thought they were weak. They wanted to show that this judgment was wrong. They could easily resist the attack from the Peloponnese without moving the fleet at Lesbos. So they manned a hundred ships, with the citizens themselves boarding, except for the cavalry and those in the highest property class, along with the resident foreigners. They put out to sea toward the Isthmus, displayed their strength, and landed wherever they chose in the Peloponnese.

2 The Lacedaemonians saw how badly events had contradicted their expectations and concluded that what the Lesbians had told them was untrue. They thought they had no way forward. Their allies had not arrived, and at the same time reports came that the thirty Athenian ships sailing around the Peloponnese were devastating the territory of their perioeci. They went home.

3 Later they prepared a fleet to send to Lesbos. They ordered the cities to supply a total of forty ships and appointed Alcidas admiral to command the expedition.

4 The Athenians also withdrew their hundred ships when they saw that the Lacedaemonians had withdrawn.

Chapter 17

1 [At the time these ships were at sea, the Athenians had one of their largest and finest fleets in active service at once. At the start of the war they had had about as many ships, or even more.

2 A hundred ships guarded Attica, Euboea, and Salamis, and another hundred were around the Peloponnese. This did not include the ships at Potidaea and in other places. In all, two hundred and fifty ships were in service at the same time during a single summer.

3 This, together with Potidaea, did the most to use up their money.

4 The hoplites keeping watch on Potidaea were paid two drachmas each a day: each man received one for himself and one for his servant. The original force numbered three thousand, and at least that many stayed throughout the siege. Another sixteen hundred came with Phormio and left before it ended. The crews of all the ships received the same pay. This was how the money was used up in the early part of the war, and this was the largest number of ships they ever manned at once.]

Chapter 18

1 At the same time as the Lacedaemonians were at the Isthmus, the Mytilenaeans and their supporting troops marched overland against Methymna, expecting it to be betrayed to them. They attacked the city, but when things did not turn out as they had expected, they left for Antissa, Pyrrha, and Eresus. They made their control of these cities more secure and strengthened their walls, then quickly went home.

2 After they withdrew, the Methymnaeans in turn marched against Antissa. But the Antissaeans and their supporting troops came out against them and defeated them. Many Methymnaeans were killed, and the rest retreated quickly.

3 The Athenians learned of these events, and that the Mytilenaeans controlled the countryside while their own troops were unable to stop them. As autumn was beginning, they sent the general Paches son of Epicurus with a thousand Athenian hoplites.

4 The hoplites rowed the ships themselves on the voyage. After arriving, they surrounded Mytilene with a single wall. At some of the strongest positions they built forts into it.

5 Mytilene was now firmly blockaded on both sides, by land and sea, and winter was beginning.

Chapter 19

1 The Athenians needed more money for the siege. They themselves paid a special tax, imposed then for the first time, of two hundred talents. They also sent twelve ships to collect money from the allies, with Lysicles and four other generals in command.

2 Lysicles sailed around collecting money in various places. He then went inland in Caria, starting from Myus and crossing the plain of the Maeander as far as the hill of Sandius. The Carians and the people of Anaea attacked him there, killing him and many of his troops.

Chapter 20

1 During the same winter, the Plataeans were still under siege by the Peloponnesians and Boeotians. Their grain was running out and they were in serious trouble. They had no hope of help from Athens, and no other way to save themselves was apparent. They and the Athenians trapped in the siege with them initially planned for everyone to break out and climb over the enemy's walls, forcing their way through if they could. The seer Theaenetus son of Tolmides and Eupompidas son of Daimachus, who was also their general, had proposed the attempt.

2 Then about half lost their nerve, thinking the danger too great. But about two hundred and twenty men volunteered to go ahead with the escape. This was how they did it.

3 They made ladders as high as the enemy's wall. They calculated its height from the courses of bricks at a place where the side facing them happened not to be plastered. Many men counted the courses at the same time. Some were likely to make mistakes, but most would get the count right, especially since they counted repeatedly and were not far away. They could easily see the part of the wall they wanted to measure.

4 This was how they worked out the length of the ladders, estimating the height from the thickness of a brick.

Chapter 21

1 The Peloponnesian wall was built as follows. It had two circuits: one facing Plataea and the other facing any force coming from Athens to attack from outside. The two circuits were about sixteen feet apart.

2 In the space between them [the sixteen feet], separate living quarters had been built for the guards. These joined together, so that the structure looked like one thick wall with battlements on both sides.

3 At every tenth battlement there were large towers as wide as the wall. Each tower extended to both the inner and the outer face. There was no way past a tower along its side; the men had to go through its middle.

4 On nights of stormy, rainy weather, the guards left the battlements and kept watch from the towers. These were close together and had roofs overhead. This was the wall that kept the Plataeans under siege.

Chapter 22

1 When their preparations were complete, the Plataeans waited for a moonless night with a storm of wind and rain, and set out. The men who had proposed the attempt led the way. First they crossed the ditch surrounding them. Then they approached the enemy's wall without the guards noticing. It was too dark for the guards to see them in advance, and the wind drowned out the noise of their approach.

2 They also walked well apart so that their weapons would not strike one another and give them away. They were lightly equipped and wore a shoe only on the left foot, to give them a secure footing in the mud.

3 They approached the battlements between two towers, knowing that no guards were there. The ladder carriers went first and set their ladders against the wall. Next, twelve lightly equipped men climbed up with short swords and breastplates. Their leader was Ammeas son of Coroebus, who climbed up first. The men behind him followed, six toward each tower. Other lightly equipped men with short spears came after them. Men behind carried their shields so that they could climb more easily, and would hand them over when they came close to the enemy.

4 When more men had reached the top, the guards in the towers noticed them. One of the Plataeans had knocked a tile off the battlements as he took hold of them, and it fell with a crash.

5 Shouts went up at once, and the troops in the camp rushed toward the wall. In the darkness and the storm, they did not know what the danger was. At the same time, the Plataeans who had stayed in the city came out and attacked the Peloponnesian wall on the opposite side from where their men were climbing over. They wanted to keep the enemy's attention away from the escape party as much as possible.

6 The guards remained at their posts in confusion. No one dared to leave his own station to help, and they could not work out what was happening.

7 The three hundred men assigned to go to the rescue wherever they were needed moved outside the wall toward the shouting. Fire signals were raised to warn Thebes of an enemy attack.

8 But the Plataeans in the city also raised many fire signals from their wall. They had prepared them earlier for this very purpose. They wanted to confuse the meaning of the enemy's signals, so that the Thebans would mistake what was happening for something else and not come to help before the escaping men had got away and reached safety.

Chapter 23

1 Meanwhile, the Plataeans were getting over the wall. The first of them had climbed up, killed the guards in both towers, and taken control of them. They stationed themselves in the passages through the towers and guarded them to stop anyone from bringing help that way. They also set ladders against the towers from the wall and brought up more men. From the towers, some threw missiles at the defenders coming to help, keeping them back both above and below. Meanwhile, most of the Plataeans set up many ladders, knocked down the battlements, and crossed the wall between the towers.

2 As each man got across, he took his place on the edge of the ditch. From there they shot arrows and threw javelins at anyone coming along the wall to help the defenders and obstruct the crossing.

3 When everyone else had crossed, the men in the towers came down last, with difficulty, and made their way to the ditch. At that moment the three hundred came toward them carrying torches.

4 Standing in the darkness on the edge of the ditch, the Plataeans could see these men more clearly. They shot arrows and threw javelins at their unprotected parts. The Plataeans themselves remained hidden, and the torchlight made them harder to see. As a result, even the last of them managed to cross the ditch in time, though with difficulty and a great deal of effort.

5 Ice had formed in the ditch, but it was not firm enough to walk on. It was more slushy, as ice is in an east [or north] wind. Snow falling during the night with this wind had greatly increased the water in the ditch. They crossed it with their heads barely above water. In fact, it was largely the severity of the storm that made their escape possible.

Chapter 24

1 Leaving the ditch, the Plataeans moved together along the road to Thebes, keeping the shrine of the hero Androcrates on their right. They thought their enemies would be least likely to suspect them of taking this road, which led toward the enemy. At the same time, they could see the Peloponnesians pursuing them with torches along the road toward Cithaeron and Dryoscephalae, which led to Athens.

2 The Plataeans followed the road toward Thebes for six or seven stades. Then they turned back and took the road toward the mountain, leading to Erythrae and Hysiae. Once they reached the mountains, they escaped to Athens. There were two hundred and twelve of them, out of a larger number who had started. Some had turned back to the city before climbing the wall, and one man, an archer, was captured at the outer ditch.

3 The Peloponnesians stopped their efforts to intercept them and returned to their positions. The Plataeans in the city knew nothing of what had happened. The men who had turned back told them that no one had survived. So at daybreak they sent out a herald and tried to arrange a truce to recover the dead. Once they learned the truth, they stopped. This was how these Plataeans got over the wall and escaped safely.

Chapter 25

1 At the end of the same winter, Salaethus, a Lacedaemonian, was sent from Lacedaemon to Mytilene in a trireme. He sailed to Pyrrha, then went on foot along a ravine where it was possible to get over the siege wall. He slipped into Mytilene unnoticed. He told the officials that an invasion of Attica would take place at the same time as the arrival of the forty ships that were to help them. He had been sent ahead to make these arrangements and also to take charge of other matters.

2 This encouraged the Mytilenaeans and made them less inclined to reach an agreement with the Athenians. This winter ended, and with it the fourth year of this war, whose history Thucydides wrote.

Chapter 26

1 The following summer, the Peloponnesians sent off the forty-two ships for Mytilene. They put Alcidas, their admiral, in command. Then they and their allies invaded Attica. They wanted to create trouble for the Athenians on two fronts and so make them less able to act against the ships sailing to Mytilene.

2 Cleomenes led this invasion on behalf of King Pausanias, the son of Pleistoanax, who was still too young. Cleomenes was the brother of Pausanias' father.

3 They destroyed the parts of Attica that had been devastated before, including anything that had grown back, and whatever the earlier invasions had left untouched. Apart from the second invasion, this was the most damaging one for the Athenians.

4 They kept waiting for news from Lesbos of something their fleet had achieved, believing it had already made the crossing. Meanwhile, they went through most of the country, destroying its crops. But none of their expectations was fulfilled, and their food ran out. They withdrew and dispersed to their own cities.

Chapter 27

1 Meanwhile, the ships from the Peloponnese were delayed and had still not reached the Mytilenaeans. The Mytilenaeans' food had run out. They were forced to come to terms with the Athenians for the following reasons.

2 Salaethus himself no longer expected the ships to arrive. He equipped the people, who had previously been lightly armed, with heavy weapons, intending to march out against the Athenians.

3 Once they had these weapons, they stopped obeying the authorities. They gathered in groups and demanded that the powerful men bring out the food supplies for everyone to see and share them among all. Otherwise, they said, they would make their own agreement with the Athenians and hand over the city.

Chapter 28

1 The men in power realized that they could not stop this and would be in danger if they were left out of the agreement. So they made terms on behalf of everyone with Paches and his army. The Athenians could decide whatever they wanted about the Mytilenaeans, and the Mytilenaeans would admit the army into the city. But the Mytilenaeans could send representatives to Athens to plead their case. Until these returned, Paches was not to imprison, enslave, or kill any Mytilenaean.

2 These were the terms they agreed on. But the Mytilenaeans who had been most involved in dealings with the Lacedaemonians were terrified. When the army entered, they could not bear it and took refuge at the altars despite the agreement. Paches persuaded them to leave by promising not to harm them. He placed them on Tenedos until the Athenians reached a decision.

3 He also sent triremes to Antissa and brought it under his control. He settled the other military arrangements as he thought best.

Chapter 29

1 The Peloponnesians in the forty ships should have arrived quickly. Instead, they spent a long time sailing around the Peloponnese itself and made slow progress on the rest of the voyage. The Athenians in the city knew nothing of them until they reached Delos. From there they went on to Icarus and Myconus, where they first learned that Mytilene had fallen.

2 To find out for certain, they sailed to Embatum in the territory of Erythrae. When they reached Embatum, Mytilene had been captured about seven days earlier. Once they had confirmed the news, they discussed what to do in these circumstances. Teutiaplus, a man from Elis, spoke to them as follows.

Chapter 30

1 “Alcidas, and all of us Peloponnesians here who command the force, I think we should sail to Mytilene as we are, before anyone learns of our presence.

2 “As is likely with men who have only just captured a city, we will probably find much left unguarded. This will be especially true on the sea side. They cannot expect an enemy to attack them there, and that is where our own strength chiefly lies. Their land troops have probably also scattered among the houses and become less careful now that they have won.

3 “So if we attack suddenly at night, I hope we can gain control with the help of people inside, if anyone still remains there who supports us.

4 “Let us not back away from the danger. We should recognize that this kind of lapse is exactly what creates an opening in war. A general who guards against it in his own forces, and attacks when he spots it in the enemy's, will have the greatest success.”

Chapter 31

1 This was what he said, but he did not persuade Alcidas. Some of the Ionian exiles and the Lesbians sailing with them offered another suggestion. If he was afraid to take this risk, he should capture one of the cities in Ionia, or Cyme in Aeolis. They could use that city as a base and make Ionia revolt. There was hope of doing so, they said, since no one resented their arrival. They would then take away Athens' greatest source of income. At the same time, if the Athenians kept a fleet stationed against them, it would cost the Athenians money. They also thought they could persuade Pissuthnes to join them in the war.

2 Alcidas would not accept these suggestions either. Since he had arrived too late for Mytilene, his chief concern was to get back to the Peloponnese as quickly as possible.

Chapter 32

1 He sailed from Embatum and followed the coast. At Myonnesus, in the territory of Teos, he put in and slaughtered most of the prisoners he had taken during the voyage.

2 When he anchored at Ephesus, representatives of the Samians living at Anaea came to him. They said he was going about the liberation of Greece the wrong way if he killed men who neither offered resistance nor were his enemies, but were allies of Athens under compulsion. Unless he stopped, he would bring few enemies over to his side and make enemies of many more friends.

3 He was persuaded and released all the Chians he still held, along with some of the others. When people saw his ships, they had not fled. Instead, they had approached them, thinking they were Athenian. They had not the slightest expectation that Peloponnesian ships could ever reach Ionia while Athens controlled the sea.

Chapter 33

1 Alcidas sailed from Ephesus in a hurry to escape. The Salaminia and the Paralus had spotted him while he was still anchored near Clarus. These ships happened to be sailing from Athens. Afraid of being chased, he sailed across the open sea. He did not intend to stop anywhere but the Peloponnese unless he had to.

2 News reached Paches and the Athenians from the territory of Erythrae, and reports also came in from every direction. Since Ionia had no fortifications, people were very afraid that the Peloponnesians would attack and plunder the cities as they sailed past, even if they had no intention of staying. The Paralus and the Salaminia also reported what they themselves had seen of Alcidas at Clarus.

3 Paches made every effort to catch them. He pursued them as far as the island of Patmos, but turned back when it became clear that he could no longer overtake them. Although he had failed to meet them at sea, he thought it an advantage that they had not been trapped anywhere and forced to set up a camp. That would have forced his men to keep watch over them and blockade them by sea.

Chapter 34

1 On his way back along the coast, he also put in at Notium, which belonged to the Colophonians. Colophonians had settled there after Itamanes and his non-Greek troops captured the upper city. They had been brought in during the Colophonians' own civil strife. The city had fallen at about the time of the Peloponnesians' second invasion of Attica.

2 The refugees who settled at Notium then fell into civil strife again. One side brought in Arcadian and non-Greek mercenaries from Pissuthnes and kept them in a fortified enclosure. Colophonians from the upper city who had sided with the Persians joined this group and shared control of the government. The other side escaped from them and went into exile. These men called in Paches.

3 Paches invited Hippias, the commander of the Arcadians in the enclosure, to a conference. He promised to return him safe and unharmed to the fortification if they reached no satisfactory agreement. Hippias came out to meet him. Paches kept him under guard, though not in chains, and suddenly attacked the fortification. He captured it while its defenders were expecting nothing and killed the Arcadians and all the non-Greeks inside. Later he took Hippias back inside, as he had promised. Once Hippias was inside, Paches seized him and had him shot dead with arrows.

4 Paches handed Notium over to the Colophonians, except those who had sided with the Persians. Later the Athenians sent men to establish a settlement there under Athenian laws. They gathered together all the Colophonians they could find in any of the cities and settled them at Notium.

Chapter 35

1 When Paches reached Mytilene, he secured the surrender of Pyrrha and Eresus. He also found Salaethus the Lacedaemonian hiding in the city and sent him to Athens. With him he sent the Mytilenaeans he had placed on Tenedos, and anyone else he considered responsible for the revolt.

2 He also sent most of the army home. He stayed with the rest and settled affairs in Mytilene and the rest of Lesbos as he thought best.

Chapter 36

1 When these men and Salaethus arrived, the Athenians immediately put Salaethus to death. He had offered, among other things, to get the Peloponnesians to withdraw from Plataea, which was still under siege.

2 They discussed what to do with the other men. In their anger, they decided to kill not just those present but every adult male Mytilenaean, and to enslave the women and children. What they held against the Mytilenaeans, apart from the revolt itself, was that they had revolted without being subjects like the other allies. The fact that Peloponnesian ships had dared to risk a voyage to Ionia to help them also did much to fuel the Athenians' anger. It suggested that the revolt had been planned well in advance.

3 So they sent a trireme to Paches to report their decision, ordering him to kill the Mytilenaeans quickly.

4 The very next day, they began to change their minds. On reflection, they thought it a savage and extreme decision to destroy an entire city rather than just those responsible.

5 When the Mytilenaean representatives in Athens and their Athenian supporters realized this, they got the officials to reopen the debate. They persuaded them more easily because the officials could clearly see that most citizens wanted someone to give them another chance to consider the matter.

6 An assembly was held at once, and various speakers put forward their views. Cleon, the son of Cleaenetus, came forward and spoke again as follows. His proposal to kill the Mytilenaeans had won in the earlier debate. In other matters too he was the most aggressive of the citizens, and at that time he had far more influence over the people than anyone else.

Chapter 37

1 “I have often before realized that a democracy is incapable of ruling others. Nothing has shown me this more clearly than your present change of mind about the Mytilenaeans.

2 “You live your daily lives without fear or plots against one another, and you take the same attitude toward your allies. If their arguments persuade you to make a mistake, or you give way out of pity, you do not think about how this weakness endangers you without earning their gratitude. You fail to see that your empire is a tyranny over people who plot against you and submit unwillingly. They do not obey because of the favors you do them at your own expense. They obey because you hold the advantage through strength, not through their goodwill.

3 “The worst thing of all will be if none of our decisions stands firm. We must understand that a city with inferior laws that remain fixed is stronger than one with good laws that have no force. Lack of learning combined with self-control is more useful than cleverness without discipline. As a rule, ordinary people govern their cities better than the more intelligent.

4 “The intelligent want to appear wiser than the laws and to outdo every argument put before the public. They act as though there were no more important matters in which to show their judgment. This behavior usually brings their cities to disaster. Ordinary people distrust their own intelligence. They accept that they know less than the laws and are less able to fault the argument of a good speaker. They judge impartially rather than competing, and so they usually get things right.

5 “We speakers should act in the same way. We must not let cleverness and competition in intelligence carry us away into giving you, the people, advice that goes against our own judgment.

Chapter 38

1 “My own opinion has not changed. I am surprised at those who have reopened the debate on the Mytilenaeans and caused a delay, which chiefly benefits the wrongdoers. The victim pursues the offender with less anger as time passes. Retaliation is most effective as punishment when it comes as close as possible to the injury and answers it in equal measure. I also wonder who will speak against me and undertake to show that the Mytilenaeans' wrongdoing benefits us, while our misfortunes harm our allies.

2 “Clearly, such a man must either trust his speaking skills and compete to overturn what seems certain, as though we had not understood it, or be tempted by profit and try to mislead you with an argument he has worked up to sound respectable.

3 “In contests like these, the city gives the prizes to others but bears the risks itself.

4 “You are to blame because you run these contests badly. You habitually treat speeches as a spectacle and learn about actions only from what you hear. You judge whether future actions are possible from the skill of those who speak for them. As for things that have already happened, you trust clever verbal criticism more than the evidence of your own eyes.

5 “You are exceptionally good at being deceived by a new argument, but unwilling to follow one that has been tested. You are slaves to whatever is unusual and look down on what is familiar.

6 “Each of you would most like to be able to make such speeches himself. Failing that, you compete with those who do, trying not to appear slow in catching their meaning. You rush to applaud a sharp remark before it is fully spoken. You eagerly anticipate what will be said, but are slow to foresee its consequences.

7 “You are looking, one might say, for a world different from the one we live in, yet you do not adequately understand even our present situation. In short, you let the pleasure of listening get the better of you. You sit there more like spectators at a display by teachers of clever argument than people considering their city's affairs.

Chapter 39

1 “To turn you away from these habits, I declare that the Mytilenaeans have wronged you more than any other single city has.

2 “I can forgive people who revolt because they cannot bear your rule, or because the enemy forces them to do so. But these people had an island protected by walls. They needed to fear our enemies only at sea, and even there their own force of triremes gave them some protection. They governed themselves and were among those we treated with the greatest honor. What they did was not so much a revolt as a conspiracy and an uprising against us. A revolt, after all, is something people do when they are being oppressed. They joined our worst enemies and tried to destroy us. This is worse than if they had built up their own strength and fought us on their own.

3 “The disasters of their neighbors who had already revolted and been brought under our control taught them nothing. Nor did their present prosperity make them hesitate to run into danger. They grew bold about the future. Their hopes went beyond their strength, though they still fell short of their desires. They started a war, choosing to put force before justice. They attacked us when they thought they would have the advantage, not because we were wronging them.

4 “When cities suddenly gain great and unexpected prosperity, they usually become arrogant. Success that comes in a way people can reasonably expect is generally safer than unexpected good fortune. People find it easier, so to speak, to drive away hardship than to preserve prosperity.

5 “We should never have given the Mytilenaeans any more honor than the others. Then they would not have become so arrogant. Human nature tends to look down on those who show consideration and to respect those who refuse to give way.

6 “Even now, let them be punished as their wrongdoing deserves. Do not put the blame on the few and let the people go free. They all attacked you alike. The people could have turned to us and now been back in their city. Instead, they thought that taking their chances with the few was the safer course, and joined them in the revolt.

7 “Consider your allies too. If you impose the same penalties on those whom the enemy forces to revolt and those who revolt willingly, who do you think will not revolt at the slightest excuse? Success will mean freedom, while failure will bring no irreparable harm.

8 “But we will have to risk our money and our lives against each city. If we succeed, we will take over a ruined city and lose its future income, which is what gives us our strength. If we fail, we will have more enemies in addition to our present ones. We will spend the time we should be using to resist our existing enemies at war with our own allies.

Chapter 40

1 “So we must not offer them any hope, whether made credible by an argument or purchased with money, that they will be forgiven for making a human mistake. They did not harm us unwillingly. They plotted against us knowingly. It is the unintentional act that deserves forgiveness.

2 “My position is the same as at the start: I insist that you must not change your earlier decision. Do not make a mistake through the three things most harmful to an empire: pity, pleasure in speeches, and leniency.

3 “Pity should rightly be given in return to people like ourselves, not to those who will not pity us in return and are bound to remain our enemies. Speakers who delight us with their speeches will have other, less important occasions to compete. They should not compete on an issue where the city will pay heavily for a brief pleasure, while they are rewarded for speaking well. And leniency is better given to people who will remain well disposed toward us in the future than to those who will stay just as hostile as before.

4 “To sum it up in one statement: if you follow my advice, you will treat the Mytilenaeans justly and serve your own interests at the same time. If you decide otherwise, you will not win their gratitude; instead, you will pass judgment against yourselves. If they were right to revolt, you must be wrong to rule them. But if you insist on ruling even when you have no right to do so, you must also punish them as your interests demand, regardless of what is fair. Otherwise, give up the empire and show how good you are without taking any risks.

5 “Decide to repay them with the same punishment they would have given you. You have escaped their plot; do not show yourselves less sensitive to injury than those who plotted it. Think what they would probably have done if they had defeated you, especially since they were the first to do wrong.

6 “Those who harm someone without any justification are particularly eager to pursue and completely destroy him. They suspect the danger of letting an enemy survive. Someone who has suffered an unprovoked injury is more dangerous if he escapes than an enemy who has fought on equal terms.

7 “So do not betray yourselves. Put yourselves as nearly as possible back into the state of mind you had when you were suffering. Remember how you would have valued defeating them above everything else, and now pay them back. Do not soften because of the immediate situation or forget the terrible danger that once hung over you.

8 “Punish these men as they deserve, and set a clear example for your other allies: anyone who revolts will be punished with death. If they understand this, you will be less likely to neglect your enemies while fighting your own allies.”

Chapter 41

1 That was what Cleon said. After him, Diodotus son of Eucrates came forward. He had been the strongest opponent of killing the Mytilenaeans at the earlier assembly too. Now he spoke as follows.

Chapter 42

1 “I do not blame those who have proposed that we reconsider the Mytilenaeans' case. Nor do I approve of those who criticize us for discussing the most important matters more than once. I think the two greatest obstacles to good judgment are haste and anger. Haste usually goes with foolishness, and anger with ignorance and a narrow outlook.

2 “Anyone who insists that discussion cannot teach us about action either lacks understanding or has a private interest at stake. He lacks understanding if he thinks we can explain the future, which is still hidden, by any other means. He has a private interest if he wants to persuade us to do something shameful. He thinks he cannot make a good argument for a bad cause, but that a skillful attack on people's character will intimidate both his opponents and his audience.

3 “Those who also accuse a speaker of putting on a display for money are especially dangerous. If they only accused him of ignorance, a man who failed to persuade you would leave with a reputation for being stupid rather than dishonest. But when dishonesty is the charge, he falls under suspicion if he persuades you. If he fails, he is considered dishonest as well as stupid.

4 “The city gains nothing from this. Fear deprives it of advisers. Indeed, it would do best if citizens of that kind could not speak. Then its citizens would be least likely to be persuaded to make mistakes.

5 “A good citizen should not frighten his opponents. He should show that his argument is better in a fair contest. A sensible city should not give extra honors to the man who most often offers good advice, but neither should it reduce the honors he already has. And it should not punish a man whose proposal fails, or even treat him with disrespect.

6 “In that way, a successful speaker would be least likely to say something against his own judgment simply to please you and win still greater honors. And an unsuccessful speaker would not try to win over the crowd himself by pleasing it in the same way.

Chapter 43

1 “We do the opposite. What is more, if we suspect someone of giving the best advice but doing it for profit, our resentment at his uncertain prospect of gain makes us deprive the city of a clear benefit.

2 “We have reached the point where good advice, honestly given, is just as suspect as bad advice. So a man who wants to persuade you to do something terrible must deceive the people to win them over, while a man offering better advice must also lie to gain their trust.

3 “Because of its excessive cleverness, ours is the only city that cannot be helped openly without being deceived. Anyone who openly offers it something good is suspected in return of secretly expecting some larger gain.

4 “Even in these conditions, when the greatest interests are at stake, you must allow us to speak with a little more foresight than you who take a short-term view. This is especially true because we are held responsible for our advice, while you are not held responsible for listening to it.

5 “If the man who persuaded you and those who followed him suffered equally, you would judge more sensibly. As things are, when you make a mistake, you sometimes give way to whatever anger comes over you and punish the one man's judgment that persuaded you. You do not punish your own judgments, though there were many of them and they shared in the mistake.

Chapter 44

1 “I have not come forward either to speak against the accusations about the Mytilenaeans or to accuse them myself. If we are sensible, our dispute is not about their wrongdoing but about making a good decision ourselves.

2 “Even if I show that they have done a great wrong, I will not therefore recommend killing them, unless that serves our interests. And even if I show that they deserve some forgiveness, I will not recommend it if it does not seem good for the city.

3 “I think we are discussing the future more than the present. Cleon insists above all that making death the penalty will benefit us in the future by reducing revolts. I too am arguing about what will be best for the future, but I reach the opposite conclusion.

4 “I ask you not to reject the practical value of my argument because his looks more respectable. His argument appeals more to justice, and so it might attract you in your present anger against the Mytilenaeans. But we are not in a lawsuit against them, where arguments about justice would be needed. We are deciding what to do about them so that they will be useful to us.

Chapter 45

1 “In cities, the death penalty is set for many offenses, not just ones as serious as this, but lesser ones too. Still, people take the risk, encouraged by hope. No one has ever set out on a dangerous plot after deciding that he would not succeed.

2 “And what city has ever attempted a revolt when it thought its resources were inadequate, either its own resources or those supplied by an alliance with others?

3 “Everyone naturally makes mistakes, both as individuals and as communities. No law will prevent this. People have already tried the whole range of punishments, making them harsher in the hope that criminals would do them less harm. Probably even the greatest crimes had lighter penalties in the past. But as people continued to break the law, most penalties eventually became death. Yet people still break the law despite that.

4 “So either we must find something more frightening than death, or this threat does nothing to hold people back. Poverty makes people desperate and so gives them courage. Having the means to do as you please encourages greed through arrogance and self-confidence. Other circumstances in life drive people into danger through their passions, as each person is gripped by some overpowering impulse that cannot be cured.

5 “Hope and desire are at work in every venture. Desire leads, and hope follows. Desire works out the plot, and hope suggests that fortune will make it easy. They do the most damage. Though they cannot be seen, they are stronger than the dangers that can.

6 “Chance also contributes just as much to encouraging people. Sometimes it comes to their aid unexpectedly and tempts them to take risks even with inadequate resources. This is no less true of cities. They are playing for the greatest stakes, freedom or power over others. And when everyone acts together, each person unreasonably overestimates his own strength.

7 “In short, it is impossible to hold human nature back by the force of law or by any other threat once it is determined to do something. Anyone who thinks otherwise is very naive.

Chapter 46

1 “We must not make a worse decision because we trust the death penalty as a sure safeguard. Nor must we leave rebels without hope that they can change their minds and end their offense as quickly as possible.

2 “Consider this. As things stand, a city that has revolted might realize it cannot win and come to terms while it can still repay our costs and pay tribute in the future. But under the other policy, what city do you think would fail to prepare more carefully than now and hold out under siege to the very end? The outcome would be the same whether it surrendered early or late.

3 “And how would it not harm us to sit there spending money because no agreement was possible? Even if we captured the city, we would take over a ruined place and lose its revenue from then on. Yet that revenue is what gives us strength against our enemies.

4 “So we must not harm ourselves by acting as overly strict judges of those who do wrong. Instead, we should see how moderate punishments can let us use the cities in the future while they are still financially strong. We should expect to protect ourselves not through frightening laws, but through careful attention to what we do.

5 “At present we do the opposite. If we overcome a free people who are ruled by force and have understandably revolted to gain independence, we think we must punish them harshly.

6 “But we should not punish free people harshly after they revolt. We should watch them carefully before they revolt and take steps beforehand so that they do not even think of it. Once we have defeated them, we should hold as few people responsible as possible.

Chapter 47

1 “Consider also how great a mistake you would make in this other respect if you followed Cleon.

2 “At present, the people in every city are friendly to you. Either they do not join the few powerful men in revolt, or, if forced to do so, they are immediately hostile to the men who caused it. So when you go to war against a city that has turned against you, you have its ordinary people as allies.

3 “But suppose you destroy the people of Mytilene. They took no part in the revolt, and once they got control of weapons, they freely handed over the city. First, you will be doing wrong by killing people who have helped you. Then you will give the powerful exactly what they most want. When they bring their cities into revolt, they will immediately have the people as allies. For you will have shown in advance that the same punishment applies equally to the guilty and the innocent.

4 “Even if they have done wrong, we must act as if we have not noticed. Otherwise the only group that is still our ally may become our enemy.

5 “I think it is much better for keeping our empire to accept being wronged than to kill, however justly, people we ought not to kill. Cleon says this punishment is both just and useful. But in this case those two things cannot be achieved together.

Chapter 48

1 “Recognize that this is the better course. Do not give extra weight to pity or to leniency. I do not allow you to be led by those either. Instead, accept my proposal on its own merits. Take your time deciding the cases of the Mytilenaeans whom Paches sent here as offenders, and let the rest stay in their city.

2 “This will be good for the future and frightening to our enemies right now. A man who plans well against his opponents is stronger than one who attacks them foolishly with force.”

Chapter 49

1 That was what Diodotus said. These proposals were the ones most directly opposed to each other. After hearing them, the Athenians remained divided in their opinions, and the show of hands was nearly even. But Diodotus' proposal won.

2 They immediately sent off another trireme at full speed. They did not want the first ship to arrive ahead of it and leave them to find the city destroyed. The first ship had a lead of about a day and a night.

3 The Mytilenaean envoys supplied the ship with wine and barley meal and promised great rewards if it arrived in time. The crew pushed on so hard that they ate while rowing, taking barley meal mixed with wine and oil. They took turns sleeping while the others rowed.

4 Luckily, no wind blew against them. The first ship was moving slowly toward its horrifying task, while the second was hurrying in this way. The first arrived only just ahead: Paches had read the decree and was about to carry out the decision. The second ship then came into harbor behind it and prevented the massacre. That was how close Mytilene came to destruction.

Chapter 50

1 On Cleon's proposal, the Athenians killed the other men whom Paches had sent away as the people most responsible for the revolt. There were a little over a thousand. They also pulled down the Mytilenaeans' walls and took over their ships.

2 Later, they did not impose tribute on the people of Lesbos. Instead, they divided the land, apart from the territory of Methymna, into three thousand plots. They set aside three hundred as sacred to the gods. To the others they sent settlers chosen by lot from their own citizens. The people of Lesbos agreed to pay these settlers two minas in silver each year for every plot, and farmed the land themselves.

3 The Athenians also took over all the small towns on the mainland that the Mytilenaeans had controlled. From then on, these were subject to Athens. That was what happened in Lesbos.

Chapter 51

1 During the same summer, after the capture of Lesbos, the Athenians made an expedition against the island of Minoa, which lies off Megara. Their general was Nicias son of Niceratus. The Megarians had built a tower on the island and used it as a fort.

2 Nicias wanted the Athenians to keep watch from there, at closer range, rather than from Budorum and Salamis. He wanted to stop the Peloponnesians from secretly sailing out of there with triremes, as they had done before, or sending out raiders. At the same time, he wanted to stop anything from being shipped in to the Megarians.

3 First, he used siege engines from the sea to capture two towers projecting from Nisaea. This cleared the entrance to the channel between the island and the mainland. He then built a wall to cut off the approach from the mainland. Reinforcements had been able to reach the island that way over a bridge across marshy shallows, since the island was only a short distance from the mainland.

4 They finished this work in a few days. Nicias then also left a wall and a garrison on the island and withdrew with his army.

Chapter 52

1 At about the same time that summer, the Plataeans had no food left and could no longer hold out under siege. They came to terms with the Peloponnesians in the following way.

2 The Peloponnesians were attacking their wall, and the Plataeans could not defend themselves. The Lacedaemonian commander recognized their weakness, but did not want to capture the city by force. He had received instructions from Lacedaemon about this. If a treaty was ever made with Athens, and the two sides agreed to return the places each had taken in war, Plataea should not have to be returned, because its people had joined them voluntarily. So he sent a herald to ask whether they were willing to hand over the city voluntarily to the Lacedaemonians and accept them as judges. They would punish the guilty, but no one unjustly.

3 That was the herald's message. The Plataeans were by now utterly weak, so they handed over their city. The Peloponnesians fed them for several days, until the five judges from Lacedaemon arrived.

4 When the judges arrived, they presented no accusation. They simply called the Plataeans before them and asked whether they had done the Lacedaemonians and their allies any good [at all] during the present war.

5 The Plataeans asked to speak at greater length. They chose two of their own people to represent them: Astymachus son of Asopolaus, and Lacon son of Aeimnestus, who acted as the Lacedaemonians' representative in Plataea. These men came forward and spoke as follows.

Chapter 53

1 “Lacedaemonians, we handed over our city because we trusted you. We did not expect to face a trial like this, but one conducted more properly. We would not have agreed to place ourselves, as we now have, before any judges [other than you]. We thought you would be the fairest.

2 “Now we fear that we were wrong on both counts. We have good reason to suspect that this case puts our lives at risk and that you will not turn out to be impartial. We base this on the fact that no accusation has been made beforehand for us to answer—we had to ask for permission to speak ourselves. And your question is so brief that an honest answer works against us, while a false one can be exposed.

3 “We have no way out on any side. This forces us to take the risk of saying something, and we think that is safer. For people in our position, even an argument left unsaid could become a cause for self-blame: if we had made it, it might have saved us.

4 “Besides our other difficulties, we also find it hard to persuade you. If we did not know each other, we might benefit by offering evidence about things you knew nothing about. But now everything we say will be addressed to people who know it all already. We are not afraid that you will decide our good deeds were inferior to yours and make that a charge against us. We fear that, to please others, you are bringing us to a trial whose outcome is already decided.

Chapter 54

1 “Still, we will set out the just grounds we have in our disputes with the Thebans and in our dealings with you and the other Greeks. We will remind you of the good we have done and try to persuade you.

2 “Your brief question was whether we have done the Lacedaemonians and their allies any good in this war. Our answer is this. If you are asking us as enemies, you have not been wronged by receiving no benefit from us. If you regard us as friends, it is those who attacked us who are more at fault.

3 “But in peacetime and against the Persian we have served you well. We were not the first to break the peace now. And back then we were the only Boeotians who joined in attacking the Persian to free Hellas.

4 “Although we live inland, we fought at sea at Artemisium. We stood beside you and Pausanias in the battle fought in our own land. And whenever any other danger faced the Greeks in that period, we took part in everything, doing more than our strength allowed.

5 “We also helped you in particular, Lacedaemonians. When Sparta faced its greatest danger after the earthquake, when the Helots revolted and went to Ithome, we sent a third of our own people to help. You should not forget these things.

Chapter 55

1 “That is how we thought it right to act in the great events of the past. Later we became enemies. But you were responsible. When the Thebans put pressure on us and we asked you for an alliance, you turned us away. You told us to turn to the Athenians, since they were near us and you lived far away.

2 “Even so, during the war you have suffered no exceptional harm from us, nor were you threatened with any.

3 “If we refused to leave the Athenians when you told us to, we did no wrong. They had come to help us against the Thebans when you held back. After that, betraying them would not have been right. This was especially true because they had helped us, we ourselves had approached them for an alliance in our need, and we had received a share in their citizenship. It was reasonable for us to respond willingly to their calls for service.

4 “As for the actions that each of you directs your allies to take, if anything wrong is done, the followers are not responsible. Those who lead them into doing wrong are.

Chapter 56

1 “The Thebans have wronged us in many other ways. You yourselves know about the latest offense, which has brought us to our present suffering.

2 “They tried to seize our city during a truce and, what is more, during a sacred festival. We were right to punish them under the rule accepted by everyone: it is lawful before the gods to defend yourself against an attacking enemy. It would not be reasonable for us to suffer now on their account.

3 “If you decide what is just by your own immediate advantage and their hostility toward us, you will show that you are not honest judges of what is right, but are looking after your interests instead.

4 “Yet if they seem useful to you now, we and the other Greeks were much more useful then, when you faced greater danger. Now you are the ones who threaten others with attack. But at that time, when the non-Greek invader was bringing slavery to everyone, these men were on his side.

5 “It is only fair to weigh our willingness to help then against our offense now, if indeed we have done anything wrong. You will find that the earlier service was greater and the present offense smaller. Our service also came at a time when few Greeks were willing to set their courage against Xerxes' forces. The men most praised were not those who dealt with the invasion by doing what served their own safety, but those who willingly took risks to do what was best.

6 “We were among those men and received the highest honors. Now we fear we will be destroyed for the same conduct: choosing the Athenians because it was right, rather than you because it was profitable.

7 “Yet you should show that you judge the same conduct by the same standards. You should recognize that your true interest lies in ensuring that good allies can always rely on gratitude for their service, even when some immediate advantage offers itself to you.

Chapter 57

1 “Consider also that most Greeks now see you as an example of courage and good conduct. But suppose you pass an unreasonable judgment on us. This trial will not take place unnoticed: you are highly respected, and we too have no bad reputation. Be careful: people may refuse to accept a disgraceful sentence on good men from you, who are considered still better. Nor will they accept trophies taken from us, who have served Hellas well, being dedicated at the shared sanctuaries.

2 “People will think it terrible that the Lacedaemonians destroyed Plataea. Your fathers had our city's name inscribed on the tripod at Delphi because of its courage. But you, to please the Thebans, would wipe it and every household in it out of the Greek world altogether.

3 “This is the depth of misfortune we have reached. We would have been destroyed if the Persians had won. Now, before you who were once our closest friends, we are losing to the Thebans. We have faced two terrible struggles: before, the prospect of starving to death unless we surrendered the city, and now, a trial with death as the penalty.

4 “We Plataeans, who did more for the Greeks than our strength allowed, have been pushed aside by everyone. We are alone, with no one to defend us. None of our allies from that time helps us. And you, Lacedaemonians, are our only hope, but we fear that we cannot rely on you.

Chapter 58

1 “Still, we ask you to be moved by the gods who once watched over our alliance, and by our service to the Greeks. Change your minds if the Thebans have persuaded you of anything. Ask them to grant you this favor in return: not to kill people whom it would be wrong for you to kill. Receive a reasonable favor instead of a shameful one. Do not give pleasure to others and receive disgrace yourselves in return.

2 “It takes little time to destroy our bodies, but removing the bad name that comes from it is hard work. For you will not be justly punishing enemies, but people who wish you well and fought you only because they had to.

3 “So by sparing our lives, you would give a judgment that respects the gods. Remember that you received us when we surrendered willingly, holding out our hands. Greek custom forbids killing such people. Remember also that we have always helped you.

4 “Look at the tombs of your fathers. They were killed by the Persians and buried in our land. Every year we honored them at public expense with clothing and the other customary offerings. We brought them the first share of every crop our land produced in its season. We did this as friends from a friendly land, and as allies honoring men who had once fought beside us. If you judge wrongly, you will do the opposite.

5 “Think about it. When Pausanias buried them, he believed he was laying them in friendly ground, among people like us. But if you kill us and make Plataean territory Theban, what else will you be doing? You will leave your fathers and relatives in enemy ground, among their killers, deprived of the honors they receive now. Besides, you will enslave the land where the Greeks won their freedom. You will leave empty the sanctuaries of the gods to whom they prayed before defeating the Persians. And you will take away the traditional sacrifices from the people who established and founded the sanctuaries.

Chapter 59

1 “Lacedaemonians, this would not fit your reputation. You must not break the customs shared by the Greeks or wrong your ancestors. You must not destroy us, who have helped you, because of someone else’s hostility, when we have done you no wrong. Spare us instead. Let a reasonable pity soften your decision. Think not just of the terrible things we will suffer, but of the kind of people who will suffer them. Remember how unpredictable disaster is, and how it can fall on anyone, even someone who does not deserve it.

2 “We ask you to accept these arguments, as we have a right to do and as our need forces us to do. We call on the gods whose altars we share and who belong to all the Greeks. We remind you of the oaths your fathers swore and ask you not to forget them. We appeal to you as suppliants at your ancestors’ tombs. We call on the dead not to let us fall under Theban rule or let us, their closest friends, be handed over to our bitterest enemies. We remind you of that day when we joined them in achieving their greatest deeds. Yet today we risk suffering the worst possible fate.

3 “For people in our position, ending a speech is both necessary and extremely painful. The danger that our lives will end comes close behind it. As we finish, we say this: we did not surrender our city to the Thebans. Rather than do that, we would have chosen to die by starvation, the most degrading death. We trusted you and came to you. If we fail to convince you, it is only fair to put us back in our former position and let us choose for ourselves whatever danger we must face.

4 “We also urgently ask you, Lacedaemonians, not to hand us over to the Thebans, our bitterest enemies. We are Plataeans, who showed the greatest commitment to the Greeks. We are your suppliants, in your hands and under your pledge of protection. Save us. Do not destroy us while you are freeing the rest of the Greeks.”

Chapter 60

1 That was what the Plataeans said. The Thebans feared that their speech might make the Lacedaemonians give way on some point. They came forward and said that they too wanted to speak. Contrary to what they had expected, the Plataeans had been allowed to say much more than an answer to the question required. Given permission, they spoke as follows.

Chapter 61

1 “We would not have asked to speak if these men had simply given a short answer to the question. Instead, they turned against us and made accusations. They also offered a long defense of themselves on matters outside the issue, matters they had not even been accused of, and praised deeds that no one had criticized. Now we must answer some of their claims and expose the others as false. Then neither our supposed wickedness nor their reputation will help them. You can hear the truth about both sides and judge.

2 “Our first disagreement with them began as follows. We founded Plataea later than the rest of Boeotia, along with other places that we took over after driving out their mixed populations. But these men refused to accept our leadership, as had originally been arranged. They broke with the ancestral customs observed by the other Boeotians. When we tried to compel them to comply, they went over to the Athenians. Together with them, they did us a great deal of harm, for which they suffered in return.

Chapter 62

1 “When the non-Greek invader came against Hellas, they say they were the only Boeotians who did not side with the Persians. This is their greatest source of pride and their main reproach against us.

2 “We say they did not side with the Persians because the Athenians did not either. Later, however, when the Athenians attacked the Greeks in the same way, these men were once again alone among the Boeotians, this time in siding with Athens.

3 “Still, consider the conditions under which each of us acted. Our city at that time was not governed either by an oligarchy with equal rights under law or by a democracy. Power was in the hands of a small group of men. This kind of personal rule is most opposed to law and sensible government, and comes closest to tyranny.

4 “These men hoped to gain even more personal power if the Persian cause won. They held the people down by force and brought the invader in. The whole city did this when it had no control over its own affairs. It is not fair to blame it for wrongs done when it was not acting under its laws.

5 “Instead, examine what happened after the Persian had left and the city had recovered its laws. Later the Athenians attacked the rest of Hellas and tried to bring our territory under their control. Through civil strife they already held most of it. Did we not fight and defeat them at Coronea and free Boeotia? Are we not now eagerly helping to free the others, supplying cavalry and more equipment than any of the other allies?

Chapter 63

1 “That is our answer to the charge of siding with the Persians. Now we will try to show that you have done the Greeks much greater harm and deserve every punishment.

2 “You became allies and citizens of Athens, you say, to get protection against us. Then you should have called on them only against us, not joined them in attacking others. If the Athenians tried to draw you into anything against your will, you had a way out. Your alliance with these Lacedaemonians, the one made against the Persian that you yourselves keep bringing up, was already in place. It was enough to keep us away from you and, most importantly, to let you make your decisions without fear. Yet you freely chose the Athenian side instead, without being forced any longer.

3 “You say it would have been shameful to betray those who had helped you. But it was far more shameful and unjust to betray all the Greeks, to whom you had sworn an oath, than the Athenians alone. The Athenians were enslaving Hellas; the others were freeing it.

4 “And the help you gave the Athenians in return was neither an equal repayment nor free from shame. You called them in, you say, because you were being wronged. But you became their partners in wronging others. It is more shameful to fail to repay a favor with a similar favor than to fail to repay one that was fairly earned when repayment would mean doing wrong.

Chapter 64

1 “You have also made it clear that even then, when you alone refused to side with the Persians, you did not do so for the Greeks’ sake. You did it because the Athenians did not side with them either. You wanted to follow the Athenians’ wishes and oppose ours.

2 “Now you claim a reward for good deeds you did because of others. That is not reasonable. You chose the Athenians, so fight alongside them. Do not bring up the sworn agreement made back then and claim that it should save you now.

3 “You abandoned that agreement. You broke it by helping to enslave the Aeginetans and some of the others who had sworn it, instead of preventing their enslavement. You did this willingly, under the same laws that you have kept to this day. No one forced you, as we were forced. You also refused our last offer before the siege wall was built around you: to remain neutral and give neither side help.

4 “So who deserves the hatred of all the Greeks more than you? You made a display of courage to bring harm on them. You have now shown that the good deeds you claim to have done once have nothing to do with you today. What your nature always wanted has been revealed for what it really was. You joined the Athenians as they followed a course of injustice.

5 “That is what we have to say about our unwilling support for the Persians and your willing support for Athens.

Chapter 65

1 “Now for the latest wrong you say you suffered. You say that we broke the law by coming against your city during a truce and a sacred month. We do not think that even here we were more at fault than you.

2 “If we had come on our own initiative, fought against your city, and ravaged your land as enemies, we would have been in the wrong. But your leading men in wealth and birth freely invited us in. They wanted to end your alliance with outsiders and restore the ancestral arrangements shared by all the Boeotians. What wrong did we do? Those who bring others in are more responsible for breaking the law than those who follow them.

3 “In our judgment, though, neither they nor we broke it. They were citizens just as you were, and they were taking greater risks. They opened their own walls and brought us into their own city as friends, not enemies. They wanted the worse men among you to stop gaining the upper hand and the better men to have what they deserved. They were trying to make your policies more sensible. They were not trying to take the city away from its citizens, but to bring it closer to its relatives. They were not making you anyone’s enemies, but putting you at peace with everyone alike.

Chapter 66

1 “Here is proof that we were not acting as enemies. We harmed no one. We publicly invited anyone who wanted to live under the ancestral arrangements shared by all Boeotians to join us.

2 “You gladly came over, made an agreement, and at first kept quiet. Later you realized how few we were. Even if you thought we had acted somewhat unfairly by coming in without the consent of your people, you did not respond in the same way. You could have avoided violence and tried to persuade us to leave. Instead, you broke the agreement and attacked us. We do not feel the same bitterness about those you killed in the fighting, since they suffered under a kind of accepted rule. But others held out their hands in surrender, and you took them alive. Later you promised us not to kill them, yet you put them to death unlawfully. How can you deny the horror of what you did?

3 “You committed three wrongs in a short time. You broke the agreement. You later killed the men. And you went back on your promise to us not to kill them if we did no harm to your property in the countryside. Yet you say we broke the law and claim that you yourselves should not be punished in return. No—not if these judges decide rightly. You will be punished for all these things.

Chapter 67

1 “Lacedaemonians, we have gone through all this for your sake as well as ours. We want you to know that your verdict against them will be just, and that our revenge will be all the more consistent with divine law.

2 “Do not let accounts of their past good deeds, if they ever did any, soften you. Such deeds should help people who are being wronged. But for people who do something shameful, they should bring a double penalty, since their wrongdoing is out of keeping with their past. Do not let these men benefit from crying and appeals to pity, as they call on your fathers’ tombs and point to their own isolation.

3 “We can point in reply to our young men, whom they killed, and who suffered far worse. Some of their fathers died at Coronea while bringing Boeotia over to your side. Others have been left behind in old age, with empty homes. Their appeal to you to punish these men is far more just.

4 “People who suffer something they do not deserve have a better claim to pity. But when people suffer justly, as these men do, the opposite is true: their suffering should give satisfaction.

5 “They have only themselves to blame for their present isolation. They willingly pushed away their better allies. They broke the law without first being harmed by us. Hatred, not justice, determined their decision. Even now, the punishment they pay will not match what they did. They will suffer within the law. They have not held out their hands in surrender after a battle, as they claim. They handed themselves over for judgment under an agreement.

6 “So, Lacedaemonians, defend the law shared by the Greeks, which these men have broken. We have suffered unlawfully. Give us a fair return for our eager service to you. Do not let their arguments push us aside in your judgment. Set an example for the Greeks. Make the contest one of actions, not speeches. When actions are good, a short account is enough. When they are wrong, speeches dressed up in fine language become a cover for them.

7 “But if those in command, as you are now, make judgments that apply to everyone by focusing on the main facts, people will be less likely to look for fine words to defend unjust deeds.”

Chapter 68

1 That was what the Thebans said. The Lacedaemonian judges thought it right to ask whether they had received any help from the Plataeans during the war. Their stated position had been that, in the earlier period, the Plataeans should remain neutral under the old agreement made by Pausanias after the Persian invasion. Later, before building the siege wall around them, they had offered them terms for remaining neutral on that basis. The Plataeans had refused. The judges therefore considered that, despite their own just intentions, the Plataeans were now outside the agreement and had harmed them. They brought the men forward one by one and again asked the same question: had they done any good for the Lacedaemonians and their allies during the war? Whenever a man said no, they led him away and killed him. They made no exceptions.

2 They killed at least two hundred of the Plataeans themselves and twenty-five Athenians who had shared the siege. They enslaved the women.

3 For a year or so, [the Thebans] let the city be occupied by Megarians who had been driven out by civil strife and by any surviving Plataeans who supported them. Later they demolished the whole city down to its foundations. Near the sanctuary of Hera they built a lodging house two hundred feet along each side, with rooms all around it on both the ground and upper floors. They used the Plataeans’ roofs and doorways for it. From the other materials inside the walls, the bronze and iron objects, they made couches and dedicated them to Hera. They also built her a stone temple a hundred feet long. They made the land public property and leased it out for ten years. The Thebans farmed it.

4 The Lacedaemonians’ harsh treatment of the Plataeans was almost entirely for the Thebans’ sake. They thought the Thebans would be useful in the war that was then just getting under way.

5 That was how the story of Plataea ended, in the ninety-third year after the Plataeans became allies of Athens.

Chapter 69

1 The forty Peloponnesian ships that had gone to help Lesbos had fled across the open sea, as described earlier. They had been pursued by the Athenians and then caught in a storm near Crete. From there they had made their way to the Peloponnese in scattered groups. At Cyllene they found thirteen triremes from Leucas and Ambracia, and Brasidas son of Tellis, who had arrived as an adviser to Alcidas.

2 Having failed at Lesbos, the Lacedaemonians wanted to increase their fleet and sail to Corcyra, where civil strife was going on. Only twelve Athenian ships were present near Naupactus. They wanted to act before a larger fleet could come from Athens to help. Brasidas and Alcidas made preparations for this.

Chapter 70

1 The Corcyraeans had been in civil strife since the return of the men taken prisoner in the sea battles near Epidamnus. The Corinthians had released them. The public explanation was that the men who represented Corcyra there had guaranteed eight hundred talents for their release. In reality, the prisoners had been persuaded to bring Corcyra over to Corinth. These men went from citizen to citizen, working to make the city break away from Athens.

2 An Athenian ship and a Corinthian ship arrived, each carrying envoys. After hearing them, the Corcyraeans voted to remain allies of Athens under their existing agreement, but to be friends of the Peloponnesians as they had been before.

3 There was a man named Peithias who voluntarily served as the Athenians’ local representative and led the people’s party. The returned prisoners brought him to trial, accusing him of enslaving Corcyra to Athens.

4 He was acquitted. He then brought charges against the five richest men among them, saying that they were cutting vine stakes from the sacred land of Zeus and Alcinous. The penalty was a stater for each stake.

5 They were found guilty. Because the fine was so large, they sat as suppliants at the sanctuaries, asking to arrange payment in installments. But Peithias, who was also a member of the council, persuaded it to enforce the law.

6 The law thus blocked their request. They also learned that Peithias intended, while he was still on the council, to persuade the people to recognize the same friends and enemies as Athens. They conspired, took daggers, and suddenly burst into the council chamber. They killed Peithias and about sixty others, both council members and private citizens. A few of Peithias’s supporters escaped to the Athenian trireme, which was still there.

Chapter 71

1 After doing this, they called the Corcyraeans together. They said that what they had done was best and gave them the best chance of avoiding enslavement by Athens. From now on, neither side should be admitted except peacefully in a single ship. Any larger force should be treated as hostile. After speaking, they forced the people to approve their proposal.

2 They also immediately sent envoys to Athens. These were to explain why their actions had been for the best, and to persuade those who had taken refuge there not to do anything against them. Their aim was to prevent a counterattack.

Chapter 72

1 When the envoys arrived, the Athenians arrested them as agents of a political overthrow. They also arrested the refugees whom the envoys had won over, and held them all on Aegina.

2 Meanwhile, a Corinthian trireme and Lacedaemonian envoys arrived at Corcyra. The men in power attacked the people’s party and defeated them in battle.

3 At nightfall, the people’s party fled to the citadel and the higher parts of the city. They gathered there and took up their position. They also held the Hyllaic harbor. The other side occupied the marketplace, where most of them lived, and the harbor beside it that faced the mainland.

Chapter 73

1 The next day there was a little skirmishing. Both sides sent messengers around the countryside, calling on the slaves to join them and promising freedom. Most of the household slaves came to help the people’s party. The other side was joined by eight hundred hired soldiers from the mainland.

Chapter 74

1 After a day’s interval, there was another battle. The people’s party won, with the advantage of stronger positions and greater numbers. The women boldly helped them, throwing roof tiles from the houses. They endured the uproar in a way that went against their nature.

2 The other side was routed in the late afternoon. The oligarchs feared that the people would rush straight on, capture the dockyard, and kill them. To block the advance, they set fire to the houses and apartment buildings around the marketplace. They spared neither their own property nor anyone else’s. Much of the merchants’ stock was also burned. The whole city was in danger of destruction if a wind came up and carried the flames toward it.

3 Both sides stopped fighting and rested, keeping watch through the night. Now that the people’s party had won, the Corinthian ship slipped out to sea. Most of the hired soldiers secretly crossed back to the mainland.

Chapter 75

1 The following day, Nicostratus son of Diitrephes, an Athenian general, arrived from Naupactus to help. He brought twelve ships and five hundred Messenian hoplites. He worked to arrange a settlement and persuaded the two sides to agree on these terms. The ten men most responsible would stand trial, though they had already left. The rest would remain in the city, making peace with one another and an agreement with Athens to recognize the same enemies and friends.

2 After arranging this, Nicostratus was about to sail away. But the leaders of the people’s party persuaded him to leave five of his own ships with them. This would make their opponents less likely to cause trouble. They themselves would crew the same number of their own ships and send them with him.

3 He agreed, and they began enrolling their enemies for service on the ships. These men feared they would be sent to Athens, so they took refuge in the sanctuary of the Dioscuri.

4 Nicostratus tried to get them to leave and reassured them. But he could not persuade them. The people’s party took up arms, using this as their excuse. They said the men’s distrust and refusal to sail showed that they were plotting something bad. They took the men’s weapons from their houses. They would also have killed some of the men they came across if Nicostratus had not stopped them.

5 Seeing what was happening, the others took refuge as suppliants in the sanctuary of Hera. There were at least four hundred of them. The people’s party feared they might attempt an uprising. They persuaded them to leave the sanctuary and moved them to the island in front of it. They sent provisions over to them there.

Chapter 76

1 This was the state of the civil strife when the Peloponnesian ships arrived from Cyllene, on the fourth or fifth day after the men had been moved to the island. The ships had been lying ready at Cyllene since their voyage from Ionia. There were fifty-three of them. Alcidas commanded them, as before, and Brasidas sailed with him as his adviser. They anchored at Sybota, a harbor on the mainland, and at dawn sailed against Corcyra.

Chapter 77

1 The Corcyraeans were in great confusion. They were frightened both by events in the city and by the approaching fleet. They began preparing sixty ships, sending each one out against the enemy as soon as it was crewed. The Athenians urged them to let the Athenian ships sail out first, and then to follow with all their own ships together.

2 Their ships reached the enemy in scattered groups. Two immediately deserted to the other side. On some of the others, the men on board were fighting one another. Nothing they did was orderly.

3 The Peloponnesians saw the confusion. They assigned twenty ships to face the Corcyraeans and the rest to face the twelve Athenian ships. Two of the Athenian ships were the Salaminia and the Paralus.

Chapter 78

1 On their side of the battle, the Corcyraeans were in trouble. They attacked badly and only a few ships at a time. The Athenians feared the enemy’s numbers and the risk of being surrounded. They did not attack the whole force assigned to face them, or strike its center. Instead, they attacked one wing and sank a ship. After this, the enemy formed a circle. The Athenians sailed around it, trying to throw them into confusion.

2 The Peloponnesians facing the Corcyraeans realized what was happening. They feared a repeat of what had happened at Naupactus and came to help. With their ships now united, they advanced against the Athenians together.

3 The Athenians now began backing water to withdraw. At the same time, they wanted as many of the Corcyraean ships as possible to get safely away ahead of them. They withdrew slowly themselves, keeping the enemy’s attack directed at them.

4 That was how the sea battle went. It ended at sunset.

Chapter 79

1 The Corcyraeans feared that the enemy, confident after their victory, would sail against the city, take off the men on the island, or make some other move against them. They brought the men back from the island to the sanctuary of Hera and guarded the city.

2 But although the Peloponnesians had won the sea battle, they did not dare sail against the city. They had captured thirteen Corcyraean ships. With these, they sailed back to the mainland, to the place they had set out from.

3 The next day they still did not sail against the city, even though its people were in great confusion and fear. Brasidas is said to have urged Alcidas to attack, but he had no equal vote in the decision. Instead, they landed at the headland of Leucimme and ravaged the countryside.

Chapter 80

1 Meanwhile, the Corcyraean people’s party was terrified that the fleet would attack. They began talks with the suppliants and the others about how to save the city. They persuaded some of them to go aboard the ships. In spite of everything, they crewed thirty ships and waited for the attack.

2 The Peloponnesians ravaged the land until midday and then sailed away. Toward nightfall, fire signals told them that sixty Athenian ships were approaching from Leucas. The Athenians had sent these ships when they learned of the civil strife and heard that the fleet under Alcidas was about to sail against Corcyra. They sent Eurymedon son of Thucles as general.

Chapter 81

1 The Peloponnesians immediately set off for home that night, traveling quickly along the coast. They hauled their ships across the isthmus of Leucas so they would not be seen sailing around it, and continued on their way.

2 The Corcyraeans learned that the Athenian ships were approaching and the enemy ships had left. They brought into the city the Messenians who had previously been outside it. They ordered the ships they had manned to sail around to the Hyllaic harbor. While the ships were making this trip, they killed any of their enemies they caught. They also brought off the ships the men they had persuaded to board them, and killed them. Then they went to Hera's sanctuary and persuaded about fifty of the men seeking protection there to stand trial. They sentenced every one of them to death.

3 Most of those seeking protection had not agreed to stand trial. When they saw what was happening, they began killing one another right there in the sanctuary. Some hanged themselves from the trees, and others ended their lives however they could.

4 For seven days, while Eurymedon remained there after arriving with his sixty ships, the Corcyraeans murdered their fellow citizens whom they considered enemies. They charged their victims with trying to overthrow the democracy. But some were killed because of personal hatred, and others by people who had borrowed money from them and owed it back.

5 People were killed in every possible way. As usually happens in such circumstances, every kind of horror took place, and worse besides. Fathers killed their sons. People were dragged away from sanctuaries and killed beside them. Some were even walled up in the sanctuary of Dionysus and died there.

Chapter 82

1 The civil strife reached this level of cruelty. It seemed all the worse because it was among the first outbreaks. Later, practically the whole Greek world was shaken by it. In each city there were divisions: the leaders of the people wanted to bring in the Athenians, and the oligarchs wanted to bring in the Lacedaemonians. In peacetime they would have had neither an excuse to call them in nor the willingness to do so. But now the two powers were at war. Each side could get an alliance that would harm its opponents and, by the same means, strengthen itself. So anyone wanting a political upheaval could easily arrange outside intervention.

2 Civil strife brought many terrible sufferings on the cities. Such things happen and will always happen as long as human nature stays the same. They may be more violent or milder, and take different forms, depending on the changes in circumstances that arise in each case. In peace and prosperity, cities and individuals show better judgment because they are not forced into desperate situations against their will. But war takes away the ease of meeting daily needs. It teaches people by force and brings most people's tempers into line with their immediate circumstances.

3 So civil strife spread through the cities. Wherever it came later, people heard what had happened elsewhere and took their ideas much further. They devised more elaborate attacks and more extreme forms of revenge.

4 People changed the usual meanings of words describing actions to suit their own judgments. Reckless daring was called courage in support of one's friends. Cautious delay was called cowardice with a respectable cover. Self-control was a disguise for a lack of manliness. Understanding every side of a question meant being unable to act on anything. A wild rush into action was counted as a manly quality. Planning with safeguards was considered a reasonable excuse for backing out.

5 The person who was always angry was trusted; anyone who disagreed with him was suspect. Someone who carried out a successful plot was clever, and someone who detected one was even more capable. But anyone who planned ahead so that neither would be needed was breaking up the party and was terrified of its opponents. In short, people praised anyone who struck first against someone about to do harm, and anyone who encouraged a person who had not intended harm to do it.

6 Even family ties became weaker than party ties, because party members were readier to take risks without making excuses. These groups were not formed to secure benefits within the established laws, but to gain more for themselves by breaking them. Their trust in one another was reinforced less by religious obligations than by their shared involvement in lawbreaking.

7 When people had the upper hand, they responded to reasonable proposals from their opponents by guarding against their actions, not by showing generosity. Taking revenge mattered more than avoiding an injury in the first place. If the two sides ever swore oaths of reconciliation, they did so to meet an immediate difficulty. The oaths held only while neither side could get strength from elsewhere. When an opportunity arose, whichever side first regained confidence and saw the other off guard preferred to take revenge by exploiting its trust rather than by an open attack. It reckoned that this was safer, and that winning by deception also earned it a prize for cleverness. Most people would rather be called clever criminals than good but simple-minded people. They are ashamed of the second description and proud of the first.

8 The cause of all this was the pursuit of power out of greed and ambition. These motives also produced the violent passions that emerged when people entered a struggle to win. In the cities, the leaders on each side adopted attractive slogans. One side favored political equality for the people, the other a moderate rule by the best men. They claimed to serve the public interest, but made it the prize they competed for. They used every means to get the better of each other, dared to commit the most terrible acts, and went on to take still greater revenge. They did not set limits according to justice or the city's good, but according to whatever would please each side at the time. Whether they gained power by an unjust vote of condemnation or by force, they were ready to satisfy their immediate desire to win. Neither side respected religious duty. Those who managed to carry out a hateful act under cover of a respectable argument won a better reputation. Citizens who stayed in the middle were destroyed by both sides, either because they would not join the struggle or because others resented their surviving.

Chapter 83

1 In this way civil strife brought every kind of bad conduct into the Greek world. Simple honesty, which is so closely connected with a noble character, was laughed out of existence. Instead, people became deeply committed to opposing one another with suspicion.

2 There was nothing to settle their differences: no dependable promise, no oath that inspired fear. Everyone had concluded firmly that there was no hope of lasting security. They looked ahead to avoid being harmed rather than finding themselves able to trust anyone.

3 People with less intelligence usually came out on top. They feared their own limitations and their opponents' cleverness. Afraid of losing in debate, or of being caught first in a plot devised by their opponents' versatile minds, they moved boldly into action.

4 The others looked down on them. They thought they would see danger coming, and that they had no need to secure by action what they could achieve by intelligence. As a result, they were more often caught off guard and killed.

Chapter 84

1 [In Corcyra, then, most of these crimes were committed first. There were acts of revenge of the kind people might commit after being ruled with more arrogance than moderation by those who had given them reason to retaliate. Others wanted to escape their long-standing poverty. Driven above all by passion and the desire to own their neighbors' property, they made unjust decisions. Still others attacked not for gain but chiefly as equals fighting equals. Carried to extremes by uncontrolled anger, they struck cruelly and without mercy.

2 At this crisis, life in the city was thrown into confusion. Human nature, already used to doing wrong despite the laws, now overpowered them. It gladly showed that it could not control its anger, that it was stronger than justice, and that it hated anyone who stood above it. People would not have put revenge ahead of religious duty, or profit ahead of avoiding wrongdoing, if envy had not possessed such destructive power.

3 When taking revenge on others, people choose to destroy in advance the common rules that apply to such situations. These rules give everyone hope of surviving if they suffer a setback themselves. Yet people do not preserve them for a time when they themselves might fall into danger and need one of them.]

Chapter 85

1 These were the first outbursts of anger that the Corcyraeans in the city directed against one another. Eurymedon and the Athenians sailed away with their ships.

2 Later, the Corcyraean exiles—about five hundred of them had survived—captured the forts on the mainland. They controlled their own city's territory on the opposite coast. Using it as their base, they raided the people on the island and did great damage. A severe famine developed in the city.

3 They also sent ambassadors to Lacedaemon and Corinth to arrange their return. Nothing came of this. After some time, they got ships and hired troops together and crossed to the island. They numbered about six hundred altogether.

4 They burned their ships so they could have no hope of doing anything except winning control of the country. Then they went up Mount Istone and built a fort there. They inflicted damage on the people in the city and controlled the countryside.

Chapter 86

1 At the end of the same summer, the Athenians sent twenty ships to Sicily. Their generals were Laches son of Melanopus and Charoeades son of Euphiletus.

2 The Syracusans and Leontini had gone to war with one another. Apart from Camarina, the other Dorian cities were allied with Syracuse. These were the cities that had also joined the Lacedaemonian alliance when the war first began, although they had not actually taken part in the fighting. The Chalcidian cities and Camarina were allied with Leontini. In Italy, Locri supported Syracuse, while Rhegium supported Leontini because of their shared ancestry.

3 The allies of Leontini sent representatives to Athens. Appealing to their old alliance and to the fact that they were Ionians, they persuaded the Athenians to send them ships. The Syracusans were cutting them off from both land and sea.

4 The Athenians sent the ships, giving their ancestral connection as the reason. Their real aims were to stop grain being shipped from there to the Peloponnese and to make an initial test of whether they could bring Sicily under their control.

5 They established themselves at Rhegium in Italy and fought the war alongside their allies. The summer ended.

Chapter 87

1 During the following winter, the disease struck the Athenians a second time. It had never disappeared completely, but there had still been some relief from it.

2 This later outbreak lasted no less than a year; the first had lasted two years. Nothing did more than this disease to crush the Athenians and damage their strength.

3 No fewer than four thousand four hundred hoplites on the military rolls died, along with three hundred cavalrymen. The number of deaths among the rest of the population could not be established.

4 There were also many earthquakes at that time, in Athens, Euboea, and Boeotia, especially at Orchomenus in Boeotia.

Chapter 88

1 During the same winter, the Athenians in Sicily and the Rhegians made an expedition with thirty ships against the islands called the Islands of Aeolus. Lack of water made an expedition against them impossible in summer.

2 The islands belong to the Liparaeans, who are colonists from Cnidus. They live on one of the islands, a small one called Lipara. From there they go out to farm the others: Didyme, Strongyle, and Hiera.

3 The local people believe that Hephaestus works at his forge on Hiera, because the island can be seen giving off a great deal of fire at night and smoke by day. These islands lie opposite the territory of the Sicels and the Messenians. Their people were allies of Syracuse.

4 The Athenians ravaged the land. When the inhabitants still refused to come over to their side, they sailed back to Rhegium. The winter ended, and the fifth year of this war, which Thucydides wrote, came to an end.

Chapter 89

1 The next summer, the Peloponnesians and their allies came as far as the Isthmus, intending to invade Attica. They were led by Agis son of Archidamus, king of the Lacedaemonians. But many earthquakes occurred, so they turned back, and the invasion did not take place.

2 Around this time, while the earthquakes continued, the sea at Orobiae in Euboea withdrew from what was then the shore. It rose into a wave and rushed over part of the city. It flooded some of the land permanently and receded from the rest. What was once land is now sea. It killed everyone who could not run to higher ground in time.

3 A similar flood occurred around Atalanta, the island off the coast of the Opuntian Locrians. It swept away part of the Athenian fort and smashed one of the two ships that had been hauled up on shore.

4 At Peparethus, too, the water drew back, but there was no flood. An earthquake knocked down part of the wall, the town hall, and a few other buildings.

5 My own explanation of these events is this: at the point where the earthquake was strongest, it drove the sea back. The sea then suddenly rushed in again, making the flood more violent. I do not think such a thing could happen without an earthquake.

Chapter 90

1 During the same summer, warfare also continued in Sicily as opportunities arose for the various parties. The Sicilian Greeks campaigned against one another, and the Athenians campaigned with their own allies. I will describe the most important actions carried out by the allies together with the Athenians, or by their enemies against them.

2 Charoeades, the Athenian general, had already been killed in battle by the Syracusans. Laches now had sole command of the fleet. With the allies, he made an expedition against Mylae, which belonged to the Messenians. Two Messenian tribes happened to be garrisoning Mylae. They had also set an ambush for the men landing from the ships.

3 The Athenians and their allies routed the men in the ambush and killed many of them. They then attacked the fort and forced its defenders to agree to surrender the acropolis and join an expedition against Messene.

4 After this, when the Athenians and their allies advanced, the Messenians themselves also came over to their side. They gave hostages and the other guarantees.

Chapter 91

1 In the same summer, the Athenians sent thirty ships around the Peloponnese, commanded by Demosthenes son of Alcisthenes and Procles son of Theodorus. They sent sixty ships and two thousand hoplites to Melos, commanded by Nicias son of Niceratus.

2 They wanted to bring the Melians under their control. Although they were islanders, the Melians refused to submit or join the Athenian alliance.

3 The Melians did not come over to their side even when their land was ravaged. So the Athenians left Melos and sailed to Oropus in Graea. They landed around nightfall, and the hoplites immediately left the ships and marched overland to Tanagra in Boeotia.

4 At an agreed signal, the entire Athenian force from the city marched overland to meet them at the same place. Its generals were Hipponicus son of Callias and Eurymedon son of Thucles.

5 They camped that day in Tanagra's territory, ravaged it, and stayed overnight. The next day they defeated in battle the Tanagraeans who came out against them and some Thebans who had come to help. They captured arms, set up a victory monument, and withdrew, some to the city and the others to the ships.

6 Nicias sailed along the coast with the sixty ships, ravaged the coastal districts of Locris, and returned home.

Chapter 92

1 Around this time the Lacedaemonians were establishing their colony of Heraclea in Trachinia. Their reasons were as follows.

2 The Malians as a whole are divided into three groups: the Paralians, the Irians, and the Trachinians. The Trachinians were being devastated in war by their neighbors the Oetaeans. At first they intended to put themselves under Athenian protection. But they feared that the Athenians would not be reliable, so they sent to Lacedaemon instead, choosing Tisamenus as their ambassador.

3 The Dorians, whose country was the original homeland of the Lacedaemonians, joined this embassy with the same request. They too were being devastated by the Oetaeans.

4 After hearing them, the Lacedaemonians decided to send out the colony. They wanted to help the Trachinians and Dorians. They also thought the city would be well placed for the war against Athens. A fleet could be equipped there to attack Euboea, with only a short crossing to make. It would also be useful for the route to Thrace. Altogether, they were eager to settle the place.

5 First they consulted the god at Delphi. When he told them to proceed, they sent out settlers from among their own people and the perioeci. They invited any other Greeks who wanted to join them, except Ionians, Achaeans, and a few other peoples. Three Lacedaemonians led the expedition as its founders: Leon, Alcidas, and Damagon.

6 After arriving, they built and walled a new city, now called Heraclea. It is about forty stades from Thermopylae and twenty from the sea. They also prepared dockyards and built a barrier on the side toward Thermopylae, right at the narrow pass, so they could easily defend the dockyards.

Chapter 93

1 When this city was being settled, the Athenians were afraid at first. They thought it was being established chiefly to threaten Euboea, because the crossing to Cenaeum in Euboea is short. But the result was contrary to their expectations: no danger came from it.

2 There were reasons for this. The Thessalians, who were powerful in that region, and the people on whose land the city was being founded were afraid of having such strong neighbors. They attacked the new settlers and fought them constantly until they wore them down. The settlers had been very numerous at first: people went there confidently because the Lacedaemonians were founding it, thinking the city would be secure. But the Lacedaemonian governors who came out were at least as responsible for ruining its affairs and reducing its population. Their harsh and sometimes unjust government frightened most people away. This made it easier for the neighboring peoples to overcome them.

Chapter 94

1 During the same summer, around the time when the Athenians were being held up at Melos, the Athenians in the thirty ships sailing around the Peloponnese first ambushed and killed some garrison troops at Ellomenus in Leucadian territory. Later they came against Leucas with a larger force. They had all the Acarnanians, who joined with their full force except for the Oeniadae, as well as Zacynthians, Cephallenians, and fifteen Corcyraean ships.

2 The Leucadians remained inactive, overwhelmed by the enemy's numbers. Their land was being ravaged both outside the isthmus and inside it, where the city of Leucas and Apollo's sanctuary stand. The Acarnanians urged Demosthenes, the Athenian general, to cut them off with a wall. They thought they could easily capture the city by siege and get rid of a city that was always hostile to them.

3 At this point, however, the Messenians persuaded Demosthenes that, with so large an army assembled, he had a good opportunity to attack the Aetolians. They were enemies of Naupactus. If he defeated them, he could easily bring the rest of the mainland in that region over to the Athenians too.

4 They explained that the Aetolians were a large and warlike people, but lived in unwalled villages set far apart and used light equipment. So it would not be difficult to conquer them before they could join forces to help one another.

5 They advised him to attack the Apodotians first, then the Ophioneans, and after them the Eurytanians. These are the largest section of the Aetolians. Their speech is especially hard to understand, and they are said to eat raw meat. Once these peoples had been taken, they said, the rest would easily come over too.

Chapter 95

1 Demosthenes agreed, partly to oblige the Messenians. Above all, he thought that with the mainland allies and the Aetolians he could march overland against Boeotia without the main Athenian force. He would go through the territory of the Ozolian Locrians to Cytinium in Doris, keeping Mount Parnassus on his right, until he came down into Phocis. He thought the Phocians would willingly join the expedition because of their long-standing friendship with Athens, or at least could be forced to join. Boeotia directly borders Phocis. So he sailed from Leucas with the whole army, against the wishes of the Acarnanians, and put in at Sollium.

2 He shared his plan with the Acarnanians. They would not accept it, because he had failed to wall off Leucas. So he marched against the Aetolians with the rest of the army: Cephallenians, Messenians, Zacynthians, and the three hundred Athenian marines from his own ships. The fifteen Corcyraean ships had left.

3 His base was Oeneon in Locris. These Ozolian Locrians were allies, and their entire force was supposed to meet the Athenians inland. As neighbors of the Aetolians who used the same equipment, they were expected to be a great help on the expedition. They knew both the Aetolian way of fighting and the countryside.

Chapter 96

1 He camped with his army at the sanctuary of Nemean Zeus. This is where the poet Hesiod is said to have been killed by the local people, after an oracle had told him that this would happen to him at Nemea. At dawn Demosthenes set out and marched into Aetolia.

2 He took Potidania on the first day, Crocyleum on the second, and Teichium on the third. He stayed there and sent the loot to Eupalium in Locris. His plan was to conquer the other places, return to Naupactus, and later campaign against the Ophioneans if they refused to surrender.

3 The Aetolians had known about these preparations even when the attack was first being planned. Once the army invaded, they all came to help in great strength. Even the most distant Ophioneans, the Bomians and Callians, whose territory extends toward the Malian Gulf, came to join them.

Chapter 97

1 The Messenians gave Demosthenes much the same advice as when they first tried to convince him how easy it would be to conquer the Aetolians. They urged him to attack the villages as quickly as possible. He should not wait until all the Aetolians had assembled to face him, but should always try to capture whichever village lay immediately ahead.

2 He accepted their advice and felt confident in his good fortune, because nothing had gone against him. He did not wait for the Locrians who were supposed to come to his support, although his greatest shortage was of lightly armed javelin throwers. Instead he advanced on Aegitium and captured it by direct assault. The inhabitants had withdrawn and taken up positions on the hills above the town. The town itself stood on high ground, about eighty stades from the sea.

3 The Aetolians had already come to the aid of Aegitium. They attacked the Athenians and their allies, running down from the hills from different directions and throwing javelins. Whenever the Athenian army advanced, they fell back. When it withdrew, they pressed after it. This kind of fighting went on for a long time, with pursuits and retreats, and the Athenians had the worse of both.

Chapter 98

1 As long as the archers had arrows and were able to use them, the rest held their ground. The Aetolians were lightly armed and drew back under the arrows. But the archers' commander was killed, and they scattered. The Athenians themselves were exhausted after being kept so long at the same hard fighting, while the Aetolians kept pressing them and throwing javelins. Then they broke and fled. They ran into ravines they could not escape from and into unfamiliar ground, and were killed. Their guide on the roads, Chromon the Messenian, also happened to have been killed.

2 The Aetolians were lightly armed and fast on their feet. They pursued closely, throwing javelins, and killed many men on the spot as they fled. But most of the fugitives lost their way and rushed into woods with no way out. The Aetolians brought fire and burned the woods around them.

3 The Athenian army suffered every kind of disaster in its flight and destruction. The survivors only just managed to escape to the sea and Oeneon in Locris, the place they had originally set out from.

4 Many of the allies died, along with about one hundred and twenty Athenian hoplites. For a group of that size and age, these were the finest men the city of Athens lost in this war. Procles, the other general, was also killed.

5 They recovered their dead from the Aetolians under a truce and returned to Naupactus. Later they sailed back to Athens. But Demosthenes stayed behind around Naupactus and the neighboring districts. After what had happened, he was afraid of the Athenians.

Chapter 99

1 At about the same time, the Athenians operating around Sicily sailed to the territory of the Locrians. During one landing they defeated the Locrians who came to resist them. They also captured a small fort on the river Halex.

Chapter 100

1 During the same summer, the Aetolians had already sent ambassadors to Corinth and Lacedaemon: Tolophon the Ophionean, Boriades the Eurytanian, and Teisander the Apodotian. They persuaded them to send an army against Naupactus because the people there had brought the Athenians against them.

2 Around the fall, the Lacedaemonians sent out three thousand allied hoplites. Five hundred of these came from Heraclea in Trachis, a city that had just been founded. Eurylochus, a Spartan, commanded the army. Two other Spartans, Macarius and Menedaius, accompanied him.

Chapter 101

1 When the army had assembled at Delphi, Eurylochus sent heralds to negotiate with the Ozolian Locrians. His route to Naupactus lay through their country. He also wanted to make them break away from the Athenians.

2 Among the Locrians, the Amphissians gave him the most help. They were afraid because the Phocians were hostile to them. They were the first to give hostages themselves. They also persuaded the others, who feared the approaching army, to do the same. First came their neighbors, the Myonians, whose territory offered the hardest route into Locris. Then came the Ipnians, Messapians, Tritaeans, Chalaeans, Tolophonians, Hessians, and Oeantheans. All these also joined the expedition. The Olpaeans gave hostages but did not join it. The Hyaeans did not give hostages until the army captured one of their villages, called Polis.

Chapter 102

1 When all his preparations were complete, Eurylochus left the hostages at Cytinium in Doris and advanced with his army through Locrian territory toward Naupactus. On the way he captured their towns of Oeneon and Eupalium, which had refused to join him.

2 Once they reached the territory of Naupactus, the Aetolians had already joined them to help. They ravaged the land and captured the unwalled suburb. They also advanced against Molycreum and captured it. It was a Corinthian colony but subject to Athens.

3 Demosthenes the Athenian was still in the area of Naupactus after the events in Aetolia. He learned of the army's approach in advance and feared for the city. He went to the Acarnanians and persuaded them to help Naupactus. This was difficult because of his withdrawal from Leucas.

4 They sent a thousand hoplites with him on the ships. These got into the town and saved it. There had been a serious fear that the defenders would not hold out: the wall covered a large area, and there were few men to defend it.

5 Eurylochus and his troops learned that the reinforcements had entered and that they could not take the city by force. They withdrew, but not to the Peloponnese. Instead they went to Aeolis, the region now called Calydon and Pleuron, to the places nearby, and to Proschium in Aetolia.

6 The reason was that the Ambraciots had come to them and persuaded them to join an attack on Amphilochian Argos, the rest of Amphilochia, and Acarnania as well. They said that if they gained control of these places, the whole mainland would become an ally of the Lacedaemonians.

7 Eurylochus agreed. He dismissed the Aetolians and kept his army in those districts, waiting until the Ambraciots marched against Argos and needed his help. The summer came to an end.

Chapter 103

1 During the following winter, the Athenians in Sicily advanced against Inessa, a Sicel town whose citadel the Syracusans held. With them were their Greek allies and those Sicels who had been forced under Syracusan rule and had been allied with them, but had revolted [from the Syracusans] and were fighting alongside the Athenians. They attacked the town, but could not take it and withdrew.

2 During the withdrawal, the allies were retreating behind the Athenians. The Syracusans came out of the fort and attacked them. Their assault put part of the army to flight and killed a considerable number.

3 After this, Laches and the Athenians made some landings from their ships in Locrian territory. Near the river Caicinus they defeated about three hundred Locrians who came to resist them under Proxenus son of Capaton. They took their weapons and withdrew.

Chapter 104

1 During the same winter, the Athenians also purified Delos in obedience to an oracle. Pisistratus the tyrant had purified it before, but not the whole island, only the part visible from the sanctuary. This time the entire island was purified in the following way.

2 They removed every burial place on Delos. They also announced that from then on no one was to die or give birth on the island. Instead, people were to be taken across to Rhenea. Rhenea is so close to Delos that Polycrates, the tyrant of Samos, once tied it to Delos with a chain when he dedicated it to Delian Apollo. This was at a time when his fleet was powerful, he ruled other islands, and he had captured Rhenea. After the purification, the Athenians held the Delian festival for the first time as a festival to take place every four years.

3 Long ago, too, there used to be a large gathering on Delos of Ionians and the islanders living nearby. They came to watch the festival with their wives and children, as the Ionians now do at the Ephesian festival. Athletic and musical contests were held there, and the cities brought choirs.

4 Homer gives the clearest evidence that this was how things were, in these verses from a prelude in honor of Apollo: / “But when you took the greatest pleasure in Delos, Phoebus, / there the Ionians in their long robes gather / with their children and wives in your street. / There they please you with boxing, dancing, and song, / remembering you whenever they hold a contest.”

5 He also shows that there was a musical contest and that people came to compete, in these verses from the same prelude. After praising the women's choir on Delos, he ended his praise with these lines, in which he also mentioned himself: / “Come now, may Apollo and Artemis be kind to us, / and farewell to all of you. In the days to come, / remember me whenever someone from among the people on earth, / another traveler who has been through hardships, comes here and asks: / ‘Girls, who is the sweetest singer of all the men / who visit here, and whose singing gives you the most pleasure?’ / All of you must be sure to answer without being prompted: / ‘A blind man, who lives on rocky Chios.’”

6 This is Homer's evidence that even long ago there was a large gathering and festival on Delos. Later, the islanders and the Athenians continued to send choirs with sacrificial offerings. But the contests and most of the other activities fell away, probably because of misfortunes. This lasted until the Athenians held the contest at this time, adding horse races, which had not been held before.

Chapter 105

1 During the same winter, the Ambraciots marched against Amphilochian Argos with three thousand hoplites. This was the campaign they had promised Eurylochus, persuading him to keep his army there. They invaded the territory of Argos and occupied Olpae, a strong fort on a hill beside the sea. The Acarnanians had once built it and used it as a common court of justice. It is about twenty-five stades from the city of Argos, which is on the coast.

2 Some of the Acarnanians went to help defend Argos. Others camped at the place in Amphilochia called Crenae. They kept watch to stop the Peloponnesians under Eurylochus from slipping through to join the Ambraciots.

3 They also sent for Demosthenes, who had commanded the Athenians in Aetolia, to lead them. And they sent for the twenty Athenian ships that happened to be off the Peloponnese. These were commanded by Aristoteles son of Timocrates and Hierophon son of Antimnestus.

4 The Ambraciots at Olpae also sent a messenger to their city, calling on the whole population to come to their aid. They feared that Eurylochus and his men might not be able to get through the Acarnanians. They would then either have to fight on their own or find it unsafe to retreat if they wanted to.

Chapter 106

1 When the Peloponnesians with Eurylochus learned that the Ambraciots had reached Olpae, they left Proschium and hurried to help them. They crossed the Achelous and advanced through Acarnania. The country was empty because its people had gone to defend Argos. They kept the city of Stratus and its garrison on their right, and the rest of Acarnania on their left.

2 After passing through the territory of Stratus, they went through Phytia, then along the outer edge of Medeon's territory, and then through Limnaea. They entered the country of the Agraeans. This was no longer Acarnania, but a country friendly to them.

3 They reached Mount Thyamus, which belongs to the Agraeans, crossed it, and descended into the territory of Argos after nightfall. They passed unnoticed between the city of Argos and the Acarnanian guard at Crenae, and joined the Ambraciots at Olpae.

Chapter 107

1 Their forces were now united. At daybreak they took up a position at the place called Metropolis and made camp. Not long afterward the Athenians arrived in the Ambracian Gulf with their twenty ships to help the Argives. Demosthenes also arrived with two hundred Messenian hoplites and sixty Athenian archers.

2 The ships blockaded the hill at Olpae from the sea. The Acarnanians had already gathered at Argos, along with a few Amphilochians. Most of the Amphilochians were being held back by force by the Ambraciots. They prepared to fight the enemy and chose Demosthenes to command the whole allied force together with their own generals.

3 Demosthenes brought them close to Olpae and camped there. A large ravine separated the armies. They remained inactive for five days. On the sixth, both sides formed up for battle. The Peloponnesian army was larger and its line extended beyond the other. Demosthenes feared being surrounded. He put about four hundred hoplites and lightly armed troops in ambush in a sunken road overgrown with bushes. They were to rise up just as the armies met and attack from behind the part of the enemy line that extended beyond his own.

4 When both sides were ready, they came to close combat. Demosthenes held the right wing with the Messenians and a few Athenians. The Acarnanians, each contingent in its assigned position, held the rest of the line, along with the Amphilochian javelin throwers who were present. The Peloponnesians and Ambraciots were mixed together in their line, except for the Mantineans. These kept together toward the left, but not at the very end of the wing. Eurylochus and his own men held the extreme left, opposite the Messenians and Demosthenes.

Chapter 108

1 Once the armies were fighting at close quarters, the Peloponnesians extended their wing around the enemy's right and began to surround it. Then the Acarnanians in ambush came up behind them, attacked, and put them to flight. They did not even stand to defend themselves. Their panic also sent most of the army into flight. When the rest saw Eurylochus' force, the strongest part of their army, being destroyed, they became much more afraid. The Messenians, who were stationed there with Demosthenes, did most of the fighting.

2 But the Ambraciots and those on the right wing defeated the troops facing them and chased them toward Argos. The Ambraciots are, in fact, the most warlike people in that region.

3 On their way back they saw that most of their army had been defeated. The other Acarnanians were pressing them, and they struggled to get safely back to Olpae. Many were killed as they ran into their opponents in confusion and with no order at all. The Mantineans were the exception. They kept their formation better than anyone else in the army as they withdrew. The battle ended late in the day.

Chapter 109

1 The next day Menedaius took command, since Eurylochus and Macarius were dead. After such a heavy defeat he did not know how they could hold out if they stayed, besieged on land and blockaded at sea by the Athenian ships, or how they could escape safely if they withdrew. He approached Demosthenes and the Acarnanian generals to discuss a truce and a withdrawal, as well as permission to recover the dead.

2 They returned the dead, set up a victory monument themselves, and recovered their own dead, about three hundred. They did not openly agree to a truce allowing everyone to withdraw. But Demosthenes and his fellow commanders, the Acarnanian generals, secretly agreed that the Mantineans, Menedaius, the other Peloponnesian commanders, and their most important men could leave quickly. He wanted to leave the Ambraciots and the mass of hired soldiers [the foreign troops] without support. Above all, he wanted to discredit the Lacedaemonians and Peloponnesians among the Greeks of that region, by showing that they had betrayed their allies and put their own interests first.

3 The defeated army recovered its dead and hurried to bury them as best it could. Those who had permission to leave secretly planned their departure.

Chapter 110

1 Demosthenes and the Acarnanians now received news that the Ambraciots from the city were marching through Amphilochian country with their whole force. They were coming to help in response to the first message from Olpae. They wanted to join the troops there and knew nothing of what had happened.

2 Demosthenes immediately sent part of his army ahead to set ambushes on the roads and occupy strong positions before the enemy arrived. At the same time he prepared to take the rest of the army against them.

Chapter 111

1 Meanwhile, the Mantineans and the others covered by the truce went out, supposedly to gather vegetables and firewood. They slipped away in small groups, collecting the things they claimed to have come out for as they went. Once they were well away from Olpae, they quickened their retreat.

2 The Ambraciots and the others who happened to have gone out together as a group realized that they were leaving. They too set off, running to catch up with them.

3 At first the Acarnanians thought that all of them were leaving without a truce. They pursued the Peloponnesians as well. Some of their own generals tried to stop them, saying that a truce had been made with these men. Someone even threw javelins at these generals, thinking that they were betraying their own side. But afterward they let the Mantineans and Peloponnesians go and killed the Ambraciots.

4 There was much argument and confusion over whether a man was an Ambraciot or a Peloponnesian. They killed about two hundred of them. The rest escaped to the neighboring country of the Agraeans. Their king, Salynthius, was friendly to them and took them in.

Chapter 112

1 The Ambraciots coming from the city reached Idomene. Idomene consists of two high hills. After night fell, the troops Demosthenes had sent ahead from his camp occupied the larger hill before the enemy could, without being noticed. The Ambraciots had already gone up the smaller hill. The advance troops camped on the larger one for the night.

2 After dinner, Demosthenes and the rest of the army began their march as soon as evening came. He led half the force along the route into the country, while the other half went through the Amphilochian mountains.

3 At dawn he fell on the Ambraciots while they were still in their sleeping places. They had no warning of what had happened. In fact, they were much more inclined to think the approaching troops were their own men.

4 Demosthenes had deliberately put the Messenians in front and told them to speak to the sentries. They spoke the Doric dialect and so reassured the guards. It was also still night, and they could not be seen clearly.

5 When he attacked their army, his men put it to flight. They killed most of them on the spot. The rest fled into the mountains.

6 But the roads had already been occupied. The Amphilochians knew their own country and were lightly armed, facing hoplites. The fugitives did not know the area and had no idea which way to turn. They fell into ravines and the ambushes set for them, and were killed.

7 They tried every possible way of escaping. Some even turned toward the sea, which was not far away. They saw the Athenian ships sailing past just as the battle was taking place and swam toward them. In their immediate terror, they thought it better, if they had to die, to be killed by the men on the ships than by the Amphilochians, who were non-Greeks and their bitterest enemies.

8 After this disaster, only a few of the many Ambraciots got safely back to their city. The Acarnanians stripped the dead, set up victory monuments, and returned to Argos.

Chapter 113

1 The next day a herald came to them from the Ambraciots who had fled from Olpae to the Agraeans. He wanted permission to recover the dead killed after the first battle, when they had left without a truce along with the Mantineans and those protected by the agreement.

2 The herald saw the weapons of the Ambraciots who had come from the city and was amazed at how many there were. He knew nothing of the disaster and thought they belonged to the men who had been with his own force.

3 Someone asked him why he was surprised and how many of their men had died. The questioner, in turn, assumed the herald had come from the troops at Idomene. He answered, “About two hundred.” The questioner replied, “These weapons don't look like they belong to that many men,

4 “but to more than a thousand.” The herald said, “Then they aren't from the men who fought with us.” The other answered, “They are if you fought at Idomene yesterday.” “But we didn't fight anyone yesterday. It was the day before, during the retreat.” “Well, yesterday we fought these men, who had come to help from the city of Ambracia.”

5 When the herald heard this and realized that the reinforcements from the city had been destroyed, he cried out in grief. Stunned by the scale of the disaster, he left at once without completing his task and no longer asked for the dead.

6 This was the greatest disaster to strike a single Greek city in a comparable number of days during this war. I have not recorded the number killed, because the reported loss seems unbelievable in relation to the size of the city. But I know that if the Acarnanians and Amphilochians had wanted to follow the advice of the Athenians and Demosthenes and take Ambracia, they could have captured it at the first assault. Instead, they feared that the Athenians, if they held it, would be more troublesome neighbors to them.

Chapter 114

1 After this, they assigned a third of the spoils to the Athenians and divided the rest among their cities. The Athenians' share was captured while being carried by sea. The three hundred full sets of armor now dedicated in the sanctuaries of Attica had been set aside for Demosthenes, and he sailed home with them. His success also made him less afraid to return after the disaster in Aetolia.

2 The Athenians in the twenty ships also left for Naupactus. After the Athenians and Demosthenes had gone, the Acarnanians and Amphilochians made a truce allowing the Ambraciots and Peloponnesians who had taken refuge with Salynthius and the Agraeans to withdraw from Oeniadae. They had moved there from Salynthius' territory.

3 The Acarnanians and Amphilochians also made a peace treaty and an alliance with the Ambraciots for the next hundred years, on these terms. The Ambraciots were not to campaign with the Acarnanians against the Peloponnesians, nor were the Acarnanians to campaign with the Ambraciots against the Athenians. They were to help defend each other's country. The Ambraciots were to return every place and hostage belonging to the Amphilochians that they held. They were not to send help to Anactorium, which was hostile to the Acarnanians.

4 With this agreement they ended the war. Afterward, the Corinthians sent about three hundred of their own hoplites to garrison Ambracia, with Xenoclides son of Euthycles as commander. They reached it with difficulty after traveling overland. That was how events at Ambracia turned out.

Chapter 115

1 During the same winter, the Athenians in Sicily landed from their ships in the territory of Himera. They acted together with the Sicels who had invaded the outer parts of that territory from the uplands. They also sailed to the islands of Aeolus.

2 When they returned to Rhegium, they found Pythodorus son of Isolochus, an Athenian general, who had arrived to take over command of Laches' ships.

3 The allies in Sicily had sailed to Athens and persuaded the Athenians to send more ships to help them. The Syracusans controlled their land. At sea, however, a small number of ships was keeping the Syracusans shut out. They were gathering a fleet and preparing to act, determined not to let this continue.

4 The Athenians were fitting out forty ships to send them. They thought this would bring the war there to an end more quickly. They also wanted to give their navy practice.

5 They therefore sent one of the generals, Pythodorus, with a few ships. They intended to send Sophocles son of Sostratides and Eurymedon son of Thucles with the larger part of the fleet.

6 Pythodorus had already taken over Laches' command of the ships. Toward the end of the winter, he sailed against the Locrian fort that Laches had captured earlier. The Locrians defeated him in battle, and he withdrew.

Chapter 116

1 Around this very spring, a stream of fire poured out of Etna, as it had before. It destroyed some land belonging to the people of Catana, who live below Mount Etna, the highest mountain in Sicily.

2 This flow is said to have occurred in the fiftieth year after the previous one. In all, the stream of fire is said to have flowed three times since Greeks began to settle in Sicily.

3 These events took place during this winter. The sixth year of this war, which Thucydides wrote, came to an end.

Chapter 1

1 The next summer, just as the corn was getting ripe, the Peloponnesians and their allies invaded Attica under the command of Archidamus, son of Zeuxidamus, king of the Lacedaemonians,

2 and sat down and ravaged the land; the Athenian horse as usual attacking them, wherever it was practicable, and preventing the mass of the light troops from advancing from their camp and wasting the parts near the city.

3 After staying the time for which they had taken provisions, the invaders retired and dispersed to their several cities.

Chapter 2

1 Immediately after the invasion of the Peloponnesians all Lesbos, except Methymna, revolted from the Athenians. The Lesbians had wished to revolt even before the war, but the Lacedaemonians would not receive them; and yet now when they did revolt, they were compelled to do so sooner than they had intended.

2 While they were waiting until the moles for their harbors and the ships and walls that they had in building should be finished, and for the arrival of archers and corn and other things that they were engaged in fetching from the Pontus,

3 the Tenedians, with whom they were at enmity, and the Methymnians, and some factious persons in Mitylene itself, who were Proxeni of Athens, informed the Athenians that the Mitylenians were forcibly uniting the island under their sovereignty, and that the preparations about which they were so active, were all concerted with the Boeotians their kindred and the Lacedaemonians with a view to a revolt, and that unless they were immediately prevented, Athens would lose Lesbos.

Chapter 3

1 However, the Athenians, distressed by the plague, and by the war that had recently broken out and was now raging, thought it a serious matter to add Lesbos with its fleet and untouched resources to the list of their enemies; and at first would not believe the charge, giving too much weight to their wish that it might not be true. But when an embassy which they sent had failed to persuade the Mitylenians to give up the union and preparations complained of, they became alarmed, and resolved to strike the first blow.

2 They accordingly suddenly sent off forty ships that had been got ready to sail round Peloponnese, under the command of Cleippides, son of Deinias, and two others;

3 word having been brought them of a festival in honor of the Malean Apollo outside the town, which is kept by the whole people of Mitylene, and at which, if haste were made, they might hope to take them by surprise. If this plan succeeded, well and good; if not, they were to order the Mitylenians to deliver up their ships and to pull down their walls, and if they did not obey, to declare war.

4 The ships accordingly set out; the ten triremes, forming the contingent of the Mitylenians present with the fleet according to the terms of the alliance, being detained by the Athenians, and their crews placed in custody.

5 However, the Mitylenians were informed of the expedition by a man who crossed from Athens to Euboea, and going overland to Geraestus, sailed from thence by a merchantman which he found on the point of putting to sea, and so arrived at Mitylene the third day after leaving Athens.

6 The Mitylenians accordingly refrained from going out to the temple at Malea, and moreover barricaded and kept guard round the half-finished parts of their walls and harbors.

Chapter 4

1 When the Athenians sailed in not long after and saw how things stood, the generals delivered their orders, and upon the Mitylenians refusing to obey, commenced hostilities.

2 The Mitylenians, thus compelled to go to war without notice and unprepared, at first sailed out with their fleet and made some show of fighting, a little in front of the harbor; but being driven back by the Athenian ships, immediately offered to treat with the commanders, wishing, if possible, to get the ships away for the present upon any tolerable terms.

3 The Athenian commanders accepted their offers, being themselves fearful that they might not be able to cope with the whole of Lesbos;

4 and an armistice having been concluded, the Mitylenians sent to Athens one of the informers, already repentant of his conduct, and others with him, to try to persuade the Athenians of the innocence of their intentions and to get the fleet recalled.

5 In the meantime, having no great hope of a favorable answer from Athens, they also sent off a trireme with envoys to Lacedaemon, unobserved by the Athenian fleet which was anchored at Malea to the north of the town.

6 While these envoys, reaching Lacedaemon after a difficult journey across the open sea, were negotiating for succors being sent them,

Chapter 5

1 the ambassadors from Athens returned without having effected anything; and hostilities were at once begun by the Mitylenians and the rest of Lesbos, with the exception of the Methymnians, who came to the aid of the Athenians with the Imbrians and Lemnians and some few of the other allies.

2 The Mitylenians made a sortie with all their forces against the Athenian camp; and a battle ensued, in which they gained some slight advantage, but retired notwithstanding, not feeling sufficient confidence in themselves to spend the night upon the field. After this they kept quiet wishing to wait for the chance of reinforcements arriving from Peloponnese before making a second venture, being encouraged by the arrival of Meleas, a Laconian, and Hermaeondas, a Theban, who had been sent off before the insurrection but had been unable to reach Lesbos before the Athenian expedition, and who now stole in in a trireme after the battle, and advised them to send another trireme and envoys back with them, which the Mitylenians accordingly did.

Chapter 6

1 Meanwhile the Athenians, greatly encouraged by the inaction of the Mitylenians, summoned allies to their aid, who came in all the quicker from seeing so little vigor displayed by the Lesbians, and bringing round their ships to a new station to the south of the town, fortified two camps, one on each side of the city, and instituted a blockade of both the harbors.

2 The sea was thus closed against the Mitylenians, who however commanded the whole country, with the rest of the Lesbians who had now joined them; the Athenians only holding a limited area round their camps, and using Malea more as the station for their ships and their market.

Chapter 7

1 While the war went on in this way at Mitylene, the Athenians, about the same time in this summer, also sent thirty ships to Peloponnese under Asopius, son of Phormio; the Acarnanians insisting that the commander sent should be some son or relative of Phormio.

2 As the ships coasted along shore they ravaged the seaboard of Laconia;

3 after which Asopius sent most of the fleet home, and himself went on with twelve vessels to Naupactus, and after-wards raising the whole Acarnanian population made an expedition against Oeniadae, the fleet sailing along the Achelous, while the army laid waste the country.

4 The inhabitants, however, showing no signs of submitting, he dismissed the land forces and himself sailed to Leucas, and making a descent upon Nericus was cut off during his retreat, and most of his troops with him, by the people in those parts aided by some coast-guards;

5 after which the Athenians sailed away, recovering their dead from the Leucadians under truce.

Chapter 8

1 Meanwhile the envoys of the Mitylenians sent out in the first ship were told by the Lacedaemonians to come to Olympia, in order that the rest of the allies might hear them and decide upon their matter, and so they journeyed thither. It was the Olympiad in which the Rhodian Dorieus gained his second victory,

2 and the envoys having been introduced to make their speech after the festival, spoke as follows.

Chapter 9

1 ‘Lacedaemonians and allies, the rule established among the Hellenes is not unknown to us. Those who revolt in war and forsake their former confederacy are favorably regarded by those who receive them, in so far as they are of use to them, but otherwise are thought less well of, through being considered traitors to their former friends.

2 Nor is this an unfair way of judging, where the rebels and the power from whom they secede are at one in policy and sympathy, and a match for each other in resources and power, and where no reasonable ground exists for the rebellion. But with us and the Athenians this was not the case;

3 and no one need think the worse of us for revolting from them in danger, after having been honored by them in time of peace.

Chapter 10

1 Justice and honesty will be the first topics of our speech, especially as we are asking for alliance; because we know that there can never be any solid friendship between individuals, or union between communities that is worth the name, unless the parties be persuaded of each other's honesty, and be generally congenial the one to the other; since from difference in feeling springs also difference in conduct.

2 Between ourselves and the Athenians alliance began, when you withdrew from the Median war and they remained to finish the business.

3 But we did not become allies of the Athenians for the subjugation of the Hellenes, but allies of the Hellenes for their liberation from the Mede;

4 and as long as the Athenians led us fairly we followed them loyally; but when we saw them relax their hostility to the Mede, to try to compass the subjection of the allies, then our apprehensions began.

5 Unable, however, to unite and defend themselves, on account of the number of confederates that had votes, all the allies were enslaved, except ourselves and the Chians, who continued to send our contingents as independent and nominally free.

6 Trust in Athens as a leader, however, we could no longer feel, judging by the examples already given; it being unlikely that she would reduce our fellow-confederates, and not do the same by us who were left, if ever she had the power.

Chapter 11

1 Had we all been still independent, we could have had more faith in their not attempting any change; but the greater number being their subjects, while they were treating us as equals, they would naturally chafe under this solitary instance of independence as contrasted with the submission of the majority; particularly as they daily grew more powerful, and we more destitute.

2 Now the only sure basis of an alliance is for each party to be equally afraid of the other: he who would like to encroach is then deterred by the reflection that he will not have odds in his favour.

3 Again, if we were left independent, it was only because they thought they saw their way to empire more clearly by specious language and by the paths of policy than by those of force.

4 Not only were we useful as evidence that powers who had votes, like themselves, would not, surely, join them in their expeditions, against their will, without the party attacked being in the wrong; but the same system also enabled them to lead the stronger states against the weaker first, and so to leave the former to the last, stripped of their natural allies, and less capable of resistance.

5 But if they had begun with us, while all the states still had their resources under their own control, and there was a center to rally round, the work of subjugation would have been found less easy.

6 Besides this, our navy gave them some apprehension: it was always possible that it might unite with you or with some other power, and become dangerous to Athens.

7 The court which we paid to their commons and its leaders for the time being, also helped us to maintain our independence.

8 However, we did not expect to be able to do so much longer, if this war had not broken out, from the examples that we had had of their conduct to the rest.

Chapter 12

1 How then could we put our trust in such friendship or freedom as we had here? We accepted each other against our inclination; fear made them court us in war, and us them in peace; sympathy, the ordinary basis of confidence, had its place supplied by terror, fear having more share than friendship in detaining us in the alliance; and the first party that should be encouraged by the hope of impunity was certain to break faith with the other.

2 So that to condemn us for being the first to break off, because they delay the blow that we dread, instead of ourselves delaying to know for certain whether it will be dealt or not, is to take a false view of the case.

3 For if we were equally able with them to meet their plots and imitate their delay, we should be their equals and should be under no necessity of being their subjects; but the liberty of offence being always theirs, that of defence ought clearly to be ours.

Chapter 13

1 Such, Lacedaemonians and allies, are the grounds and the reasons of our revolt; clear enough to convince our hearers of the fairness of our conduct, and sufficient to alarm ourselves, and to make us turn to some means of safety. This we wished to do long ago, when we sent to you on the subject while the peace yet lasted, but were baulked by your refusing to receive us; and now, upon the Boeotians inviting us, we at once responded to the call, and decided upon a twofold revolt, from the Hellenes and from the Athenians, not to aid the latter in harming the former, but to join in their liberation, and not to allow the Athenians in the end to destroy us, but to act in time against them.

2 Our revolt, however has taken place prematurely and without preparation—a fact which makes it all the more incumbent on you to receive us into alliance and to send us speedy relief, in order to show that you support your friends, and at the same time do harm to your enemies.

3 You have an opportunity such as you never had before. Disease and expenditure have wasted the Athenians: their ships are either cruising round your coasts, or engaged in blockading us;

4 and it is not probable that they will have any to spare, if you invade them a second time this summer by sea and land; but they will either offer no resistance to your vessels, or withdraw from both our shores.

5 Nor must it be thought that this is a case of putting yourselves into danger for a country which is not yours. Lesbos may appear far off, but when help is wanted she will be found near enough. It is not in Attica that the war will be decided, as some imagine, but in the countries by which Attica is supported;

6 and the Athenian revenue is drawn from the allies, and will become still larger if they reduce us; as not only will no other state revolt, but our resources will be added to theirs, and we shall be treated worse than those that were enslaved before.

7 But if you will frankly support us, you will add to your side a state that has a large navy, which is your great want; you will smooth the way to the overthrow of the Athenians by depriving them of their allies, who will be greatly encouraged to come over; and you will free yourselves from the imputation made against you, of not supporting insurrection. In short, only show yourselves as liberators, and you may count upon having the advantage in the war.

Chapter 14

1 Respect, therefore, the hopes placed in you by the Hellenes, and that Olympian Zeus, in whose temple we stand as very suppliants; become the allies and defenders of the Mitylenians, and do not sacrifice us, who put our lives upon the hazard, in a cause in which general good will result to all from our success, and still more general harm if we fail through your refusing to help us;

2 but be the men that the Hellenes think you, and our fears desire.’

Chapter 15

1 Such were the words of the Mitylenians. After hearing them out, the Lacedaemonians and confederates granted what they urged, and took the Lesbians into alliance, and deciding in favour of the invasion of Attica, told the allies present to march as quickly as possible to the Isthmus with two-thirds of their forces; and arriving there first themselves, got ready hauling machines to carry their ships across from Corinth to the sea on the side of Athens, in order to make their attack by sea and land at once.

2 However, the zeal which they displayed was not imitated by the rest of the confederates, who came in but slowly, being engaged in harvesting their corn and sick of making expeditions.

Chapter 16

1 Meanwhile the Athenians, aware that the preparations of the enemy were due to his conviction of their weakness, and wishing to show him that he was mistaken, and that they were able, without moving the Lesbian fleet, to repel with ease that with which they were menaced from Peloponnese, manned a hundred ships by embarking the citizens of Athens, except the knights and Pentecosiomedimni, and the resident aliens; and putting out to the Isthmus, displayed their power, and made descents upon Peloponnese wherever they pleased.

2 A disappointment so signal made the Lacedaemonians think that the Lesbians had not spoken the truth; and embarrassed by the non-appearance of the confederates, coupled with the news that the thirty ships round Peloponnese were ravaging the lands near Sparta, they went back home.

3 Afterwards, however, they got ready a fleet to send to Lesbos, and ordering a total of forty ships from the different cities in the league, appointed Alcidas to command the expedition in his capacity of high admiral.

4 Meanwhile the Athenians in the hundred ships, upon seeing the Lacedaemonians go home, went home likewise.

Chapter 17

1 If at the time that this fleet was at sea, Athens had almost the largest number of first-rate ships in commission that she ever possessed at any one moment, she had as many or even more when the war began.

2 At that time one hundred guarded Attica, Euboea, and Salamis; a hundred more were cruising round Peloponnese, besides those employed at Potidaea and in other places; making a grand total of two hundred and fifty vessels employed on active service in a single summer.

3 It was this, with Potidaea, that most exhausted her revenues—

4 Potidaea being blockaded by a force of heavy infantry (each drawing two drachmae a day, one for himself and another for his servant), which amounted to three thousand at first, and was kept at this number down to the end of the siege; besides sixteen hundred with Phormio who went away before it was over; and the ships being all paid at the same rate. In this way her money was wasted at first; and this was the largest number of ships ever manned by her.

Chapter 18

1 About the same time that the Lacedaemonians were at the Isthmus, the Mitylenians marched by land with their mercenaries against Methymna, which they thought to gain by treachery. After assaulting the town, and not meeting with the success that they anticipated, they withdrew to Antissa, Pyrrha, and Eresus; and taking measures for the better security of these towns and strengthening their walls, hastily returned home.

2 After their departure the Methymnians marched against Antissa, but were defeated in a sortie by the Antissians and their mercenaries, and retreated in haste after losing many of their number.

3 Word of this reaching Athens, and the Athenians learning that the Mitylenians were masters of the country and their own soldiers unable to hold them in check, they sent out about the beginning of autumn Paches, son of Epicurus, to take the command, and a thousand Athenian heavy infantry;

4 who worked their own passage, and arriving at Mitylene, built a single wall all round it, forts being erected at some of the strongest points.

5 Mitylene was thus blockaded strictly on both sides, by land and by sea, and winter now drew near.

Chapter 19

1 The Athenians needing money for the siege, although they had for the first time raised a contribution of two hundred talents from their own citizens, now sent out twelve ships to levy subsidies from their allies, with Lysicles and four others in command.

2 After cruising to different places and laying them under contribution, Lysicles went up the country from Myus, in Caria, across the plain of the Meander, as far as the hill of Sandius; and being attacked by the Carians and the people of Anaia, was slain with many of his soldiers.

Chapter 20

1 The same winter the Plataeans, who were still being besieged by the Peloponnesians and Boeotians, distressed by the failure of their provisions, and seeing no hope of relief from Athens, nor any other means of safety, formed a scheme with the Athenians besieged with them for escaping, if possible, by forcing their way over the enemy's walls; the attempt having been suggested by Theaenetus, son of Tolmides, a soothsayer, and Eupompides, son of Daimachus, one of their generals. At first all were to join:

2 afterwards, half hung back, thinking the risk great; about two hundred and twenty, however, voluntarily persevered in the attempt, which was carried out in the following way.

3 Ladders were made to match the height of the enemy's wall, which they measured by the layers of bricks, the side turned towards them not being thoroughly whitewashed. These were counted by many persons at once; and though some might miss the right calculation, most would hit upon it, particularly as they counted over and over again, and were no great way from the wall, but could see it easily enough for their purpose.

4 The length required for the ladders was thus obtained, being calculated from the breadth of the brick.

Chapter 21

1 Now the wall of the Peloponnesians was constructed as follows. It consisted of two lines drawn round the place, one against the Plataeans, the other against any attack on the outside from Athens, about sixteen feet apart.

2 The intermediate space of sixteen feet was occupied by huts portioned out among the soldiers on guard, and built in one block, so as to give the appearance of a single thick wall with battlements on either side.

3 At intervals of every ten battlements were towers of considerable size, and the same breadth as the wall, reaching right across from its inner to its outer face, with no means of passing except through the middle.

4 Accordingly on stormy and wet nights the battlements were deserted, and guard kept from the towers, which were not far apart and roofed in above.Such being the structure of the wall by which the Plataeans were blockaded,

Chapter 22

1 when their preparations were completed, they waited for a stormy night of wind and rain and without any moon, and then set out, guided by the authors of the enterprise. Crossing first the ditch that ran round the town, they next gained the wall of the enemy unperceived by the sentinels, who did not see them in the darkness, or hear them, as the wind drowned with its roar the noise of their approach;

2 besides which they kept a good way off from each other, that they might not be betrayed by the clash of their weapons. They were also lightly equipped, and had only the left foot shod to preserve them from slipping in the mire.

3 They came up to the battlements at one of the intermediate spaces where they knew them to be unguarded: those who carried the ladders went first and planted them; next twelve light-armed soldiers with only a dagger and a breastplate mounted, led by Ammias, son of Coroebus, who was the first on the wall; his followers getting up after him and going six to each of the towers. After these came another party of light troops armed with spears, whose shields, that they might advance the easier, were carried by men behind, who were to hand them to them when they found themselves in presence of the enemy.

4 After a good many had mounted they were discovered by the sentinels in the towers, by the noise made by a tile which was knocked down by one of the Plataeans as he was laying hold of the battlements.

5 The alarm was instantly given, and the troops rushed to the wall, not knowing the nature of the danger, owing to the dark night and stormy weather; the Plataeans in the town having also chosen that moment to make a sortie against the wall of the Peloponnesians upon the side opposite to that on which their men were getting over, in order to divert the attention of the besiegers.

6 Accordingly they remained distracted at their several posts, without any venturing to stir to give help from his own station, and at a loss to guess what was going on.

7 Meanwhile the three hundred set aside for service on emergencies went outside the wall in the direction of the alarm. Fire-signals of an attack were also raised towards Thebes;

8 but the Plataeans in the town at once displayed a number of others, prepared beforehand for this very purpose, in order to render the enemy's signals unintelligible, and to prevent his friends getting a true idea of what was passing and coming to his aid, before their comrades who had gone out should have made good their escape and be in safety.

Chapter 23

1 Meanwhile the first of the scaling-party that had got up, after carrying both the towers and putting the sentinels to the sword, posted themselves inside to prevent any one coming through against them; and rearing ladders from the wall, sent several men up on the towers, and from their summit and base kept in check all of the enemy that came up, with their missiles, while their main body planted a number of ladders against the wall, and knocking down the battlements, passed over between the towers;

2 each as soon as he had got over taking up his station at the edge of the ditch, and plying from thence with arrows and darts any who came along the wall to stop the passage of his comrades.

3 When all were over, the party on the towers came down, the last of them not without difficulty, and proceeded to the ditch, just as the three hundred came up carrying torches.

4 The Plataeans, standing on the edge of the ditch in the dark, had a good view of their opponents, and discharged their arrows and darts upon the unarmed parts of their bodies, while they themselves could not be so well seen in the obscurity for the torches; and thus even the last of them got over the ditch, though not without effort and difficulty;

5 as ice had formed in it, not strong enough to walk upon, but of that watery kind which generally comes with a wind more east than north, and the snow which this wind had caused to fall during the night, had made the water in the ditch rise, so that they could scarcely breast it as they crossed. However, it was mainly the violence of the storm that enabled them to effect their escape at all.

Chapter 24

1 Starting from the ditch, the Plataeans went all together along the road leading to Thebes, keeping the chapel of the hero Androcrates upon their right; considering that the last road which the Peloponnesians would suspect them of having taken would be that towards their enemies' country. Indeed they could see them pursuing with torches upon the Athens road towards Cithaeron and Druoskephalai or Oakheads.

2 After going for rather more than half a mile upon the road to Thebes, the Plataeans turned off and took that leading to the mountain, to Erythrae and Hysiae, and reaching the hills, made good their escape to Athens, two hundred and twelve men in all; some of their number having turned back into the town before getting over the wall, and one archer having been taken prisoner at the outer ditch.

3 Meanwhile the Peloponnesians gave up the pursuit and returned to their posts; and the Plataeans in the town, knowing nothing of what had passed, and informed by those who had turned back that not a man had escaped, sent out a herald as soon as it was day to make a truce for the recovery of the dead bodies, and then learning the truth, desisted. In this way the Plataean party got over and were saved.

Chapter 25

1 Towards the close of the same winter, Salaethus, a Lacedaemonian, was sent out in a trireme from Lacedaemon to Mitylene. Going by sea to Pyrrha, and from thence overland, he passed along the bed of a torrent, where the line of circumvallation was passable, and thus entering unperceived into Mitylene, told the magistrates that Attica would certainly be invaded, and the forty ships destined to relieve them arrive, and that he had been sent on to announce this and to superintend matters generally.

2 The Mitylenians upon this took courage, and laid aside the idea of treating with the Athenians; and now this winter ended, and with it ended the fourth year of the war of which Thucydides was the historian.

Chapter 26

1 The next summer the Peloponnesians sent off the forty-two ships for Mitylene, under Alcidas, their high admiral, and themselves and their allies invaded Attica, their object being to distract the Athenians by a double movement, and thus to make it less easy for them to act against the fleet sailing to Mitylene.

2 The commander in this invasion was Cleomenes, in the place of King Pausanias, son of Pleistoanax, his nephew, who was still a minor.

3 Not content with laying waste whatever had shot up in the parts which they had before devastated, the invaders now extended their ravages to lands passed over in their previous incursions; so that this invasion was more severely felt by the Athenians than any except the second;

4 the enemy staying on and on until they had overrun most of the country, in the expectation of hearing from Lesbos of something having been achieved by their fleet, which they thought must now have got over. However, as they did not obtain any of the results expected, and their provisions began to run short, they retreated and dispersed to their different cities.

Chapter 27

1 In the meantime the Mitylenians, finding their provisions failing, while the fleet from Peloponnese was loitering on the way instead of appearing at Mitylene, were compelled to come to terms with the Athenians in the following manner.

2 Salaethus having himself ceased to expect the fleet to arrive, now armed the commons with heavy armour, which they had not before possessed, with the intention of making a sortie against the Athenians.

3 The commons, however, no sooner found themselves possessed of arms than they refused any longer to obey their officers; and forming in knots together, told the authorities to bring out in public the provisions and divide them amongst them all, or they would themselves come to terms with the Athenians and deliver up the city.

Chapter 28

1 The government, aware of their inability to prevent this, and of the danger they would be in, if left out of the capitulation, publicly agreed with Paches and the army to surrender Mitylene at discretion and to admit the troops into the town upon the understanding that the Mitylenians should be allowed to send an embassy to Athens to plead their cause, and that Paches should not imprison, make slaves of, or put to death any of the citizens until its return.

2 Such were the terms of the capitulation; in spite of which the chief authors of the negotiation with Lacedaemon were so completely overcome by terror when the army entered, that they went and seated themselves by the altars, from which they were raised up by Paches under promise that he would do them no wrong, and lodged by him in Tenedos, until he should learn the pleasure of the Athenians concerning them.

3 Paches also sent some triremes and seized Antissa, and took such other military measures as he thought advisable.

Chapter 29

1 Meanwhile, the Peloponnesians in the forty ships, who ought to have made all haste to relieve Mitylene, lost time in coming round Peloponnese itself, and proceeding leisurely on the remainder of the voyage, made Delos without having been seen by the Athenians at Athens, and from thence arriving at Icarus and Myconus, there first heard of the fall of Mitylene.

2 Wishing to know the truth, they put into Embatum, in the Erythraeid, about seven days after the capture of the town. Here they learned the truth, and began to consider what they were to do; and Teutiaplus, an Elean, addressed them as follows:—

Chapter 30

1 ‘Alcidas and Peloponnesians who share with me the command of this armament, my advice is to sail just as we are to Mitylene, before we have been heard of.

2 We may expect to find the Athenians as much on their guard as men generally are who have just taken a city: this will certainly be so by sea, where they have no idea of any enemy attacking them, and where our strength, as it happens, mainly lies; while even their land forces are probably scattered about the houses in the carelessness of victory.

3 If therefore we were to fall upon them suddenly and in the night, I have hopes, with the help of the well-wishers that we may have left inside the town, that we shall become masters of the place.

4 Let us not shrink from the risk, but let us remember that this is just the occasion for one of the baseless panics common in war; and that to be able to guard against these in one's own case, and to detect the moment when an attack will find an enemy at this disadvantage, is what makes a successful general.’

Chapter 31

1 These words of Teutiaplus failing to move Alcidas, some of the Ionian exiles and the Lesbians with the expedition began to urge him, since this seemed too dangerous, to seize one of the Ionian cities or the Aeolic town of Cyme, to use as a base for effecting the revolt of Ionia. This was by no means a hopeless enterprise, as their coming was welcome everywhere; their object would be by this move to deprive Athens of her chief source of revenue, and at the same time to saddle her with expense, if she chose to blockade them; and they would probably induce Pissuthnes to join them in the war.

2 However, Alcidas gave this proposal as bad a reception as the other, being eager, since he had come too late for Mitylene, to find himself back in Peloponnese as soon as possible.

Chapter 32

1 Accordingly he put out from Embatum and proceeded along shore; and touching at the Teian town, Myonnesus, there butchered most of the prisoners that he had taken on his passage.

2 Upon his coming to anchor at Ephesus, envoys came to him from the Samians at Anaia, and told him that he was not going the right way to free Hellas in massacring men who had never raised a hand against him, and who were not enemies of his, but allies of Athens against their will, and that if he did not stop he would turn many more friends into enemies than enemies into friends.

3 Alcidas agreed to this, and let go all the Chians still in his hands and some of the others that he had taken; the inhabitants, instead of flying at the sight of his vessels, rather coming up to them, taking them for Athenian, having no sort of expectation that while the Athenians commanded the sea Peloponnesian ships would venture over to Ionia.

Chapter 33

1 From Ephesus Alcidas set sail in haste and fled. He had been seen by the Salaminian and Paralian galleys, which happened to be sailing from Athens, while still at anchor off Clarus and fearing pursuit he now made across the open sea, fully determined to touch nowhere, if he could help it, until he got to Peloponnese.

2 Meanwhile news of him had come in to Paches from the Erythraeid, and indeed from all quarters. As Ionia was unfortified great fears were felt that the Peloponnesians coasting along shore, even if they did not intend to stay, might make descents in passing and plunder the towns; and now the Paralian and Salaminian, having seen him at Clarus, themselves brought intelligence of the fact.

3 Paches accordingly gave hot chase, and continued the pursuit as far as the isle of Patmos, and then finding that Alcidas had got on too far to be overtaken, came back again. Meanwhile he thought it fortunate that, as he had not fallen in with them out at sea, he had not overtaken them anywhere where they would have been forced to encamp, and so give him the trouble of blockading them.

Chapter 34

1 On his return along shore he touched, among other places, at Notium, the port of Colophon, where the Colophonians had settled after the capture of the upper town by Itamenes and the barbarians, who had been called in by certain individuals in a party quarrel. The capture of the town took place about the time of the second Peloponnesian invasion of Attica.

2 However, the refugees, after settling at Notium, again split up into factions, one of which called in Arcadian and barbarian mercenaries from Pissuthnes, and entrenching these in a quarter apart, formed a new community with the Median party of the Colophonians who joined them from the upper town. Their opponents had retired into exile, and now called in Paches,

3 who invited Hippias, the commander of the Arcadians in the fortified quarter, to a parley, upon condition that, if they could not agree, he was to be put back safe and sound in the fortification. However, upon his coming out to him, he put him into custody, though not in chains, and attacked suddenly and took by surprise the fortification, and putting the Arcadians and the barbarians found in it to the sword, afterwards took Hippias into it as he had promised, and, as soon as he was inside, seized him and shot him down.

4 Paches then gave up Notium to the Colophonians not of the Median party; and settlers were afterwards sent out from Athens, and the place colonized according to Athenian laws, after collecting all the Colophonians found in any of the cities.

Chapter 35

1 Arrived at Mitylene, Paches reduced Pyrrha and Eresus; and finding the Lacedaemonian, Salaethus, in hiding in the town, sent him off to Athens, together with the Mitylenians that he had placed in Tenedos, and any other persons that he thought concerned in the revolt.

2 He also sent back the greater part of his forces, remaining with the rest to settle Mitylene and the rest of Lesbos as he thought best.

Chapter 36

1 Upon the arrival of the prisoners with Salaethus, the Athenians at once put the latter to death, although he offered, among other things, to procure the withdrawal of the Peloponnesians from Plataea, which was still under siege;

2 and after deliberating as to what they should do with the former, in the fury of the moment determined to put to death not only the prisoners at Athens, but the whole adult male population of Mitylene, and to make slaves of the women and children. It was remarked that Mitylene had revolted without being, like the rest, subjected to the empire; and what above all swelled the wrath of the Athenians was the fact of the Peloponnesian fleet having ventured over to Ionia to her support, a fact which was held to argue a long-meditated rebellion.

3 They accordingly sent a trireme to communicate the decree to Paches, commanding him to lose no time in despatching the Mitylenians.

4 The morrow brought repentance with it and reflection on the horrid cruelty of a decree, which condemned a whole city to the fate merited only by the guilty.

5 This was no sooner perceived by the Mitylenian ambassadors at Athens and their Athenian supporters, than they moved the authorities to put the question again to the vote; which they the more easily consented to do, as they themselves plainly saw that most of the citizens wished some one to give them an opportunity for reconsidering the matter.

6 An assembly was therefore at once called, and after much expression of opinion upon both sides, Cleon, son of Cleaenetus, the same who had carried the former motion of putting the Mitylenians to death, the most violent man at Athens, and at that time by far the most powerful with the commons, came forward again and spoke as follows:—

Chapter 37

1 ‘I have often before now been convinced that a democracy is incapable of empire, and never more so than by your present change of mind in the matter of Mitylene.

2 Fears or plots being unknown to you in your daily relations with each other, you feel just the same with regard to your allies, and never reflect that the mistakes into which you may be led by listening to their appeals, or by giving way to your own compassion, are full of danger to yourselves, and bring you no thanks for your weakness from your allies; entirely forgetting that your empire is a despotism and your subjects disaffected conspirators, whose obedience is insured not by your suicidal concessions, but by the superiority given you by your own strength and not their loyalty.

3 The most alarming feature in the case is the constant change of measures with which we appear to be threatened, and our seeming ignorance of the fact that bad laws which are never changed are better for a city than good ones that have no authority; that unlearned loyalty is more serviceable than quick-witted insubordination; and that ordinary men usually manage public affairs better than their more gifted fellows.

4 The latter are always wanting to appear wiser than the laws, and to overrule every proposition brought forward, thinking that they cannot show their wit in more important matters, and by such behavior too often ruin their country; while those who mistrust their own cleverness are content to be less learned than the laws, and less able to pick holes in the speech of a good speaker; and being fair judges rather than rival athletes, generally conduct affairs successfully.

5 These we ought to imitate, instead of being led on by cleverness and intellectual rivalry to advise your people against our real opinions.

Chapter 38

1 For myself, I adhere to my former opinion, and wonder at those who have proposed to reopen the case of the Mitylenians, and who are thus causing a delay which is all in favour of the guilty, by making the sufferer proceed against the offender with the edge of his anger blunted; although where vengeance follows most closely upon the wrong, it best equals it and most amply requites it. I wonder also who will be the man who will maintain the contrary, and will pretend to show that the crimes of the Mitylenians are of service to us, and our misfortunes injurious to the allies.

2 Such a man must plainly either have such confidence in his rhetoric as to adventure to prove that what has been once for all decided is still undetermined, or be bribed to try to delude us by elaborate sophisms.

3 In such contests the state gives the rewards to others, and takes the dangers for herself.

4 The persons to blame are you who are so foolish as to institute these contests; who go to see an oration as you would to see a sight, take your facts on hearsay, judge of the practicability of a project by the wit of its advocates, and trust for the truth as to past events not to the fact which you saw more than to the clever strictures which you heard;

5 the easy victims of newfangled arguments, unwilling to follow received conclusions; slaves to every new paradox, despisers of the commonplace;

6 the first wish of every man being that he could speak himself, the next to rival those who can speak by seeming to be quite up with their ideas by applauding every hit almost before it is made, and by being as quick in catching an argument as you are slow in foreseeing its consequences;

7 asking, if I may so say, for something different from the conditions under which we live, and yet comprehending inadequately those very conditions; very slaves to the pleasure of the ear, and more like the audience of a rhetorician than the council of a city.

Chapter 39

1 In order to keep you from this, I proceed to show that no one state has ever injured you as much as Mitylene.

2 I can make allowance for those who revolt because they cannot bear our empire, or who have been forced to do so by the enemy. But for those who possessed an island with fortifications; who could fear our enemies only by sea, and there had their own force of triremes to protect them; who were independent and held in the highest honor by you—to act as these have done, this is not revolt—revolt implies oppression; it is deliberate and wanton aggression; an attempt to ruin us by siding with our bitterest enemies; a worse offence than a war undertaken on their own account in the acquisition of power.

3 The fate of those of their neighbors who had already rebelled and had been subdued, was no lesson to them; their own prosperity could not dissuade them from affronting danger; but blindly confident in the future, and full of hopes beyond their power though not beyond their ambition, they declared war and made their decision to prefer might to right, their attack being determined not by provocation but by the moment which seemed propitious.

4 The truth is that great good fortune coming suddenly and unexpectedly tends to make a people insolent: in most cases it is safer for mankind to have success in reason than out of reason; and it is easier for them, one may say, to stave off adversity than to preserve prosperity.

5 Our mistake has been to distinguish the Mitylenians as we have done: had they been long ago treated like the rest, they never would have so far forgotten themselves, human nature being as surely made arrogant by consideration, as it is awed by firmness.

6 Let them now therefore be punished as their crime requires, and do not, while you condemn the aristocracy, absolve the people. This is certain, that all attacked you without distinction, although they might have come over to us, and been now again in possession of their city. But no, they thought it safer to throw in their lot with the aristocracy and so joined their rebellion!

7 Consider therefore! if you subject to the same punishment the ally who is forced to rebel by the enemy, and him who does so by his own free choice, which of them, think you, is there that will not rebel upon the slightest pretext; when the reward of success is freedom, and the penalty of failure nothing so very terrible?

8 We meanwhile shall have to risk our money and our lives against one state after another; and if successful, shall receive a ruined town from which we can no longer draw the revenue upon which our strength depends; while if unsuccessful, we shall have an enemy the more upon our hands, and shall spend the time that might be employed in combating our existing foes in warring with our own allies.

Chapter 40

1 No hope, therefore, that rhetoric may instil or money purchase, of the mercy due to human infirmity must be held out to the Mitylenians. Their offence was not involuntary, but of malice and deliberate; and mercy is only for unwilling offenders.

2 I therefore now as before persist against your reversing your first decision, or giving way to the three failings most fatal to empire—pity, sentiment, and indulgence.

3 Compassion is due to those who can reciprocate the feeling, not to those who will never pity us in return, but are our natural and necessary foes: the orators who charm us with sentiment may find other less important arenas for their talents, in the place of one where the city pays a heavy penalty for a momentary pleasure, themselves receiving fine acknowledgments for their fine phrases; while indulgence should be shown towards those who will be our friends in future, instead of towards men who will remain just what they were, and as much our enemies as before.

4 To sum up shortly, I say that if you follow my advice you will do what is just towards the Mitylenians, and at the same time expedient; while by a different decision you will not oblige them so much as pass sentence upon yourselves. For if they were right in rebelling, you must be wrong in ruling. However, if, right or wrong, you determine to rule, you must carry out your principle and punish the Mitylenians as your interest requires; or else you must give up your empire and cultivate honesty without danger.

5 Make up your minds, therefore, to give them like for like; and do not let the victims who escaped the plot be more insensible than the conspirators who hatched it; but reflect what they would have done if victorious over you, especially as they were the aggressors.

6 It is they who wrong their neighbor without a cause, that pursue their victim to the death, on account of the danger which they foresee in letting their enemy survive; since the object of a wanton wrong is more dangerous, if he escape, than an enemy who has not this to complain of.

7 Do not, therefore, be traitors to yourselves, but recall as nearly as possible the moment of suffering and the supreme importance which you then attached to their reduction; and now pay them back in their turn, without yielding to present weakness or forgetting the peril that once hung over you.

8 Punish them as they deserve, and teach your other allies by a striking example that the penalty of rebellion is death. Let them once understand this and you will not have so often to neglect your enemies while you are fighting with your own confederates.’

Chapter 41

1 Such were the words of Cleon. After him Diodotus, son of Eucrates, who had also in the previous assembly spoken most strongly against putting the Mitylenians to death, came forward and spoke as follows:—

Chapter 42

1 ‘I do not blame the persons who have reopened the case of the Mitylenians, nor do I approve the protests which we have heard against important questions being frequently debated. I think the two things most opposed to good counsel are haste and passion; haste usually goes hand in hand with folly, passion with coarseness and narrowness of mind.

2 As for the argument that speech ought not to be the exponent of action, the man who uses it must be either senseless or interested: senseless if he believes it possible to treat of the uncertain future through any other medium; interested if wishing to carry a disgraceful measure and doubting his ability to speak well in a bad cause, he thinks to frighten opponents and hearers by well-aimed calumny.

3 What is still more intolerable is to accuse a speaker of making a display in order to be paid for it. If ignorance only were imputed, an unsuccessful speaker might retire with a reputation for honesty, if not for wisdom; while the charge of dishonesty makes him suspected, if successful, and thought, if defeated, not only a fool but a rogue.

4 The city is no gainer by such a system, since fear deprives it of its advisers; although in truth, if our speakers are to make such assertions, it would be better for the country if they could not speak at all, as we should then make fewer blunders.

5 The good citizen ought to triumph not by frightening his opponents but by beating them fairly in argument; and a wise city without over-distinguishing its best advisers, will nevertheless not deprive them of their due, and far from punishing an unlucky counsellor will not even regard him as disgraced.

6 In this way successful orators would be least tempted to sacrifice their convictions for popularity, in the hope of still higher honors, and unsuccessful speakers to resort to the same popular arts in order to win over the multitude.

Chapter 43

1 This is not our way; and, besides, the moment that a man is suspected of giving advice, however good, from corrupt motives, we feel such a grudge against him for the gain which after all we are not certain he will receive, that we deprive the city of its certain benefit.

2 Plain good advice has thus come to be no less suspected than bad; and the advocate of the most monstrous measures is not more obliged to use deceit to gain the people, than the best counsellor is to lie in order to be believed.

3 The city and the city only, owing to these refinements, can never be served openly and without disguise; he who does serve it openly being always suspected of serving himself in some secret way in return.

4 Still, considering the magnitude of the interests involved, and the position of affairs, we orators must make it our business to look a little further than you who judge offhand; especially as we, your advisers, are responsible, while you, our audience, are not so.

5 For if those who gave the advice, and those who took it, suffered equally, you would judge more calmly; as it is, you visit the disasters into which the whim of the moment may have led you, upon the single person of your adviser, not upon yourselves, his numerous companions in error.

Chapter 44

1 However, I have not come forward either to oppose or to accuse in the matter of Mitylene; indeed, the question before us as sensible men is not their guilt, but our interests.

2 Though I prove them ever so guilty, I shall not, therefore, advise their death, unless it be expedient; nor though they should have claims to indulgence, shall I recommend it, unless it be clearly for the good of the country.

3 I consider that we are deliberating for the future more than for the present; and where Cleon is so positive as to the useful deterrent effects that will follow from making rebellion capital, I who consider the interests of the future quite as much as he, as positively maintain the contrary.

4 And I require you not to reject my useful considerations for his specious ones: his speech may have the attraction of seeming the more just in your present temper against Mitylene; but we are not in a court of justice, but in a political assembly; and the question is not justice, but how to make the Mitylenians useful to Athens.

Chapter 45

1 Now of course communities have enacted the penalty of death for many offences far lighter than this: still hope leads men to venture; and no one ever yet put himself in peril without the inward conviction that he would succeed in his design.

2 Again, was there ever city rebelling that did not believe that it possessed either in itself or in its alliances resources adequate to the enterprise?

3 All, states and individuals, are alike prone to err, and there is no law that will prevent them; or why should men have exhausted the list of punishments in search of enactments to protect them from evil-doers? It is probable that in early times the penalties for the greatest offences were less severe, and that, as these were disregarded, the penalty of death has been by degrees in most cases arrived at, which is itself disregarded in like manner.

4 Either then some means of terror more terrible than this must be discovered, or it must be owned that this restraint is useless; and that as long as poverty gives men the courage of necessity, or plenty fills them with the ambition which belongs to insolence and pride, and the other conditions of life remain each under the thraldom of some fatal and master passion, so long will the impulse never be wanting to drive men into danger.

5 Hope also and cupidity, the one leading and the other following, the one conceiving the attempt, the other suggesting the facility of succeeding, cause the widest ruin, and, although invisible agents, are far stronger than the dangers that are seen.

6 Fortune, too, powerfully helps the delusion, and by the unexpected aid that she sometimes lends, tempts men to venture with inferior means; and this is especially the case with communities, because the stakes played for are the highest, freedom or empire, and, when all are acting together, each man irrationally magnifies his own capacity.

7 In fine, it is impossible to prevent, and only great simplicity can hope to prevent, human nature doing what it has once set its mind upon, by force of law or by any other deterrent force whatsoever.

Chapter 46

1 We must not, therefore, commit ourselves to a false policy through a belief in the efficacy of the punishment of death, or exclude rebels from the hope of repentance and an early atonement of their error.

2 Consider a moment! At present, if a city that has already revolted perceive that it cannot succeed, it will come to terms while it is still able to refund expenses, and pay tribute afterwards. In the other case, what city think you would not prepare better than is now done, and hold out to the last against its besiegers, if it is all one whether it surrender late or soon?

3 And how can it be otherwise than hurtful to us to be put to the expense of a siege, because surrender is out of the question; and if we take the city, to receive a ruined town from which we can no longer draw the revenue which forms our real strength against the enemy?

4 We must not, therefore, sit as strict judges of the offenders to our own prejudice, but rather see how by moderate chastisements we may be enabled to benefit in future by the revenue-producing powers of our dependencies; and we must make up our minds to look for our protection not to legal terrors but to careful administration.

5 At present we do exactly the opposite. When a free community, held in subjection by force, rises, as is only natural, and asserts its independence, it is no sooner reduced than we fancy ourselves obliged to punish it severely;

6 although the right course with freemen is not to chastise them rigorously when they do rise, but rigorously to watch them before they rise, and to prevent their ever entertaining the idea, and, the insurrection suppressed, to make as few responsible for it as possible.

Chapter 47

1 Only consider what a blunder you would commit in doing as Cleon recommends.

2 As things are at present, in all the cities the people is your friend, and either does not revolt with the oligarchy, or, if forced to do so, becomes at once the enemy of the insurgents; so that in the war with the hostile city you have the masses on your side.

3 But if you butcher the people of Mitylene, who had nothing to do with the revolt, and who, as soon as they got arms, of their own motion surrendered the town, first you will commit the crime of killing your benefactors; and next you will play directly into the hands of the higher classes, who when they induce their cities to rise, will immediately have the people on their side, through your having announced in advance the same punishment for those who are guilty and for those who are not.

4 On the contrary, even if they were guilty, you ought to seem not to notice it, in order to avoid alienating the only class still friendly to us.

5 In short, I consider it far more useful for the preservation of our empire voluntarily to put up with injustice, than to put to death, however justly, those whom it is our interest to keep alive. As for Cleon's idea that in punishment the claims of justice and expediency can both be satisfied, facts do not confirm the possibility of such a combination.

Chapter 48

1 Confess, therefore, that this is the wisest course, and without conceding too much either to pity or to indulgence, by neither of which motives do I any more than Cleon wish you to be influenced, upon the plain merits of the case before you, be persuaded by me to try calmly those of the Mitylenians whom Paches sent off as guilty, and to leave the rest undisturbed.

2 This is at once best for the future, and most terrible to your enemies at the present moment; inasmuch as good policy against an adversary is superior to the blind attacks of brute force.’

Chapter 49

1 Such were the words of Diodotus. The two opinions thus expressed were the ones that most directly contradicted each other; and the Athenians, notwithstanding their change of feeling, now proceeded to a division, in which the show of hands was almost equal, although the motion of Diodotus carried the day.

2 Another trireme was at once sent off in haste, for fear that the first might reach Lesbos in the interval, and the city be found destroyed; the first ship having about a day and a night's start.

3 Wine and barley-cakes were provided for the vessel by the Mitylenian ambassadors, and great promises made if they arrived in time; which caused the men to use such diligence upon the voyage that they took their meals of barley-cakes kneaded with oil and wine as they rowed, and only slept by turns while the others were at the oar.

4 Luckily they met with no contrary wind, and the first ship making no haste upon so horrid an errand, while the second pressed on in the manner described, the first arrived so little before them, that Paches had only just had time to read the decree, and to prepare to execute the sentence, when the second put into port and prevented the massacre. The danger of Mitylene had indeed been great.

Chapter 50

1 The other party whom Paches had sent off as the prime movers in the rebellion, were upon Cleon's motion put to death by the Athenians, the number being rather more than a thousand. The Athenians also demolished the walls of the Mitylenians, and took possession of their ships.

2 Afterwards tribute was not imposed upon the Lesbians; but all their land, except that of the Methymnians, was divided into three thousand allotments, three hundred of which were reserved as sacred for the gods, and the rest assigned by lot to Athenian shareholders, who were sent out to the island. With these the Lesbians agreed to pay a rent of two minae a year for each allotment, and cultivated the land themselves.

3 The Athenians also took possession of the towns on the continent belonging to the Mitylenians, which thus became for the future subject to Athens. Such were the events that took place at Lesbos.

Chapter 51

1 During the same summer, after the reduction of Lesbos, the Athenians under Nicias, son of Niceratus, made an expedition against the island of Minos, which lies off Megara and was used as a fortified post by the Megarians, who had built a tower upon it.

2 Nicias wished to enable the Athenians to maintain their blockade from this nearer station instead of from Budorum and Salamis; to stop the Peloponnesian triremes and privateers sailing out unobserved from the island, as they had been in the habit of doing; and at the same time prevent anything from coming into Megara.

3 Accordingly, after taking two towers projecting on the side of Nisaea, by engines from the sea, and clearing the entrance into the channel between the island and the shore, he next proceeded to cut off all communication by building a wall on the mainland at the point where a bridge across a morass enabled succors to be thrown into the island, which was not far off from the continent.

4 A few days sufficing to accomplish this, he afterwards raised some works in the island also, and leaving a garrison there, departed with his forces.

Chapter 52

1 About the same time in this summer, the Plataean being now without provisions, and unable to support the siege, surrendered to the Peloponnesians in the following manner.

2 An assault had been made upon the wall, which the Plataeans were unable to repel. The Lacedaemonian commander, perceiving their weakness, wished to avoid taking the place by storm; his instructions from Lacedaemon having been so conceived, in order that if at any future time peace should be made with Athens, and they should agree each to restore the places that they had taken in the war, Plataea might be held to have come over voluntarily, and not be included in the list. He accordingly sent a herald to them to ask if they were willing voluntarily to surrender the town to the Lacedaemonians, and accept them as their judges, upon the understanding that the guilty should be punished, but no one without form of law.

3 The Plataeans were now in the last state of weakness, and the herald had no sooner delivered his message than they surrendered the town. The Peloponnesians fed them for some days until the judges from Lacedaemon, who were five in number, arrived.

4 Upon their arrival no charge was preferred; they simply called up the Plataeans, and asked them whether they had done the Lacedaemonians and allies any service in the war then raging.

5 The Plataeans asked leave to speak at greater length, and deputed two of their number to represent them; Astymachus, son of Asopolaus, and Lacon, son of Aeimnestus, Proxenus of the Lacedaemonians, who came forward and spoke as follows:—

Chapter 53

1 ‘Lacedaemonians, when we surrendered our city we trusted in you, and looked forward to a trial more agreeable to the forms of law than the present, to which we had no idea of being subjected; the judges also in whose hands we consented to place ourselves were you, and you only (from whom we thought we were most likely to obtain justice), and not other persons, as is now the case.

2 As matters stand, we are afraid that we have been doubly deceived. We have good reason to suspect, not only that the issue to be tried is the most terrible of all, but that you will not prove impartial; if we may argue from the fact that no accusation was first brought forward for us to answer, but we had ourselves to ask leave to speak, and from the question being put so shortly, that a true answer to it tells against us, while a false one can be contradicted.

3 In this dilemma, our safest, and indeed our only course, seems to be to say something at all risks: placed as we are, we could scarcely be silent without being tormented by the damning thought that speaking might have saved us.

4 Another difficulty that we have to encounter is the difficulty of convincing you. Were we unknown to each other we might profit by bringing forward new matter with which you were unacquainted: as it is, we can tell you nothing that you do not know already, and we fear, not that you have condemned us in your own minds of having failed in our duty towards you, and make this our crime, but that to please a third party we have to submit to a trial the result of which is already decided.

Chapter 54

1 Nevertheless, we will place before you what we can justly urge, not only on the question of the quarrel which the Thebans have against us, but also as addressing you and the rest of the Hellenes; and we will remind you of our good services, and endeavor to prevail with you.

2 To your short question, whether we have done the Lacedaemonians and allies any service in this war, we say, if you ask us as enemies, that to refrain from serving you was not to do you injury; if as friends, that you are more in fault for having marched against us.

3 During the peace, and against the Mede, we acted well: we have not now been the first to break the peace, and we were the only Boeotians who then joined in defending against the Mede the liberty of Hellas.

4 Although an inland people, we were present at the action at Artemisium; in the battle that took place in our territory we fought by the side of yourselves and Pausanias; and in all the other Hellenic exploits of the time we took a part quite out of proportion to our strength.

5 Besides, you, as Lacedaemonians, ought not to forget that at the time of the great panic at Sparta, after the earthquake, caused by the secession of the Helots to Ithome, we sent the third part of our citizens to assist you.

Chapter 55

1 On these great and historical occasions such was the part that we chose, although afterwards we became your enemies. For this you were to blame. When we asked for your alliance against our Theban oppressors, you rejected our petition, and told us to go to the Athenians who were our neighbors, as you lived too far off.

2 In the war we never have done to you, and never should have done to you, anything unreasonable.

3 If we refused to desert the Athenians when you asked us, we did no wrong; they had helped us against the Thebans when you drew back, and we could no longer give them up with honor; especially as we had obtained their alliance and had been admitted to their citizenship at our own request, and after receiving benefits at their hands; but it was plainly our duty loyally to obey their orders.

4 Besides, the faults that either of you may commit in your supremacy must be laid, not upon the followers, but on the chiefs that lead them astray.

Chapter 56

1 With regard to the Thebans, they have wronged us repeatedly, and their last aggression, which has been the means of bringing us into our present position, is within your own knowledge.

2 In seizing our city in time of peace, and what is more at a holy time in the month, they justly encountered our vengeance, in accordance with the universal law which sanctions resistance to an invader; and it cannot now be right that we should suffer on their account.

3 By taking your own immediate interest and their animosity as the test of justice, you will prove yourselves to be rather waiters on expediency than judges of right;

4 although if they seem useful to you now, we and the rest of the Hellenes gave you much more valuable help at a time of greater need. Now you are the assailants, and others fear you; but at the crisis to which we allude, when the barbarian threatened all with slavery, the Thebans were on his side.

5 It is just, therefore, to put our patriotism then against our error now, if error there has been; and you will find the merit outweighing the fault, and displayed at a juncture when there were few Hellenes who would set their valor against the strength of Xerxes, and when greater praise was theirs who preferred the dangerous path of honor to the safe source of consulting their own interest with respect to the invasion.

6 To these few we belonged, and highly were we honored for it; and yet we now fear to perish by having again acted on the same principles, and chosen to act well with Athens sooner than wisely with Sparta.

7 Yet in justice the same cases should be decided in the same way, and policy should not mean anything else than lasting gratitude for the service of a good ally combined with a proper attention to one's own immediate interest.

Chapter 57

1 Consider also that at present the Hellenes generally regard you as a pattern of worth and honor; and if you pass an unjust sentence upon us in this which is no obscure cause, but one in which you the judges, are as illustrious as we, the prisoners, are blameless, take care that displeasure be not felt at an unworthy decision in the matter of honorable men made by men yet more honorable than they, and at the consecration in the national temples of spoils taken from the Plataeans, the benefactors of Hellas.

2 Shocking indeed will it seem for Lacedaemonians to destroy Plataea, and for the city whose name your fathers inscribed upon the tripod at Delphi for its good service, to be by you blotted out from the map of Hellas, to please the Thebans.

3 To such a depth of misfortune have we fallen, that while the Medes' success had been our ruin, Thebans now supplant us in your once fond regards; and we have been subjected to two dangers, the greatest of any—that of dying of starvation then, if we had not surrendered our town, and now of being tried for our lives.

4 So that we Plataeans, after exertions beyond our power in the cause of the Hellenes, are rejected by all, forsaken and unassisted; helped by none of our allies, and reduced to doubt the stability of our only hope, yourselves.

Chapter 58

1 Still, in the name of the gods who once presided over our confederacy, and of our own good service in the Hellenic cause, we adjure you to relent; to recall the decision which we fear that the Thebans may have obtained from you; to ask back the gift that you have given them, that they disgrace not you by slaying us; to gain a pure instead of a guilty gratitude, and not to gratify others to be yourselves rewarded with shame.

2 Our lives may be quickly taken, but it will be a heavy task to wipe away the infamy of the deed; as we are no enemies whom you might justly punish, but friends forced into taking arms against you.

3 To grant us our lives would be, therefore, a righteous judgment; if you consider also that we are prisoners who surrendered of their own accord, stretching out our hands for quarter, whose slaughter Hellenic law forbids, and who besides were always your benefactors.

4 Look at the sepulchres of your fathers, slain by the Medes and buried in our country, whom year by year we honored with garments and all other dues, and the first fruits of all that our land produced in their season, as friends from a friendly country and allies to our old companions in arms! Should you not decide aright, your conduct would be the very opposite to ours. Consider only:

5 Pausanias buried them thinking that he was laying them in friendly ground and among men as friendly; but you, if you kill us and make the Plataean territory Theban, will leave your fathers and kinsmen in a hostile soil and among their murderers, deprived of the honors which they now enjoy. What is more, you will enslave the land in which the freedom of the Hellenes was won, make desolate the temples of the gods to whom they prayed before they overcame the Medes, and take away your ancestral sacrifices from those who founded and instituted them.

Chapter 59

1 It were not to your glory, Lacedaemonians, either to offend in this way against the common law of the Hellenes and against your own ancestors, or to kill us your benefactors to gratify another's hatred without having been wronged yourselves: it were more so to spare us and to yield to the impressions of a reasonable compassion; reflecting not merely on the awful fate in store for us, but also on the character of the sufferers, and on the impossibility of predicting how soon misfortune may fall even upon those who deserve it not.

2 We, as we have a right to do and as our need impels us, entreat you, calling aloud upon the gods at whose common altar all the Hellenes worship, to hear our request, to be not unmindful of the oaths which your fathers swore, and which we now plead—we supplicate you by the tombs of your fathers, and appeal to those that are gone to save us from falling into the hands of the Thebans and their dearest friends from being given up to their most detested foes. We also remind you of that day on which we did the most glorious deeds, by your fathers' sides, we who now, on this are like to suffer the most dreadful fate.

3 Finally, to do what is necessary and yet most difficult for men in our situation—that is, to make an end of speaking, since with that ending the peril of our lives draws near—

4 in conclusion we say that we did not surrender our city to the Thebans (to that we would have preferred inglorious starvation), but trusted in and capitulated to you; and it would be just, if we fail to persuade you, to put us back in the same position and let us take the chance that falls to us. And at the same time we adjure you not to give us up,—your suppliants, Lacedaemonians, out of your hands and faith, Plataeans foremost of the Hellenic patriots, to Thebans, our most hated enemies,—but to be our saviours, and not, while you free the rest of the Hellenes, to bring us to destruction.’

Chapter 60

1 Such were the words of the Plataeans. The Thebans, afraid that the Lacedaemonians might be moved by what they had heard, came forward and said that they too desired to address them, since the Plataeans had, against their wish, been allowed to speak at length instead of being confined to a simple answer to the question. Leave being granted, the Thebans spoke as follows:—

Chapter 61

1 ‘We should never have asked to make this speech if the Plataeans on their side had contented themselves with shortly answering the question, and had not turned round and made charges against us, coupled with a long defence of themselves upon matters outside the present inquiry and not even the subject of accusation, and with praise of what no one finds fault with. However, since they have done so, we must answer their charges and refute their self-praise, in order that neither our bad name nor their good may help them, but that you may hear the real truth on both points, and so decide.

2 The origin of our quarrel was this. We settled Plataea some time after the rest of Boeotia, together with other places out of which we had driven the mixed population. The Plataeans not choosing to recognize our supremacy, as had been first arranged, but separating themselves from the rest of the Boeotians, and proving traitors to their nationality, we used compulsion; upon which they went over to the Athenians, and with them did us much harm, for which we retaliated.

Chapter 62

1 Next, when the barbarian invaded Hellas, they say that they were the only Boeotians who did not Medise; and this is where they most glorify themselves and abuse us.

2 We say that if they did not Medise, it was because the Athenians did not do so either; just as afterwards when the Athenians attacked the Hellenes they, the Plataeans, were again the only Boeotians who Atticized.

3 And yet consider the forms of our respective governments when we so acted. Our city at that juncture had neither an oligarchical constitution in which all the nobles enjoyed equal rights nor a democracy, but that which is most opposed to law and good government and nearest a tyranny—the rule of a close cabal.

4 These, hoping to strengthen their individual power by the success of the Mede, kept down by force the people, and brought him into the town. The city as a whole was not its own mistress when it so acted, and ought not to be reproached for the errors that it committed while deprived of its constitution.

5 Examine only how we acted after the departure of the Mede and the recovery of the constitution; when the Athenians attacked the rest of Hellas and endeavored to subjugate our country, of the greater part of which faction had already made them masters. Did not we fight and conquer at Coronea and liberate Boeotia, and do we not now actively contribute to the liberation of the rest, providing horses to the cause and a force unequalled by that of any other state in the confederacy?

Chapter 63

1 Let this suffice to excuse us for our Medism. We will now endeavor to show that you have injured the Hellenes more than we, and are more deserving of condign punishment.

2 It was in defence against us, say you, that you became allies and citizens of Athens. If so, you ought only to have called in the Athenians against us, instead of joining them in attacking others: it was open to you to do this if you ever felt that they were leading you where you did not wish to follow, as Lacedaemon was already your ally against the Mede, as you so much insist; and this was surely sufficient to keep us off, and above all to allow you to deliberate in security. Nevertheless, of your own choice and without compulsion you chose to throw your lot in with Athens.

3 And you say that it had been base for you to betray your benefactors; but it was surely far baser and more iniquitous to sacrifice the whole body of the Hellenes, your fellow-confederates, who were liberating Hellas, than the Athenians only, who were enslaving it.

4 The return that you made them was therefore neither equal nor honorable, since you called them in, as you say, because you were being oppressed yourselves, and then became their accomplices in oppressing others; although baseness rather consists in not returning like for like than in not returning what is justly due but must be unjustly paid.

Chapter 64

1 Meanwhile, after thus plainly showing that it was not for the sake of the Hellenes that you alone then did not Medise, but because the Athenians did not do so either, and you wished to side with them and to be against the rest;

2 you now claim the benefit of good deeds done to please your neighbors. This cannot be admitted: you chose the Athenians, and with them you must stand or fall. Nor can you plead the league then made and claim that it should now protect you.

3 You abandoned that league, and offended against it by helping instead of hindering the subjugation of the Aeginetans and others of its members, and that not under compulsion, but while in enjoyment of the same institutions that you enjoy to the present hour, and no one forcing you as in our case. Lastly, an invitation was addressed to you before you were blockaded to be neutral and join neither party: this you did not accept.

4 Who then merit the detestation of the Hellenes more justly than you, you who sought their ruin under the mask of honor? The former virtues that you allege you now show not to be proper to your character; the real bent of your nature has been at length damningly proved: when the Athenians took the path of injustice you followed them.

5 Of our unwilling Medism and your willful Atticizing this then is our explanation.

Chapter 65

1 The last wrong of which you complain consists in our having, as you say, lawlessly invaded your town in time of peace and festival. Here again we cannot think that we were more in fault than yourselves.

2 If of our own proper motion we made an armed attack upon your city and ravaged your territory, we are guilty; but if the first men among you in estate and family, wishing to put an end to the foreign connection and to restore you to the common Boeotian country, of their own free will invited us, wherein is our crime? Where wrong is done, those who lead, as you say, are more to blame than those who follow.

3 Not that, in our judgment, wrong was done either by them or by us. Citizens like yourselves, and with more at stake than you, they opened their own walls and introduced us into their own city, not as foes but as friends, to prevent the bad among you from becoming worse; to give honest men their due; to reform principles without attacking persons, since you were not to be banished from your city, but brought home to your kindred, nor to be made enemies to any, but friends alike to all.

Chapter 66

1 That our intention was not hostile is proved by our behavior. We did no harm to any one, but publicly invited those who wished to live under a national, Boeotian government to come over to us;

2 which at first you gladly did, and made an agreement with us and remained tranquil, until you became aware of the smallness of our numbers. Now it is possible that there may have been something not quite fair in our entering without the consent of your commons. At any rate you did not repay us in kind. Instead of refraining, as we had done, from violence, and inducing us to retire by negotiation, you fell upon us in violation of your agreement, and slew some of us in fight, of which we do not so much complain, for in that there was a certain justice; but others who held out their hands and received quarter, and whose lives you subsequently promised us, you lawlessly butchered. If this was not abominable, what is?

3 And after these three crimes committed one after the other—the violation of your agreement, the murder of the men afterwards, and the lying breach of your promise not to kill them, if we refrained from injuring your property in the country—you still affirm that we are the criminals and yourselves pretend to escape justice. Not so, if these your judges decide aright, but you will be punished for all together.

Chapter 67

1 Such, Lacedaemonians, are the facts. We have gone into them at some length both on your account and on our own, that you may feel that you will justly condemn the prisoners, and we, that we have given an additional sanction to our vengeance.

2 We would also prevent you from being melted by hearing of their past virtues, if any such they had: these may be fairly appealed to by the victims of injustice, but only aggravate the guilt of criminals, since they offend against their better nature. Nor let them gain anything by crying and wailing, by calling upon your fathers' tombs and their own desolate condition.

3 Against this we point to the far more dreadful fate of our youth, butchered at their hands; the fathers of whom either fell at Coronea, bringing Boeotia over to you, or seated, forlorn old men by desolate hearths, who with far more reason implore your justice upon the prisoners.

4 The pity which they appeal to is rather due to men who suffer unworthily; those who suffer justly as they do, are on the contrary subjects for triumph.

5 For their present desolate condition they have themselves to blame, since they willfully rejected the better alliance. Their lawless act was not provoked by any action of ours; hate, not justice, inspired their decision; and even now the satisfaction which they afford us is not adequate; they will suffer by a legal sentence, not as they pretend as suppliants asking for quarter in battle, but as prisoners who have surrendered upon agreement to take their trial.

6 Vindicate, therefore, Lacedaemonians, the Hellenic law which they have broken; and to us, the victims of its violation, grant the reward merited by our zeal. Nor let us be supplanted in your favour by their harangues, but offer an example to the Hellenes, that the contests to which you invite them are of deeds, not words: good deeds can be shortly stated, but where wrong is done a wealth of language is needed to veil its deformity.

7 However, if leading powers were to do what you are now doing, and putting one short question all alike were to decide accordingly, men would be less tempted to seek fine phrases to cover bad actions.’

Chapter 68

1 Such were the words of the Thebans. The Lacedaemonian judges decided that the question, whether they had received any service from the Plataeans in the war, was a fair one for them to put; as they had always invited them to be neutral, agreeably to the original covenant of Pausanias after the defeat of the Mede, and had again definitely offered them the same conditions before the blockade. This offer having been refused, they were now, they conceived, by the loyalty of their intention released from their covenant; and having, as they considered, suffered evil at the hands of the Plataeans, they brought them in again one by one and asked each of them the same question, that is to say, whether they had done the Lacedaemonians and allies any service in the war; and upon their saying that they had not, took them out and slew them all without exception.

2 The number of Plataeans thus massacred was not less than two hundred, with twenty-five Athenians who had shared in the siege. The women were taken as slaves.

3 The city the Thebans gave for about a year to some political emigrants from Megara, and to the surviving Plataeans of their own party to inhabit, and afterwards razed it to the ground from the very foundations, and built on to the precinct of Hera an inn two hundred feet square, with rooms all round above and below, making use for this purpose of the roofs and doors of the Plataeans: of the rest of the materials in the wall, the brass and the iron, they made couches which they dedicated to Hera, for whom they also built a stone chapel of a hundred feet square. The land they confiscated and let out on a ten-years' lease to Theban occupiers.

4 The adverse attitude of the Lacedaemonians—in the whole Plataean affair was mainly adopted to please the Thebans, who were thought to be useful in the war at that moment raging.

5 Such was the end of Plataea in the ninety-third year after she became the ally of Athens.

Chapter 69

1 Meanwhile, the forty ships of the Peloponnesians that had gone to the relief of the Lesbians, and which we left flying across the open sea, pursued by the Athenians, were caught in a storm off Crete, and scattering from thence made their way to Peloponnese, where they found at Cyllene thirteen Leucadian and Ambraciot triremes, with Brasidas, son of Tellis, lately arrived as counsellor to Alcidas;

2 the Lacedaemonians, upon the failure of the Lesbian expedition, having resolved to strengthen their fleet and sail to Corcyra, where a revolution had broken out, so as to arrive there before the twelve Athenian ships at Naupactus could be reinforced from Athens. Brasidas and Alcidas began to prepare accordingly.

Chapter 70

1 The Corcyraean revolution began with the return of the prisoners taken in the sea-fights off Epidamnus. These the Corinthians had released, nominally upon the security of eight hundred talents given by their Proxeni but in reality upon their engagement to bring over Corcyra to Corinth. These men proceeded to canvass each of the citizens, and to intrigue with the view of detaching the city from Athens.

2 Upon the arrival of an Athenian and a Corinthian vessel, with envoys on board, a conference was held in which the Corcyraeans voted to remain allies of the Athenians according to their agreement, but to be friends of the Peloponnesians as they had been formerly.

3 Meanwhile, the returned prisoners brought Peithias, a volunteer Proxenus of the Athenians and leader of the commons, to trial, upon the charge of enslaving Corcyra to Athens.

4 He, being acquitted, retorted by accusing five of the richest of their number of cutting stakes in the ground sacred to Zeus and Alcinous; the legal penalty being a stater for each stake.

5 Upon their conviction, the amount of the penalty being very large, they seated themselves as suppliants in the temples, to be allowed to pay it by instalments; but Peithias, who was one of the senate, prevailed upon that body to enforce the law;

6 upon which the accused, rendered desperate by the law, and also learning that Peithias had the intention, while still a member of the senate, to persuade the people to conclude a defensive and offensive alliance with Athens, banded together armed with daggers, and suddenly bursting into the senate killed Peithias and sixty others, senators and private persons; some few only of the party of Peithias taking refuge in the Athenian trireme, which had not yet departed.

Chapter 71

1 After this outrage, the conspirators summoned the Corcyraeans to an assembly, and said that this would turn out for the best, and would save them from being enslaved by Athens: for the future, they moved to receive neither party unless they came peacefully in a single ship, treating any larger number as enemies. This motion made, they compelled it to be adopted,

2 and instantly sent off envoys to Athens to justify what had been done and to dissuade the refugees there from any hostile proceedings which might lead to a reaction.

Chapter 72

1 Upon the arrival of the embassy the Athenians arrested the envoys and all who listened to them, as revolutionists, and lodged them in Aegina.

2 Meanwhile a Corinthian trireme arriving in the island with Lacedaemonian envoys, the dominant Corcyraean party attacked the commons and defeated them in battle.

3 Night coming on, the commons took refuge in the Acropolis and the higher parts of the city, and concentrated themselves there, having also possession of the Hyllaic harbor, their adversaries occupying the market-place, where most of them lived, and the harbor adjoining, looking towards the mainland.

Chapter 73

1 The next day passed in skirmishes of little importance, each party sending into the country to offer freedom to the slaves and to invite them to join them. The mass of the slaves answered the appeal of the commons; their antagonists being reinforced by eight hundred mercenaries from the continent.

Chapter 74

1 After a day's interval hostilities recommenced, victory remaining with the commons, who had the advantage in numbers and position, the women also valiantly assisting them, pelting with tiles from the houses, and supporting the melee with a fortitude beyond their sex.

2 Towards dusk, the oligarchs in full rout, fearing that the victorious commons might assault and carry the arsenal and put them to the sword, fired the houses round the market-place and the lodging-houses, in order to bar their advance; sparing neither their own, nor those of their neighbors; by which much stuff of the merchants was consumed and the city risked total destruction, if a wind had come to help the flame by blowing on it.

3 Hostilities now ceasing, both sides kept quiet, passing the night on guard, while the Corinthian ship stole out to sea upon the victory of the commons, and most of the mercenaries passed over secretly to the continent.

Chapter 75

1 The next day the Athenian general, Nicostratus, son of Diitrephes, came up from Naupactus with twelve ships and five hundred Messenian heavy infantry. He at once endeavored to bring about a settlement, and persuaded the two parties to agree together to bring to trial ten of the ringleaders, who presently fled, while the rest were to live in peace, making terms with each other, and entering into a defensive and offensive alliance with the Athenians.

2 This arranged, he was about to sail away, when the leaders of the commons induced him to leave them five of his ships to make their adversaries less disposed to move, while they manned and sent with him an equal number of their own.

3 He had no sooner consented, than they began to enroll their enemies for the ships; and these fearing that they might be sent off to Athens, seated themselves as suppliants in the temple of the Dioscuri.

4 An attempt on the part of Nicostratus to reassure them and to persuade them to rise proving unsuccessful, the commons armed upon this pretext, alleging the refusal of their adversaries to sail with them as a proof of the hollowness of their intentions, and took their arms out of their houses, and would have dispatched some whom they fell in with, if Nicostratus had not prevented it.

5 The rest of the party seeing what was going on, seated themselves as suppliants in the temple of Hera, being not less than four hundred in number; until the commons, fearing that they might adopt some desperate resolution, induced them to rise, and conveyed them over to the island in front of the temple where provisions were sent across to them.

Chapter 76

1 At this stage in the revolution, on the fourth or fifth day after the removal of the men to the island, the Peloponnesian ships arrived from Cyllene where they had been stationed since their return from Ionia, fifty-three in number, still under the command of Alcidas, but with Brasidas also on board as his adviser; and dropping anchor at Sybota, a harbor on the mainland, at daybreak made sail for Corcyra.

Chapter 77

1 The Corcyraeans in great confusion and alarm at the state of things in the city and at the approach of the invader, at once proceeded to equip sixty vessels, which they sent out, as fast as they were manned, against the enemy, in spite of the Athenians recommending them to let them sail out first, and to follow themselves afterwards with all their ships together.

2 Upon their vessels coming up to the enemy in this straggling fashion, two immediately deserted: in others the crews were fighting among themselves, and there was no order in anything that was done;

3 so that the Peloponnesians seeing their confusion, placed twenty ships to oppose the Corcyraeans, and ranged the rest against the twelve Athenian ships, amongst which were the two vessels Salaminia and Paralus.

Chapter 78

1 While the Corcyraeans, attacking without judgment and in small detachments, were already crippled by their own misconduct, the Athenians, afraid of the numbers of the enemy and of being surrounded, did not venture to attack the main body or even the center of the division opposed to them, but fell upon its wing and sank one vessel; after which the Peloponnesians formed in a circle, and the Athenians rowed round them and tried to throw them into disorder.

2 Perceiving this, the division opposed to the Corcyraeans fearing a repetition of the disaster of Naupactus, came to support their friends, and the whole fleet now bore down, united, upon the Athenians,

3 who retired before it, backing water, retiring as leisurely as possible in order to give the Corcyraeans time to escape, while the enemy was thus kept occupied.

4 Such was the character of this sea-fight, which lasted until sunset.

Chapter 79

1 The Corcyraeans now feared that the enemy would follow up their victory and sail against the town and rescue the men in the island, or strike some other blow equally decisive, and accordingly carried the men over again to the temple of Hera, and kept guard over the city.

2 The Peloponnesians, however, although victorious in the sea-fight, did not venture to attack the town, but took the thirteen Corcyraean vessels which they had captured, and with them sailed back to the continent from whence they had put out.

3 The next day equally they refrained from attacking the city, although the disorder and panic were at their height, and though Brasidas, it is said, urged Alcidas, his superior officer, to do so, but they landed upon the promontory of Leukimme and laid waste the country.

Chapter 80

1 Meanwhile the commons in Corcyra, being still in great fear of the fleet attacking them, came to a parley with the suppliants and their friends, in order to save the town; and prevailed upon some of them to go on board the ships, of which they still manned thirty, against the expected attack.

2 But the Peloponnesians after ravaging the country until midday sailed away, and towards nightfall were informed by beacon signals of the approach of sixty Athenian vessels from Leucas, under the command of Eurymedon, son of Thucles; which had been sent off by the Athenians upon the news of the revolution and of the fleet with Alcidas being about to sail for Corcyra.

Chapter 81

1 The Peloponnesians accordingly at once set off in haste by night for home, coasting along shore; and hauling their ships across the Isthmus of Leucas, in order not to be seen doubling it, so departed.

2 The Corcyraeans, made aware of the approach of the Athenian fleet and of the departure of the enemy, brought the Messenians from outside the walls into the town, and ordered the fleet which they had manned to sail round into the Hyllaic harbor; and while it was so doing, slew such of their enemies as they laid hands on, dispatching afterwards as they landed them, those whom they had persuaded to go on board the ships. Next they went to the sanctuary of Hera and persuaded about fifty men to take their trial, and condemned them all to death.

3 The mass of the suppliants who had refused to do so, on seeing what was taking place, slew each other there in the consecrated ground; while some hanged themselves upon the trees, and others destroyed themselves as they were severally able.

4 During seven days that Eurymedon stayed with his sixty ships, the Corcyraeans were engaged in butchering those of their fellow-citizens whom they regarded as their enemies: and although the crime imputed was that of attempting to put down the democracy, some were slain also for private hatred, others by their debtors because of the monies owed to them.

5 Death thus raged in every shape; and, as usually happens at such times, there was no length to which violence did not go; sons were killed by their fathers, and suppliants dragged from the altar or slain upon it; while some were even walled up in the temple of Dionysus and died there.

Chapter 82

1 So bloody was the march of the revolution, and the impression which it made was the greater as it was one of the first to occur. Later on, one may say, the whole Hellenic world was convulsed; struggles being everywhere made by the popular chiefs to bring in the Athenians, and by the oligarchs to introduce the Lacedaemonians. In peace there would have been neither the pretext nor the wish to make such an invitation; but in war, with an alliance always at the command of either faction for the hurt of their adversaries and their own corresponding advantage, opportunities for bringing in the foreigner were never wanting to the revolutionary parties.

2 The sufferings which revolution entailed upon the cities were many and terrible, such as have occurred and always will occur, as long as the nature of mankind remains the same; though in a severer or milder form, and varying in their symptoms, according to the variety of the particular cases. In peace and prosperity states and individuals have better sentiments, because they do not find themselves suddenly confronted with imperious necessities; but war takes away the easy supply of daily wants, and so proves a rough master, that brings most men's characters to a level with their fortunes.

3 Revolution thus ran its course from city to city, and the places which it arrived at last, from having heard what had been done before carried to a still greater excess the refinement of their inventions, as manifested in the cunning of their enterprises and the atrocity of their reprisals.

4 Words had to change their ordinary meaning and to take that which was now given them. Reckless audacity came to be considered the courage of a loyal ally; prudent hesitation, specious cowardice; moderation was held to be a cloak for unmanliness; ability to see all sides of a question inaptness to act on any. Frantic violence, became the attribute of manliness; cautious plotting, a justifiable means of self-defence.

5 The advocate of extreme measures was always trustworthy; his opponent a man to be suspected. To succeed in a plot was to have a shrewd head, to divine a plot a still shrewder; but to try to provide against having to do either was to break up your party and to be afraid of your adversaries. In fine, to forestall an intending criminal, or to suggest the idea of a crime where it was wanting, was equally commended,

6 until even blood became a weaker tie than party, from the superior readiness of those united by the latter to dare everything without reserve; for such associations had not in view the blessings derivable from established institutions but were formed by ambition for their overthrow; and the confidence of their members in each other rested less on any religious sanction than upon complicity in crime.

7 The fair proposals of an adversary were met with jealous precautions by the stronger of the two, and not with a generous confidence. Revenge also was held of more account than self-preservation. Oaths of reconciliation, being only proffered on either side to meet an immediate difficulty, only held good so long as no other weapon was at hand; but when opportunity offered, he who first ventured to seize it and to take his enemy off his guard, thought this perfidious vengeance sweeter than an open one, since, considerations of safety apart, success by treachery won him the palm of superior intelligence. Indeed it is generally the case that men are readier to call rogues clever than simpletons honest, and are as ashamed of being the second as they are proud of being the first.

8 The cause of all these evils was the lust for power arising from greed and ambition; and from these passions proceeded the violence of parties once engaged in contention. The leaders in the cities, each provided with the fairest professions, on the one side with the cry of political equality of the people, on the other of a moderate aristocracy, sought prizes for themselves in those public interests which they pretended to cherish, and, recoiling from no means in their struggles for ascendancy, engaged in the direct excesses; in their acts of vengeance they went to even greater lengths, not stopping at what justice or the good of the state demanded, but making the party caprice of the moment their only standard, and invoking with equal readiness the condemnation of an unjust verdict or the authority of the strong arm to glut the animosities of the hour. Thus religion was in honor with neither party; but the use of fair phrases to arrive at guilty ends was in high reputation. Meanwhile the moderate part of the citizens perished between the two, either for not joining in the quarrel, or because envy would not suffer them to escape.

Chapter 83

1 Thus every form of iniquity took root in the Hellenic countries by reason of the troubles. The ancient simplicity into which honor so largely entered was laughed down and disappeared; and society became divided into camps in which no man trusted his fellow.

2 To put an end to this, there was neither promise to be depended upon, nor oath that could command respect; but all parties dwelling rather in their calculation upon the hopelessness of a permanent state of things, were more intent upon self-defence than capable of confidence.

3 In this contest the blunter wits were most successful. Apprehensive of their own deficiencies and of the cleverness of their antagonists, they feared to be worsted in debate and to be surprised by the combinations of their more versatile opponents, and so at once boldly had recourse to action:

4 while their adversaries, arrogantly thinking that they should know in time, and that it was unnecessary to secure by action what policy afforded, often fell victims to their want of precaution.

Chapter 84

1 Meanwhile Corcyra gave the first example of most of the crimes alluded to; of the reprisals exacted by the governed who had never experienced equitable treatment or indeed aught but insolence from their rulers—when their hour came; of the iniquitous resolves of those who desired to get rid of their accustomed poverty, and ardently coveted their neighbors' goods; and lastly, of the savage and pitiless excesses into which men who had begun the struggle not in a class but in a party spirit, were hurried by their ungovernable passions.

2 In the confusion into which life was now thrown in the cities, human nature, always rebelling against the law and now its master, gladly showed itself ungoverned in passion, above respect for justice, and the enemy of all superiority; since revenge would not have been set above religion, and gain above justice, had it not been for the fatal power of envy.

3 Indeed men too often take upon themselves in the prosecution of their revenge to set the example of doing away with those general laws to which all alike can look for salvation in adversity, instead of allowing them to subsist against the day of danger when their aid may be required.

Chapter 85

1 While the revolutionary passions thus for the first time displayed themselves in the factions of Corcyra, Eurymedon and the Athenian fleet sailed away;

2 after which some five hundred Corcyrean exiles who had succeeded in escaping, took some forts on the mainland, and becoming masters of the Corcyrean territory over the water, made this their base to plunder their countrymen in the island, and did so much damage as to cause a severe famine in the town.

3 They also sent envoys to Lacedaemon and Corinth to negotiate their restoration; but meeting with no success, afterwards got together boats and mercenaries and crossed over to the island, being about six hundred in all;

4 and burning their boats so as to have no hope except in becoming masters of the country, went up to Mount Istone, and fortifying themselves there, began to annoy those in the city and obtained command of the country.

Chapter 86

1 At the close of the same summer the Athenians sent twenty ships under the command of Laches, son of Melanopus, and Charceades, son of Euphiletus, to Sicily,

2 where the Syracusans and Leontines were at war. The Syracusans had for allies all the Dorian cities except Camarina—these had been included in the Lacedaemonian confederacy from the commencement of the war, though they had not taken any active part in it—the Leontines had Camarina and the Chalcidian cities. In Italy the Locrians were for the Syracusans, the Rhegians for their Leontine kinsmen.

3 The allies of the Leontines now sent to Athens and appealed to their ancient alliance and to their Ionian origin, to persuade the Athenians to send them a fleet, as the Syracusans were blockading them by land and sea.

4 The Athenians sent it upon the plea of their common descent, but in reality to prevent the exportation of Sicilian corn to Peloponnese and to test the possibility of bringing Sicily into subjection.

5 Accordingly they established themselves at Rhegium in Italy, and from thence carried on the war in concert with their allies.

Chapter 87

1 Summer was now over. The winter following, the plague a second time attacked the Athenians; for although it had never entirely left them, still there had been a notable abatement in its ravages.

2 The second visit lasted no less than a year, the first having lasted two; and nothing distressed the Athenians and reduced their power more than this.

3 No less than four thousand four hundred heavy infantry in the ranks died of it and three hundred cavalry, besides a number of the multitude that was never ascertained.

4 At the same time took place the numerous earthquakes in Athens, Euboea, and Boeotia, particularly at Orchomenus in the last-named country.

Chapter 88

1 The same winter the Athenians in Sicily and the Rhegians, with thirty ships, made an expedition against the islands of Aeolus; it being impossible to invade them in summer, owing to the want of water.

2 These islands are occupied by the Liparians, a Cnidian colony, who live in one of them of no great size called Lipara; and from this as their headquarters cultivate the rest, Didyme, Strongyle, and Hiera.

3 In Hiera the people in those parts believe that Hephaestus has his forge, from the quantity of flame which they see it send out by night, and of smoke by day. These islands lie off the coast of the Sicels and Messinese, and were allies of the Syracusans.

4 The Athenians laid waste their land, and as the inhabitants did not submit, sailed back to Rhegium. Thus the winter ended, and with it ended the fifth year of this war, of which Thucydides was the historian.

Chapter 89

1 The next summer the Peloponnesians and their allies set out to invade Attica under the command of Agis, son of Archidamus, and went as far as the Isthmus, but numerous earthquakes occurring, turned back again without the invasion taking place.

2 About the same time that these earthquakes were so common, the sea at Orobiae, in Euboea, retiring from the then line of coast, returned in a huge wave and invaded a great part of the town, and retreated leaving some of it still under water; so that what was once land is now sea; such of the inhabitants perishing as could not run up to the higher ground in time.

3 A similar inundation also occurred at Atalanta, the island off the Opuntian-Locrian coast, carrying away part of the Athenian fort and wrecking one of two ships which were drawn up on the beach.

4 At Peparethus also the sea retreated a little, without however any inundation following; and an earthquake threw down part of the wall, the town hall, and a few other buildings.

5 The cause, in my opinion, of this phenomenon must be sought in the earthquake. At the point where its shock has been the most violent the sea is driven back, and suddenly recoiling with redoubled force, causes the inundation. Without an earthquake I do not see how such an accident could happen.

Chapter 90

1 During the same summer different operations were carried on by the different belligerents in Sicily; by the Siceliots themselves against each other, and by the Athenians and their allies: I shall however confine myself to the actions in which the Athenians took part, choosing the most important.

2 The death of the Athenian general Charoeades, killed by the Syracusans in battle, left Laches in the sole command of the fleet, which he now directed in concert with the allies against Mylae, a place belonging to the Messinese. Two Messinese battalions in garrison at Mylae laid an ambush for the party landing from the ships,

3 but were routed with great slaughter by the Athenians and their allies, who thereupon assaulted the fortification and compelled them to surrender the Acropolis and to march with them upon Messina.

4 This town afterwards also submitted upon the approach of the Athenians and their allies, and gave hostages and all other securities required.

Chapter 91

1 The same summer the Athenians sent thirty ships round Peloponnese under Demosthenes, son of Alcisthenes, and Procles, son of Theodorus, and sixty others, with two thousand heavy infantry, against Melos, under Nicias, son of Niceratus;

2 wishing to reduce the Melians, who, although islanders refused to be subjects of Athens or even to join her confederacy.

3 The devastation of their land not procuring their submission, the fleet, weighing from Melos, sailed to Oropus in the territory of Graea, and landing at nightfall, the heavy infantry started at once from the ships by land for Tanagra in Boeotia,

4 where they were met by the whole levy from Athens, agreeably to a concerted signal, under the command of Hipponicus, son of Callias, and Eurymedon, son of Thucles.

5 They encamped, and passing that day in ravaging the Tanagraean territory, remained there for the night; and next day, after defeating those of the Tanagraeans who sallied out against them and some Thebans who had come up to help the Tanagraeans, took some arms, set up a trophy, and retired, the troops to the city and the others to the ships.

6 Nicias with his sixty ships coasted along shore and ravaged the Locrian seaboard, and so returned home.

Chapter 92

1 About this time the Lacedaemonians founded their colony of Heraclea in Trachis, their object being the following.

2 The Malians form in all three tribes, the Paralians, the Hiereans, and the Trachinians. The last of these having suffered severely in a war with their neighbors the Oetaeans, at first intended to give themselves up to Athens; but afterwards fearing not to find in her the security that they sought, sent to Lacedaemon, having chosen Tisamenus for their ambassador.

3 In this embassy joined also the Dorians from the mother country of the Lacedaemonians, with the same request, as they themselves also suffered from the same enemy.

4 After hearing them, the Lacedaemonians determined to send out the colony, wishing to assist the Trachinians and Dorians, and also because they thought that the proposed town would lie conveniently for the purposes of the war against the Athenians. A fleet might be got ready there against Euboea, with the advantage of a short passage to the island; and the town would also be useful as a station on the road to Thrace. In short, everything made the Lacedaemonians eager to found the place.

5 After first consulting the god at Delphi and receiving a favorable answer, they sent off the colonists, Spartans and Perioeci, inviting also any of the rest of the Hellenes who might wish to accompany them, except Ionians, Achaeans, and certain other nationalities; three Lacedaemonians leading as founders of the colony, Leon, Alcidas, and Damagon.

6 The settlement effected, they fortified anew the city, now called Heraclea, distant about four miles and a half from Thermopylae and two miles and a quarter from the sea, and commenced building docks, closing the side towards Thermopylae just by the pass itself, in order that they might be easily defended.

Chapter 93

1 The foundation of this town, evidently meant to annoy Euboea (the passage across to Cenaeum in that island being a short one), at first caused some alarm at Athens, which the event however did nothing to justify, the town never giving them any trouble.

2 The reason of this was as follows. The Thessalians, who were sovereign in those parts, and whose territory was menaced by its foundation, were afraid that it might prove a very powerful neighbor, and accordingly continually harassed and made war upon the new settlers, until they at last wore them out in spite of their originally considerable numbers, people flocking from all quarters to a place founded by the Lacedaemonians, and thus thought secure of prosperity. On the other hand the Lacedaemonians themselves, in the persons of their governors, did their full share towards ruining its prosperity and reducing its population, as they frightened away the greater part of the inhabitants by governing harshly and in some cases not fairly, and thus made it easier for their neighbors to prevail against them.

Chapter 94

1 The same summer, about the same time that the Athenians were detained at Melos, their fellow-citizens in the thirty ships cruising round Peloponnese, after cutting off some guards in an ambush at Ellomenus in Leucadia, subsequently went against Leucas itself with a large armament, having been reinforced by the whole levy of the Acarnanians except Oeniadae, and by the Zacynthians and Cephallenans and fifteen ships from Corcyra.

2 While the Leucadians witnessed the devastation of their land, without and within the isthmus upon which the town of Leucas and the temple of Apollo stand, without making any movement on account of the overwhelming numbers of the enemy, the Acarnanians urged Demosthenes, the Athenian general, to build a wall so as to cut off the town from the continent, a measure which they were convinced would secure its capture and rid them once and for all of a most troublesome enemy.

3 Demosthenes however had in the meanwhile been persuaded by the Messenians that it was a fine opportunity for him, having so large an army assembled, to attack the Aetolians, who were not only the enemies of Naupactus, but whose reduction would further make it easy to gain the rest of that part of the continent for the Athenians.

4 The Aetolian nation, although numerous and warlike, yet dwelt in unwalled villages scattered far apart, and had nothing but light armour, and might, according to the Messenians, be subdued without much difficulty before succors could arrive.

5 The plan which they recommended was to attack first the Apodotians, next the Ophionians, and after these the Eurytanians, who are the largest tribe in Aetolia, and speak, as is said, a language exceedingly difficult to understand, and eat their flesh raw. These once subdued, the rest would easily come in.

Chapter 95

1 To this plan Demosthenes consented, not only to please the Messenians, but also in the belief that by adding the Aetolians to his other continental allies he would be able, without aid from home, to march against the Boeotians by way of Ozolian Locris to Kytinium in Doris, keeping Parnassus on his right until he descended to the Phocians, whom he could force to join him if their ancient friendship for Athens did not, as he anticipated, at once decide them to do so. Arrived in Phocis he was already upon the frontier of Boeotia.

2 He accordingly weighed from Leucas, against the wish of the Acarnanians, and with his whole armament sailed along the coast to Sollium, where he communicated to them his intention; and upon their refusing to agree to it on account of the non-investment of Leucas, himself with the rest of the forces, the Cephallenians, the Messenians, and Zacynthians, and three hundred Athenian marines from his own ships (the fifteen Corcyraean vessels having departed), started on his expedition against the Aetolians.

3 His base he established at Oeneon in Locris, as the Ozolian Locrians were allies of Athens and were to meet him with all their forces in the interior. Being neighbors of the Aetolians and armed in the same way, it was thought that they would be of great service upon the expedition, from their acquaintance with the localities and the warfare of the inhabitants.

Chapter 96

1 After bivouacking with the army in the precinct of Nemean Zeus, in which the poet Hesiod is said to have been killed by the people of the country, according to an oracle which had foretold that he should die in Nemea, Demosthenes set out at daybreak to invade Aetolia.

2 The first day he took Potidania, the next Krokyle, and the third Tichium, where he halted and sent back the booty to Eupalium in Locris, having determined to pursue his conquests as far as the Ophionians, and in the event of their refusing to submit, to return to Naupactus and make them the objects of a second expedition.

3 Meanwhile the Aetolians had been aware of his design from the moment of its formation, and as soon as the army invaded their country came up in great force with all their tribes; even the most remote Ophionians, the Bomiensians, and Calliensians, who extend towards the Malian Gulf, being among the number.

Chapter 97

1 The Messenians, however, adhered to their original advice. Assuring Demosthenes that the Aetolians were an easy conquest, they urged him to push on as rapidly as possible, and to try to take the villages as fast as he came up to them, without waiting until the whole nation should be in arms against him.

2 Led on by his advisers and trusting in his fortune, as he had met with no opposition, without waiting for his Locrian reinforcements, who were to have supplied him with the light-armed darters in which he was most deficient, he advanced and stormed Aegitium, the inhabitants flying before him and posting themselves upon the hills above the town, which stood on high ground about nine miles from the sea.

3 Meanwhile the Aetolians had gathered to the rescue, and now attacked the Athenians and their allies, running down from the hills on every side and darting their javelins, falling back when the Athenian army advanced, and coming on as it retired; and for a long while the battle was of this character, alternate advance and retreat, in both which operations the Athenians had the worst.

Chapter 98

1 Still as long as their archers had arrows left and were able to use them, they held out, the light-armed Aetolians retiring before the arrows; but after the captain of the archers had been killed and his men scattered, the soldiers, wearied out with the constant repetition of the same exertions

2 and hard pressed by the Aetolians with their javelins, at last turned and fled, and falling into pathless gullies and places that they were unacquainted with, thus perished, the Messenian Chromon, their guide, having also unfortunately been killed. A great many were overtaken in the pursuit by the swift-footed and light-armed Aetolians, and fell beneath their javelins; the greater number however missed their road and rushed into the wood, which had no ways out, and which was soon fired and burnt round them by the enemy.

3 Indeed the Athenian army fell victims to death in every form, and suffered all the vicissitudes of flight; the survivors escaped with difficulty to the sea and Oeneon in Locris, whence they had set out.

4 Many of the allies were killed, and about one hundred and twenty Athenian heavy infantry, not a man less, and all in the prime of life. These were by far the best men in the city of Athens that fell during this war. Among the slain was also Procles, the colleague of Demosthenes.

5 Meanwhile the Athenians took up their dead under truce from the Aetolians, and retired to Naupactus, and from thence went in their ships to Athens; Demosthenes staying behind in Naupactus and in the neighborhood, being afraid to face the Athenians after the disaster.

Chapter 99

1 About the same time the Athenians on the coast of Sicily sailed to Locris, and in a descent which they made from the ships defeated the Locrians who came against them, and took a fort upon the river Halex.

Chapter 100

1 The same summer the Aetolians, who before the Athenian expedition had sent an embassy to Corinth and Lacedaemon, composed of Tolophus, an Ophionian, Boriades, an Eurytanian, and Tisander, an Apodotian, obtained that an army should be sent them against Naupactus, which had invited the Athenian invasion.

2 The Lacedaemonians accordingly sent off towards autumn three thousand heavy infantry of the allies, five hundred of whom were from Heraclea, the newly-founded city in Trachis, under the command of Eurylochus, a Spartan, accompanied by Macarius and Menedaius, also Spartans.

Chapter 101

1 The army having assembled at Delphi, Eurylochus sent a herald to the Ozolian Locrians; the road to Naupactus lying through their territory, and he having besides conceived the idea of detaching them from Athens.

2 His chief abettors in Locris were the Amphissians, who were alarmed at the hostility of the Phocians. These first gave hostages themselves, and induced the rest to do the same for fear of the invading army; first, their neighbors the Myonians, who held the most difficult of the passes, and after them the Ipnians, Messapians, Tritaeans, Chalaeans, Tolophonians, Hessians, and Oeanthians, all of whom joined in the expedition; the Olpaeans contenting themselves with giving hostages, without accompanying the invasion; and the Hyaeans refusing to do either, until the capture of Polis, one of their villages.

Chapter 102

1 His preparations completed, Eurylochus lodged the hostages in Kytinium, in Doris, and advanced upon Naupactus through the country of the Locrians, taking upon his way Oeneon and Eupalium, two of their towns that refused to join him.

2 Arrived in the Naupactian territory, and having been now joined by the Aetolians, the army laid waste the land and took the suburb of the town, which was unfortified; and after this Molycrium also, a Corinthian colony subject to Athens.

3 Meanwhile the Athenian Demosthenes, who since the affair in Aetolia had remained near Naupactus, having had notice of the army and fearing for the town, went and persuaded the Acarnanians, although not without difficulty because of his departure from Leucas, to go to the relief of Naupactus.

4 They accordingly sent with him on board his ships a thousand heavy infantry, who threw themselves into the place and saved it; the extent of its wall and the small number of its defenders otherwise placing it in the greatest danger.

5 Meanwhile Eurylochus and his companions, finding that this force had entered and that it was impossible to storm the town, withdrew, not to Peloponnese, but to the country once called Aeolis and now Calydon and Pleuron, and to the places in that neighborhood and Proschium in Aetolia;

6 the Ambraciots having come and urged them to combine with them in attacking Amphilochian Argos and the rest of Amphilochia and Acarnania; affirming that the conquest of these countries would bring all the continent into alliance with Lacedaemon.

7 To this Eurylochus consented, and dismissing the Aetolians, now remained quiet with his army in those parts, until the time should come for the Ambraciots to take the field, and for him to join them before Argos.Summer was now over.

Chapter 103

1 The winter ensuing, the Athenians in Sicily with their Hellenic allies, and such of the Sicel subjects or allies of Syracuse as had revolted from her and joined their army, marched against the Sicel town Inessa, the Acropolis of which was held by the Syracusans, and after attacking it without being able to take it, retired.

2 In the retreat, the allies retreating after the Athenians were attacked by the Syracusans from the fort, and a large part of their army routed with great slaughter.

3 After this, Laches and the Athenians from the ships made some descents in Locris, and defeating the Locrians, who came against them with Proxenus, son of Capaton, upon the river Cacinus, took some arms and departed.

Chapter 104

1 The same winter the Athenians purified Delos, in compliance, it appears, with a certain oracle. It had been purified before by Pisistratus the tyrant; not indeed the whole island, but as much of it as could be seen from the temple. All of it was, however, now purified in the following way.

2 All the sepulchres of those that had died in Delos were taken up, and for the future it was commanded that no one should be allowed either to die or to give birth to a child in the island; but that they should be carried over to Rhenea, which is so near to Delos that Polycrates, tyrant of Samos, having added Rhenea to his other island conquests during his period of naval ascendancy, dedicated it to the Delian Apollo by binding it to Delos with a chain.The Athenians, after the purification, celebrated, for the first time, the quinquennial festival of the Delian games.

3 Once upon a time, indeed, there was a great assemblage of the Ionians and the neighboring islanders at Delos, who used to come to the festival, as the Ionians now do to that of Ephesus, and athletic and poetical contests took place there, and the cities brought choirs of dancers.

4 Nothing can be clearer on this point than the following verses of Homer, taken from a hymn to Apollo:— / Phoebus, where'er thou strayest, far or near, / Delos was still of all thy haunts most dear. / Thither the robed Ionians take their way / With wife and child to keep thy holiday,— / Invoke thy favour on each manly game, / And dance and sing in honor of thy name.

5 That there was also a poetical contest in which the Ionians went to contend, again is shown by the following, taken from the same hymn. After celebrating the Delian dance of the women, he ends his song of praise with these verses, in which he also alludes to himself:— / Well, may Apollo keep you all! and so, / Sweethearts, good-bye—yet tell me not I go / Out from your hearts; and if in after hours / Some other wanderer in this world of ours / Touch at your shores, and ask your maidens here / Who sings the songs the sweetest to your ear, / Think of me then, and answer with a smile, / A blind old man of Chios' rocky isle.

6 Homer thus attests that there was anciently a great assembly and festival at Delos. In later times, although the islanders and the Athenians continued to send the choirs of dancers with sacrifices, the contests and most of the ceremonies were abolished, probably through adversity, until the Athenians celebrated the games upon this occasion with the novelty of horse-races.

Chapter 105

1 The same winter the Ambraciots, as they had promised Eurylochus when they retained his army, marched out against Amphilochian Argos with three thousand heavy infantry, and invading the Argive territory occupied Olpae, a stronghold on a hill near the sea, which had been formerly fortified by the Acarnanians and used as the place of assizes for their nation, and which is about two miles and three-quarters from the city of Argos upon the sea-coast.

2 Meanwhile the Acarnanians went with a part of their forces to the relief of Argos, and with the rest encamped in Amphilochia at the place called Krenae, or the Wells, to watch for Eurylochus and his Peloponnesians, and to prevent their passing through and effecting their junction with the Ambraciots;

3 while they also sent for Demosthenes, the commander of the Aetolian expedition, to be their leader, and for the twenty Athenian ships that were cruising off Peloponnese under the command of Aristotle, son of Timocrates, and Hierophon, son of Antimnestus.

4 On their part, the Ambraciots at Olpae sent a messenger to their own city, to beg them to come with their whole levy to their assistance, fearing that the army of Eurylochus might not be able to pass through the Acarnanians, and that they might themselves be obliged to fight single-handed, or be unable to retreat, if they wished it, without danger.

Chapter 106

1 Meanwhile Eurylochus and his Peloponnesians, learning that the Ambraciots at Olpae had arrived, set out from Proschium with all haste to join them, and crossing the Achelous advanced through Acarnania, which they found deserted by its population, who had gone to the relief of Argos; keeping on their right the city of the Stratians and its garrison, and on their left the rest of Acarnania.

2 Traversing the territory of the Stratians, they advanced through Phytia, next, skirting Medeon, through Limnaea; after which they left Acarnania behind them and entered a friendly country, that of the Agraeans.

3 From thence they reached and crossed Mount Thyamus, which belongs to the Agraeans, and descended into the Argive territory after nightfall, and passing between the city of Argos and the Acarnanian posts at Krenae, joined the Ambraciots at Olpae.

Chapter 107

1 Uniting here at daybreak, they sat down at the place called Metropolis, and encamped. Not long afterwards the Athenians in the twenty ships came into the Ambracian Gulf to support the Argives, with Demosthenes and two hundred Messenian heavy infantry, and sixty Athenian archers.

2 While the fleet off Olpae blockaded the hill from the sea, the Acarnanians and a few of the Amphilochians, most of whom were kept back by force by the Ambraciots, had already arrived at Argos, and were preparing to give battle to the enemy, having chosen Demosthenes to command the whole of the allied army in concert with their own generals.

3 Demosthenes led them near to Olpae and encamped, a great ravine separating the two armies. During five days they remained inactive; on the sixth both sides formed in order of battle. The army of the Peloponnesians was the largest and outflanked their opponents; and Demosthenes fearing that his right might be surrounded, placed in ambush in a hollow way overgrown with bushes some four hundred heavy infantry and light troops, who were to rise up at the moment of the onset behind the projecting left wing of the enemy, and to take them in the rear.

4 When both sides were ready they joined battle; Demosthenes being on the right wing with the Messenians and a few Athenians, while the rest of the line was made up of the different divisions of the Acarnanians, and of the Amphilochian darters. The Peloponnesians and Ambraciots were drawn up pell-mell together, with the exception of the Mantineans, who were massed on the left, without however reaching to the extremity of the wing, where Eurylochus and his men confronted the Messenians and Demosthenes.

Chapter 108

1 The Peloponnesians were now well engaged and with their outflanking wing were upon the point of turning their enemy's right; when the Acarnanians from the ambuscade set upon them from behind, and broke them at the first attack, without their staying to resist; while the panic into which they fell caused the flight of most of their army, terrified beyond measure at seeing the division of Eurylochus and their best troops cut to pieces. Most of the work was done by Demosthenes and his Messenians, who were posted in this part of the field.

2 Meanwhile the Ambraciots (who are the best soldiers in those countries) and the troops upon the right wing, defeated the division opposed to them and pursued it to Argos.

3 Returning from the pursuit, they found their main body defeated; and hard pressed by the Acarnanians, With difficulty made good their passage to Olpae, suffering heavy loss on the way, as they dashed on without discipline or order, the Mantineans excepted, who kept their ranks best of any in the army during the retreat. The battle did not end until the evening.

Chapter 109

1 The next day Menedaius, who on the death of Eurylochus and Macarius had succeeded to the sole command, being at a loss after so signal a defeat how to stay and sustain a siege, cut off as he was by land and by the Athenian fleet by sea, and equally so how to retreat in safety, opened a parley with Demosthenes and the Acarnanian generals for a truce and permission to retreat, and at the same time for the recovery of the dead.

2 The dead they gave back to him, and setting up a trophy took up their own also to the number of about three hundred. The retreat demanded they refused publicly to the army; but permission to depart without delay was secretly granted to the Mantineans and to Menedaius and the other commanders and principal men of the Peloponnesians by Demosthenes and his Acarnanian colleagues; who desired to strip the Ambraciots and the mercenary host of foreigners of their supporters; and, above all, to discredit the Lacedaemonians and Peloponnesians with the Hellenes in those parts, as traitors and selfseekers.

3 While the enemy was taking up his dead and hastily burying them as he could, and those who obtained permission were secretly planning their retreat,

Chapter 110

1 word was brought to Demosthenes and the Acarnanians that the Ambraciots from the city, in compliance with the first message from Olpae, were on the march with their whole levy through Amphilochia to join their countrymen at Olpae, knowing nothing of what had occurred. Demosthenes prepared to march with his army against them,

2 and meanwhile sent on at once a strong division to beset the roads and occupy the strong positions.

Chapter 111

1 In the meantime the Mantineans and others included in the agreement went out under the pretence of gathering herbs and firewood, and stole off by twos and threes, picking on the way the things which they professed to have come out for, until they had gone some distance from Olpae, when they quickened their pace.

2 The Ambraciots and such of the rest as had accompanied them in larger parties, seeing them going on, pushed on in their turn, and began running in order to catch them up.

3 The Acarnanians at first thought that all alike were departing without permission, and began to pursue the Peloponnesians; and believing that they were being betrayed, even threw a dart or two at some of their generals who tried to stop them and told them that leave had been given. Eventually, however, they let pass the Mantineans and Peloponnesians, and slew only the Ambraciots,

4 there being much dispute and difficulty in distinguishing whether a man was an Ambraciot or a Peloponnesian. The number thus slain was about two hundred; the rest escaped into the bordering territory of, and found refuge with Salynthius, the friendly king of the Agraeans.

Chapter 112

1 Meanwhile the Ambraciots from the city arrived at Idomene. Idomene consists of two lofty hills, the highest of which the troops sent on by Demosthenes succeeded in occupying after nightfall, unobserved by the Ambraciots, who had meanwhile ascended the smaller and bivouacked upon it.

2 After supper Demosthenes set out with the rest of the army, as soon as it was evening; himself with half his force making for the pass, and the remainder going by the Amphilochian hills.

3 At dawn he fell upon the Ambraciots while they were still abed, ignorant of what had passed, and fully thinking that it was their own countrymen,—

4 Demosthenes having purposely put the Messenians in front with orders to address them in the Doric dialect, and thus to inspire confidence in the sentinels, who would not be able to see them, as it was still night.

5 In this way he routed their army as soon as he attacked it, slaying most of them where they were, the rest breaking away in flight over the hills.

6 The roads, however, were already occupied, and while the Amphilochians knew their own country, the Ambraciots were ignorant of it and could not tell which way to turn, and had also heavy armour as against a light-armed enemy, and so fell into ravines and into the ambushes which had been set for them, and perished there.

7 In their manifold efforts to escape some even turned to the sea, which was not far off, and seeing the Athenian ships coasting along shore just while the action was going on, swam off to them, thinking it better in the panic they were in, to perish, if perish they must, by the hands of the Athenians, than by those of the barbarous and detested Amphilochians.

8 Of the large Ambraciot force destroyed in this manner, a few only reached the city in safety; while the Acarnanians, after stripping the dead and setting up a trophy, returned to Argos.

Chapter 113

1 The next day arrived a herald from the Ambraciots who had fled from Olpae to the Agraeans, to ask leave to take up the dead that had fallen after the first engagement, when they left the camp with the Mantineans and their companions, without, like them, having had permission to do so.

2 At the sight of the arms of the Ambraciots from the city, the herald was astonished at their number, knowing nothing of the disaster and fancying that they were those of their own party.

3 Some one asked him what he was so astonished at, and how many of them had been killed, fancying in his turn that this was the herald from the troops at Idomene. He replied, ‘About two hundred;’ upon which his interrogator took him up, saying,

4 ‘Why, the arms you see here are of more than a thousand.’ The herald replied, ‘Then they are not the arms of those who fought with us?’ The other answered, ‘Yes, they are, if at least you fought at Idomene yesterday.’ ‘But we fought with no one yesterday; but the day before in the retreat.’ ‘However that may be, we fought yesterday with those who came to reinforce you from the city of the Ambraciots.’

5 When the herald heard this and knew that the reinforcement from the city had been destroyed, he broke into wailing, and stunned at the magnitude of the present evils, went away at once without having performed his errand, or again asking for the dead bodies.

6 Indeed, this was by far the greatest disaster that befell any one Hellenic city in an equal number of days during this war; and I have not set down the number of the dead, because the amount stated seems so out of proportion to the size of the city as to be incredible. In any case I know that if the Acarnanians and Amphilochians had wished to take Ambracia as the Athenians and Demosthenes advised, they would have done so without striking a blow; as it was, they feared that if the Athenians had it they would be worse neighbors to them than the present.

Chapter 114

1 After this the Acarnanians allotted a third of the spoils to the Athenians, and divided the rest among their own different towns. The share of the Athenians was captured on the voyage home; the arms now deposited in the Attic temples are three hundred panoplies, which the Acarnanians set apart for Demosthenes, and which he brought to Athens in person, his return to his country after the Aetolian disaster being rendered less hazardous by this exploit.

2 The Athenians in the twenty ships also went off to Naupactus. The Acarnanians and Amphilochians, after the departure of Demosthenes and the Athenians, granted the Ambraciots and Peloponnesians who had taken refuge with Salynthius and the Agraeans a free retreat from Oeniadae, to which place they had removed from the country of Salynthius,

3 and for the future concluded with the Ambraciots a treaty and alliance for one hundred years, upon the terms following. It was to be a defensive, not an offensive alliance; the Ambraciots could not be required to march with the Acarnanians against the Peloponnesians, nor the Acarnanians with the Ambraciots against the Athenians; for the rest the Ambraciots were to give up the places and hostages that they held of the Amphilochians, and not to give help to Anactorium, which was at enmity with the Acarnanians.

4 With this arrangement they put an end to the war. After this the Corinthians sent a garrison of their own citizens to Ambracia, composed of three hundred heavy infantry, under the command of Xenocleides, son of Euthycles, who reached their destination after a difficult journey across the continent. Such was the history of the affair of Ambracia.

Chapter 115

1 The same winter the Athenians in Sicily made a descent from their ships upon the territory of Himera, in concert with the Sicels, who had invaded its borders from the interior, and also sailed to the islands of Aeolus.

2 Upon their return to Rhegium they found the Athenian general, Pythodorus, son of Isolochus, come to supersede Laches in the command of the fleet.

3 The allies in Sicily had sailed to Athens and induced the Athenians to send out more vessels to their assistance, pointing out that the Syracusans who already commanded their land were making efforts to get together a navy, to avoid being any longer excluded from the sea by a few vessels.

4 The Athenians proceeded to man forty ships to send to them, thinking that the war in Sicily would thus be the sooner ended, and also wishing to exercise their navy.

5 One of the generals, Pythodorus, was accordingly sent out with a few ships; Sophocles, son of Sostratides, and Eurymedon, son of Thucles, being destined to follow with the main body.

6 Meanwhile Pythodorus had taken the command of Laches' ships, and towards the end of winter sailed against the Locrian fort, which Laches had formerly taken, and returned after being defeated in battle by the Locrians.

Chapter 116

1 In the first days of this spring, the stream of fire issued from Etna, as on former occasions, and destroyed some land of the Catanians, who live upon Mount Etna, which is the largest mountain in Sicily.

2 Fifty years, it is said, had elapsed since the last eruption, there having been three in all since the Hellenes have inhabited Sicily.

3 Such were the events of this winter; and with it ended the sixth year of this war, of which Thucydides was the historian.