Book 7

Chapter 1

1 After repairing their ships, Gylippus and Pythen sailed along the coast from Tarentum to Epizephyrian Locri. There they learned more certainly that Syracuse was not yet completely walled off, but that an army could still make its way in over Epipolae. They considered whether to keep Sicily on their right and risk sailing into Syracuse, or to keep it on their left, sail first to Himera, and, after securing the support of its people and whatever other troops they could persuade to join them, march overland.

2 They decided to sail for Himera, especially since the four Athenian ships which Nicias had nevertheless sent out on hearing that they were at Locri had not yet reached Rhegium. Getting ahead of this guard, they crossed the strait and, after putting in at Rhegium and Messene, reached Himera.

3 There they persuaded the Himeraeans to join the war, accompany them in person, and supply arms to any sailors from their ships who lacked them; for they had hauled the ships ashore at Himera. They also sent to the Selinuntians, instructing them to meet them with their full force at an appointed place.

4 The Geloans and some of the Sicels also promised to send them a small force. The Sicels were now far readier to join them, both because Archonides had recently died—a ruler of some of the Sicels in that region, a man of considerable power and a friend of the Athenians—and because Gylippus seemed to have come from Lacedaemon with a resolute purpose.

5 Gylippus took with him about seven hundred armed men from his own sailors and marines, a thousand Himeraean hoplites and light troops combined and a hundred cavalry, some light troops and cavalry from Selinus, a few Geloans, and about a thousand Sicels in all, and marched toward Syracuse.

Chapter 2

1 Meanwhile the Corinthians were coming from Leucas to their aid with the rest of the ships as fast as they could. Gongylus, one of the Corinthian commanders, though the last to set out, arrived first at Syracuse with a single ship, a little before Gylippus. Finding the Syracusans about to hold an assembly on ending the war, he prevented it and heartened them with the news that more ships were still approaching, and that the Lacedaemonians had sent Gylippus son of Cleandridas to take command.

2 The Syracusans took fresh courage and at once marched out with their whole army to meet Gylippus; for they had already learned that he was near.

3 He had meanwhile captured Ietae, a fortified Sicel settlement on his route, and advanced to Epipolae with his men drawn up for battle. Ascending by Euryelus, where the Athenians too had first come up, he marched with the Syracusans against the Athenian fortifications.

4 His arrival happened to fall at the moment when the Athenians had already completed their double wall, seven or eight stades long, down to the Great Harbor, except for a short stretch by the sea, on which they were still working. Along the rest of the circuit, toward Trogilus and the sea on the other side, stones had already been laid out for the greater part of the wall, and some stretches had been left half built, others finished. So narrowly had Syracuse escaped its peril.

Chapter 3

1 The Athenians were at first thrown into confusion by the sudden advance of Gylippus and the Syracusans, but then drew up in battle order. Halting his men nearby, Gylippus sent them a herald to say that, if they were willing to leave Sicily within five days, taking their own possessions with them, he was prepared to make a truce.

2 They treated the offer with contempt and sent the herald away without an answer. After this both sides made ready to fight.

3 But Gylippus, seeing the Syracusans in disorder and finding it difficult to form their ranks, withdrew his army into more open ground. Nicias did not lead the Athenians forward, but remained quiet beside their own wall. When Gylippus realized that they were not advancing, he led his army away to the height called Temenites, and they bivouacked there.

4 The next day he brought up most of his army and formed it in front of the Athenian walls, to prevent the Athenians from sending help elsewhere. He sent a detachment against the fort of Labdalum, captured it, and killed everyone he took inside. The position was out of the Athenians’ sight.

5 On the same day the Syracusans also captured an Athenian trireme lying on guard off the harbor.

Chapter 4

1 After this the Syracusans and their allies began at the city and built a single wall up across Epipolae toward the transverse wall, so that, unless the Athenians could stop them, they would no longer be able to complete the blockade.

2 The Athenians had by now come up to the heights, having completed their wall to the sea. Gylippus, however, took his army by night and advanced against a weak point in the Athenian wall.

3 The Athenians, who happened to be bivouacking outside, became aware of the movement and advanced to meet him. When he realized this, he quickly withdrew his men. The Athenians built the wall higher at that point and kept guard there themselves, while assigning their other allies stations along the rest of the fortifications, each contingent in the place it was to defend.

4 Nicias decided to fortify the place called Plemmyrium, a headland opposite the city which projects into the entrance of the Great Harbor and narrows its mouth. If it were fortified, he thought that bringing in supplies would be easier: they could keep watch off the Syracusans’ harbor from a shorter distance, instead of having to put out from the innermost part of the harbor, as they now did, whenever the enemy made a naval movement. He was already turning his attention more to the war at sea, seeing that, since Gylippus had arrived, their prospects on land were becoming less hopeful.

5 He therefore ferried troops across, moved the ships, and built three forts. Most of the equipment was stored in them, and the large vessels and the fast warships now lay at anchor there.

6 This was a principal cause of the deterioration which now first began among the crews. Water was scarce and had to be fetched from a distance, and whenever the sailors went out to gather firewood they were cut down by the Syracusan cavalry, who controlled the country. For a third of the Syracusan cavalry had been stationed at the little settlement by the Olympieum to deal with the men at Plemmyrium and prevent them from coming out to ravage the land.

7 Nicias also learned that the remaining Corinthian ships were approaching. He sent twenty ships to intercept them, with orders to lie in wait off Locri and Rhegium and along the approach to Sicily.

Chapter 5

1 Gylippus continued building the wall across Epipolae, using the stones which the Athenians had laid out for their own use. At the same time he repeatedly led the Syracusans and their allies out and drew them up in front of the fortifications; the Athenians formed up opposite them.

2 When Gylippus judged the moment right, he began the attack. They came to close quarters and fought between the walls, where the Syracusan cavalry could be of no use.

3 The Syracusans and their allies were defeated and recovered their dead under a truce, while the Athenians set up a trophy. Gylippus then assembled his army and said that the fault had been his, not theirs: by placing their line too far inside the space between the walls, he had deprived them of the support of their cavalry and javelin throwers. Now he would lead them forward again.

4 He urged them to bear in mind that in equipment they would be at no disadvantage, while in spirit it would be intolerable if they, Peloponnesians and Dorians, did not consider themselves bound to defeat Ionians, islanders, and a rabble of men from every quarter, and drive them from the country.

Chapter 6

1 After this, when the moment came, he led them forward again. Nicias and the Athenians believed that, even if the enemy were unwilling to open the battle, they themselves must not stand by and let the wall be carried past their own. For the enemy’s construction had already all but passed the end of the Athenian wall; once it went farther, it would make no difference to the Athenians whether they won every battle or never fought at all. They therefore advanced to meet the Syracusans.

2 Gylippus led his hoplites farther beyond the walls than before and brought them into action, while placing his cavalry and javelin throwers on the Athenians’ flank, in the open ground where the construction of both walls ended.

3 During the battle the cavalry charged the Athenian left wing, which faced them, and put it to flight. As a result the rest of the army too was defeated by the Syracusans and driven headlong back into the fortifications.

4 During the following night the Syracusans succeeded in carrying their wall past the Athenian works before they could be stopped. They themselves could therefore no longer be obstructed by the Athenians, whom they had now wholly deprived of the power to wall them in, even if the Athenians should win in battle.

Chapter 7

1 After this the remaining twelve ships of the Corinthians, Ambraciots, and Leucadians sailed in, eluding the Athenian guard. They were commanded by Erasinides, a Corinthian, and their crews helped the Syracusans complete the rest of the wall as far as the transverse wall.

2 Gylippus went to the rest of Sicily to collect forces for sea and land, and at the same time to bring over any cities that were either lukewarm or still entirely outside the war.

3 Other envoys, Syracusan and Corinthian, were sent to Lacedaemon and Corinth to arrange for more troops to cross, in merchantmen or other vessels, or by whatever means proved practicable; for the Athenians too were sending for reinforcements.

4 The Syracusans manned a fleet and practiced with it, intending to make an attempt at sea as well, and in all other respects their confidence grew greatly.

Chapter 8

1 Nicias perceived this and saw the enemy’s strength and his own difficulties increasing day by day. He too sent a report to Athens. He had often sent reports before, as each event occurred, but did so with particular urgency now, believing that their position was desperate and that, unless the Athenians either recalled them or sent substantial reinforcements at once, there was no hope of survival.

2 But he feared that his messengers might fail to report the facts, whether through inability to express themselves, a lapse of memory, or a desire to say something that would please the crowd. He therefore wrote a letter, thinking this the best way for the Athenians to learn his judgment without any part of it being obscured in transmission, and so to deliberate upon the truth.

3 The men he sent went off carrying the letter and the instructions for what they were to say. He himself attended to the affairs of the army, now keeping it on the defensive rather than exposing it to risks of his own choosing.

Chapter 9

1 At the close of the same summer, Euetion, an Athenian general, marched with Perdiccas and a large force of Thracians against Amphipolis. He failed to capture the city, but brought triremes round into the Strymon and maintained a siege from the river, using Himeraeum as his base. And the summer came to an end.

Chapter 10

1 In the following winter the messengers from Nicias reached Athens, delivered the oral instructions they had been given, answered any questions put to them, and handed over the letter. The secretary of the city came forward and read it to the Athenians. Its contents were as follows.

Chapter 11

1 “Athenians, you know what was done before from my many other letters. Now it is no less necessary for you to learn our present position before deciding what to do.

2 “After we had defeated the Syracusans, against whom we were sent, in most of our battles and had built the walls within which we now remain, Gylippus the Lacedaemonian arrived with an army from the Peloponnese and some of the cities in Sicily. In the first battle he was defeated by us; in the next we were overpowered by his numerous cavalry and javelin throwers and withdrew within the walls.

3 “We have therefore abandoned the work of encirclement because of the enemy’s numbers and remain inactive. We could not even use our whole army, since guarding the walls absorbs part of our hoplite force. The enemy, meanwhile, have built a single wall past ours, so that it is no longer possible to wall them in unless someone attacks this counterwall with a large army and captures it.

4 “Thus, though we seem to be besieging others, we find ourselves rather the besieged, at least on land; for their cavalry prevent us from going far into the country.

Chapter 12

1 “They have also sent envoys to the Peloponnese for another army, and Gylippus has gone to the cities of Sicily, to persuade those now inactive to join the war, and to bring from the others additional land forces and, if he can, naval resources as well.

2 “For their intention, as I learn, is to attack our walls with their army and at the same time to assail us with their ships at sea.

3 “Let none of you think it extraordinary that they should attack at sea as well. Our fleet, as they too have learned, was at its best at the outset, with its ships dry and its crews unimpaired; now the ships are waterlogged from so long at sea, and the crews have deteriorated.

4 “We cannot haul the ships ashore and dry them out, because the enemy’s ships, equal to ours in number or even more numerous, keep us in constant expectation of an attack.

5 “They can plainly be seen practicing; the initiative rests with them, and they have greater freedom to dry out their own ships, since they are not maintaining a blockade against others.

Chapter 13

1 “We could scarcely enjoy that freedom even with a large surplus of ships, and without being compelled, as we now are, to keep them all on guard. For if we withdraw even a small part of our watch, we shall have no supplies: even now we bring them in past the enemy’s city only with difficulty.

2 “Our crews have deteriorated, and are still deteriorating, for the following reasons. Some sailors are killed by the cavalry when gathering firewood, plundering, or fetching water from a distance. The slaves desert, now that we have been reduced to an even contest; and of the foreigners, those who were forced aboard slip away to the various cities at the first opportunity. Others, initially drawn by high pay and expecting to make money rather than fight, now find, against their expectations, that the enemy confront them with a fleet as well as every other kind of resistance. Some go off on the pretext of deserting to the enemy, others however they can—Sicily is a large place. Some, trading on their own account, have even persuaded the trierarchs to put slaves from Hyccara aboard in their stead, and so have robbed the fleet of its trained efficiency.

Chapter 14

1 “You know, as I write this, that a crew’s effective strength lies in a small core of men, and that few of the sailors are the men who give a ship its impetus and keep the rowing together.

2 “The most intractable difficulty of all is that I, the general, cannot prevent these things—your temperaments are hard to govern—and that we have no source from which to replenish our crews, while the enemy have many. We must draw both the men we still have and replacements for our losses from the force with which we arrived; for our present allies, Naxos and Catana, are powerless.

3 “If the enemy gain one further advantage, and the places in Italy which feed us, seeing our position and your failure to come to our aid, go over to them, they will have brought [the war] to its end without a battle, by reducing us through siege.

4 “I could have written you other news, more pleasing than this, but not more useful, if you are to know the situation here clearly before making your decision. Besides, knowing your disposition—to want the most agreeable reports, but afterward to blame the messenger if the outcome falls short of them—I judged it safer to make the truth plain.

Chapter 15

1 “For the present, be assured that, in the tasks for which we originally came, neither your soldiers nor your commanders have deserved reproach. But now that all Sicily is uniting against us and another army from the Peloponnese is expected by the enemy, you must decide on the understanding that our forces here cannot meet even their present strength. You must either recall these men or send out another army no smaller than this one, both for land and sea, together with substantial funds, and someone to succeed me, since a disease of the kidneys makes it impossible for me to remain.

2 “I ask for your indulgence: when I was in health, I did you much good in my commands. Whatever you intend, act at the very beginning of spring and without delay. The enemy can obtain their resources in Sicily quickly; those from the Peloponnese will come more slowly, yet unless you are watchful, some will escape your notice, as they did before, and others will forestall you.”

Chapter 16

1 Such were the contents of Nicias’ letter. After hearing it, the Athenians did not relieve Nicias of his command. Instead, until the colleagues they were to elect could arrive, they appointed two men already there, Menander and Euthydemus, to share his command, so that he should not bear the burden alone in his illness. They also voted to send another force for land and sea, drawn from Athenians on the muster roll and from the allies.

2 They elected Demosthenes son of Alcisthenes and Eurymedon son of Thucles as his fellow commanders. Eurymedon they sent out at once to Sicily, about the winter solstice, with ten ships and a hundred and twenty talents of silver, to announce to the men there that help would come and that they would not be neglected.

Chapter 17

1 Demosthenes remained behind and prepared to sail at the beginning of spring, requisitioning troops from the allies and making ready money, ships, and hoplites at Athens.

2 The Athenians also sent twenty ships round the Peloponnese to keep watch and prevent anyone from crossing to Sicily from Corinth or the Peloponnese.

3 For when their envoys returned and reported that affairs in Sicily had taken a better turn, the Corinthians felt that their earlier dispatch of the ships had not been ill-timed, and their confidence rose still higher. They prepared to send hoplites to Sicily in merchantmen, while the Lacedaemonians prepared to send men from the rest of the Peloponnese in the same way.

4 The Corinthians were also manning twenty-five ships, intending to try a sea battle against the squadron on guard at Naupactus. In this way the Athenians at Naupactus would be less able to prevent their merchantmen from putting out, since they would have to keep watch against the triremes arrayed opposite them.

Chapter 18

1 The Lacedaemonians were also preparing their invasion of Attica, as they had previously resolved. The Syracusans and Corinthians, on learning of the reinforcements being sent from Athens to Sicily, urged this course upon them, in the hope that an invasion would prevent their dispatch. Alcibiades too pressed them insistently to fortify Decelea and not relax their prosecution of the war.

2 What most strengthened the Lacedaemonians was their belief that the Athenians, with a double war on their hands, against themselves and the Siceliots, would be easier to defeat, and that the Athenians had been the first to break the treaty. In the earlier war they felt that the wrongdoing had been more on their own side: the Thebans had entered Plataea during a truce, and although the earlier agreement forbade an armed attack if the other party was willing to submit to arbitration, they themselves had refused when the Athenians challenged them to arbitrate. For this reason they considered their misfortunes deserved, recalling the disaster at Pylos and whatever other reverses had befallen them.

3 But the Athenians had now used their thirty ships, operating from Argos, to ravage part of the territory of Epidaurus and Prasiae and other places, and were at the same time conducting raids from Pylos. Whenever differences arose over a disputed point under the treaty, the Athenians refused to submit to arbitration when the Lacedaemonians challenged them to do so. The Lacedaemonians now believed that the same wrongdoing of which they had earlier been guilty had in turn passed to the Athenians, and were eager for war.

4 During this winter they sent round to their allies requisitions for iron and prepared the other tools needed to establish the fortified post. At the same time they themselves gathered forces to send out in merchantmen to the men in Sicily, and compelled the other Peloponnesians to do likewise. And the winter came to an end, and the eighteenth year of this war, which Thucydides wrote, came to an end.

Chapter 19

1 At the very beginning of the following spring, as early as possible, the Lacedaemonians and their allies invaded Attica under Agis son of Archidamus, king of the Lacedaemonians. First they ravaged the parts of the country around the plain; then they fortified Decelea, dividing the work among the several cities.

2 Decelea is about a hundred and twenty stades from the city of Athens, and about the same distance, or not much farther, from Boeotia. The fort was built in a position overlooking the plain and the richest parts of the country, so as to lay them waste, and was visible as far away as the city of Athens.

3 While the Peloponnesians and their allies in Attica were building the fort, those in the Peloponnese were sending the hoplites to Sicily in merchant ships at about the same time. The Lacedaemonians selected the best of the Helots and of the newly enfranchised, about six hundred hoplites in all, with Eccritus, a Spartan, as commander. The Boeotians sent three hundred hoplites under Xenon and Nicon, Thebans, and Hegesander, a Thespian.

4 These were among the first to set out, putting to sea from Taenarum in Laconia. Not long afterward the Corinthians sent five hundred hoplites, some from Corinth itself and others hired from Arcadia, appointing Alexarchus, a Corinthian, to command them. The Sicyonians also sent two hundred hoplites along with the Corinthians, under Sargeus, a Sicyonian.

5 The twenty-five Corinthian ships that had been manned during the winter lay at anchor opposite the twenty Athenian ships at Naupactus until these hoplites of theirs had sailed from the Peloponnese in the merchant ships. This was indeed why they had been manned in the first place: to keep the Athenians' attention on the triremes rather than on the transports.

Chapter 20

1 Meanwhile, at the very beginning of spring, while Decelea was being fortified, the Athenians sent thirty ships around the Peloponnese under Charicles son of Apollodorus. He had orders to go to Argos and, under the terms of the alliance, call on the Argives to send hoplites aboard his ships.

2 They were also sending Demosthenes to Sicily, as they had intended, with sixty Athenian ships and five Chian, twelve hundred Athenian hoplites drawn from the muster rolls, and as many islanders as they could obtain from each place. From their other subject allies too they had collected whatever useful contributions to the war were available. His orders were first to sail around with Charicles and join him in operations along the Laconian coast.

3 Demosthenes sailed to Aegina and waited there for any part of his force that had been left behind, and for Charicles to take the Argives aboard.

Chapter 21

1 In Sicily, at about this same time in the spring, Gylippus too reached Syracuse, bringing as large a force as he could from each of the cities he had won over.

2 He called the Syracusans together and said that they must man as many ships as possible and put themselves to the test in a naval battle; he hoped by this means to achieve something in the war that would justify the risk.

3 Hermocrates also did much to encourage them not to lose heart at the prospect of attacking the Athenians at sea. The Athenians themselves, he said, had neither inherited their naval experience from their fathers nor possessed it forever: they had been even more a people of the land than the Syracusans, and had been forced by the Medes to become seamen. Against daring men such as the Athenians, those who dared to face them would prove the most formidable opponents [for them]. For the same means by which the Athenians frightened their neighbors—attacking with audacity, even when they had no superiority in strength—could equally well be used by the Syracusans against their enemies.

4 He said that the Syracusans should be well assured of this: by daring, against all expectation, to confront the Athenian fleet, they would gain more from the shock this caused the Athenians than the Athenians, with all their skill, could inflict on Syracusan inexperience. He urged them, then, to make trial of their fleet and not shrink back.

5 Persuaded by Gylippus, Hermocrates, and whoever else spoke in support, the Syracusans were eager for the naval battle and began manning their ships.

Chapter 22

1 When Gylippus had made the fleet ready, he led the whole land army out by night, intending himself to attack the forts on Plemmyrium by land. At the same time, on an agreed signal, thirty-five Syracusan triremes sailed out from the Great Harbor, while forty-five from the smaller harbor, where their dockyard was, sailed around to join those inside and advance together against Plemmyrium, so that the Athenians would be thrown into confusion from both directions.

2 The Athenians hurriedly manned sixty ships in response. With twenty-five they fought the thirty-five Syracusan ships in the Great Harbor, while with the remainder they went to meet those sailing around from the dockyard. Battle began at once outside the entrance to the Great Harbor, and for a long time the two sides held out against each other, one seeking to force an entrance, the other to prevent it.

Chapter 23

1 Meanwhile the Athenians on Plemmyrium had gone down to the sea and were intent on the naval battle. Gylippus seized the moment to fall suddenly upon the forts at dawn, taking the largest first and then the two smaller ones, whose guards did not stand their ground once they saw how easily the largest had fallen.

2 From the first fort captured, the men who had taken refuge in the boats and in a merchant ship had difficulty making their way to the camp: the Syracusans were winning the battle with their ships in the Great Harbor, and a single fast-sailing trireme pursued the fugitives. But by the time the two smaller forts were being captured, the Syracusans were already losing, and the men escaping from these sailed past more easily.

3 For the Syracusan ships fighting outside the harbor entrance had forced their way through the Athenian ships, but entered in no order; falling into confusion among themselves, they handed victory to the Athenians. The Athenians routed both these ships and those by which they had at first been defeated inside the harbor.

4 They sank eleven Syracusan ships and killed most of their crews, except for those from three ships whom they took alive; three of their own ships were destroyed. After hauling away the Syracusan wrecks and setting up a trophy on the little island off Plemmyrium, they withdrew to their own camp.

Chapter 24

1 Such was the Syracusans' fortune in the naval battle; but they held the forts on Plemmyrium and set up three trophies for their capture. They demolished one of the two forts taken last, repaired the other two, and garrisoned them.

2 Many men were killed or taken alive in the capture of the forts, and a great quantity of property in all was seized. The Athenians had used the forts as a storehouse, and they contained much merchandise and grain belonging to traders, as well as much property belonging to the trierarchs. Indeed, the sails and other equipment of forty triremes were captured there, together with three triremes that had been hauled ashore.

3 The loss of Plemmyrium was one of the first and gravest blows to the Athenian army. Even the passage into the harbor for supply ships was no longer safe: the Syracusans lay at anchor there with their ships to bar the way, and supplies could now be brought in only by fighting. In other respects too the loss spread consternation and despondency through the army.

Chapter 25

1 After this the Syracusans sent out twelve ships under Agatharchus, a Syracusan. One of them went to the Peloponnese, carrying envoys who were to report their hopeful situation and press for the war there to be pursued still more vigorously. The other eleven sailed toward Italy, having learned that ships laden with goods were on their way to the Athenians.

2 They encountered these ships and destroyed most of them, and in the territory of Caulonia they burned shipbuilding timber that lay ready for the Athenians.

3 They then went to Locri, and while they lay at anchor there, one of the merchant ships from the Peloponnese sailed in with Thespian hoplites aboard.

4 The Syracusans took these men aboard their own ships and sailed along the coast for home. The Athenians, watching for them with twenty ships near Megara, captured one ship with its crew, but could not take the rest, which escaped to Syracuse.

5 There was also skirmishing in the harbor over the piles which the Syracusans had driven into the sea in front of the old shipsheds. Their purpose was to allow their own ships to lie at anchor inside, out of reach of Athenian attacks by ramming.

6 The Athenians brought up against them a merchantman of ten thousand talents' burden, fitted with wooden towers and protective screens. Working from small boats, they fastened ropes to the piles, winched them up and broke them off; they also dived beneath the water and sawed them through. The Syracusans shot at them from the shipsheds, and the men on the merchantman returned their fire. In the end the Athenians removed most of the piles.

7 The most troublesome part of the barrier was the hidden one. Some of the piles had been driven in without projecting above the water, making it dangerous to approach, for fear that a ship might strike them unseen, as it would a reef. But divers went down and sawed these through as well, for pay. Even so, the Syracusans drove in piles again.

8 They devised many other measures against one another, as was natural with the armies encamped so close and facing each other, and resorted to skirmishes and attempts of every kind.

9 The Syracusans also sent envoys—Corinthians, Ambraciots, and Lacedaemonians—to the cities. They were to announce the capture of Plemmyrium and explain that the defeat at sea had been due less to the enemy's strength than to their own disorder; to make clear [once more] that in other respects their prospects were good; and to ask for help by land and sea against the Athenians. Another Athenian army was expected, they were to say, and if they could first destroy the army already there, the war would be over. Such were the events in Sicily.

Chapter 26

1 When the army with which Demosthenes was to bring aid to Sicily had assembled, he put out from Aegina, sailed toward the Peloponnese, and joined Charicles and the thirty Athenian ships. They took Argive hoplites aboard and sailed to Laconia.

2 First they ravaged part of the territory of Epidaurus Limera. Then they put in on the Laconian coast opposite Cythera, where the sanctuary of Apollo stands, ravaged parts of the land, and fortified a place shaped like an isthmus. They intended it as a refuge to which the Lacedaemonians' Helots could desert, and at the same time as a base from which raiders could plunder, as they did from Pylos.

3 As soon as Demosthenes had helped to seize the place, he sailed along the coast toward Corcyra, to take aboard the allies from there and make the passage to Sicily as quickly as possible. Charicles stayed until he had completed the fortifications and left a garrison; afterward he too returned home with his thirty ships, and the Argives with him.

Chapter 27

1 In this same summer thirteen hundred peltasts from the sword-bearing Thracians of the Dii tribe also arrived at Athens. They were to have sailed with Demosthenes to Sicily.

2 Since they had come too late, the Athenians intended to send them back to Thrace, where they had come from. Keeping them for the war arising from Decelea seemed too costly, for each man received a drachma a day.

3 For Decelea, first fortified by the whole army during this summer and afterward occupied by garrisons from the cities, which relieved one another at intervals and attacked the countryside, inflicted great damage on the Athenians. Through the destruction of property and the loss of men it was among the chief causes of the deterioration of their affairs.

4 Previously the invasions had been brief and had not prevented them from enjoying the use of their land for the rest of the time. Now the enemy occupied it continuously: sometimes larger forces came against them, and at other times the regular garrison, driven by necessity, overran the country and plundered it. Agis, the Lacedaemonian king, was there in person and did not treat the war as a secondary concern. The Athenians suffered grievously.

5 They were deprived of their entire countryside, and more than twenty thousand slaves had deserted, most of them skilled workers. All their sheep and beasts of burden had been lost. As the cavalry rode out every day, raiding toward Decelea and keeping watch over the countryside, some horses went lame from constant exertion on hard ground, while others were wounded.

Chapter 28

1 The conveyance of supplies from Euboea, formerly quicker by land from Oropus through Decelea, now became expensive, since they had to come by sea around Sunium. The city needed everything alike to be imported, and instead of a city it had become a fortress.

2 By day the Athenians took turns guarding the battlements; by night all but the cavalry were on duty, some under arms and others on the wall. Summer and winter alike they endured this hardship.

3 What weighed most heavily upon them was that they had two wars on their hands at once, and had committed themselves to a struggle of such obstinacy that anyone hearing of it before it happened would have disbelieved it. Though themselves besieged by the Peloponnesians from a fortified position, they did not even then withdraw from Sicily, but continued there to besiege Syracuse in the same fashion—a city in itself no smaller than Athens. So far did their power and daring surpass the Greeks' calculations: at the beginning of the war some had thought they would hold out for a year, others for two, but no one for more than three if the Peloponnesians invaded their land; yet in the seventeenth year after the first invasion they went to Sicily, already worn down in every way by the war, and took on an additional war no less formidable than the one they already faced from the Peloponnese.

4 For these reasons, with Decelea inflicting great damage and other heavy expenses falling upon them, they now became financially powerless. About this time they imposed on their subjects a levy of one twentieth on seaborne trade in place of tribute, thinking that more money would come in this way. Expenditure was no longer at its former level but had become much greater, in proportion to the greater scale of the war, while revenues were dwindling.

Chapter 29

1 Thus, unwilling in their present shortage of money to bear the expense of the Thracians who had arrived too late for Demosthenes, they sent them away at once. They entrusted their return to Diitrephes, with instructions to use them, if he could, to damage the enemy on the voyage along the coast, since their route lay through the Euripus.

2 He landed them in the territory of Tanagra and carried out a hurried raid for plunder. Then, sailing across the Euripus from Chalcis in Euboea in the evening, he disembarked in Boeotia and led them against Mycalessus.

3 He passed the night undetected near the Hermaeum, about sixteen stades from Mycalessus, and at daybreak attacked the town, which was not large. He took it by falling upon people who were unguarded and never expected anyone to come so far inland from the sea to attack them. The wall was weak, in places fallen down, in others built low; the gates too stood open, so secure did they feel.

4 The Thracians burst into Mycalessus, plundered houses and sanctuaries, and butchered the inhabitants, sparing neither old nor young but killing everyone they met in turn, children and women as well, and even beasts of burden and every other living thing they saw. For the Thracian people, like the most savage of the barbarians, are most bloodthirsty when they have nothing to fear.

5 There was great confusion everywhere and destruction in every form. They fell upon a boys' school, the largest in the town, where the children had just come in, and cut them all down. This calamity struck the whole city, as unexpected and terrible as any that ever befell another.

Chapter 30

1 The Thebans heard of it and came to the rescue. Overtaking the Thracians before they had gone far, they recovered the plunder, put them to flight, and pursued them to the Euripus and the sea, where the vessels that had brought them lay at anchor.

2 They killed the greatest number as they were embarking: the Thracians could not swim, and the men aboard the vessels, seeing what was happening on shore, had anchored beyond bowshot. In the rest of their retreat the Thracians had defended themselves quite capably against the Theban cavalry, which attacked them first, rushing out ahead and then closing ranks in their native formation; few of them had been killed in this phase. Some who lingered in the town for plunder were also caught there and perished. In all, two hundred and fifty of the thirteen hundred Thracians were killed.

3 They in turn killed about twenty of the Thebans and the others who had come to help, cavalry and hoplites together, and Scirphondas, one of the Theban Boeotarchs. A portion of the population of Mycalessus was wiped out. Such were the events at Mycalessus, whose sufferings, in proportion to its size, deserved lamentation no less than any in this war.

Chapter 31

1 Demosthenes, then sailing toward Corcyra after the fortification of the position in Laconia, found a merchant ship at anchor at Pheia in Elis, in which the Corinthian hoplites were to cross to Sicily. He destroyed the ship, but the men escaped, later obtained another, and sailed on.

2 After this Demosthenes reached Zacynthus and Cephallenia, took aboard hoplites, and sent for Messenians from Naupactus. He then crossed to the opposite mainland coast of Acarnania, to Alyzia and to Anactorium, which the Athenians held.

3 While he was in these parts he was met by Eurymedon, sailing back from Sicily, who had been sent out during the winter with the money for the army. Along with his other news, Eurymedon reported that he had learned, when already on his voyage, of the capture of Plemmyrium by the Syracusans.

4 Conon, the commander at Naupactus, also came to them, reporting that the twenty-five Corinthian ships at anchor opposite them were not giving up the war and were preparing for a naval battle. He therefore urged them to send ships, since his own eighteen were not enough to fight the enemy's twenty-five.

5 Demosthenes and Eurymedon accordingly sent Conon ten of the best-sailing ships they had to reinforce those at Naupactus. They themselves made preparations for assembling their army. Eurymedon sailed to Corcyra, ordered the Corcyraeans to man fifteen ships, and enrolled hoplites; for he had now turned back and was sharing the command with Demosthenes, as he had been elected to do. Demosthenes gathered slingers and javelin throwers from the places around Acarnania.

Chapter 32

1 When the envoys who had gone from Syracuse to the cities after the capture of Plemmyrium had persuaded them and were about to bring in the army they had assembled, Nicias learned of it beforehand. He sent to those of the Sicels who controlled the passage and were allies of the Athenians—the people of Centoripa and Halicyae, and others—asking them not to let the enemy pass, but to combine and block their advance. The enemy would not even try another route, since the Agrigentines refused passage through their territory.

2 When the Siceliots were already on the march, the Sicels did as the Athenians had asked: they laid an ambush in three places, fell suddenly upon the unsuspecting enemy, and killed about eight hundred, together with all the envoys except the Corinthian. He brought the survivors, about fifteen hundred, into Syracuse.

Chapter 33

1 At about the same time the Camarinaeans also came to their aid, with five hundred hoplites, three hundred javelin throwers, and three hundred archers. The people of Gela, too, sent crews for five ships, four hundred javelin throwers, and two hundred cavalry.

2 For by now almost all Sicily, except the Acragantines—who belonged to neither side—had joined the Syracusans against the Athenians: even those who had previously stood aloof now came to their support.

3 After their setback among the Sicels, the Syracusans held back from an immediate attack on the Athenians. Demosthenes and Eurymedon, meanwhile, now had their force from Corcyra and the mainland ready, and crossed the Ionian Sea with the whole army to the Iapygian headland.

4 Setting out from there, they put in at the Choerades islands off Iapygia and took aboard a hundred and fifty Iapygian javelin throwers of the Messapian people. They renewed an old friendship with Artas, the local ruler who had supplied these men, and reached Metapontium in Italy.

5 They persuaded the Metapontians, under the terms of their alliance, to send three hundred javelin throwers and two triremes with them. Taking these on, they sailed along the coast to Thurii. There they found that the party hostile to Athens had recently been expelled in civil strife.

6 They wished to assemble and review their entire force there, bringing in any detachments left behind, and to persuade the Thurians both to join their expedition with all possible zeal and, in their present circumstances, to regard the same people as friends and enemies as the Athenians did. They therefore remained at Thurii, attending to these matters.

Chapter 34

1 About this same time the Peloponnesians in the twenty-five ships, which had been stationed opposite the ships at Naupactus to protect the passage of the transports to Sicily, prepared for a sea battle. They manned additional ships until their fleet was only slightly smaller than the Athenian, and anchored off Erineus in Achaea, in the territory of Rhypes.

2 The place where they lay was crescent-shaped. The land forces of the Corinthians and the local allies, which had come to their support, were drawn up on the projecting headlands at either end; the ships blocked the space between. Polyanthes, a Corinthian, commanded the fleet.

3 The Athenians sailed against them from Naupactus with thirty-three ships under the command of Diphilus.

4 At first the Corinthians remained still. Then, when they thought the moment had come and their signal was raised, they advanced against the Athenians and engaged them. For a long time the two sides held their ground against each other.

5 Three Corinthian ships were destroyed. Of the Athenian ships none actually sank, but seven or so were disabled: struck bow to bow, their oar outriggers were torn open by the Corinthian ships, whose catheads had been made thicker for this very purpose.

6 The battle was evenly contested, and each side claimed the victory. The Athenians nevertheless secured the wrecks, since the wind carried them out to sea and the Corinthians did not put out again. The fleets then parted, without any pursuit or prisoners taken on either side. The Corinthians and Peloponnesians, fighting close to land, could easily save themselves, while no Athenian ship had sunk.

7 When the Athenians had sailed back to Naupactus, the Corinthians immediately set up a trophy in token of victory, since they had disabled more of the enemy's ships. They considered themselves undefeated for the very reason that their opponents did not consider themselves victorious: the Corinthians counted it a victory not to have suffered a decisive defeat, while the Athenians thought themselves defeated because they had not won decisively.

8 After the Peloponnesians had sailed away and the land forces had dispersed, the Athenians also set up a trophy in Achaea to mark their victory, about twenty stades from Erineus, where the Corinthians had been anchored. Such was the outcome of the sea battle.

Chapter 35

1 When the Thurians had made ready to join them with seven hundred hoplites and three hundred javelin throwers, Demosthenes and Eurymedon ordered the ships to sail along the coast toward the territory of Croton. They themselves first reviewed the whole land army at the river Sybaris, then led it through Thurian territory.

2 On reaching the river Hylias, they received a message from the Crotoniates saying that they did not wish the army to pass through their land. They therefore turned down toward the sea and camped at the mouth of the Hylias, where the ships met them. The next day they embarked and sailed along the coast, putting in at the cities, except Locri, until they reached Petra in the territory of Rhegium.

Chapter 36

1 Meanwhile the Syracusans, hearing of their approach, wished to make another attempt with their ships and with the rest of their land forces, which they were assembling for this very purpose, eager to strike before the reinforcements arrived.

2 They made the other preparations for their fleet in whatever ways the previous battle had shown might give them an advantage. They also shortened their ships' bows to make them more solid, fitted thick catheads to them, and ran supporting struts from these to the hull for some six cubits, inside and out. This was the same arrangement with which the Corinthians had strengthened their bows before fighting the ships at Naupactus.

3 The Syracusans believed that they would be at no disadvantage against the Athenian ships, which had not been built as solidly to meet them but had light bows, because the Athenians preferred to ram after rowing around an opponent rather than bow to bow. They also thought that a battle in the Great Harbor, with many ships in a confined space, would favor them. By ramming bow to bow they would tear open the enemy's bows, striking with their solid, thick rams against hollow, weak structures.

4 In these narrow waters the Athenians would have no room either to row around their line or to break through it—the maneuvers they most trusted their skill to execute. The Syracusans would prevent a breakthrough as far as they could, while lack of space would prevent an outflanking movement.

5 They themselves would make the fullest use of the head-on collision, previously thought a mark of ignorance in a helmsman, for here their advantage would be greatest. The Athenians, when driven back, would have nowhere to retreat but toward the shore, and even there only a short distance into a narrow space directly in front of their own camp. The Syracusans would control the rest of the harbor, and if forced back at any point the Athenians would be crowded

6 into a small space, all in one place, where collisions would throw them into confusion. This, indeed, did the Athenians the greatest harm in all their sea battles: unlike the Syracusans, they could not retreat throughout the harbor. Nor would they be able to row around into open water, since the Syracusans controlled both the approach from the sea and the retreat toward it; all the more so because Plemmyrium would be hostile to them and the harbor mouth was not wide.

Chapter 37

1 Having devised these measures to suit their own skill and strength, and now encouraged further by the previous sea battle, the Syracusans attacked simultaneously with their land army and their ships.

2 A little earlier Gylippus had led the troops out of the city and brought them up against the Athenian wall on the side facing the city. From the Olympieum, all the hoplites stationed there, together with the Syracusan cavalry and light-armed troops, approached the wall from the opposite side. Immediately afterward the ships of the Syracusans and their allies sailed out.

3 The Athenians had at first thought the attack would be made by land alone. When they suddenly saw the ships advancing too, they were thrown into confusion. Some drew up on the walls and in front of them to meet the approaching troops; others went out against the large force of cavalry and javelin throwers rapidly advancing from the Olympieum and the country outside; still others manned the ships and hurried to the shore to help. When the ships were manned, they put out with seventy-five; the Syracusans had about eighty.

Chapter 38

1 For much of the day they advanced and backed water, testing each other, but neither side could gain any notable advantage, apart from the Syracusans' sinking one or two Athenian ships. They then separated, and the land army withdrew from the walls at the same time.

2 The next day the Syracusans remained quiet, giving no indication of what they meant to do. Nicias, seeing that the sea battle had been evenly contested and expecting another attack, compelled the trierarchs to repair any damage their ships had sustained. He also moored merchant ships in front of his palisade, which had been driven into the sea in front of the warships to serve as an enclosed harbor.

3 He stationed the merchant ships about two plethra apart, so that any warship hard pressed would have a safe refuge and could afterward put out again without disturbance. These preparations occupied the Athenians for the whole day, until nightfall.

Chapter 39

1 On the following day the Syracusans attacked the Athenians earlier in the morning, but with the same combined assault by land and sea.

2 The fleets faced each other as before and again spent much of the day testing each other. At last Ariston son of Pyrrhichus, a Corinthian and the best helmsman on the Syracusan side, persuaded his naval commanders to send to the officials in the city with orders to move the market to the seashore as quickly as possible, and to compel everyone who had food to bring it there and sell it. They could then disembark their sailors and take their meal immediately beside the ships, so as to attack again after a short interval, that same day, when the Athenians would not expect it.

Chapter 40

1 The commanders accepted his advice and sent a messenger; the market was made ready. The Syracusans suddenly backed water and sailed toward the city again, disembarked immediately, and took their meal there.

2 The Athenians supposed that their opponents had backed away toward the city because they were beaten. They disembarked at leisure and attended to their other affairs and their meal, believing that for that day, at least, there would be no more fighting at sea.

3 Suddenly the Syracusans manned their ships and sailed against them again. Amid great confusion the Athenians embarked without any order, most of them still unfed, and only with difficulty at last put out to meet them.

4 For a time they kept their distance, watching each other. Then the Athenians decided not to let their own delays wear them out, but to attack as soon as possible. At the word of command they advanced and engaged.

5 The Syracusans met them bow to bow, as they had planned, and with their specially strengthened rams tore open long stretches of the Athenian ships' oar outriggers. The men throwing javelins from their decks inflicted heavy losses on the Athenians; heavier still were those inflicted by the Syracusans cruising in small boats, darting under the enemy ships' banks of oars, running alongside, and throwing javelins at the sailors from there.

Chapter 41

1 In the end the Syracusans, fighting in this manner with overwhelming effect, won the battle, and the Athenians turned and sought refuge through the line of merchant ships in their own anchorage.

2 The Syracusan ships pursued as far as the merchant ships, but were then stopped by the booms raised from these over the passages, carrying suspended dolphin-shaped weights.

3 Two Syracusan ships, carried away by victory, ventured close to them and were destroyed; one was captured with all its crew.

4 The Syracusans had sunk seven Athenian ships and badly damaged many more, taking most of the men alive and killing the others. They withdrew and set up trophies for both sea battles. They now felt securely confident of their marked superiority at sea, and believed they would also overcome the army on land.

Chapter 42

1 While they were preparing for another attack on both fronts, Demosthenes and Eurymedon arrived with the reinforcements from Athens: about seventy-three ships, including the foreign vessels, some five thousand hoplites, both Athenians and allies, a considerable number of javelin throwers, barbarians and Greeks, as well as slingers, archers, and ample equipment of every other kind.

2 The immediate effect on the Syracusans and their allies was profound dismay: would they never be free of danger? They saw that the fortification of Decelea had done nothing to prevent the arrival of another army equal in size and much like the first, and that Athenian power was displaying its strength on every side. For the original Athenian army, by contrast, this brought a measure of renewed vigor after its hardships.

3 Demosthenes saw the state of affairs and judged that he must neither delay nor repeat Nicias' experience. Nicias had been formidable on his first arrival, but because he had not immediately pressed Syracuse and had instead wintered at Catana, he came to be despised; Gylippus had forestalled him by arriving with an army from the Peloponnese. The Syracusans would not even have summoned that army had Nicias attacked at once. Believing themselves sufficient for their own defense, they would have discovered their inferiority only when they had already been walled in, so that even if they had then sent for help, it could no longer have benefited them to the same extent. Reviewing all this, and recognizing that he himself was most alarming to the enemy now, on the very first day, Demosthenes wished to exploit as quickly as possible the present shock caused by his army.

4 He saw that the Syracusan cross-wall, by which they had prevented the Athenians from surrounding them with a wall, was only a single line. If one could secure the ascent to Epipolae and then the camp on the heights, the wall itself could easily be taken, for no one would stand against them.

5 He was therefore eager to make the attempt, judging this the shortest way to settle the war. Either he would succeed and hold Syracuse, or he would withdraw the army, instead of wearing down to no purpose both the Athenians serving on the expedition and the city as a whole.

6 First, then, the Athenians marched out and ravaged the Syracusan land around the Anapus. As at the beginning, their forces held the upper hand both by land and sea, for on neither front did the Syracusans come out to oppose them, except with cavalry and javelin throwers from the Olympieum.

Chapter 43

1 Demosthenes next decided to make a preliminary attempt against the cross-wall with siege engines. But when he brought them up, the defenders on the wall burned them, while attacks by the rest of the army at many points were repulsed. He decided to delay no longer. Having persuaded Nicias and his other fellow commanders, he made his attempt on Epipolae as he had planned.

2 An approach and ascent by daylight, he thought, could not escape detection. He therefore ordered five days' provisions and took all the stonemasons and carpenters, together with a further supply of missiles and everything they would need for building a wall if they won. After the first sleep of the night, he, Eurymedon, and Menander led the whole army toward Epipolae; Nicias was left behind within the walls.

3 They reached the heights by way of Euryelus, where the earlier army had first ascended. They escaped the notice of the Syracusan guards, advanced against the fort that stood there, captured it, and killed some of its garrison.

4 Most of the guards escaped and immediately reported the attack to the camps. There were three of these on Epipolae, within outer fortifications: one for the Syracusans, one for the other Sicilian Greeks, and one for the allies. They also informed the six hundred Syracusans who formed the forward guard in this part of Epipolae.

5 These at once came to help, but Demosthenes and the Athenians encountered them and put them to flight despite their spirited resistance. They themselves pressed forward immediately, eager to use their present momentum and waste no time in accomplishing what they had come for. Others, from the outset, were taking the Syracusan cross-wall, whose guards did not stand their ground, and pulling down its battlements.

6 The Syracusans and their allies, with Gylippus and his men, came to help from the outer fortifications. Stunned by this unexpected night assault, they attacked the Athenians, but were at first overpowered and fell back.

7 The Athenians were now advancing in growing disorder, as though victory were already theirs. They wished to push as quickly as possible through all the enemy troops not yet engaged, lest a slackening of their own assault allow these to rally again. The Boeotians were the first to stand against them; they attacked, routed them, and sent them fleeing.

Chapter 44

1 The Athenians now fell into great confusion and bewilderment, and how each event occurred was not easy to discover even from other people's accounts. In daylight things are clearer, yet even then no participant knows the whole course of events, and each scarcely knows what happens around himself. But in a battle by night—the only one fought between large armies in this war—how could anyone know anything clearly?

2 The moon was bright, but they saw each other as one would expect in moonlight: they could make out the outline of a body in front of them, yet could not trust themselves to recognize a friend. Large numbers of hoplites on both sides were moving about in a confined space.

3 Some of the Athenians were already being defeated, while others, still unbeaten in their first assault, continued to advance. Of the considerable force behind them, some had only just reached the heights and others were still coming up; they did not know where to direct their advance. For the rout had already thrown everything ahead into confusion, and the shouting made it hard to distinguish what was happening.

4 The Syracusans and their allies, feeling themselves victorious, were urging one another on with loud cries—there was no other way of signaling at night—and at the same time meeting those who came against them. The Athenians were searching for their own men and took everyone coming toward them for an enemy, even when they were friends already fleeing back. Unable to recognize one another by any other means, they continually demanded the password; with everyone asking at once, they created great confusion among themselves and made it quite plain to the enemy.

5 They did not have the same knowledge of the enemy's password, because the enemy, victorious and not scattered, had less difficulty recognizing one another. Thus, if the Athenians met an enemy party weaker than themselves, their opponents escaped because they knew the Athenian password; but if the Athenians themselves could not answer a challenge, they were killed.

6 The singing of the paean also caused immense harm, as much as anything else. Sounding much alike on both sides, it left them bewildered. Whenever the Argives, the Corcyraeans, or any of the other Dorians serving with the Athenians sang their paean, they frightened the Athenians; and the enemy's singing did the same.

7 Once confusion had taken hold, they finally collided with one another in many parts of the army, friend with friend and fellow citizen with fellow citizen. Not only were they thrown into panic: they even came to blows and could scarcely be parted.

8 As they were pursued, many threw themselves over the cliffs and perished, since the descent back from Epipolae was narrow. Of those who survived the descent to level ground, most, including all the men from the earlier army, escaped to the camp through their better knowledge of the country. But some of the new arrivals missed the paths and wandered through the countryside; when day came, the Syracusan cavalry rode around them and killed them.

Chapter 45

1 The next day the Syracusans raised two trophies, one on Epipolae at the point of ascent, the other where the Boeotians had first made their stand; the Athenians recovered their dead under a truce.

2 Not a few of the Athenians and their allies had died, yet the arms captured exceeded even the number of the dead: of those forced to leap down the cliffs stripped of their arms [without their shields], some perished, but others escaped.

Chapter 46

1 After this the Syracusans, their spirits once more revived, as before, by an unexpected success, sent Sicanus with fifteen ships to Acragas, which was torn by civil strife, to bring the city over if he could. Gylippus again set off by land into the rest of Sicily to bring back still more troops, hoping now to take even the Athenian walls by storm, since events on Epipolae had turned out as they had.

Chapter 47

1 Meanwhile the Athenian generals deliberated on the disaster that had occurred and the pervasive weakness now afflicting their camp. They saw that their undertakings were failing and that the soldiers resented remaining there;

2 for sickness bore heavily on them for two reasons: it was the season of the year when people are most prone to illness, and the ground where they were encamped was also marshy and unhealthy. In all other respects, too, their prospects seemed hopeless.

3 Demosthenes therefore thought they should stay no longer. In keeping with the intention with which he had risked the assault on Epipolae, now that it had failed he voted to leave without delay, while it was still possible to cross the open sea and the army could still command it, at least with the ships that had lately arrived.

4 It would be more profitable for the city, he said, to wage war against those fortifying a position in their own country than against the Syracusans, whom it was no longer easy to subdue; nor was it reasonable to remain at the siege, spending great sums to no purpose.

Chapter 48

1 Such was Demosthenes' judgment. Nicias himself also thought their affairs were in a bad state, but he did not wish to expose their weakness in words, or to have an open vote for withdrawal, with many present, make their intentions known to the enemy. That would make it far harder to leave undetected whenever they chose.

2 Moreover, the enemy's affairs, of which his sources gave him fuller knowledge than the others possessed, still offered some hope that their position would become worse than the Athenians' if these persevered in the siege. Lack of money would wear them down, especially now that the Athenians commanded the sea more widely with the fleet they had. There was indeed a party in Syracuse that wished to surrender control to the Athenians; it was communicating with him through messengers and urging him not to withdraw.

3 Knowing this, he was in fact holding back, still weighing both courses and examining the situation; but in his public statements at the time he refused to lead the army away. He knew well, he said, that the Athenians would not approve their leaving without a vote of their own. For those who would vote on the generals [themselves] would not know the facts as they did, from seeing them rather than hearing them through the denunciations of others; instead, they would be persuaded by whatever accusations a skillful speaker might bring.

4 Many, indeed most, of the soldiers now there, he said, who were crying out about their desperate situation, would on reaching home cry out to the opposite effect: that the generals had taken bribes, betrayed them, and withdrawn. For his own part, knowing the Athenian character, he would not choose to perish unjustly at Athenian hands on a shameful charge rather than, if he must, meet the same fate at the enemy's hands, taking the risk himself.

5 The Syracusans' position, he said, was nevertheless still weaker than their own. Paying mercenaries, spending money on fortified posts as well, and maintaining a large fleet for a full year already, they were short of resources in some respects and would soon be at a loss in others. They had already spent two thousand talents and owed much more besides; and if they allowed any part whatever of their present forces to fall away through failure to pay for its maintenance, their cause would be ruined, since it depended on hired auxiliaries rather than, as the Athenians' did, on compulsory service.

6 They must therefore remain at the siege, he said, and wear the enemy down, not depart defeated in money, the very resource in which they were far stronger.

Chapter 49

1 Nicias pressed these arguments firmly, having exact knowledge of affairs in Syracuse, of its shortage of money, and of the large party there which wished control to pass to the Athenians and was sending him messages urging him not to withdraw. At the same time he felt more confident than before that, with the fleet at least, he would prevail.

2 Demosthenes, however, would not hear of continuing the siege on any terms. If they must not lead the army away without an Athenian decree, but must linger there, he said, they should move to Thapsus or Catana and do so there. From either place their infantry could raid wide stretches of the country, feeding themselves by ravaging the enemy's property and inflicting losses on them; their ships, too, would fight on the open sea, not in confined waters, which favored the enemy, but with room to maneuver. There their skill would be of use, and they would have space for retreats and attacks, no longer putting out and coming to land within a narrow, circumscribed area.

3 In short, he said, he could not approve of remaining in the same place on any account: they must move at once, as quickly as possible, and delay no longer. Eurymedon supported his arguments.

4 But Nicias' opposition produced a certain hesitation and delay, along with a suspicion that he might be insisting because he knew something more. In this way the Athenians continued to put matters off and stayed where they were.

Chapter 50

1 Meanwhile Gylippus and Sicanus returned to Syracuse. Sicanus had failed at Acragas, for while he was still at Gela the faction friendly to the Syracusans had been driven out. Gylippus came with a large additional army from Sicily, including the hoplites sent from the Peloponnese in merchant ships in the spring, who had reached Selinus by way of Libya.

2 They had been driven off course to Libya, where the Cyrenaeans gave them two triremes and guides for the voyage. Sailing along the coast, they helped the Euesperitae, who were being besieged by Libyans, and defeated the Libyans. From there they sailed along to Neapolis, a Carthaginian trading station, from which Sicily is at its shortest distance, two days' and a night's voyage; crossing from there, they reached Selinus.

3 Immediately upon their arrival the Syracusans prepared to attack the Athenians again both by sea and by land. The Athenian generals, seeing that another army had reinforced the enemy, while their own affairs showed no improvement but grew worse in every respect from day to day, above all under the burden of sickness among the men, regretted not having withdrawn earlier. Since Nicias no longer opposed them as before, except to insist that the vote should not be taken openly, they gave the whole army orders, as secretly as they could, to sail out from the camp and to make ready for the signal.

4 But when everything was ready and they were about to sail, the moon was eclipsed; it happened to be full. Most of the Athenians, taking this to heart as an omen, urged the generals to wait. Nicias, who was indeed somewhat excessively devoted to divination and such things, declared that he would not even consider a proposal to move before they had waited three times nine days, as the soothsayers prescribed. Thus the Athenians delayed, and for this reason their stay was prolonged.

Chapter 51

1 When the Syracusans too learned of this, they were far more encouraged to give the Athenians no respite: the Athenians themselves, they reasoned, had now admitted that they were no longer superior either at sea or on land, for otherwise they would not have planned to sail away. Nor did they want them to settle somewhere else in Sicily and become harder to fight; rather, they wished to force them into a sea battle there, as soon as possible and on terms favorable to themselves.

2 They therefore manned their ships and practiced for as many days as they thought sufficient. When the time came, on the first day they attacked the Athenian walls. A small force of hoplites and cavalry came out against them through one of the gates; they cut off some of the hoplites, routed them, and pursued them. Since the entrance was narrow, the Athenians lost seventy horses and a few hoplites.

Chapter 52

1 On that day the Syracusan army withdrew. The next day they put out with seventy-six ships and at the same time advanced with their infantry against the walls. The Athenians sailed out to meet them with eighty-six ships, and the fleets engaged.

2 Eurymedon, who commanded the Athenian right wing, wished to encircle the enemy's ships and was extending his course farther toward the shore. The Syracusans and their allies first defeated the Athenian center, then cut him off as well in the recess at the innermost part of the harbor, killed him, and destroyed the ships that had followed him. They then pursued the entire Athenian fleet and drove it ashore.

Chapter 53

1 Gylippus, seeing the enemy's ships defeated and being swept ashore outside their palisades and their own camp, hurried with part of his army to the breakwater. He wanted to kill the men as they disembarked and make it easier for the Syracusans to tow the ships away, with the shore in friendly hands.

2 But the Tyrrhenians, who were guarding this point for the Athenians, saw them approaching in disorder, rushed out to meet them, and fell upon the foremost, routing them and driving them into the marsh called Lysimeleia.

3 Later, when more of the Syracusan and allied army had come up, the Athenians too hurried to the rescue, fearing for their ships. They engaged the enemy, defeated and pursued them, and killed a few hoplites. They saved most of their ships and brought them together by the camp, but the Syracusans and their allies captured eighteen and killed all the men aboard.

4 Wishing to burn the remaining ships, they filled an old merchantman with vine cuttings and pinewood, set it alight, and sent [the ship] adrift, for the wind was blowing toward the Athenians. Alarmed for their fleet, the Athenians devised means to extinguish the fire and barriers to stop the vessel; by quenching the flames and preventing the merchantman from coming near, they escaped the danger.

Chapter 54

1 After this the Syracusans raised trophies for the sea battle and for cutting off the hoplites above, near the wall, where they had also captured the horses. The Athenians raised trophies for the rout in which the Tyrrhenians had driven the infantry into the marsh, and for the one they themselves had inflicted with the rest of their army.

Chapter 55

1 Now that the Syracusans had won a brilliant victory at sea as well—for before this they had feared the ships that arrived with Demosthenes—the Athenians sank into utter despondency. The shock was great, but their regret for the expedition was greater still.

2 For these were the only cities they had yet attacked that resembled their own in character: democracies like themselves, with ships, cavalry, and large populations. They could gain no advantage by a change of government that would bring them over, nor by a great superiority in equipment; instead they failed in most of their attempts. They had been at a loss even before, and now that they had been defeated at sea as well, which they would never have expected, they were far more so.

Chapter 56

1 The Syracusans at once began sailing about the harbor without fear and planned to close its mouth, so that the Athenians could no longer sail out undetected, even if they wished.

2 Their concern was no longer merely for their own survival, but also to prevent the Athenians' escape. They thought, as was indeed the case, that in the present circumstances their position was far superior, and that if they could defeat the Athenians and their allies both on land and at sea, their achievement would appear glorious to the Greeks. Of the other Greeks, some would at once be set free and others released from fear, since the power left to Athens would no longer be capable of sustaining the war that would then be brought against it; and they themselves, credited with these results, would be greatly admired by the rest of mankind and by generations to come.

3 The contest was indeed worthy of its prize, both for these reasons and because they were prevailing not over the Athenians alone, but over their many other allies as well. Nor were they themselves alone, but fought with those who had come to their aid, having assumed the leadership alongside the Corinthians and Lacedaemonians, placed their own city in the forefront of danger, and made great advances in naval power.

4 For more peoples had gathered against this one city than against any other, apart, of course, from the total assembled in this war against the cities of Athens and Lacedaemon.

Chapter 57

1 For the following were the peoples on either side who fought in Sicily and for Sicily at Syracuse, some coming to help conquer the country, others to help preserve it. They took their places beside one another less from any claim of right or kinship than as circumstances in each case, interest or compulsion, determined.

2 The Athenians themselves, Ionians, came of their own will against the Dorian Syracusans. With them served the Lemnians and Imbrians, the Aeginetans who then held Aegina, and also the Histiaeans inhabiting Histiaea in Euboea: all were their colonists and still shared their language and customs.

3 Of the others who served with them, some were subjects, others autonomous allies, and some were mercenaries.

4 Among the tribute-paying subjects were the Eretrians, Chalcidians, Styrians, and Carystians from Euboea; from the islands, the Ceans, Andrians, and Tenians; and from Ionia, the Milesians, Samians, and Chians. Of these, the Chians accompanied them as an autonomous people, supplying ships rather than paying tribute. All these were for the most part Ionians descended from Athenians, except the Carystians, who are Dryopians; and though subjects serving under compulsion, they were at least Ionians following against Dorians.

5 Besides these there were Aeolians: the Methymnaeans, subjects obliged to furnish ships rather than tribute, and the tribute-paying Tenedians and Aenianians. These Aeolians were compelled to fight against their Aeolian founders, the Boeotians serving with the Syracusans; the Plataeans alone, Boeotians facing Boeotians outright, did so naturally, from hatred.

6 The Rhodians and Cytherians were both Dorians. The Cytherians, colonists of the Lacedaemonians, bore arms with the Athenians against the Lacedaemonians accompanying Gylippus; the Rhodians, Argive by descent, were compelled to fight against the Dorian Syracusans and also against the Geloans, their own colonists, who served with the Syracusans.

7 Of the islanders around the Peloponnese, the Cephallenians and Zacynthians accompanied them as autonomous peoples, though their island position put them rather under constraint, since the Athenians controlled the sea. The Corcyraeans, not merely Dorians but unmistakably Corinthians, served against Corinthians and Syracusans, though colonists of the former and kinsmen of the latter: ostensibly under compulsion, but no less willingly, through their hatred of the Corinthians.

8 Those now called Messenians were also brought into the war, from Naupactus and from Pylos, which the Athenians then held. A few Megarian exiles, too, were brought by circumstance to fight against the Selinuntians, who were Megarians.

9 The rest took part in the expedition more of their own free will. The Argives followed the Ionian Athenians, Dorians against Dorians, less for the alliance than from hatred of the Lacedaemonians and the immediate private advantage of each man. The Mantineans and other Arcadian mercenaries, accustomed to march against whatever enemy was designated for them, now regarded the Arcadians who had come with the Corinthians as enemies no less, for the sake of gain. The Cretans and Aetolians too were induced by pay; and so the Cretans, who had joined the Rhodians in founding Gela, came willingly for wages, not to support their colonists but to attack them.

10 Some Acarnanians also came to their aid as allies, partly for profit, but more from friendship for Demosthenes and goodwill toward the Athenians.

11 These came from the region bounded by the Ionian Gulf. Of the Greeks in Italy, the Thurians and Metapontians served with them, caught at that time in constraints imposed by civil strife; of the Greeks in Sicily, the Naxians and Catanaeans; and of the barbarians, the Egestaeans, who had invited them in, and most of the Sicels. From outside Sicily came some Tyrrhenians, because of their quarrel with the Syracusans, and Iapygian mercenaries. Such were the peoples campaigning with the Athenians.

Chapter 58

1 To the Syracusans' aid on the other side came their neighbors the Camarinaeans, and the Geloans, whose territory lay next beyond them; then, since the Acragantines remained neutral, the Selinuntians, settled still farther along.

2 These occupied the part of Sicily facing Libya; the Himeraeans came from the part facing the Tyrrhenian Sea, where they are the only Greek inhabitants, and they alone from that region came to help.

3 These were the Greek peoples of Sicily who fought as allies, all Dorians and all autonomous; of the barbarians, only those Sicels who had not gone over to the Athenians. Of the Greeks from outside Sicily, the Lacedaemonians supplied a Spartan commander, the rest of their men being neodamodes and Helots [the term neodamodes signifies that they were now free]. The Corinthians alone came with both ships and infantry; the Leucadians and Ambraciots came through ties of kinship; from Arcadia came mercenaries sent by the Corinthians, and the Sicyonians served under compulsion; from outside the Peloponnese came the Boeotians.

4 Compared with these forces from abroad, the Sicilian Greeks themselves supplied greater numbers in every category, since they inhabited large cities: many hoplites, ships, and cavalry were assembled, and an abundant multitude of other troops. Compared, in turn, with virtually all the others together, the Syracusans themselves provided more, both because of their city's size and because theirs was the greatest danger.

Chapter 59

1 Such were the reinforcements gathered on either side. By this time all were present with their respective armies, and no further force came to either.

2 The Syracusans and their allies therefore reasonably thought that, after their victory in the sea battle, it would be a glorious achievement to capture the whole Athenian army, great as it was, and allow it no means of escape, either by sea or by land.

3 They at once began to close the Great Harbor, whose mouth was about eight stades wide, anchoring triremes broadside across it, together with merchant vessels and small boats. They made their other preparations in case the Athenians should dare to fight another sea battle, and nothing they planned in any respect was on a small scale.

Chapter 60

1 The Athenians, seeing the blockade and perceiving the rest of their design, thought they must take counsel.

2 The generals and the commanders of the infantry divisions met to consider their present difficulties, especially the fact that they no longer had provisions even for the immediate present—for, expecting to sail away, they had sent ahead to Catana to forbid further supplies—and would have none in future unless they won command of the sea. They decided to abandon the upper walls and enclose with a cross-wall, close beside the ships themselves, the smallest area that would suffice for the stores and the sick, and to guard it; then, embarking every available man from the rest of the infantry, to fill all the ships, both the seaworthy and those less fit to sail, and fight their way out. If victorious, they would make for Catana; if not, they would burn their ships, form up, and retreat by land along whichever route offered the quickest prospect of reaching some friendly territory, barbarian or Greek.

3 Having resolved on this, they acted accordingly. They came down from the upper walls and manned every ship, compelling everyone whose age seemed to make him fit for service in any capacity to embark.

4 In all, about a hundred and ten ships were manned. They embarked many archers and javelin throwers, both Acarnanians and other foreign troops, and made all the other provision they could under the pressure of necessity and with such a purpose in view.

5 When most preparations were complete, Nicias saw that the soldiers were disheartened by their defeat at sea, so far contrary to their accustomed experience, and that the shortage of provisions made them eager to stake everything as soon as possible. He called them all together and first addressed them with the following words of encouragement.

Chapter 61

1 “Soldiers of Athens and of our other allies, the coming struggle will be equally shared by all, for the survival and homeland of each of you, no less than for those of our enemies. For if we win now with our ships, each man may see his own native city once again.

2 “You must not lose heart or behave like the most inexperienced of men, who stumble in their first contests and thereafter let their misfortunes set the measure of all their fearful expectations.

3 “Instead, all you Athenians here, experienced already in many wars, and all you allies who have always campaigned beside us, remember the unexpected turns of war. Hope that fortune may yet take our side, and prepare to renew the struggle in a manner worthy of this multitude, whose strength you can see for yourselves.

Chapter 62

1 “Everything we judged would help us against the narrowness of the harbor, with the crowd of ships that will fill it, and against their preparations on deck, from which we suffered before, has now been considered with the helmsmen and made ready for us too, so far as our resources allow.

2 “For many archers and javelin throwers will go aboard, and a mass of men whom we would not employ in a sea battle on the open water, since their weight would hamper our skill by making the ships heavy. But in the land battle aboard ships to which we are compelled here, they will be of service.

3 “We have devised the changes our ships require to counter theirs; and against their thick catheads, which did us the greatest damage, we have grappling irons to throw aboard. These will prevent a ship that strikes us from backing away, if the marines perform the service that must follow.

4 “For we have been driven to the point of fighting a land battle from our ships, and it seems advantageous neither to back away ourselves nor to let them do so, especially since the land is hostile except for the part our army holds.

Chapter 63

1 “Remember this and fight with all your strength, resisting any attempt to drive you ashore. When ship meets ship, refuse to break free until you have swept the hoplites from the enemy's deck.

2 “I urge this upon the hoplites no less than upon the sailors, since this task falls rather to the men above; and even now we still have the advantage in most respects with our infantry.

3 “To the sailors I offer the same encouragement and entreat them not to be too overwhelmed by our misfortunes: our preparations on deck are better now, and our ships more numerous. Remember also how well worth preserving is that privilege you have enjoyed. Though not Athenians, you were taken for Athenians, and through your knowledge of our language and imitation of our ways you were admired throughout Greece. You shared no less in the benefits of our empire, and far more in the fear you inspired in its subjects and your freedom from injury.

4 “Since you alone share our empire as free partners, you should in justice not betray it now. Despise the Corinthians, whom you have often defeated, and the Sicilians, not one of whom thought fit even to stand against us while our navy was at its height. Beat them back, and show that even amid weakness and misfortune your skill is stronger than another's strength blessed with success.

Chapter 64

1 “And to those of you who are Athenians I give this further reminder: you have left behind neither other ships in the sheds to match these nor a reserve of men of hoplite age. If anything happens to you but victory, the enemy here will sail at once against Athens, and those of us left there will be powerless to resist both the enemies already there and those who come against them. You would fall immediately under the Syracusans—you yourselves know with what intentions you attacked them—and those at home under the Lacedaemonians.

2 “Standing, then, in this single contest for both, hold firm now if ever you did. Remember, each of you and all together, that you who are about to embark are Athens' infantry and fleet, all that remains of her city, and the great name of Athens. In their defense, if one man surpasses another at all in skill or courage, he could never display it at a moment when he would serve himself better or do more to save us all.”

Chapter 65

1 With this exhortation Nicias immediately ordered the ships to be manned. Gylippus and the Syracusans could see from the preparations themselves that the Athenians were going to fight at sea; they had also been warned of the grappling irons to be thrown aboard,

2 and made their arrangements against this, as against each of the other measures. They covered their bows and much of the upper parts of their ships with hides, so that a grapple thrown aboard would slip off and find no hold.

3 When everything was ready, the generals and Gylippus exhorted their men in these terms:

Chapter 66

1 “Syracusans and allies, most of you, we believe, know that our past achievements are glorious and that the coming contest holds glorious prizes; otherwise you would not have taken it up so eagerly. If anyone has not understood this as fully as he should, we will make it clear.

2 “The Athenians came to this country to enslave Sicily first and then, if they succeeded, the Peloponnese and the rest of Greece. They already possessed the greatest empire of any Greeks, past or present. Yet you were the first men to stand against their navy, the very instrument of all their conquests: you have already won the sea battles fought so far, and will in all likelihood win this one now.

3 “For when men are humbled in what they claim as their special strength, what remains of their self-esteem is weaker than if they had never cherished that belief at all. The unexpected overthrow of their pride makes them yield beyond what the actual strength of their forces warrants. This, we may reasonably think, has now happened to the Athenians.

Chapter 67

1 “Our former confidence, which emboldened us even when we still lacked experience, is firmer now. Added to it is the conviction that, if we have defeated the best, we must ourselves be best; and so each man's hope is doubled. In undertaking a task, the greatest hope generally brings the greatest eagerness too.

2 “As for their imitation of our equipment, it is familiar to our way of fighting, and we shall be well adapted to meet every part of it. But when they have many hoplites on their decks, contrary to their established practice, and many javelin throwers too—Acarnanians and others, landsmen, so to speak, who have boarded ships and will not even know how to throw a missile from a seated position—how can they fail to unbalance their ships and fall into confusion among themselves, all moving in ways unfamiliar to them?

3 “Nor will the number of their ships help them, if any of you fears this too, that he will fight against superior numbers. Crowded in a small space, their ships will be less able to do what they wish and more easily damaged by the measures we have prepared.

4 “Learn the truth of their position from what we believe we have reliably ascertained. Their sufferings have become intolerable, and their present straits have forced them into desperation. They are resolved to hazard whatever they can, trusting less in their preparations than in fortune, so as either to force a passage out to sea or afterward to make their retreat by land, since they can fare no worse than they do now.

Chapter 68

1 “Let us therefore attack with anger such disorder and the fortune of our bitterest enemies, which has delivered itself into our hands. Let us consider that those who choose to sate their anger against an enemy in punishment for his assault act with the fullest right; and consider too that we shall have the chance to avenge ourselves upon our enemies, which, as the saying goes, is the sweetest thing of all.

2 “That they are enemies, and our bitterest enemies, you all know. They came against our country to enslave it, and had they succeeded they would have inflicted the most grievous suffering on our men, the worst indignities on our children and women, and the most shameful name upon our whole city.

3 “In return for this, no one should weaken or count it a gain merely to see them depart without danger to ourselves. They will do that just the same even if they win. But if, as is likely, we achieve what we intend, we shall punish these men and hand down to all Sicily, already enjoying freedom, a freedom more secure: a noble prize to contend for. And rarest are those risks which do least harm through failure and bring most benefit through success.”

Chapter 69

1 After the Syracusan generals and Gylippus had thus exhorted their own soldiers, they too began manning their ships, as soon as they perceived that the Athenians were doing so.

2 Nicias, overwhelmed by their situation and seeing the magnitude of the danger and how near it already [was], now that they were almost on the point of putting out, felt what men feel in great contests: that everything they had done was still inadequate and that he had not yet said enough to them. Once again he called back each of the trierarchs, naming his father, the man himself, and his tribe. He urged any man who had some distinction of his own not to betray it, and not to efface the ancestral virtues for which his forebears had been renowned. He reminded them of their country, the freest of all countries, and of the unrestricted freedom everyone there enjoyed in ordering his life. He said the other things men at such a crisis would say, without guarding against seeming to someone to rehearse old commonplaces: appeals much the same in every case, invoking wives, children, and ancestral gods, which men cry out because they think them useful in the terror of the moment.

3 Then, believing his exhortations not so much sufficient as required by necessity, he withdrew, led the infantry down to the sea, and drew them up along as wide a front as he could, to give the men aboard the ships the greatest possible support to their courage.

4 Demosthenes, Menander, and Euthydemus—the generals who had gone aboard the Athenian ships—put out from their own camp and sailed straight toward the barrier across the harbor and the opening left for passage, intending to force their way out.

Chapter 70

1 The Syracusans and their allies had already brought out about as many ships as before. They guarded the outlet with some of them, stationing the rest around the harbor so as to fall on the Athenians from every side at once; their infantry meanwhile came to their support wherever the ships put in. Sicanus and Agatharchus commanded the Syracusan fleet, each holding one wing of the whole force, while Pythen and the Corinthians held the center.

2 When the rest of the Athenians approached the barrier, the first impetus of their attack overpowered the ships stationed there, and they tried to break the closures. But then the Syracusans and their allies bore down upon them from every side, and the sea battle spread beyond the barrier throughout the harbor. It was fierce beyond any of the previous battles.

3 On either side the sailors showed great eagerness to advance whenever the order came, and the helmsmen matched their skill against one another in fierce rivalry. Whenever ship struck ship, the marines took care that their work on deck should not fall short of the skill displayed elsewhere. Each man strove to show himself foremost at his assigned post.

4 So many ships were crowded together in a narrow space—never had so many fought in so little room, for the two fleets together fell little short of two hundred—that there were few ramming attacks, since there was no room to back water or break through the enemy's line. Collisions were more frequent, as one ship happened to run into another while fleeing or advancing against a different ship.

5 While a ship was bearing down, the men on deck poured javelins, arrows, and stones upon it without stint. Once the ships met, the marines fought hand to hand and tried to board one another's vessels.

6 In many places the lack of room meant that, while a ship rammed another, it was itself rammed, and two or sometimes even more ships were locked by necessity around one. The helmsmen had to guard against some and plot attacks on others, not one at a time but many from every direction. The great crashing of so many ships together spread terror and drowned the voices of the boatswains.

7 For on both sides the boatswains were shouting loud and frequent encouragement, both to direct the work and to spur the immediate struggle for victory. They cried to the Athenians to force their way out and, now if ever, to strive with all their hearts for a safe return to their country; to the Syracusans and their allies, that it would be glorious to prevent the enemy's escape and by their victory enhance each man's own homeland.

8 The generals on both sides, too, whenever they saw a ship backing water without necessity, called its trierarch by name and questioned him. The Athenians asked whether they were retreating because they now considered the most hostile shore friendlier than the sea they had won at no small cost in labor. The Syracusans asked whether they themselves were fleeing before the fleeing Athenians, whom they well knew to be straining every effort to escape.

Chapter 71

1 While the sea battle hung in the balance, the infantry of both sides on shore endured a fierce struggle and tension of mind: the local army striving for still greater glory, the invaders fearing a fate worse even than their present distress.

2 For the Athenians had staked everything on their ships, and their fear for the future was beyond comparison. The changing fortunes of the sea battle compelled those watching from the shore to see it in changing ways as well.

3 With the spectacle so close and not all watching the same point at once, some, if they saw their own men prevailing anywhere, took heart and turned to invoking the gods not to deprive them of deliverance. Others, looking toward a part where they were being defeated, broke into loud cries of lamentation; the sight of what was happening enslaved their spirits more than those of the men actually fighting. Still others, watching some evenly matched encounter, endured the greatest torment: the struggle went on without a decision, and in their fear their very bodies swayed with their apprehensions. At every moment they were a hair's breadth from escape or destruction.

4 While the fighting remained evenly balanced, all sounds could be heard together in the same Athenian army: lamentation, shouting, victory, defeat, and all the many cries that a great army in great peril must utter.

5 The men aboard their ships were experiencing much the same, until at last, after the sea battle had held out for a long time, the Syracusans and their allies routed the Athenians and pressed them hard, pursuing them to shore amid loud shouts and mutual encouragement.

6 Then the men of the fleet, all who had not been captured on the water, were driven ashore at different points and rushed into the camp. The infantry no longer felt conflicting emotions: all with one impulse gave way to wailing and groaning, unable to bear what was happening. Some ran to help at the ships, others to defend what remained of the wall; others again, the greater number, were already looking to themselves and considering how they might escape.

7 The terror of that moment was as great as any they had ever known. What they suffered resembled what they themselves had inflicted at Pylos: when the Lacedaemonians' ships were destroyed, the men who had crossed to the island were lost to them as well. So now the Athenians had no hope of escape by land unless something beyond all expectation should occur.

Chapter 72

1 After this fierce sea battle, in which both sides had lost many ships and men, the victorious Syracusans and their allies recovered the wrecks and the dead, sailed back to the city, and set up a trophy.

2 The Athenians, overwhelmed by the scale of their present calamity, did not even think of asking leave to recover their dead or their wrecks. Instead, they planned to retreat at once that night.

3 Demosthenes approached Nicias and proposed manning their remaining ships and trying to force the passage out at daybreak, if they could. He pointed out that they still had more serviceable ships left than the enemy: the Athenians had about sixty remaining, their opponents fewer than fifty.

4 Nicias agreed with this proposal, but when they wished to man the ships, the sailors refused to embark. They were stunned by the defeat and no longer believed they could win.

Chapter 73

1 By now they were all resolved to retreat by land. Hermocrates the Syracusan suspected their intention and thought it dangerous that so great an army should withdraw by land, establish itself somewhere in Sicily, and decide to renew the war against them. He went to the authorities and urged them not to let the enemy depart that night, setting out the considerations that weighed with him. All the Syracusans and their allies, he said, should march out at once, wall off the roads, and occupy and guard the narrow passages in advance.

2 They themselves understood all this no less than he did, and thought it should be done. But they did not think the men would readily consent to obey, now that they had gladly taken their rest after a great sea battle and were also celebrating a festival: that day happened to be the day of their sacrifice to Heracles. In the exuberance of victory most had turned to drinking at the festival; the authorities expected them to obey any order rather than take up arms and march out at that moment.

3 Since these considerations made the task seem impossible to the authorities, and Hermocrates could no longer persuade them, he devised the following expedient. He feared that the Athenians would slip through the most difficult country unmolested during the night before they could be stopped. As dusk fell, he sent some of his own companions with horsemen toward the Athenian camp. They rode up within earshot and called out to some of the men, pretending to be friends of the Athenians—for Nicias did have messengers bringing word from inside the city. They told them to warn Nicias not to lead the army away that night, since the Syracusans were guarding the roads, but to make his preparations at leisure and withdraw by day.

4 Having delivered their message, they departed, and those who had heard them passed it on to the Athenian generals.

Chapter 74

1 The generals, believing the message was no deception, stayed where they were for the night. And since they had thus failed to set out immediately, they decided to wait through the following day as well, so that the soldiers might pack whatever would be most useful from what was available. They were to leave everything else behind and set out carrying only the necessities they had for their bodily subsistence.

2 Meanwhile the Syracusans and Gylippus marched their infantry out ahead, blocked the roads through the countryside by which the Athenians were likely to go, guarded the crossings of the streams and rivers, and took up positions wherever seemed best for intercepting the army and stopping it. Their ships sailed up and towed the Athenian ships away from the beach. The Athenians themselves had burned a few, as they had intended, but the rest were made fast at leisure wherever each lay stranded and brought back to the city without opposition.

Chapter 75

1 After this, when Nicias and Demosthenes judged their preparations sufficient, the army at last broke camp, on the third day after the sea battle.

2 Their plight was terrible on more than one account: not only were they withdrawing with all their ships lost, their great hopes exchanged for danger to themselves and their city, but in abandoning the camp each man encountered sights painful to his eyes and thoughts painful to his mind.

3 The dead lay unburied, and whenever anyone saw a friend lying there, grief mingled with fear overcame him. Yet the living who were being left behind, wounded or sick, caused the living far greater anguish than the dead, and were more pitiable than those already lost.

4 Turning to supplication and lament, they left their comrades at a loss, demanding to be taken along and calling to each man by name whenever they caught sight of a friend or relative. They clung to their tentmates as they were leaving and followed as far as they could; when strength and body failed them, they fell behind with a few appeals to the gods and cries of grief. The whole army was filled with tears and such helplessness that it could scarcely bring itself to depart, though it was leaving enemy country, and though both the sufferings it had already endured and those it feared from the unseen future were too great for tears.

5 There was deep dejection too, and bitter self-reproach. They resembled nothing so much as the people of a city fleeing after a siege had forced its surrender—and no small city, for the whole multitude marching together numbered no fewer than forty thousand. All the others carried whatever useful things each could manage, while the hoplites and cavalry, contrary to their custom, carried their own provisions as well as their weapons, some for lack of attendants, others because they could not trust them: some attendants had deserted long before, and most had done so just now. Even what they carried was insufficient, for there was no longer food in the camp.

6 The rest of their misery, and the equal share all bore in their sufferings, afforded some relief through being shared with so many; yet even so their present condition seemed hard to bear, above all when they considered the splendor and pride of their beginning and the humiliation of their end.

7 Never had a Greek army undergone a greater reversal. They had come to enslave others, and were leaving in greater fear of suffering that fate themselves; in place of the prayers and paeans with which they had sailed out, they now set off amid cries of the opposite kind, marching on foot instead of sailing aboard ships, and looking to hoplite warfare rather than to their fleet. Yet the magnitude of the danger still hanging over them made all this seem bearable.

Chapter 76

1 Seeing the army dispirited and overwhelmed by its reversal, Nicias went along the ranks, encouraging and consoling the men as circumstances allowed. In his earnestness he raised his voice still louder to each group he reached, hoping that, by making himself heard as far as possible, he might do some good.

Chapter 77

1 “Athenians and allies, even in our present circumstances we must have hope—others before us have survived worse than these—and you must not reproach yourselves too bitterly for our disasters or for the hardships we now endure beyond our deserts.

2 “I myself am no stronger than any of you—you see how illness has brought me low—and though I was thought inferior to none in good fortune, whether in private life or otherwise, I now hang in the same peril as the humblest man. Yet I have lived with much reverence for the gods, and with much justice toward men, giving no cause for resentment.

3 “For this reason my hope for the future is still confident, and these disasters do not frighten me as much as their gravity warrants. Perhaps they may even abate: our enemies have had good fortune enough, and if our expedition provoked the resentment of any god, we have already been amply punished.

4 “Others too have marched against their neighbors before now, and after acting as men will, have suffered no more than men can bear. We too may reasonably hope for gentler treatment from the divine power, since we now deserve the gods’ pity rather than their resentment. And when you look at yourselves, at the quality and number of the hoplites marching in your ranks, do not be too dismayed. Consider that wherever you settle, you are at once a city yourselves, and no other city in Sicily could easily withstand your assault or drive you out once you had established yourselves anywhere.

5 “See to it yourselves that the march is secure and orderly. Each man must hold to this one thought: whatever ground he is compelled to fight on, if he prevails, will be both his homeland and his fortress.

6 “We shall press on along the road by night and day alike, for our provisions are scanty. Once we reach some friendly district of the Sicels—they remain faithful to us through fear of the Syracusans—consider yourselves already in safety. Messengers have been sent ahead to them with instructions to meet us and bring further supplies.

7 “In short, soldiers, understand that you must prove yourselves brave men: there is no place nearby where you can find safety by giving way. If you escape the enemy now, the rest of you will see again what you long to see, and you Athenians will raise up the great power of your city, fallen though it is. For men are a city, not walls or ships empty of men.”

Chapter 78

1 With such encouragement Nicias passed along the army, gathering and ordering the men wherever he saw them scattered or marching out of formation. Demosthenes was no less active, saying the same or similar things to the troops under his own command.

2 The army marched in a hollow square, with Nicias’ division leading and Demosthenes’ following. The hoplites kept the baggage carriers and the greater part of the multitude inside their formation.

3 When they reached the crossing of the river Anapus, they found a force of Syracusans and allies drawn up there. Routing them and securing the ford, they marched forward; but Syracusan cavalry rode alongside and harassed them, while the light troops hurled javelins into their ranks.

4 That day the Athenians advanced about forty stades and bivouacked beside a hill. Early the following morning they marched on for about twenty stades, then descended to a stretch of level ground and encamped there. They wished to get something to eat from the houses, since the district was inhabited, and to carry water away with them: for many stades ahead, along their intended route, water was scarce.

5 Meanwhile the Syracusans went ahead and began walling off the passage before them. It was a strong hill with a steep-sided ravine on either side, called the Acraean Height.

6 The next day the Athenians advanced, but the numerous cavalry and javelin throwers of the Syracusans and their allies obstructed them on either side, hurling javelins and riding alongside. The Athenians fought for a long time, then withdrew to the same camp. They could no longer obtain provisions as before, for the cavalry now prevented them from ranging out.

Chapter 79

1 Setting out early, they marched again and forced their way to the hill that had been walled off. There they found the enemy infantry drawn up before them above the barrier, many shields deep, for the ground was narrow.

2 The Athenians advanced to attack the wall, but missiles rained on them from the many men on the steep hillside, whose shots carried more easily from above. Unable to force a passage, they withdrew once more and rested.

3 Thunder and rain happened to come on at the same time, as is usual when the year is already drawing toward autumn. This dispirited the Athenians still further, and they thought that these things too were all conspiring toward their destruction.

4 While they were resting, Gylippus and the Syracusans sent part of their army to wall off the road behind them as well, along which they had advanced. But the Athenians sent some of their own men against them and prevented it.

5 After this the Athenians withdrew with their whole army farther toward the plain and bivouacked. The next day they advanced, while the Syracusans assailed them on every side and wounded many. Whenever the Athenians advanced against them, they withdrew; whenever the Athenians fell back, they pressed upon them, attacking the rearmost men in particular, in the hope that by routing one small part after another they might spread panic through the entire army.

6 For a long time the Athenians held out in this way; then, after advancing five or six stades, they rested on the plain. The Syracusans too withdrew from them to their own camp.

Chapter 80

1 That night Nicias and Demosthenes decided that, since their army was in a wretched state, now lacking every kind of provision and with many men badly wounded in the enemy’s repeated attacks, they should light as many fires as possible and lead the army away. They would no longer follow the route they had intended, but go in the opposite direction to that which the Syracusans were watching, toward the sea.

2 This route as a whole led the army not toward Catana, but toward the other side of Sicily, in the direction of Camarina and Gela and the cities of that region, Greek and barbarian alike.

3 They therefore lit many fires and set out in the night. Panic and terror commonly arise in all armies, especially the largest, above all when they are marching at night through enemy country with the enemy close at hand; and so confusion fell upon them.

4 Nicias’ division, which was leading, kept together and gained a considerable lead, while Demosthenes’ division, about half the army or more, became detached and marched in greater disorder.

5 Nevertheless, at dawn they reached the sea, entered the road called the Helorine Way, and marched along it. Their intention was, on reaching the river Cacyparis, to turn upstream and follow it inland; for they hoped that here too they would meet the Sicels whom they had summoned.

6 But when they reached the river, they found a Syracusan guard there also, walling and palisading the ford. Forcing their way through it, they crossed the river and marched on toward another river, the Erineus, for this was the direction their guides advised.

Chapter 81

1 Meanwhile, when day came and the Syracusans and their allies discovered that the Athenians had gone, most of them accused Gylippus of deliberately letting them escape. They hurried in pursuit along the route the Athenians had taken, which they found without difficulty, and caught up with them about the time of the morning meal.

2 Coming upon Demosthenes’ men, who were behind and marching more slowly and in greater disorder after the confusion of the night, they immediately fell upon them and began fighting. Since the Athenian forces were now separated, the Syracusan cavalry found it easier to encircle these men and drive them together into one place.

3 Nicias’ division was as much as fifty stades ahead. He had been leading his men faster, judging that in such circumstances safety lay not in willingly standing their ground to fight, but in retreating as quickly as possible, fighting only when compelled.

4 Demosthenes, on the other hand, had generally been under more continuous pressure, since he was withdrawing in the rear and the enemy attacked him first. Now, when he realized that the Syracusans were pursuing, he concentrated less on advancing than on drawing up for battle, until his delay allowed them to surround him, and he and the Athenians with him were thrown into great confusion. They were penned into a place enclosed by a low wall, with a road on either side and many olive trees within it, and were struck by missiles from all around.

5 The Syracusans had good reason to employ such attacks rather than close combat. Risking battle against desperate men was no longer any more to their advantage than to the Athenians’. Besides, with success now assured, each man was anxious to spare himself from being killed before the end; and they thought that even by this method they would wear the enemy down and capture them.

Chapter 82

1 After hurling missiles all day at the Athenians and their allies from every side, and seeing them now exhausted by wounds and their other sufferings, Gylippus, the Syracusans, and their allies first issued a proclamation inviting any of the islanders who wished to come over to them on a guarantee of freedom. A few civic contingents withdrew.

2 Later an agreement was reached with all the others under Demosthenes as well: they were to surrender their arms, and no one was to die by violence, in bonds, or through lack of the bare necessities of life.

3 They all surrendered, six thousand in number, and gave up all the money they had, throwing it into upturned shields; they filled four shields. These men were immediately taken away to the city. That same day Nicias and his troops reached the river Erineus, crossed it, and settled the army on some high ground.

Chapter 83

1 The Syracusans caught up with Nicias the next day and told him that Demosthenes’ men had surrendered, urging him to do the same. Disbelieving them, he obtained a truce to send a horseman to find out.

2 When the horseman returned and reported that they had indeed surrendered, Nicias sent a herald to Gylippus and the Syracusans. He was ready, on behalf of the Athenians, to agree to repay all the money the Syracusans had spent on the war, provided they let his army go. Until the money was paid, he would give Athenian men as hostages, one for every talent.

3 The Syracusans and Gylippus rejected these terms. Instead, they attacked, surrounded these men too, and hurled missiles at them from every side until late in the day.

4 They too were in a wretched state for lack of food and other provisions. Nevertheless, they waited for a quiet moment in the night, intending to march. But as they were taking up their arms, the Syracusans became aware of it and raised the paean.

5 Realizing that their movement had been detected, the Athenians laid down their arms again, except for about three hundred men. These forced their way through the guards and made their way through the night as best they could.

Chapter 84

1 When day came, Nicias led the army on, while the Syracusans and their allies pressed upon them as before, assailing them from all sides with missiles and javelins.

2 The Athenians hurried toward the river Assinarus, driven both by the attacks of the numerous cavalry and the rest of the enemy throng from every side—they thought their plight might be somewhat easier once they crossed the river—and by their exhaustion and longing to drink.

3 When they reached it, they rushed in with no order left at all. Each man wanted to cross first, and the enemy pressing upon them made the crossing still more difficult. Forced to move in a mass, they fell upon one another and trampled each other underfoot; amid their spears and baggage some died at once, while others became entangled and tumbled down.

4 The Syracusans took up positions on the farther bank, which was precipitous, and hurled missiles down upon the Athenians. Most were drinking eagerly, jostling one another in confusion in the deep riverbed.

5 The Peloponnesians came down into the river and slaughtered the men there above all. The water was at once fouled, yet they drank it all the same, muddy and stained with blood, and most of them fought over it.

Chapter 85

1 At last, with many dead already heaped upon one another in the river and the army being destroyed, whether in the river itself or, if any escaped it, by the cavalry, Nicias surrendered to Gylippus, trusting him more than the Syracusans. He told him that he and the Lacedaemonians might do whatever they wished with Nicias himself, but asked them to stop killing the other soldiers.

2 After this Gylippus ordered that the men should now be taken alive. They gathered in all the survivors whom individual captors had not hidden away—and those hidden were many—and sent pursuers after the three hundred who had broken through the guards in the night, and captured them.

3 The part of the army collected into public custody was therefore not large, but the number secretly taken was great, and all Sicily was filled with them: unlike Demosthenes’ men, they had not been captured under an agreement.

4 A considerable portion also died. This slaughter was enormous, as great as any in this [Sicilian] war. Not a few had also died in the many other attacks during the retreat. Nevertheless, many escaped, some at once, others by running away later after a period of slavery. These men found refuge in Catana.

Chapter 86

1 The Syracusans and their allies gathered together, took up their spoils and as many prisoners as they could, and returned to the city.

2 All the other Athenians and allies they had captured they sent down into the stone quarries, considering these the most secure place of confinement. But they slaughtered Nicias and Demosthenes against Gylippus’ wishes: he thought that, to crown his other achievements, bringing the opposing generals to the Lacedaemonians would be a splendid prize.

3 Of the two, Demosthenes happened to be their bitterest enemy because of the events on the island and at Pylos, and Nicias their closest friend for the same reasons. For Nicias had worked zealously for the release of the Lacedaemonian men from the island, persuading the Athenians to make a treaty.

4 The Lacedaemonians were therefore warmly disposed toward him, and it was largely his confidence in this that led him to surrender himself to Gylippus. But some Syracusans, it was said, feared that, since they had been in communication with him, he might under torture expose this and cause them trouble in the midst of their success. Others, particularly the Corinthians, feared that, being wealthy, he might bribe someone and escape, and that he might again bring fresh danger upon them. They persuaded their allies and put him to death.

5 For this reason, or something very close to it, Nicias died—a man who, of all the Greeks of my time, least deserved to reach such a depth of misfortune, since his whole way of life had been devoted to the practice of what is held to be virtue.

Chapter 87

1 Those in the quarries were harshly treated by the Syracusans at first. Crowded into a small, hollow space without shelter, they suffered initially from the sun and the still-stifling heat; then the autumn nights came on, cold by contrast, and the change brought illness.

2 Forced by the narrowness of the place to do everything in the same spot, with the bodies of those who died of wounds, the change of weather, and similar causes piled upon one another beside them, they endured an intolerable stench. Hunger and thirst oppressed them too: for eight months each man was given one cotyle of water and two cotyles of grain. Of all the other sufferings likely to befall men cast into such a place, there was none they did not undergo.

3 For some seventy days they lived like this, all together. Then, apart from the Athenians and any Sicilian or Italian Greeks who had served with them, the rest were sold.

4 The total number captured is difficult to state precisely, but it was no fewer than seven thousand.

5 This proved the greatest [Greek] action of the war, and, in my judgment, of all the Greek actions known to us by report: most glorious for the victors, most disastrous for the vanquished.

6 Defeated in every respect and in every way, with no small measure of suffering in any part of their ordeal, they were, as the saying goes, utterly destroyed: army, ships, everything was lost, and few out of many returned home. Such were the events in Sicily.

Chapter 1

1 After repairing their ships, Gylippus and Pythen sailed along the coast from Tarentum to Epizephyrian Locri. They now learned more definitely that Syracuse was not yet completely walled off. An army could still enter by way of Epipolae. They considered two options. They could keep Sicily on their right and risk sailing into Syracuse. Or they could keep it on their left, sail first to Himera, recruit the people there and any other troops they could persuade to join them, and travel overland.

2 They decided to sail to Himera. One further reason was that the four Athenian ships had not yet reached Rhegium. Nicias had nevertheless sent these when he learned that they were at Locri. Getting ahead of this patrol, they passed through the strait. They stopped at Rhegium and Messene and reached Himera.

3 There they persuaded the Himeraeans to join the war, march with them in person, and provide weapons for any sailors from their ships who had none. They had hauled their ships ashore at Himera. They also sent a message telling the Selinuntians to meet them at a certain place with their whole army.

4 The people of Gela and some of the Sicels also promised to send them a small force. The Sicels were now much more willing to join them. Archonides had recently died. He had ruled some of the Sicels in that region, had considerable power, and was friendly to the Athenians. Gylippus also seemed to have come from Lacedaemon with a strong commitment to helping them.

5 Gylippus set out for Syracuse with about seven hundred armed men from his own sailors and marines. He also took a thousand Himeraean hoplites and light-armed troops in all, and a hundred cavalry. There were also some light-armed troops and cavalry from Selinus, a few men from Gela, and about a thousand Sicels altogether.

Chapter 2

1 Meanwhile, the Corinthians were hurrying from Leucas to bring help with the rest of their ships. Gongylus, one of the Corinthian commanders, had been the last to set out, with a single ship, but reached Syracuse first, shortly before Gylippus. He found the Syracusans about to hold an assembly to discuss ending the war. He stopped them and encouraged them by saying that more ships were still on their way, and that the Lacedaemonians had sent Gylippus son of Cleandridas as commander.

2 The Syracusans gained confidence. They immediately marched out with their whole army to meet Gylippus, since they had already learned that he was nearby.

3 Gylippus had meanwhile captured Ietae, a Sicel fort on his route. He arranged his men for battle and reached Epipolae. He climbed up by Euryelus, the same way the Athenians had first come, and advanced with the Syracusans toward the Athenian fortifications.

4 He happened to arrive at the following stage of the work. The Athenians had already completed a double wall extending seven or eight stades to the Great Harbor. Only a short stretch near the sea remained, and they were still building it. For most of the rest of their circuit, toward Trogilus and the sea on the other side, stones had already been laid out. Some stretches of wall had been left half finished, and others were complete. This was how close Syracuse had come to disaster.

Chapter 3

1 The Athenians were alarmed at first by the sudden approach of Gylippus and the Syracusans, but they drew up for battle. Gylippus halted his troops nearby and sent them a herald. His message was that he was ready to make a truce if they were willing to take their own belongings and leave Sicily within five days.

2 They treated the offer with contempt and sent the herald away without an answer. After this, both sides prepared to fight each other.

3 Gylippus saw that the Syracusans were in confusion and had trouble getting into formation. He moved the army back onto more open ground. Nicias did not lead the Athenians forward, but stayed by their own wall. When Gylippus realized that they were not coming toward him, he led his army away to the high ground called Temenites. They camped there.

4 The next day he led out most of his army and drew it up facing the Athenian walls, to stop the Athenians from sending help elsewhere. He sent a detachment against the fort at Labdalum and captured it. He killed everyone he caught inside. The Athenians could not see this position from where they were.

5 On the same day, the Syracusans also captured an Athenian trireme that was keeping watch off the harbor.

Chapter 4

1 After this, the Syracusans and their allies began building a single wall from the city up across Epipolae toward the cross-wall. Unless the Athenians could stop them, this would make it impossible for the Athenians to complete the encirclement.

2 The Athenians had now finished their wall down to the sea and had moved up to the higher ground. There was a weak point in their wall, and Gylippus took his army toward it at night.

3 The Athenians happened to be camping outside. When they noticed his approach, they moved out to meet him. Gylippus saw this and quickly led his men back. The Athenians built this part of the wall higher and guarded it themselves. They now assigned the other allies their separate posts along the rest of the fortifications.

4 Nicias decided to fortify the place called Plemmyrium. This is a headland opposite the city. It projects into the Great Harbor and narrows its entrance. He thought that fortifying it would make bringing in supplies easier. They would be able to keep watch closer to the Syracusan harbor. If the enemy made a move with their fleet, they would no longer have to put out from the innermost part of the harbor, as they did now. He was already paying more attention to the war at sea. He saw that, since Gylippus had arrived, their prospects on land were less promising.

5 He therefore moved troops and the ships across and built three forts. Most of the equipment was stored in them. The large transport ships and the fast warships were now moored there too.

6 This was when the ships' crews first began to suffer serious losses. Water was scarce and had to be fetched from a distance. When the sailors went out for it or to collect firewood, the Syracusan cavalry, who controlled the countryside, killed them. The Syracusans had stationed a third of their cavalry at the small settlement by the Olympieum to prevent the men at Plemmyrium from coming out to damage the countryside.

7 Nicias also learned that the rest of the Corinthian ships were approaching. He sent twenty ships to intercept them, with orders to lie in wait around Locri and Rhegium and at the approach to Sicily.

Chapter 5

1 Gylippus continued building the wall across Epipolae, using the stones the Athenians had previously laid out for themselves. At the same time, he regularly led the Syracusans and their allies out in front of the fortifications and drew them up for battle. The Athenians drew up opposite them.

2 When Gylippus thought the moment was right, he led the attack. They met and fought at close quarters between the walls, where the Syracusan cavalry could be of no use.

3 The Syracusans and their allies were defeated. They recovered their dead under a truce, and the Athenians set up a victory marker. Gylippus called his army together and said the fault had been his, not theirs. By placing their battle line too far inside the space between the walls, he had deprived them of the help of their cavalry and javelin throwers. Now he would lead them into battle again.

4 He told them to keep this in mind: their equipment would be no worse than the enemy's. As for their determination, it would be intolerable if they, as Peloponnesians and Dorians, did not think it their duty to defeat Ionians, islanders, and a mixed crowd of men, and drive them out of the country.

Chapter 6

1 After this, when the moment was right, he led them forward again. Nicias and the Athenians believed that, even if the enemy did not want to start a battle, they themselves had to stop the wall being built past their own. The enemy's wall had already almost passed the end of the Athenian wall. If it went any farther, winning every battle from then on would do them no more good than not fighting at all. So they advanced to meet the Syracusans.

2 Gylippus brought his hoplites farther out from the walls than before and engaged the Athenians. He had placed his cavalry and javelin throwers on the Athenians' flank, on the open ground where construction of both walls ended.

3 During the battle, the cavalry attacked the Athenian left wing, which was opposite them, and put it to flight. As a result, the rest of the Athenian army was also defeated by the Syracusans and driven back in confusion into the fortifications.

4 During the following night, the Syracusans managed to extend their wall beyond the Athenian construction before they could be stopped. The Athenians could no longer obstruct them. Even if the Athenians won in battle, they had now completely lost the chance to wall the Syracusans in.

Chapter 7

1 After this, the twelve remaining ships from Corinth, Ambracia, and Leucas sailed in without being noticed by the Athenian patrol. Their commander was Erasinides, a Corinthian. Their men helped the Syracusans finish the rest of the wall as far as the cross-wall.

2 Gylippus went to the rest of Sicily to gather forces for both land and sea. He also meant to bring over any cities that were reluctant to help or had so far stayed out of the war altogether.

3 Other Syracusan and Corinthian envoys were sent to Lacedaemon and Corinth to arrange for more troops to cross over. They were to come in merchant ships, smaller vessels, or whatever other means could be found, since the Athenians were also sending for reinforcements.

4 The Syracusans manned a fleet and practiced with it, intending to attempt an attack by sea as well. Their confidence also grew greatly in other areas.

Chapter 8

1 Nicias learned of this and saw the enemy's strength growing day by day while his own difficulties increased. He too sent reports to Athens. He had often sent reports before about each development, but now he did so with particular urgency. He thought they were in serious danger. Unless the Athenians recalled them as quickly as possible or sent a substantial new force, there was no chance of survival.

2 He was afraid the messengers might not report the facts as they were. They might lack the ability to explain them, forget something, or say something to please the crowd. So he wrote a letter. He thought this was the best way for the Athenians to learn his views without anything being lost through the messenger, and to make their decision on the basis of the truth.

3 The men he sent left with the letter and instructions about what they needed to say. Nicias attended to matters in camp, now concentrating on keeping it secure rather than taking risks of his own choice.

Chapter 9

1 At the end of the same summer, the Athenian general Euetion campaigned against Amphipolis with Perdiccas and many Thracians. He failed to capture the city. But he brought triremes around into the Strymon and conducted a siege from the river, using Himeraeum as his base. The summer ended.

Chapter 10

1 During the following winter, Nicias' messengers arrived in Athens. They delivered the oral message they had been given, answered any questions put to them, and handed over the letter. The city's secretary came forward and read it to the Athenians. It said the following.

Chapter 11

1 “Athenians, you know what happened earlier from my many previous letters. Now it is just as important for you to learn our present situation and decide what to do.

2 “We had defeated the Syracusans, whom you sent us to fight, in most of our battles. We had also built the walls within which we are now stationed. Then Gylippus the Lacedaemonian arrived with an army from the Peloponnese and some of the cities in Sicily. We defeated him in the first battle. But in the next battle, large numbers of cavalry and javelin throwers overpowered us, and we withdrew inside our walls.

3 “So now we have stopped building the encircling wall because of the enemy's numbers, and we are taking no action. We cannot even use our whole army, since guarding the walls takes up part of our hoplite force. The enemy have built a single wall past ours. We can no longer wall them in unless someone attacks and captures this blocking wall with a large army.

4 “We are supposed to be besieging others. Instead, at least on land, we are more like the ones under siege. Their cavalry prevents us from going far into the countryside.

Chapter 12

1 “They have also sent envoys to the Peloponnese for another army. Gylippus has gone to the cities in Sicily. He means to persuade those that are now inactive to join the war. From the others he will bring more land troops and, if he can, resources for a fleet.

2 “From what I hear, they intend to attack our walls with their army and at the same time attack us at sea with their ships.

3 “None of you should be surprised that they mean to attack at sea too. Our fleet was at its best at the start, with dry ships and crews at full strength, as the enemy also know from reports. Now the ships are waterlogged after being at sea for so long, and the crews have been depleted.

4 “We cannot haul our ships ashore to dry them out. The enemy's ships are equal to ours in number, or even more numerous, so we must constantly expect them to attack.

5 “We can see them practicing. They can choose when to attack, and they have more opportunity to dry out their own ships. They are not keeping up a naval blockade against anyone else.

Chapter 13

1 “We could scarcely do that even with a large surplus of ships, and if we were not forced, as we are now, to use all of them on guard duty. If we relax our watch even a little, we will have no supplies. Even now, we have trouble bringing them in past the enemy's city.

2 “These are the reasons our crews have been losing men and are still losing them. Some sailors are killed by the cavalry while gathering firewood, raiding for supplies, or fetching water from far away. The slaves are deserting now that we are no stronger than the enemy. Among the foreigners, those who were forced aboard leave for the various cities at the first opportunity. Others were originally attracted by high pay and expected to make money rather than fight. Now, against their expectations, they see the enemy holding out with a fleet as well as in other ways. Some leave under the pretense of going over to the enemy; others get away however they can. Sicily is a large place. Some have even gone into trade themselves and persuaded the trireme captains to put slaves from Hyccara aboard in their places. This has destroyed the fleet's efficiency.

Chapter 14

1 “You know already what I am writing: a crew stays at its best for only a short time. Few sailors have the skill to get a ship moving and keep the rowing together.

2 “The worst difficulties of all are these. As general, I cannot prevent these things, since your people are hard to command. And we have no source of replacement crews, whereas the enemy have many. We must meet both our current needs and our losses from the men we brought with us. Our present allied cities, Naxos and Catana, cannot help us.

3 “The enemy may gain one further advantage. The places in Italy that feed us may see our condition, and see that you are not coming to help, and go over to them. If that happens, they will have won [the war] without a fight, by starving us into surrender.

4 “I could have written you other things that would be more pleasant to hear. But they would not be more useful, if you are to decide what to do with a clear knowledge of the situation here. I also know your character. You want to hear the most pleasing reports, but later you make accusations if the results do not match them. So I thought it safer to tell you the truth.

Chapter 15

1 “Be assured that neither your soldiers nor your commanders deserve blame for their handling of the task we originally came to carry out. But now all Sicily is joining forces against us, and the enemy expect another army from the Peloponnese. You must make your decision knowing that our men here are not strong enough even for the forces already facing them. You must either recall them or send another force at least as large as this one, both an army and a fleet, with a large amount of money. You must also send someone to replace me. I have a kidney disease and cannot stay on.

2 “I ask you to allow me this. When I was healthy, I did you much good in my commands. Whatever you intend to do, do it as soon as spring begins, without delay. The enemy can obtain their reinforcements in Sicily quickly. Those from the Peloponnese will take longer. Even so, unless you pay attention, some will arrive without your noticing, as they did before, and others will get here before you can act.”

Chapter 16

1 This was what Nicias' letter said. After hearing it, the Athenians did not release him from command. Instead, until the new joint commanders could be elected and arrive, they chose two men who were already there, Menander and Euthydemus, to assist him. They did not want him to struggle alone while ill. They also voted to send another force, both ships and land troops, made up of Athenians called up from the military rolls and men from the allies.

2 They elected Demosthenes son of Alcisthenes and Eurymedon son of Thucles to share his command. They sent Eurymedon to Sicily immediately, around the winter solstice, with ten ships and a hundred and twenty talents of silver. He was also to tell the men there that help would come and that their needs would be attended to.

Chapter 17

1 Demosthenes stayed behind and prepared to sail as soon as spring began. He sent orders to the allies for troops and got money, ships, and hoplites ready in Athens.

2 The Athenians also sent twenty ships around the Peloponnese to keep watch and prevent anyone from crossing to Sicily from Corinth or the Peloponnese.

3 The Corinthians had received their envoys, who reported that things were going better in Sicily. They felt that their earlier decision to send the ships had been well timed, and this greatly increased their confidence. They were preparing to send hoplites to Sicily in merchant ships. The Lacedaemonians were preparing to send men from the rest of the Peloponnese in the same way.

4 The Corinthians also manned twenty-five ships. They intended to try a sea battle against the squadron on guard at Naupactus. The Athenian ships at Naupactus would then be less able to stop the merchant ships from leaving, since they would have to keep watch against the triremes facing them.

Chapter 18

1 The Lacedaemonians were also preparing to invade Attica, as they had previously decided. The Syracusans and Corinthians urged them to do so. They had learned that reinforcements were coming from Athens to Sicily and wanted an invasion to prevent their departure. Alcibiades also kept pressing the Lacedaemonians to fortify Decelea and not let up in the war.

2 Two things especially encouraged the Lacedaemonians. They thought the Athenians would be easier to defeat now that they were fighting two wars, against themselves and the Sicilian Greeks. They also believed the Athenians had been the first to break the treaty. In the previous war, they thought the fault had been more their own. The Thebans had entered Plataea during the truce. Also, the earlier agreement said that neither side should take up arms if the other was willing to submit to arbitration. Yet they themselves had refused when the Athenians challenged them to arbitrate. For this reason they thought their misfortunes had been deserved. They recalled the disaster at Pylos and any other disasters they had suffered.

3 But the Athenians had now used their thirty ships based at Argos to devastate parts of Epidaurus and Prasiae and other places. They were also making raids from Pylos. Whenever a disagreement arose over a disputed point under the treaty, the Lacedaemonians challenged them to arbitrate, but they refused to submit the matter. The Lacedaemonians now thought that the Athenians had taken on the same wrongdoing that they themselves had committed before. So they were eager for war.

4 During this winter they sent orders to their allies for iron and prepared the other tools needed to build the fort in enemy territory. At the same time, they gathered reinforcements to send to the men in Sicily in merchant ships and pressed the other Peloponnesians to do the same. The winter ended, and the eighteenth year of this war, which Thucydides wrote, came to an end.

Chapter 19

1 At the very start of the following spring, as early as possible, the Lacedaemonians and their allies invaded Attica. Agis son of Archidamus, king of the Lacedaemonians, led them. First they devastated the countryside around the plain. Then they began fortifying Decelea, dividing the work among the cities.

2 Decelea is about a hundred and twenty stades from Athens. Its distance from Boeotia is much the same, or not much greater. The fort was being built in a position overlooking the plain and the best land, so that the invaders could damage them. It was visible all the way to Athens.

3 While the Peloponnesians and their allies in Attica were building the fort, those in the Peloponnese were sending the hoplites to Sicily in cargo ships at about the same time. The Lacedaemonians selected their best men from the Helots and the newly enfranchised men, about six hundred hoplites from the two groups together. Eccritus, a Spartan, commanded them. The Boeotians sent three hundred hoplites under Xenon and Nicon, both Thebans, and Hegesander of Thespiae.

4 These troops were among the first to set out. They put out to open sea from Taenarum in Laconia. Not long afterward, the Corinthians sent five hundred hoplites. Some came from Corinth itself, and they hired the rest from Arcadia. They appointed Alexarchus, a Corinthian, to command them. The Sicyonians also sent two hundred hoplites along with the Corinthians, under Sargeus of Sicyon.

5 The twenty-five Corinthian ships that had been crewed during the winter remained stationed opposite the twenty Athenian ships at Naupactus until these hoplites had sailed from the Peloponnese in their cargo ships. That was why the Corinthians had crewed their ships in the first place: to keep the Athenians' attention on the triremes rather than the cargo ships.

Chapter 20

1 Meanwhile, just as spring began and Decelea was being fortified, the Athenians sent thirty ships around the Peloponnese under Charicles son of Apollodorus. He had orders to go to Argos and invoke the alliance to ask the Argives to send hoplites aboard the ships.

2 They were also sending Demosthenes to Sicily, as they had planned, with sixty Athenian ships and five Chian ships. He had twelve hundred Athenian hoplites drawn from the muster roll, and as many islanders as they could get from each island. They had also collected anything useful for the war that their other subject allies could provide. He had orders first to sail around with Charicles and join his campaign along the Laconian coast.

3 Demosthenes sailed to Aegina. There he waited for any part of his force that had not yet arrived, and for Charicles to pick up the Argives.

Chapter 21

1 In Sicily, at about the same time that spring, Gylippus reached Syracuse. He brought as many troops as he could get from each of the cities he had persuaded to help.

2 He called the Syracusans together and said they should crew as many ships as possible and try fighting a naval battle. He hoped this would achieve something in the war that would justify the risk.

3 Hermocrates also did a great deal to persuade them not to lose heart about taking on the Athenians at sea. He said that the Athenians' skill at sea was neither inherited from their ancestors nor something they had always possessed. They had been even more of a land-based people than the Syracusans, and the Persians had forced them to become sailors. Bold men like the Athenians would find the toughest opponents [for them] in men who dared to match their boldness. Sometimes the Athenians attacked their neighbors without having greater strength, and frightened them simply by their daring. The Syracusans could do exactly the same thing to their opponents.

4 He said the Syracusans should be sure of this: if they unexpectedly dared to stand up to the Athenian fleet, the shock would give them a greater advantage than Athenian skill could gain from the Syracusans' lack of experience. So he urged them to try their strength at sea and not hold back.

5 Persuaded by Gylippus, Hermocrates, and anyone else who spoke in support, the Syracusans became eager for a naval battle and began crewing their ships.

Chapter 22

1 Once Gylippus had the fleet ready, he led the entire land army out at night. He himself intended to attack the forts at Plemmyrium by land. At the same time, on an agreed signal, thirty-five Syracusan triremes sailed out from the Great Harbor. The other forty-five sailed out from the smaller harbor, where their shipyard was, and headed around the coast. They wanted to join the ships inside the Great Harbor and approach Plemmyrium together, so that the Athenians would face confusion from both directions.

2 The Athenians quickly crewed sixty ships to oppose them. With twenty-five they fought the thirty-five Syracusan ships in the Great Harbor. With the rest they went to meet those sailing around from the shipyard. They immediately began fighting in front of the Great Harbor's entrance. Both sides held their ground for a long time. The Syracusans wanted to force their way in, and the Athenians wanted to stop them.

Chapter 23

1 Meanwhile, the Athenians at Plemmyrium had gone down to the sea and were concentrating on the naval battle. Gylippus took the opportunity to launch a surprise attack on the forts at dawn. He captured the largest one first, then the two smaller ones. Their guards did not stand their ground once they saw how easily the largest had been taken.

2 The men from the first fort to fall who escaped to the boats and a cargo ship had great difficulty getting back to the camp. The Syracusans were winning the naval battle with their ships in the Great Harbor, and a single fast trireme pursued the fugitives. But by the time the two smaller forts were taken, the Syracusans were already losing. The men escaping from those forts sailed past more easily.

3 The Syracusan ships fighting in front of the entrance had forced their way past the Athenian ships, but they entered the harbor in no order. They got in one another's way and handed the victory to the Athenians. The Athenians routed both these ships and those that had initially been beating them inside the harbor.

4 The Athenians sank eleven Syracusan ships and killed most of the men, except those from three ships whom they took alive. Three of their own ships were destroyed. They hauled the Syracusan wrecks ashore and set up a victory monument on the little island in front of Plemmyrium. Then they returned to their own camp.

Chapter 24

1 That was how the Syracusans had fared in the naval battle. But they held the forts at Plemmyrium and put up three victory monuments for their capture. They demolished one of the two forts taken last. They repaired the other two and stationed guards in them.

2 Many men were killed or captured when the forts fell, and a large amount of property was taken altogether. The Athenians had used the forts as storehouses. There were large stocks of merchants' goods and grain inside, as well as much property belonging to the trireme commanders. The captures included sails and other equipment for forty triremes, and three triremes that had been hauled ashore.

3 The loss of Plemmyrium was one of the first and most damaging blows to the Athenian army. Even the passage into the harbor for supply ships was no longer safe. The Syracusans stationed ships there to block them, and supplies now had to be fought through. The loss also left the army frightened and discouraged in other ways.

Chapter 25

1 After this, the Syracusans sent out twelve ships under Agatharchus, a Syracusan. One went to the Peloponnese carrying envoys. They were to report that the Syracusans were hopeful about their situation and to urge that the war there be pursued even harder. The other eleven ships sailed toward Italy. They had heard that ships loaded with supplies were on their way to the Athenians.

2 They came across these ships and destroyed most of them. In the territory of Caulonia they also burned timber that was ready for the Athenians to use in shipbuilding.

3 Next they went to Locri. While they were at anchor there, one of the cargo ships from the Peloponnese arrived, carrying hoplites from Thespiae.

4 The Syracusans took these men aboard their own ships and sailed along the coast toward home. The Athenians waited for them near Megara with twenty ships and captured one ship with all its men. They could not catch the others, which escaped to Syracuse.

5 There was also a skirmish in the harbor over the stakes that the Syracusans had driven into the sea in front of their old ship sheds. They had put them there so that their ships could anchor behind them, out of reach of Athenian ramming attacks.

6 The Athenians brought up a cargo ship with a capacity of ten thousand talents, fitted with wooden towers and protective screens. Working from small boats, they fastened ropes to the stakes, winched them up, and broke them off. Divers also sawed them through underwater. The Syracusans shot at them from the ship sheds, and the men on the cargo ship shot back. In the end the Athenians removed most of the stakes.

7 The most troublesome part of this barrier was the hidden stakes. Some had been driven in without sticking up above the water. This made it dangerous to approach: a sailor might not see one in time and run his ship onto it as if it were a reef. But divers were paid to go underwater and saw these through as well. Even so, the Syracusans drove in more stakes.

8 The two sides also devised many other ways to attack each other, as was natural with their camps close together and facing each other. They carried out skirmishes and tried every kind of attack.

9 The Syracusans also sent envoys from among the Corinthians, Ambraciots, and Lacedaemonians to the cities. They were to announce the capture of Plemmyrium and explain that the naval defeat had been due more to their own confusion than to the enemy's strength. They were [also] to make clear that the general situation gave them hope, and ask for help from both ships and land troops. More Athenian troops were expected. If they could first destroy the Athenian force already there, the war would be over. That was what the two sides were doing in Sicily.

Chapter 26

1 Once Demosthenes had assembled the force he needed to take to Sicily as reinforcements, he sailed from Aegina toward the Peloponnese. He joined Charicles and the thirty Athenian ships. They took Argive hoplites aboard their ships and sailed to Laconia.

2 First they devastated part of the territory of Epidaurus Limera. Then they landed on the Laconian coast opposite Cythera, where the sanctuary of Apollo stands. They devastated some of the land and fortified a place shaped like an isthmus. The aim was to give the Lacedaemonians' Helots a place to desert to, and also to provide a base for raiders to go out and plunder, as they did from Pylos.

3 As soon as Demosthenes had helped secure the site, he sailed along the coast toward Corcyra. He wanted to pick up allies there too and make the voyage to Sicily as quickly as possible. Charicles stayed until he had finished fortifying the site and left a garrison there. Later he too sailed home with the thirty ships, and the Argives went with him.

Chapter 27

1 During that same summer, thirteen hundred light-armed troops carrying small shields arrived in Athens. They were sword-carrying Thracians of the tribe of the Dii. They were supposed to sail to Sicily with Demosthenes.

2 Since they had arrived too late, the Athenians planned to send them back to Thrace, where they had come from. Keeping them for the fighting against Decelea seemed too expensive: each man was paid a drachma a day.

3 Decelea had first been fortified that summer by the whole enemy army. Afterward, garrisons from the different cities took turns occupying it and attacking the countryside. It did the Athenians a great deal of harm. The losses of property and men that it caused were among the main reasons their position became so much worse.

4 Earlier invasions had been brief and had not stopped them using their land the rest of the time. Now the enemy stayed there continuously. Sometimes larger forces joined them. At other times the regular garrison had to do the work of overrunning and plundering the countryside. Agis, the Lacedaemonian king, was there in person and treated the war as his main business. So the Athenians suffered heavy losses.

5 They were cut off from all their land. More than twenty thousand slaves had deserted, most of them skilled workers. All their sheep and other livestock, as well as their pack animals, had been lost. The cavalry rode out every day to raid Decelea and patrol the countryside. Some of their horses went lame from constant hard work on rough ground, while others were wounded.

Chapter 28

1 Supplies from Euboea had previously traveled more quickly by land from Oropus through Decelea. Now they had to come by sea around Sunium, at great expense. The city also had to import everything it needed. It had become a fortress instead of a city.

2 The Athenians took turns guarding the battlements by day. At night they all served except the cavalry, some resting under arms and others on the wall. Summer and winter, this wore them down.

3 Their greatest burden was having two wars on their hands at once. They had become so determined to win that, before it happened, no one would have believed it possible. The Peloponnesians were besieging them from a fort in their own territory. Yet even then they did not withdraw from Sicily. Instead, they went on besieging Syracuse there in the same way, a city which, considered on its own, was no smaller than Athens. They surprised the Greeks by showing far more strength and daring than anyone had expected. At the start of the war, some thought they would last one year if the Peloponnesians invaded their land, others two, but no one more than three. Yet in the seventeenth year after the first invasion, already worn down in every way by the war, they went to Sicily. They took on another war no smaller than the one they already had against the Peloponnesians.

4 For these reasons, with Decelea causing so much damage and other heavy expenses piling up, they now ran short of money. Around this time they replaced their subjects' tribute with a five-percent duty on goods carried by sea. They thought this would bring in more money. Their expenses were no longer what they had been, but far greater, in proportion to the increase in the war. Meanwhile, their revenues were disappearing.

Chapter 29

1 Because they were so short of money, they did not want to spend it on the Thracians who had arrived too late for Demosthenes. They immediately sent them back and put Diitrephes in charge of taking them home. They also told him to use them to do whatever damage he could to the enemy on the voyage along the coast. Their route took them through the Euripus.

2 He landed them in the territory of Tanagra and quickly carried out a raid for plunder. Then, setting out in the evening from Chalcis in Euboea, he crossed the Euripus, landed in Boeotia, and led them toward Mycalessus.

3 He camped unnoticed for the night near the Hermaeum, about sixteen stades from Mycalessus. At daybreak he attacked the town, which was not large, and captured it. The people were off guard. They had never expected anyone to come so far inland from the sea to attack them. The wall was weak, had fallen down in places, and was low where it still stood. The gates were open too, because the people felt safe.

4 The Thracians burst into Mycalessus, looted the houses and sanctuaries, and murdered the people. They spared neither old nor young, but killed everyone they came across, children and women included. They also killed the pack animals and any other living creatures they saw. For the Thracian people, like the most bloodthirsty of the non-Greek peoples, are extremely murderous whenever they feel confident.

5 There was widespread confusion and destruction of every kind. They broke into the largest school for children in the town, where the children had just come in, and hacked them all to death. The disaster that struck the whole town was as unexpected and terrible as any.

Chapter 30

1 When the Thebans heard what had happened, they came to help. They caught up with the Thracians before they had gone far, took away their plunder, and put them to flight. They pursued them toward the Euripus and the sea, where the ships that had brought them were anchored.

2 They killed the largest number as the Thracians tried to board the ships. The Thracians could not swim, and the men aboard, seeing what was happening on land, had moved the ships out beyond bowshot. During the rest of the retreat, the Thracians had defended themselves quite well against the Theban cavalry, which had attacked them first. They rushed out to attack and then gathered into tight groups in their own customary formation. Few of them were killed during that stage. Some were also caught in the town itself while looting and were killed. Altogether, two hundred and fifty of the thirteen hundred Thracians died.

3 They also killed about twenty of the Thebans and the others who had come to help, counting cavalry and hoplites together. They also killed Scirphondas, one of the Theban Boeotarchs. Some of the people of Mycalessus were killed. Such was what happened at Mycalessus. In proportion to the town's size, its suffering deserved as much pity as any disaster in this war.

Chapter 31

1 At this time Demosthenes was sailing toward Corcyra after building the fort in Laconia. He found a cargo ship at anchor at Pheia in Elis. The Corinthian hoplites intended to cross to Sicily in it. He destroyed the ship, but the men escaped. Later they got another ship and sailed on.

2 After this Demosthenes reached Zacynthus and Cephallenia, where he picked up hoplites. He also sent for some of the Messenians at Naupactus. Then he crossed to the mainland of Acarnania opposite, to Alyzia and Anactorium, which the Athenians held.

3 While he was in this area, Eurymedon met him on his return voyage from Sicily. He was the man who had been sent out during the winter with money for the army. Along with his other news, he reported that he had learned after starting his voyage that the Syracusans had captured Plemmyrium.

4 Conon, the commander at Naupactus, also came to meet them. He reported that the twenty-five Corinthian ships stationed opposite his force were not giving up the fighting and were about to fight a naval battle. He asked them to send ships: his own eighteen were not enough to fight the Corinthians' twenty-five.

5 Demosthenes and Eurymedon therefore sent ten of their fastest ships with Conon to join the fleet at Naupactus. They themselves worked on assembling their army. Eurymedon sailed to Corcyra, told the people there to crew fifteen ships, and enrolled hoplites. He had now turned back and was sharing the command with Demosthenes, as he had originally been appointed to do. Demosthenes collected slingers and javelin throwers from the places around Acarnania.

Chapter 32

1 The envoys who had left Syracuse for the cities after the capture of Plemmyrium had now persuaded them to help, assembled an army, and were about to bring it back. Nicias learned of this in advance. He sent to the Sicels who were Athenian allies and controlled the route, including the Centoripans, the Halicyaeans, and others. He asked them not to let the enemy through, but to join forces and block their passage. The enemy would not even try another route, since the people of Acragas would not allow them through their territory.

2 When the Sicilian Greeks were already on the march, the Sicels did as the Athenians had asked. They set an ambush in three places, caught them off guard in a surprise attack, and killed about eight hundred. They also killed all the envoys except the Corinthian. He brought the men who escaped, about fifteen hundred, to Syracuse.

Chapter 33

1 Around the same time, the Camarinaeans also arrived to help them, with five hundred hoplites, three hundred javelin throwers, and three hundred archers. The people of Gela also sent crews for five ships, four hundred javelin throwers, and two hundred cavalry.

2 By now almost all Sicily had joined together to help the Syracusans against the Athenians. Even those who had previously stood aside were now helping. The only exception was Acragas, which supported neither side.

3 After the disaster among the Sicels, the Syracusans put off their immediate attack on the Athenians. Meanwhile, the troops from Corcyra and the mainland were now ready. Demosthenes and Eurymedon took the whole force across the Ionian Sea to the Iapygian headland.

4 From there they sailed to the Choerades islands off Iapygia. They took aboard a hundred and fifty Iapygian javelin throwers from the Messapian people. They also renewed an old friendship with Artas, the local ruler who had supplied these men. Then they reached Metapontium in Italy.

5 They persuaded the people of Metapontium to send three hundred javelin throwers and two triremes with them under the terms of their alliance. After taking these reinforcements aboard, they sailed along the coast to Thurii. There they found that the opponents of Athens had recently been driven out in civil strife.

6 They wanted to bring all their troops together there, including any who had fallen behind, and review them. They also wanted to persuade the Thurians to join their expedition with all possible enthusiasm and, given their present turn of fortune, to regard the same people as friends and enemies as the Athenians did. So they stayed at Thurii and worked on these matters.

Chapter 34

1 At about this same time, the Peloponnesians in the twenty-five ships prepared for a sea battle. They had been stationed opposite the ships at Naupactus to protect the transport ships on their voyage to Sicily. They now manned more ships, bringing their number to just below that of the Athenian ships. They anchored off Erineus in the territory of Rhypes in Achaea.

2 Their anchorage was shaped like a crescent. Infantry from Corinth and the local allies had come to support them and were drawn up on the projecting headlands on either side. The ships filled the space between them, blocking it off. Polyanthes of Corinth commanded the fleet.

3 The Athenians sailed out against them from Naupactus with thirty-three ships, commanded by Diphilus.

4 At first the Corinthians held their position. Then, when they thought the time was right and the signal was raised, they advanced against the Athenians and began the sea battle. The two sides held out against each other for a long time.

5 Three Corinthian ships were destroyed. No Athenian ship was actually sunk, but about seven were put out of action. They were rammed head-on and had their projecting oar frames torn open by the Corinthian ships. These had been fitted with thicker bow timbers for this very purpose.

6 The battle was evenly matched, and each side claimed victory. The Athenians did, however, gain control of the wrecks, because the wind carried them out to sea and the Corinthians did not come out again. The fleets separated without a chase, and neither side took any prisoners. The Corinthians and Peloponnesians had fought close to land and could easily get to safety. On the Athenian side, no ship had sunk.

7 Once the Athenians had sailed away to Naupactus, the Corinthians immediately set up a trophy to claim victory. They had put more of the enemy's ships out of action. They also judged that they had not lost for the very reason that the other side had not won. The Corinthians considered themselves the winners unless they had suffered a heavy defeat. The Athenians thought they had lost because they had not won a major victory.

8 After the Peloponnesians sailed away and the infantry dispersed, the Athenians also set up a trophy in Achaea to claim victory. It was about twenty stades from Erineus, where the Corinthians had anchored. This was how the sea battle ended.

Chapter 35

1 The Thurians now had seven hundred hoplites and three hundred javelin throwers ready to join Demosthenes and Eurymedon. The two commanders ordered the ships to sail along the coast toward the territory of Croton. They themselves first reviewed all the infantry at the river Sybaris, then led them through Thurian territory.

2 When they reached the river Hylias, the people of Croton sent messengers to say that they did not want the army passing through their land. So the commanders went down toward the sea and camped at the mouth of the Hylias. Their ships met them there. The next day they took the troops aboard and sailed along the coast. They stopped at the cities along the way, except Locri, until they reached Petra in the territory of Rhegium.

Chapter 36

1 Meanwhile, the Syracusans learned that they were approaching by sea. They wanted to try another attack with their ships and with the rest of their land forces. They had been assembling these forces for this very purpose, because they wanted to strike before the reinforcements arrived.

2 They had also made other preparations for their fleet, using what they had learned in the previous sea battle to gain an advantage. They also shortened their ships' bows to make them stronger. They fitted thick timbers to the bows and ran braces from these to the ships' sides for about six cubits, both inside and outside. This was the same way the Corinthians had strengthened their ships' bows for their battle against the fleet at Naupactus.

3 The Syracusans thought this would put them at no disadvantage against the Athenian ships. Those ships were not built to match theirs in this respect. Their bows were lightly built, because the Athenians preferred to sail around an enemy ship and ram it rather than ram it head-on. The Syracusans also thought that fighting in the Great Harbor would favor them, since many ships would be fighting in a small space. By ramming head-on, they would smash the Athenian bows. Their solid, heavy rams would strike against hollow, weak structures.

4 In the cramped space, the Athenians would be unable either to sail around the Syracusan ships or to break through their line. These were the maneuvers in which they trusted their skill most. The Syracusans would do all they could to stop them from breaking through, and the lack of space would stop them from sailing around.

5 They would make the most use of head-on collisions, a tactic previously thought to show a helmsman's lack of skill. This would give them their greatest advantage. When the Athenians were forced back, they would have nowhere to back water except toward the shore, only a short distance away, and into the small space directly in front of their own camp. The Syracusans would control the rest of the harbor. If the Athenians came under pressure anywhere, they would all be forced together

6 into the same small space. They would collide with each other and fall into confusion. This was, in fact, what hurt the Athenians most in all the sea battles. They could not back water freely throughout the harbor as the Syracusans could. Nor would they be able to sail around into open water, since the Syracusans would control the approaches from the sea and the room for backing water. This would be especially difficult because Plemmyrium was now in enemy hands and the harbor entrance was narrow.

Chapter 37

1 The Syracusans worked out these plans to suit their own skills and strength. They also felt more confident now because of the previous sea battle. They began an attack by land and sea at the same time.

2 A little earlier, Gylippus had led the infantry out of the city and brought them up to the part of the Athenian wall facing the city. From the Olympieum, all the hoplites stationed there, together with the Syracusan cavalry and light infantry, approached the wall from the other side. Immediately afterward, the ships of the Syracusans and their allies sailed out.

3 At first the Athenians thought the enemy would attack only by land. When they suddenly saw the ships coming at them too, they were thrown into confusion. Some took up positions on the walls and in front of them to face the advancing troops. Others went out to meet the large force of cavalry and javelin throwers moving quickly from the Olympieum and the area outside the city. Others manned the ships while also rushing to help along the beach. When the crews were aboard, they put out to meet the enemy with seventy-five ships. The Syracusans had about eighty.

Chapter 38

1 For much of the day the fleets advanced and backed water, testing each other. Neither could achieve anything important, except that the Syracusans sank one or two Athenian ships. Then they separated, and the infantry withdrew from the walls at the same time.

2 The next day the Syracusans stayed quiet and gave no sign of what they would do next. Nicias saw that the sea battle had been evenly matched and expected them to attack again. He made the trireme captains repair any damage to their ships. He also anchored merchant ships in front of the Athenian line of stakes. The stakes had been fixed in the sea in front of their warships to serve as an enclosed harbor.

3 He placed the merchant ships about two plethra apart. This would give any warship under pressure a safe refuge and allow it to sail out again without difficulty. The Athenians spent the entire day making these preparations, right up to nightfall.

Chapter 39

1 The following day the Syracusans attacked the Athenians earlier in the morning, but with the same combined assault by land and sea.

2 The ships faced each other again in the same way and spent much of the day testing each other. Then Ariston son of Pyrrhichus, a Corinthian and the best helmsman on the Syracusan side, persuaded his naval commanders to send orders to the officials in the city. They were to move the market and its goods down to the sea as quickly as possible. They were to make everyone bring whatever food they had there and sell it. The commanders could then land their sailors and have them eat their midday meal immediately beside the ships. After a short break they could attack again that same day, taking the Athenians by surprise.

Chapter 40

1 The commanders agreed and sent a messenger, and the market was made ready. The Syracusans suddenly backed water and sailed back toward the city. They immediately went ashore and ate their midday meal on the spot.

2 The Athenians thought the Syracusans had pulled back toward the city because they had been beaten. They went ashore without hurrying and attended to their other business and their midday meal. They did not expect to fight another sea battle that day.

3 Suddenly the Syracusans manned their ships and sailed at them again. In great confusion, and with most of them still without food, the Athenians boarded in no order at all. Only with difficulty did they finally put out to meet them.

4 For a while the two fleets kept their distance, each on its guard against the other. Then the Athenians decided not to let their own delay leave them exhausted and beaten. Instead they would attack as quickly as possible. With shouts of encouragement they advanced and began the battle.

5 The Syracusans met the attack head-on, as they had planned. Their specially fitted rams tore open long stretches of the Athenian ships' projecting oar frames. Men throwing javelins from their decks also did heavy damage to the Athenians. Still more damage was done by the Syracusans who moved around in small boats. They slipped underneath the oars of the enemy ships and came alongside, throwing javelins from their boats at the sailors.

Chapter 41

1 By fighting in this way, the Syracusans finally won a decisive sea victory. The Athenians turned and fled between the merchant ships into their own anchorage.

2 The Syracusan ships pursued them as far as the merchant ships. Then they were stopped by the beams projecting from the merchant ships over the entrances, with heavy dolphin-shaped weights hanging from them.

3 Two Syracusan ships, carried away by their victory, came close to these defenses and were destroyed. One of them was captured with its entire crew.

4 The Syracusans had sunk seven Athenian ships and badly damaged many others. They had captured most of the men and killed the others. They withdrew and set up trophies for both sea battles. They now felt firmly confident that they were far stronger at sea, and they thought they would also defeat the land army.

Chapter 42

1 They were preparing to attack again by land and sea when Demosthenes and Eurymedon arrived with the reinforcements from Athens. They had about seventy-three ships, including the foreign ships, and about five thousand hoplites from Athens and its allies. They also had a large number of Greek and non-Greek javelin throwers, slingers, archers, and plenty of other equipment.

2 At first the Syracusans and their allies were badly shaken. They wondered whether they would ever escape from danger. Despite the fortification of Decelea, a fresh army as large and much like the first had arrived. Athenian power seemed great everywhere. The original Athenian army, meanwhile, recovered some strength after its troubles.

3 Demosthenes saw the situation and decided that he could not waste time or repeat what had happened to Nicias. When Nicias first arrived, he had inspired fear. But he did not immediately attack Syracuse. Instead he spent the winter at Catana, and the Syracusans came to look down on him. Gylippus had time to arrive before he acted, bringing an army from the Peloponnese. The Syracusans would not even have sent for that army if Nicias had attacked at once. They would have thought they were strong enough on their own. By the time they discovered they were weaker, they would already have been walled in. Even if they had then sent for help, it could no longer have been of the same use to them. Demosthenes considered all this. He knew that he too was most frightening to the enemy now, on the first day. So he wanted to make use of the shock caused by his army as quickly as possible.

4 He saw that the Syracusan cross-wall, which had stopped the Athenians from walling them in, was only a single wall. If they gained control of the way up to Epipolae and then of the camp on the heights, they could easily capture it. He thought no one would even stand against them.

5 So he was eager to make the attempt. He thought it was the quickest way to settle the war. Either he would succeed and take Syracuse, or he would lead the army away. He would not let the Athenians serving on the expedition, or the city as a whole, wear themselves out for nothing.

6 First the Athenians went out and laid waste to Syracusan land around the Anapus. Their forces had the upper hand again, as at the beginning, both on land and at sea. The Syracusans did not come out against them in either field, except with cavalry and javelin throwers from the Olympieum.

Chapter 43

1 Then Demosthenes decided to try the siege engines against the cross-wall first. But when he brought them up, the enemy defending the wall burned them. His other troops attacked at many points but were driven back. He decided to delay no longer. After winning over Nicias and the other commanders, he made the attack on Epipolae that he had been planning.

2 He thought it would be impossible to approach and climb up unnoticed in daylight. He ordered the men to take five days' food. He took all the stoneworkers and carpenters, along with a supply of arrows and everything else they would need for building fortifications if they won. After the first sleep of the night, he set out for Epipolae with Eurymedon and Menander, taking the whole army. Nicias had been left behind inside the walls.

3 They reached the heights by way of Euryelus, where the original army had first climbed up. They got past the Syracusan guards unnoticed, attacked the Syracusan fort there, and captured it. They killed some of its guards.

4 Most of the guards escaped straight to the camps and reported the attack. There were three camps in fortified enclosures on Epipolae: one for the Syracusans, one for the other Sicilian Greeks, and one for the allies. The fugitives also warned the six hundred Syracusans who formed the forward guard on this part of Epipolae.

5 These immediately came to help. Demosthenes and the Athenians met them and put them to flight, despite their determined resistance. The Athenians pressed straight ahead. They wanted to use their present momentum to carry out the task they had come for without delay. Other troops had begun capturing the Syracusan cross-wall at the start of the attack, as its guards did not stand their ground, and were tearing down its battlements.

6 The Syracusans and their allies, along with Gylippus and his men, came to help from the fortified enclosures. This daring night attack had caught them by surprise. They were shaken when they attacked the Athenians, and at first they were forced back and retreated.

7 The Athenians were now advancing in increasing disorder, as if they had already won. They wanted to get through all the enemy troops who had not yet fought as quickly as possible. They did not want to ease their attack and give the enemy time to rally. But the Boeotians were the first to stand firm against them. They attacked, routed the Athenians, and put them to flight.

Chapter 44

1 The Athenians now fell into great confusion and did not know what to do. It was hard even to find out from either side how each event had happened. In daylight things are clearer. Even then, those who are present can scarcely know everything beyond what happens to each of them personally. So how could anyone know anything clearly in a night battle, the only one fought by large armies in this war?

2 The moon was bright, but they could see each other only as well as people can by moonlight. They could make out the shape of a body ahead of them, but could not be sure whether it belonged to a friend. Large numbers of hoplites from both sides were moving about in a confined space.

3 Some Athenians were already being defeated, while others were still advancing, unbeaten since their first attack. A large part of the rest of their army had only just reached the top or was still coming up. These men did not know where to go. Once the rout had begun, everything in front was already in confusion, and the shouting made it hard to tell what was happening.

4 The Syracusans and their allies, confident that they were winning, shouted loudly to encourage each other. At night they had no other way to signal. At the same time they met the troops coming at them. The Athenians were looking for their own men. They took everyone coming toward them for an enemy, even friends who had already turned and were running back. They kept asking for the password, since they had no other way to recognize each other. With everyone asking at once, they created great confusion among themselves and also made the password clear to the enemy.

5 The Athenians did not know the enemy's password in the same way. The enemy were winning and had not broken up, so they had less trouble recognizing one another. As a result, when Athenians met a weaker group of the enemy, the enemy could escape because they knew the Athenian password. But when Athenians themselves could not answer a challenge, they were killed.

6 The battle songs also did enormous damage, as much as anything else. The songs on both sides sounded much alike and caused uncertainty. Whenever the Argives, the Corcyraeans, or any of the other Dorians serving with Athens sang their battle song, it frightened the Athenians, just as the enemy's song did.

7 In the end, once confusion had set in, they collided with their own men in many parts of the army. Friends met friends and fellow citizens met fellow citizens. They not only frightened each other but even came to blows, and could hardly pull apart.

8 As they were pursued, many threw themselves over the cliffs and died, because the path back down from Epipolae was narrow. When the survivors reached the level ground below, most of them escaped to the camp. So did all those from the original army, who knew the country better. But some of the recent arrivals missed the paths and wandered through the countryside. At daybreak the Syracusan cavalry surrounded them and killed them.

Chapter 45

1 The next day the Syracusans set up two victory monuments. One was on Epipolae at the point where the Athenians had climbed up. The other was where the Boeotians had first stood against them. The Athenians recovered their dead under a truce.

2 Many Athenians and allies had died. But more sets of arms were captured than the number of men killed. Men had been forced to jump down the cliffs without their equipment [without their shields]. Some died, but others survived.

Chapter 46

1 After this unexpected success, the Syracusans felt a fresh surge of confidence, as they had before. They sent Sicanus with fifteen ships to Acragas, where there was civil strife. He was to bring the city over to their side if he could. Gylippus again went overland to the rest of Sicily to bring in more troops. After what had happened on Epipolae, he hoped to take even the Athenian walls by force.

Chapter 47

1 Meanwhile the Athenian generals discussed their recent defeat and the weakness that now affected every part of the army. They could see that their attacks were failing and that the soldiers resented staying where they were.

2 Disease was wearing the soldiers down for two reasons. It was the season when people were most likely to fall sick, and their camp was also in a marshy, unhealthy place. In every other way, too, their situation seemed hopeless to them.

3 Demosthenes therefore thought they should stay no longer. His proposal was the one he had had in mind when he risked the attack on Epipolae: now that it had failed, they should leave without delay. They could still make the sea crossing, and the ships that had recently arrived, at least, gave their forces the upper hand at sea.

4 He said it would be more useful to Athens to fight the enemy who were building a fortified position in Athenian territory than to fight the Syracusans, who would no longer be easy to defeat. Nor was it reasonable to go on with the siege, spending large sums for nothing.

Chapter 48

1 That was Demosthenes' opinion. Nicias too thought their situation was bad. But he did not want to admit their weakness openly in discussion. Nor did he want them to vote openly for withdrawal before a large gathering and have the news reach the enemy. That would make it much harder to leave undetected whenever they chose.

2 He also knew more than the others about the enemy's affairs. What he knew gave him some hope that, if they kept up the siege, the enemy's position would become worse than their own. They would wear the enemy down through lack of money, especially now that the ships at their disposal gave the Athenians greater control of the sea. There was also a group in Syracuse that wanted to hand the city over to the Athenians. Its members kept sending messages to Nicias and urging him not to leave.

3 With this knowledge, he was in fact still considering both alternatives and holding back while he examined them. But in the discussion at that time he openly said he would not take the army away. He knew very well that the Athenians would not accept their leaving without a vote authorizing it. The men who would pass judgment on the generals [themselves] would not have seen the situation as the generals had. Their knowledge would come from hearing other people's accusations. They would be persuaded by whatever accusations a skillful speaker brought against the generals.

4 He said that many of the soldiers there—indeed, most of them—were now shouting about their terrible situation. But once back in Athens they would shout the opposite: that the generals had taken bribes, betrayed the army, and left. He himself knew the Athenian character. He would rather risk his life at the enemy's hands and die, if he had to, on his own responsibility than be unjustly put to death by the Athenians on a disgraceful charge.

5 He said the Syracusans were still in a worse position than they were. They had to pay mercenaries, spend money on garrison posts as well, and support a large fleet, which they had now maintained for a year. They were already short of some things and would soon have no way of getting others. They had already spent two thousand talents and still owed a great deal more. If failure to pay for its support forced them to give up even a small part of their present force, their position would collapse. Their force depended more on hired troops, whereas the Athenians' own men served because they had to.

6 So, he said, they should stay and wear the enemy down. They should not leave because they had been beaten financially, when they had far more money.

Chapter 49

1 Nicias argued strongly for this position. He had accurate information about conditions in Syracuse, its shortage of money, and the large group there that wanted control to pass to the Athenians and kept sending him messages urging him not to leave. At the same time, he was now more confident than before that they would win, at least with their fleet.

2 Demosthenes would not agree to continue the siege on any terms. If they must not take the army home without an Athenian vote but must spend more time in Sicily, he said they should move to Thapsus or Catana and wait there. From there their infantry could raid wide stretches of the countryside, feeding themselves by ravaging the enemy's land and hurting the enemy at the same time. Their ships could fight on the open sea, not in confined waters that favored the enemy. In open water their skill would be useful. They could withdraw or attack without having to set out from, or return to, a small and restricted area.

3 In short, he said, he was completely against staying any longer in the same place. They should move out as quickly as possible, without delay. Eurymedon supported this view.

4 But Nicias opposed them, and this caused hesitation and delay. There was also a suspicion that he might be insisting because he knew something more. So the Athenians kept putting off a decision and stayed where they were.

Chapter 50

1 Meanwhile Gylippus and Sicanus returned to Syracuse. Sicanus had failed at Acragas: while he was still at Gela, the faction friendly to Syracuse had been driven out. Gylippus brought many more troops from Sicily. He also brought the hoplites sent from the Peloponnese in merchant ships that spring, who had reached Selinus from Libya.

2 They had been driven off course to Libya. The Cyrenaeans had given them two triremes and guides for the voyage. As they sailed along the coast, they helped the people of Euesperides, who were under siege by the Libyans, and defeated the Libyans. From there they sailed along the coast to Neapolis, a Carthaginian trading port. This was the shortest crossing to Sicily, a voyage of two days and a night. They then crossed from there to Selinus.

3 As soon as these troops arrived, the Syracusans prepared to attack the Athenians again with both their ships and their land army. The Athenian generals saw that another army had reinforced the enemy. Their own situation, meanwhile, was not improving. Every aspect of it grew worse each day, and the men's sickness was their greatest burden. They regretted not having left earlier. Nicias no longer opposed them as strongly as before. He only insisted that they should not vote openly on the decision. So they gave everyone in the camp orders, as secretly as they could, to prepare to sail out when the signal was given.

4 Everything was ready and they were about to sail when there was an eclipse of the moon, which was full at the time. Most of the Athenians took this to heart and urged the generals to wait. Nicias, who was somewhat too devoted to divination and such things, said he would not even discuss setting out until they had waited three times nine days, as the diviners instructed. This was why the Athenians delayed and stayed where they were.

Chapter 51

1 When the Syracusans too learned of this, they were much more determined not to ease their pressure on the Athenians. They thought the Athenians themselves had now admitted that they were no longer superior either at sea or on land. Otherwise they would not have planned to sail away. The Syracusans also did not want them to settle somewhere else in Sicily and become harder to fight. Instead they wanted to force them into a sea battle as soon as possible, right where they were, in a place that favored the Syracusans.

2 So they manned their ships and trained for as many days as they thought necessary. When the time came, they attacked the Athenian walls on the first day. A small force of hoplites and cavalry came out against them through one of the gates. The Syracusans cut off some of the hoplites, routed them, and pursued them. The entrance was narrow, and the Athenians lost seventy horses and a few hoplites.

Chapter 52

1 The Syracusan army withdrew for that day. The next day they sailed out with seventy-six ships, while their infantry advanced against the walls. The Athenians sailed out to meet them with eighty-six ships. The fleets came together and fought.

2 Eurymedon commanded the Athenian right wing. He wanted to surround the enemy ships and extended his line farther toward the shore. But the Syracusans and their allies first defeated the Athenian center. Then they cut him off too, in the inner recess of the harbor, and killed him and destroyed the ships that had followed him. After that they pursued the whole Athenian fleet and drove it ashore.

Chapter 53

1 Gylippus saw the enemy ships being defeated and driven ashore outside their stockades and camp. He wanted to kill the men as they came ashore and make it easier for the Syracusans to tow off the ships by bringing the shore under friendly control. So he hurried along to the harbor mole with part of his army.

2 The Tyrrhenians were guarding this part of the shore for the Athenians. When they saw the troops approaching in disorder, they rushed out and attacked the men in front. They routed them and drove them into the lake called Lysimeleia.

3 Later, more Syracusan and allied troops arrived. The Athenians also came to help, fearing for their ships. They fought the enemy, defeated and pursued them, and killed a few hoplites. They saved most of their ships and brought them together by the camp. But the Syracusans and their allies captured eighteen of them and killed all the men aboard.

4 They also wanted to burn the remaining ships. They filled an old merchant ship with vine cuttings and pinewood, set it on fire, and let [the ship] go. The wind was blowing toward the Athenians. Fearing for their ships, the Athenians devised ways to put out the fire and keep the burning ship away. They stopped the flames and prevented the merchant ship from coming close, and so escaped the danger.

Chapter 54

1 After this the Syracusans set up victory monuments for the sea battle and for cutting off the hoplites inland by the wall, where they had also captured the horses. The Athenians set up monuments for the Tyrrhenians' rout of the infantry into the lake and for their own victory with the rest of their army.

Chapter 55

1 The Syracusans had now won a clear victory with their fleet as well, although before this they had feared the ships that had arrived with Demosthenes. The Athenians were completely discouraged. Their shock at this unexpected result was great, and their regret at having made the expedition was greater still.

2 These were the only cities they had yet attacked that were like their own. They too were democracies, and they were large cities with fleets and cavalry. The Athenians could not create political divisions by changing their governments and so win them over. Nor could they bring a vastly superior force against them. Most of their efforts failed. They had already been at a loss before this, and now they had been defeated even at sea, which they had thought impossible. This left them far more at a loss than before.

Chapter 56

1 The Syracusans immediately began sailing around the harbor without fear. They planned to close its mouth so that the Athenians could no longer slip out to sea undetected, even if they wanted to.

2 They were no longer concerned only with saving themselves. They also wanted to prevent the Athenians from escaping. They believed, correctly, that in the present circumstances they had a great advantage. If they could defeat the Athenians and their allies both on land and at sea, their achievement would win honor among the Greeks. Some of the other Greeks would immediately gain their freedom, and the rest would be freed from fear. What remained of Athenian power would not be strong enough to withstand the war that would be brought against it afterward. The Syracusans would get the credit for this and be greatly admired, both by the rest of the world and by future generations.

3 Their struggle did deserve recognition for these reasons. They were also overcoming not only the Athenians but their many allies, and they were not doing it alone but with the allies who had come to their aid. They had taken the lead alongside the Corinthians and Lacedaemonians. They had put their own city forward to face the danger first and had made great progress in naval warfare.

4 More peoples came together at this one city than at any other, except for the total number that joined the sides of Athens and Lacedaemon in this war.

Chapter 57

1 The following peoples on each side fought at Syracuse, coming to Sicily or fighting over it. Some came to help conquer the country, others to help save it. They took sides not so much because of justice or kinship as because circumstances brought each of them there through self-interest or compulsion.

2 The Athenians themselves were Ionians and willingly attacked the Dorian Syracusans. They were joined by the Lemnians, Imbrians, and Aeginetans—the people who then held Aegina—and by the Hestiaeans living at Hestiaea in Euboea. These were Athenian colonists who still shared the Athenians' language and customs.

3 Of the others who joined the expedition, some were subjects, some were independent allies, and some were mercenaries.

4 From among the subject and tribute-paying peoples came the Eretrians, Chalcidians, Styrians, and Carystians from Euboea; the Ceans, Andrians, and Tenians from the islands; and the Milesians, Samians, and Chians from Ionia. The Chians, however, paid no tribute. They joined as independent allies who supplied ships. Nearly all these peoples were Ionians of Athenian origin. The exception was the Carystians, who were Dryopes. Although they followed as subjects under compulsion, they were at least Ionians fighting Dorians.

5 There were Aeolians too. The Methymnaeans were subjects who supplied ships rather than tribute; the Tenedians and Aenianians paid tribute. These Aeolians were forced to fight the Boeotians, who were also Aeolians and had founded their settlements but were now on the Syracusan side. The Plataeans, by contrast, were the only Boeotians fighting other Boeotians. Their hostility made that natural.

6 The Rhodians and Cytherians were both Dorians. The Cytherians were colonists of the Lacedaemonians, yet fought on the Athenian side against the Lacedaemonians with Gylippus. The Rhodians were of Argive descent. They were forced to fight the Syracusans, who were Dorians, and the people of Gela, who were their own colonists and were serving with the Syracusans.

7 Among the islanders around the Peloponnese, the Cephallenians and Zacynthians were independent. But as islanders they were more exposed to pressure, since the Athenians controlled the sea, and so they joined them. The Corcyraeans were not only Dorians but specifically Corinthians. They followed against the Corinthians, whose colonists they were, and the Syracusans, who were their relatives. Their stated reason was compulsion, but their hatred of the Corinthians gave them no less reason to join willingly.

8 The people now called Messenians were brought into the war from Naupactus and from Pylos, which the Athenians then held. There were also a few Megarian exiles. Circumstances had brought them into a war against the Selinuntians, who were Megarians themselves.

9 The remaining peoples took part more willingly. The Argives were Dorians who followed the Ionian Athenians against Dorians. Their alliance was no greater reason for this than their hatred of the Lacedaemonians and the immediate personal benefit each man gained. The Mantineans and other Arcadians were mercenaries, accustomed to fight whoever was designated as their enemy. On this occasion the prospect of profit made them treat the Arcadians who had come with the Corinthians as enemies just as much as anyone else. The Cretans and Aetolians too were persuaded by pay. The Cretans had helped the Rhodians found Gela. Yet now they willingly came for pay, not to join their colonists but to fight against them.

10 Some Acarnanians also came to help as allies. Profit played a part, but their main reasons were friendship with Demosthenes and goodwill toward the Athenians.

11 The peoples listed so far came from this side of the Ionian Gulf. Among the Greeks of Italy, the Thurians and Metapontians joined the expedition because periods of civil strife had then placed them under such pressures. Among the Greeks of Sicily, the Naxians and Catanaeans joined. The non-Greeks included the Egestaeans, who had brought the Athenians over in the first place, and most of the Sicels. From outside Sicily came some Tyrrhenians, because of a quarrel with the Syracusans, and Iapygian mercenaries. These were the peoples who fought with the Athenians.

Chapter 58

1 The Camarinaeans, who were neighbors of the Syracusans, came to help them against the Athenians. So did the people of Gela, who lived next along the coast. The people of Acragas stayed out of the war, but beyond them the Selinuntians also joined.

2 These peoples lived on the side of Sicily facing Libya. The Himeraeans came from the side facing the Tyrrhenian Sea. They were the only Greeks living in that region and the only people from it to send help.

3 These were the Greek peoples of Sicily who joined the Syracusans. They were all Dorians and independent. Of the non-Greeks, only those Sicels who had not gone over to the Athenians joined them. Among the Greeks from outside Sicily, the Lacedaemonians supplied a Spartan commander; the rest of their men were newly enfranchised men and Helots [newly enfranchised means already free]. The Corinthians were the only ones to come with both ships and infantry. The Leucadians and Ambraciots came because of kinship. From Arcadia came mercenaries sent by the Corinthians, and the Sicyonians were forced to serve. From outside the Peloponnese came the Boeotians.

4 Compared with these troops from abroad, the Greeks of Sicily themselves supplied greater numbers in every category, since they lived in large cities. They assembled many hoplites, ships, and cavalry, and a large number of other troops. The Syracusans themselves, in turn, provided more than practically all the others combined, because of the size of their city and because they faced the greatest danger.

Chapter 59

1 These were the forces gathered to support each side. By this time all of them had arrived, and no further reinforcements came to either side.

2 The Syracusans and their allies naturally thought it would be a fine achievement to follow their victory at sea by capturing the whole Athenian army, large as it was, and allowing none of it to escape by either sea or land.

3 So they immediately began closing the Great Harbor, whose mouth was about eight stades wide. They anchored triremes broadside across it, together with merchant vessels and small boats. They also made their other preparations in case the Athenians dared to fight another sea battle. All their plans, in every area, were ambitious.

Chapter 60

1 The Athenians saw the harbor being blocked and realized what else the enemy intended. They decided they needed to discuss what to do.

2 The generals and the infantry commanders met to consider their present difficulties. Besides their other problems, they had no provisions left for immediate use: when they had expected to sail away, they had sent word ahead to Catana not to bring any more. Nor would they have provisions in the future unless they won control of the sea. They decided to abandon the upper walls. Right beside the ships, they would build a crosswall to enclose as small an area as possible, just enough for their equipment and the sick, and guard it. They would use the rest of the infantry to man every ship they had, both the seaworthy ones and those less fit to sail, putting everyone aboard. Then they would fight their way out. If they won, they would go to Catana. If not, they would burn the ships, form up for a march, and retreat by whatever route would bring them soonest to a friendly place, whether non-Greek or Greek.

3 Once they had decided on this plan, they carried it out. They came down from the upper walls and manned all their ships. They forced everyone aboard who seemed even remotely fit for service and of an age to take part.

4 They manned about a hundred and ten ships in all. They put many archers and javelin throwers aboard, drawn from the Acarnanians and the other foreign troops. They made the rest of their preparations as well as they could under the pressure of necessity and with this plan in mind.

5 When most of the preparations were complete, Nicias saw that the soldiers were discouraged by their naval defeat, so different from what they were used to. Their shortage of provisions also made them want to risk a battle as soon as possible. He called them all together and first encouraged them with the following speech.

Chapter 61

1 “Athenian soldiers and soldiers from our other allies, the coming battle concerns all of us alike. Each of us will be fighting for survival and for his homeland, no less than our enemies will. If we win with our ships now, each man has a chance to see his own city again, wherever it is.

2 “We must not lose heart. We must not act like people with no experience, who fail in their first battles and then always expect the disasters they fear to match those they have already suffered.

3 “Those of you here who are Athenians have experience of many wars already. Those who are allies have always fought alongside us. Remember how unpredictable war can be. Hope that luck may take our side too. Get ready to fight back in a way that does justice to this great force, whose size you can see for yourselves.

Chapter 62

1 “We have considered, together with the helmsmen, everything that could help us in the narrow harbor, with the crowd of ships that will be there, and against the enemy's equipment on deck. These things harmed us before. Now we too have made all the preparations our resources allow.

2 “Many archers and javelin throwers will board the ships, along with a large number of other men. We would not use such a crowd in a sea battle out in open water. Their weight would make the ships heavy and prevent us from using our skill. But here we are forced to fight what amounts to a land battle from our ships, and these men will be useful.

3 “We have also worked out the changes we need to make to our ships. To counter the enemy's thick projecting bow timbers, which did us the most damage, we will throw iron grappling hooks onto their ships. These will stop a ship that has struck us from backing away, if the marines do their part after that.

4 “We have been forced into this position: we must fight a land battle from our ships. It seems best neither to back away ourselves nor to let the enemy do so. This is especially true because the land is hostile, except for the stretch our army holds.

Chapter 63

1 “Remember this and fight with all your strength. Do not let yourselves be driven onto that land. When your ship meets another, do not agree to separate until you have swept the hoplites off the enemy's deck.

2 “I am urging this on the hoplites no less than on the sailors, since this task is more the responsibility of the men on deck. Even now our army is still stronger in most respects.

3 “At the same time I advise the sailors, and appeal to them, not to be too frightened by our setbacks. We now have better equipment on deck and more ships. Remember too the pleasure of the position you have enjoyed, and how well worth keeping it is. Until now, although you were not Athenians, people thought you were. Your knowledge of our language and your imitation of our ways won you admiration throughout Hellas. You had no smaller share in the benefits of our empire. In fact, you had a much greater share in the fear you inspired in its subjects and in protection from mistreatment.

4 “So you alone share our empire with us as free men. It is only right that you should not betray it now. Look down on the Corinthians, whom you have beaten so often, and on the Greeks of Sicily. None of them thought they could even stand up to us while our navy was at its height. Fight them off. Show that even with weakness and setbacks, your skill is stronger than someone else's strength backed by good luck.

Chapter 64

1 “Now I remind the Athenians among you once again of this. You have not left behind other ships in the dockyards to match these, or a reserve of men of hoplite age. If the result is anything other than victory for you, our enemies here will sail straight for Athens. Our people left there will be unable to fight off both the enemies already there and the new arrivals. You here would immediately fall under the power of the Syracusans. You know for yourselves what your intentions were when you attacked them. Our people at home would fall under the power of the Lacedaemonians.

2 “So this one battle will decide the fate of both groups. Stand firm now as never before. Each of you, and all of you together, must keep this in mind: those of you who are about to go aboard are Athens' army, its fleet, what is left of its city, and its great name. If any man has more skill or courage than another, he could never show it at a better time. By doing so he will help himself and save us all.”

Chapter 65

1 After giving this encouragement, Nicias immediately ordered the men to crew the ships. Gylippus and the Syracusans could see the preparations themselves and recognize that the Athenians were going to fight at sea. They had also been told in advance about the use of iron grappling hooks.

2 They made preparations to meet each of the other measures, and this one too. They covered the bows and much of the upper part of their ships with hides. This would make a grappling hook slide off when it was thrown aboard, instead of finding a hold.

3 When everything was ready, the generals and Gylippus encouraged their men with these words.

Chapter 66

1 “Syracusans and allies, we think most of you know that what you have already achieved is a fine thing, and that the battle ahead will be fought for fine rewards. Otherwise you would not have taken it on so eagerly. If anyone has not understood this fully, we will explain it.

2 “The Athenians came to this country intending first to enslave Sicily. Then, if they succeeded, they meant to enslave the Peloponnese and the rest of Hellas too. They already held the greatest empire any Greeks have ever possessed, in the past or in our own time. You were the first people to stand up to their navy, the force they used to gain all this. You have already won sea battles against them, and you are likely to win the one ahead.

3 “When men suffer a setback in the thing in which they claim to excel, what remains of their confidence is weaker than it would have been if they had never had that opinion of themselves. Their pride meets an unexpected defeat, and they give way more than the actual strength of their forces would require. The Athenians have probably suffered this now.

Chapter 67

1 “Our original courage, which made us dare to fight even when we still lacked skill, is now more firmly established. Added to it is the belief that we must be the best if we have beaten the best. So each man's confidence has doubled. In most undertakings, the greatest confidence also produces the greatest enthusiasm.

2 “They have copied our equipment. But we are used to that way of fighting, and we will be able to deal with each of their measures. They, on the other hand, will have many hoplites on deck, contrary to their usual practice. They will also have many javelin throwers aboard, Acarnanians and others who are, so to speak, men of the land rather than the sea. These men will not even know how to throw a javelin while sitting down. How can they fail to make the ships unsteady? And how can they avoid getting in each other's way, when none of them is moving as he is used to?

3 “Their greater number of ships will not help them either, in case any of you is also frightened at the thought of fighting an unequal number. Many ships in a small space will be slower to do what they intend, and very easy to damage with the equipment we have prepared.

4 “Learn the real truth from information that we believe is reliable. Their troubles have become overwhelming, and their present lack of a way out has driven them to desperation. They are relying less on their preparations than on taking a chance with luck, any way they can. They hope either to force their way out to sea or to retreat by land afterward. They believe that nothing they do could make their position worse than it is now.

Chapter 68

1 “So let us angrily attack our bitterest enemies, whose ranks are in such disorder and whose fate is now in our hands. Let us consider it entirely right to satisfy our anger against our opponents when we mean to punish them for attacking us. And let us remember that we will have the chance to pay back our enemies, which, as people say, is the greatest pleasure.

2 “You all know that they are enemies, and the bitterest enemies. They came to our country to enslave us. If they had succeeded, they would have inflicted the worst suffering on our men, the worst indignities on our children and women, and the most shameful name on our whole city.

3 “In return for this, no one should weaken or think it a gain just to let them get away safely. They will do that anyway if they win. But if we achieve what we want, as we probably will, we will punish these men and give all Sicily a firmer hold on the freedom it already enjoys. That is a fine goal to fight for. There are very few risks like this, where failure causes so little harm and success brings such great benefits.”

Chapter 69

1 After the Syracusan generals and Gylippus had encouraged their own soldiers in this way, they too began to crew their ships, as soon as they saw the Athenians doing so.

2 Nicias was shaken by the situation. He saw how great the danger was, and how close it already [was], since the ships were just about to set out. As often happens to people facing a great struggle, he thought that everything they had done was still inadequate, and that he had not yet said enough to the men. He called each trireme captain back again, addressing him by his father's name, his own name, and his tribe. If a man had any personal distinction, Nicias urged him not to betray it. He urged them not to wipe out the record of their fathers' courage, which had made their ancestors famous. He reminded them that their homeland was the freest of all, and that everyone there could live as he chose, without anyone ordering him about. He also said all the other things people say when they reach such a moment. They do not worry that someone may think they are repeating old phrases. They make much the same appeals on behalf of all that matters to them, bringing up wives, children, and ancestral gods. In the terror of the moment, they shout these things out because they think they will help.

3 He felt that his words of advice were necessary, even if they were not enough. He then withdrew, led the land army to the sea, and spread it out along as wide a front as he could. He wanted it to give the men in the ships as much encouragement as possible.

4 Demosthenes, Menander, and Euthydemus were the Athenian generals who went aboard the ships. They put out from their own camp and sailed straight for the barrier across the harbor and the opening left for sailing through it. They intended to force their way out.

Chapter 70

1 The Syracusans and their allies had already put out, with about as many ships as before. They used part of their fleet to guard the exit, and the rest to guard positions around the harbor. This would let them attack the Athenians from every side at once. Their land army also came to help wherever the ships came in to shore. Sicanus and Agatharchus commanded the Syracusan fleet, each holding one wing of the whole force. Pythen and the Corinthians held the center.

2 When the rest of the Athenians approached the barrier, the first rush of their attack overcame the ships stationed there, and they tried to open the blocked passage. Then the Syracusans and their allies attacked them from every side. The battle was no longer being fought only at the barrier, but throughout the harbor. It was fierce, and unlike any of the earlier battles.

3 The sailors on both sides put all their energy into driving their ships forward whenever they were ordered. The helmsmen competed intensely, each trying to outdo the others in skill. Whenever ship met ship, the marines worked to make sure that the fighting on deck lived up to the skill shown elsewhere. Every man hurried to show that he was the best at his assigned task.

4 Many ships were crowded together in a small space. No greater number had ever fought in so little room: the two fleets together came to just under two hundred ships. There were few ramming attacks, since the ships could not back away or sail through the enemy's line. But accidental collisions were more frequent, as one ship struck another while fleeing or sailing to attack a different ship.

5 While a ship was approaching, the men on deck showered it with javelins, arrows, and stones. When the ships came together, the marines fought hand to hand and tried to board each other's ships.

6 Because of the lack of space, it often happened that ships struck others on one side while being struck themselves on another. Two ships, and sometimes more, were forced into a tangled group around one. The helmsmen had to defend against some and plan attacks on others, not one at a time, but against many threats from every direction. The great crash of so many ships colliding was terrifying in itself. It also made it impossible to hear the orders shouted by the men directing the rowers.

7 These men on both sides shouted many orders and appeals, both to direct the work and to spur the men on in the immediate struggle to win. They called on the Athenians to force their way out and to make an eager effort, now if ever, to get home safely once more. They told the Syracusans and their allies that it would be a fine thing to stop the enemy from escaping, and by victory to make each man's homeland greater.

8 The generals on either side also called out whenever they saw a ship backing away without being forced to. They addressed its captain by name. The Athenian generals asked whether the men were retreating because they now thought the bitterly hostile land was more their own than the sea they had won at such great cost. The Syracusan generals asked whether they were themselves fleeing from the fleeing Athenians, when they knew perfectly well that the Athenians were trying every means of escape.

Chapter 71

1 As the sea battle remained evenly balanced, the armies of both sides on land were under great strain, their minds locked on the struggle. The local army was eager to win an even greater success. The invaders were afraid of ending up worse off than they already were.

2 Everything the Athenians had was at stake in their ships, so their fear for the future was unlike anything else. Because the sea battle was going differently in different places, the men watching from shore also saw different things.

3 They were watching from close by, and not everyone was looking at the same place at once. Whenever some saw their own side winning somewhere, they would take courage and turn to calling on the gods not to deny them safety. Others, looking at a place where their side was losing, would cry out and weep. What they saw happening broke their spirits even more than those of the men actually fighting. Others were watching a part of the sea battle where the sides were evenly matched. As the contest went on without a decision, they anxiously moved their own bodies this way and that in time with their fears. Their distress was extreme. At every moment they were only a little way from either escaping or being destroyed.

4 As long as the sea battle was closely balanced, all these sounds could be heard together within the same Athenian army: weeping, shouting, cries of victory and defeat, and all the other different sounds that a great army in great danger is forced to make.

5 The Athenians aboard the ships felt much the same way. Finally, after the battle had held out for a long time, the Syracusans and their allies put the Athenians to flight. They pressed their attack hard, shouting loudly and urging one another on, and chased them toward the land.

6 Then the men of the fleet who had not been captured out on the water were driven ashore at different points and rushed out into the camp. The land army no longer reacted in different ways. All now shared the same impulse, wailing and groaning at what was happening. Some hurried to help at the ships. Others went to guard what remained of the wall. Others, now the largest group, were looking out for themselves and trying to work out how to escape.

7 The shock at that moment was as great as any they had ever suffered. They were now experiencing something like what they themselves had done at Pylos. When the Lacedaemonians' ships were destroyed, they also lost the men who had crossed to the island. Now the Athenians had no hope of escaping by land unless something unexpected happened.

Chapter 72

1 The sea battle had been fierce, and both sides had lost many ships and men. The victorious Syracusans and their allies collected the wrecks and the dead, sailed back to the city, and set up a victory trophy.

2 The Athenians were so overwhelmed by their present troubles that they did not even think of asking permission to recover their dead or their wrecks. Instead they planned to retreat at once during the night.

3 Demosthenes went to Nicias and proposed that they should crew the remaining ships and try to force their way out at dawn, if they could. He said they still had more usable ships left than the enemy. The Athenians had about sixty remaining, while their opponents had fewer than fifty.

4 Nicias agreed to the plan, and they wanted to crew the ships. But the sailors refused to board. The defeat had terrified them, and they no longer believed they could win.

Chapter 73

1 By now all the Athenians had made up their minds to retreat by land. But Hermocrates the Syracusan guessed what they intended. He thought it would be dangerous if so large an army retreated inland, established itself somewhere in Sicily, and wanted to renew the war against them. He went to the authorities and urged them not to stand by and let the Athenians withdraw that night. He explained his concerns and proposed that all the Syracusans and their allies should march out at once, block the roads with walls, and take up positions in advance to guard the narrow passes.

2 The authorities understood this just as well as he did, and agreed that it ought to be done. But they thought the men would not readily obey. They had only just come to rest after a great sea battle and were enjoying their relief. There was also a festival: a sacrifice to Heracles happened to fall on that day. In their delight at the victory, most of the men had turned to drinking at the festival. The authorities expected them to do anything they were told rather than take up their weapons and march out at that moment.

3 The authorities thought these difficulties could not be overcome, and Hermocrates could no longer persuade them. So he came up with the following plan. He was afraid that the Athenians might get a head start in the night and pass quietly through the most difficult ground. As darkness was falling, he sent some of his own companions with horsemen to the Athenian camp. They rode up to within earshot and called for some of the men, pretending to be friends of the Athenians. Nicias did in fact have people inside the city who sent him messages. They told the men to warn Nicias not to lead his army away that night, because the Syracusans were guarding the roads. Instead, he should take his time preparing and withdraw by day.

4 After saying this, they left. Those who had heard them passed the message to the Athenian generals.

Chapter 74

1 In response to the message, the generals stayed where they were that night, believing it was not a trick. Since they had not set out at once after all, they decided to wait through the next day too. This would let the soldiers pack the most useful things they could from what was available. They were to leave everything else behind and set out with only the supplies they could carry to keep themselves alive.

2 The Syracusans and Gylippus marched out ahead of them with the land army. They blocked the roads through the country that the Athenians were likely to take, guarded the crossings over streams and rivers, and took up positions wherever they thought best to meet and stop the army. Meanwhile they sailed up to the Athenian ships and towed them off the beach. The Athenians themselves burned a few, as they had planned. The Syracusans fastened towlines to the rest wherever each had been driven ashore, and brought them back to the city at their leisure, with no one stopping them.

Chapter 75

1 After this, when Nicias and Demosthenes thought their preparations were complete, the army finally broke camp. It was the third day after the sea battle.

2 Their situation was terrible in more ways than one. They were retreating after losing all their ships. Their great hopes had given way to danger for both themselves and their city. But leaving the camp also brought each man painful sights and painful thoughts.

3 The dead were still unburied. Whenever a man saw one of his friends lying there, he felt grief mixed with fear. But the living men left behind, the wounded and sick, caused the survivors much more distress than the dead did. Their own condition was even more miserable than that of the men who had died.

4 They begged and cried out, leaving the others at a loss about what to do. They demanded to be taken along and called out to anyone they saw among their friends or relatives, one man after another. As their tentmates left, they clung to them and followed as far as they could. When their strength and bodies failed them, they were left behind with some cries to the gods and groans. The whole army was full of tears and this feeling of helplessness. They found it hard to start, even though they were leaving enemy territory. They had already suffered things too great for tears, and feared still more such suffering in the unknown future.

5 At the same time, they were deeply dejected and bitterly blamed themselves. They looked like nothing so much as the population of a city fleeing after its capture in a siege—and not a small city, either. The whole crowd marching together numbered at least forty thousand. Everyone else carried whatever useful things he could. The hoplites and cavalrymen, contrary to their usual practice, carried their own food along with their weapons. Some had no servants; others did not trust them. Servants had been deserting for a long time, and most had left just now. Even the food they carried was not enough, since there was no longer any grain in the camp.

6 Everyone had an equal share in their other suffering. Sharing troubles with so many others did offer some relief. Even so, their suffering seemed hard to bear in their present situation. This was especially true when they thought of the splendor and pride of their departure and the humiliating end they had now reached.

7 No Greek army had ever experienced a greater reversal. They had come to enslave others, but were leaving in greater fear of being enslaved themselves. They had sailed out with prayers and songs of victory; now they were setting out to cries that meant the opposite. They were traveling on foot instead of aboard ships, and depended on hoplites rather than a fleet. Yet the enormous danger still hanging over them made all this seem bearable.

Chapter 76

1 Nicias saw how discouraged the army was and how great a reversal it had suffered. He went along the ranks, encouraging and comforting the men as best he could in the circumstances. As he reached each group, his eagerness made him raise his voice still higher. He wanted to be heard as far away as possible and do some good.

Chapter 77

1 “Athenians and allies, even in our present situation we must have hope. Others have escaped from dangers worse than these. Do not blame yourselves too much for our misfortunes or for the suffering you now endure, which you do not deserve.

2 “I am no stronger than any of you. You can see what my illness has done to me. And although I was thought to be as fortunate as anyone, both in my private life and in other ways, I now face the same uncertain danger as the least fortunate among you. Yet throughout my life I have carefully observed my duties to the gods and treated people justly, without giving them grounds for resentment.

3 “That is why I still have strong hopes for the future, and why our misfortunes do not frighten me as much as their scale might suggest. They may even ease soon. Our enemies have already had enough good fortune. And if our expedition made any god resent us, we have already been punished enough.

4 “Others have invaded foreign countries before. They acted as humans do, and what they suffered was bearable. We too now have reason to hope for gentler treatment from the gods. We deserve their pity now more than their resentment. Look at yourselves: think how good you are as hoplites, and how many of you are marching together in formation. Do not be too alarmed. Remember that wherever you settle, you immediately form a city yourselves. No other city in Sicily could easily withstand your attack or drive you out once you had established yourselves somewhere.

5 “Make sure yourselves that the march is safe and orderly. Each man should keep this one thought in mind: wherever he is forced to fight, if he wins, that place will be his country and his protecting wall.

6 “We will have to hurry on our way by night as well as by day, since we have little food. If we reach some friendly territory belonging to the Sicels, you can consider yourselves safe. They are still loyal to us because they fear the Syracusans. We have already sent ahead to them, telling them to meet us and bring more food.

7 “In short, soldiers, understand that you must be brave. There is nowhere nearby where you can find safety if you lose your courage. If you escape the enemy now, those of you from other cities will see the things you long to see again. And you Athenians will restore your city's great power, even though it has fallen. A city is its men, not walls or ships with no men in them.”

Chapter 78

1 Nicias went along the army giving encouragement of this kind. Wherever he saw men scattered and marching out of formation, he brought them together and put them in order. Demosthenes was doing just as much for his own troops, speaking to them in the same or similar terms.

2 The army marched in a hollow square, with Nicias' force leading and Demosthenes' following. The hoplites kept the baggage carriers and most of the crowd inside their formation.

3 When they reached the crossing of the river Anapus, they found a force of Syracusans and allies drawn up there. They routed them, gained control of the crossing, and moved forward. The Syracusan cavalry rode alongside and kept attacking them, while the light troops threw javelins at them.

4 That day the Athenians advanced about forty stades and camped by a hill. The next day they set out early and went about twenty stades. They came down to a level area and camped there. There were people living in the district, so they wanted to get some food from the houses. They also wanted to take water with them from there, since water was scarce for many stades ahead along their intended route.

5 Meanwhile, the Syracusans went ahead and were building a wall across the pass farther along the route. The position was a strong hill with a steep-sided ravine on either side. It was called Acraeum Lepas.

6 The next day the Athenians moved forward. Large numbers of Syracusan and allied cavalry and javelin throwers blocked them on both sides, throwing javelins and riding alongside them. The Athenians fought for a long time, then withdrew to the same camp. They no longer had the same supply of food, since the cavalry now prevented them from going out to get it.

Chapter 79

1 They set out early and marched again. They forced their way to the hill where the wall had been built. There they found the enemy infantry drawn up ahead of them above the wall. The ranks were many shields deep, since the ground was narrow.

2 The Athenians attacked the wall. Many men on the steep hill above threw missiles down at them, and those above could reach them more easily. Unable to force their way through, the Athenians withdrew again and rested.

3 There also happened to be some thunder and rain, as is usual when the year is already approaching autumn. This discouraged the Athenians still more. They thought that all these things too were happening to bring about their destruction.

4 While they were resting, Gylippus and the Syracusans sent part of their army to build another wall behind them, across the route by which they had advanced. The Athenians sent some of their own men against them and prevented this.

5 After this, the Athenians withdrew with their whole army closer to the plain and camped for the night. The next day they moved forward. The Syracusans attacked them on every side and wounded many of them. When the Athenians advanced against them, they fell back; when the Athenians withdrew, they pressed forward. They attacked the men at the rear in particular. They hoped that by routing a few at a time they might panic the whole army.

6 The Athenians held out against these tactics for a long time. Then, after advancing five or six stades, they stopped to rest on the plain. The Syracusans also left them and returned to their own camp.

Chapter 80

1 That night Nicias and Demosthenes decided to light as many fires as possible and lead the army away. It was in bad condition, now short of every kind of supply, and many men had been wounded in the enemy's repeated attacks. They would no longer take their intended route. Instead, they would go toward the sea, in the opposite direction from the route the Syracusans were guarding.

2 This route as a whole led the army not toward Catana, but toward the other side of Sicily, in the direction of Camarina, Gela, and the other cities in that region, both Greek and non-Greek.

3 So they lit many fires and marched away in the night. But confusion broke out among them. Fear and panic can affect any army, especially a very large one, and all the more when it is marching by night through enemy territory with the enemy close by.

4 Nicias' force, which was in the lead, stayed together and got a long way ahead. But Demosthenes' force, which made up about half the army or more, became separated and marched in greater disorder.

5 Nevertheless, at dawn they reached the sea. They took the road called the Helorine Road and marched along it. Their plan was to turn inland when they reached the river Cacyparis, following it upstream. They also hoped to meet the Sicels there whom they had sent for.

6 When they reached the river, they found a Syracusan guard force there too, building a wall and a line of stakes across the crossing. They forced their way past the guards, crossed the river, and moved on toward another river, the Erineus. That was the way their guides told them to go.

Chapter 81

1 Meanwhile, when day came and the Syracusans and their allies learned that the Athenians had gone, most blamed Gylippus for deliberately letting them escape. They quickly set off in pursuit. It was easy to find out which way the Athenians had gone, and they caught up with them around the time of the morning meal.

2 They came up with Demosthenes' troops, who were in the rear and marching more slowly and in greater disorder because of the confusion during the night. They immediately attacked and began fighting. The Syracusan cavalry found it easier to surround them now that they were separated from the other force, and crowded them into one place.

3 Nicias' force was as much as fifty stades ahead. He was moving faster because he thought that in such a situation safety did not lie in choosing to stand and fight. It lay in retreating as fast as possible and fighting only as much as they had to.

4 Demosthenes had generally faced more continuous hardship. Since his force was retreating in the rear, it was the first to be attacked by the enemy. Now, when he realized that the Syracusans were pursuing them, he concentrated on drawing up his men for battle rather than moving forward. As he delayed, the enemy surrounded him, and he and the Athenians with him fell into great confusion. They were trapped in a place enclosed by a low wall, with a road on either side and many olive trees inside. The enemy surrounded them and threw missiles at them.

5 The Syracusans had good reason to use attacks like these instead of close combat. By now, risking a fight with desperate men was no more in their interest than in the Athenians'. With success already certain, each man was anxious not to throw his life away before it came. They also thought that even without close combat they could wear the Athenians down in this way and capture them.

Chapter 82

1 They spent the day attacking the Athenians and their allies with missiles from all sides. When they saw that the men were worn down by wounds and their other suffering, Gylippus, the Syracusans, and their allies first made a proclamation to the islanders. Any of them who wanted could come over to their side and keep their freedom. The men from a few cities did leave.

2 Later, they also made an agreement with all the rest of Demosthenes' men. They were to hand over their weapons, and none of them was to die by violence, from imprisonment, or from a lack of the most basic necessities of life.

3 All six thousand men surrendered. They handed over all the money they had, putting it into shields laid face up. They filled four shields. These prisoners were taken to the city at once. That same day, Nicias and his men reached the river Erineus. After crossing it, he settled the army on some high ground.

Chapter 83

1 The next day the Syracusans caught up with him. They said that Demosthenes' men had surrendered and told him to do the same. He did not believe them and agreed on a truce so that he could send a cavalryman to find out.

2 The man went and returned with the news that they had surrendered. Nicias then sent a herald to Gylippus and the Syracusans. He was ready to agree on behalf of the Athenians to repay all the money the Syracusans had spent on the war, if they would let his army go. Until the money was paid, he would give Athenians as hostages, one man for each talent.

3 The Syracusans and Gylippus refused these terms. Instead, they attacked, surrounded these troops too on all sides, and threw missiles at them until late in the day.

4 These men too were in a bad condition from lack of grain and other supplies. Even so, they planned to wait for the quiet part of the night and then march away. But just as they were picking up their weapons, the Syracusans noticed and sang their battle song.

5 Realizing that they had been detected, the Athenians put down their weapons again, except for about three hundred men. These forced their way through the guards and went on through the night wherever they could.

Chapter 84

1 At daybreak Nicias led the army on. The Syracusans and their allies kept attacking in the same way, throwing missiles from all sides and striking men down with javelins.

2 The Athenians hurried toward the river Assinarus. The attacks from all sides by large numbers of cavalry and the rest of the enemy force were driving them on. They thought things would be easier if they crossed the river. Their exhaustion and their longing for a drink also drove them forward.

3 When they reached it, they rushed in without any order at all. Every man wanted to get across first, and the enemy's continued attacks were making the crossing very difficult. Forced to move in a mass, they fell over one another and trampled each other. Some were killed at once on their own spears and equipment. Others got tangled in them and fell.

4 The Syracusans took positions on the far bank, which was steep, and threw missiles down at the Athenians. Most of the Athenians were eagerly drinking and jostling one another in confusion down in the riverbed.

5 The Peloponnesians came down after them and slaughtered the men, especially those in the river. The water was immediately fouled, but the men kept drinking it, muddy and bloody as it was. The crowd even fought over it.

Chapter 85

1 At last, many bodies were already piled on one another in the river. The army was being destroyed: some died in the river, and any who escaped were killed by the cavalry. Nicias surrendered to Gylippus, whom he trusted more than the Syracusans. He told him that he and the Lacedaemonians could do whatever they wanted with him, but asked them to stop killing the other soldiers.

2 After this, Gylippus ordered his men to take prisoners alive. They gathered up the survivors, except those whom individual captors had kept hidden—and there were many of these. They also sent men in pursuit of the three hundred who had broken through the guards during the night, and captured them.

3 The number of troops collected as public prisoners was therefore not large, but very many were secretly taken by individuals. They were scattered throughout Sicily, since, unlike Demosthenes' men, they had not been captured under an agreement.

4 A considerable number also died. This was the greatest slaughter, as great as any in this [Sicilian] war. Many had also died in the numerous other attacks during the retreat. Yet many escaped, some immediately, and others later, after they had been enslaved and then run away. These men found refuge in Catana.

Chapter 86

1 The Syracusans and their allies gathered together, took as many prisoners as they could and the captured equipment, and returned to the city.

2 They put all the other Athenians and allies they had captured down in the stone quarries, which they thought were the most secure place to keep them. But they executed Nicias and Demosthenes against Gylippus' wishes. In addition to his other achievements, Gylippus thought it would be a fine success to bring the enemy generals back to the Lacedaemonians.

3 Of the two, Demosthenes happened to be their bitterest enemy because of what had happened on the island and at Pylos. Nicias was their closest friend for the same reason. He had worked hard to get the Lacedaemonian prisoners from the island released, persuading the Athenians to make a treaty.

4 The Lacedaemonians were friendly toward him because of this. It was also a major reason why he had trusted Gylippus and surrendered to him. But some of the Syracusans, it was said, had been in secret communication with Nicias. They feared that under torture he might disclose this and cause them trouble just when they were doing well. Others, especially the Corinthians, feared that, since he was rich, he might bribe someone and escape, and then cause them more trouble. They persuaded their allies and had him killed.

5 He died for this reason, or something very close to it. Of all the Greeks of my time, he least deserved to come to such a miserable end, because he had devoted his whole life to following accepted standards of goodness.

Chapter 87

1 At first the Syracusans treated the men in the quarries harshly. There were many of them crowded into a small, deep hollow without shelter. Initially they suffered from the sun and the heat, which was still stifling. Then the autumn nights came on cold instead, and the change made them ill.

2 Because they were so cramped, they had to do everything in the same place. The bodies of men who died from wounds, the change in temperature, and similar causes were piled on one another there too. The smells were unbearable. They were also tormented by hunger and thirst. For eight months each man was given a cotyle of water and two cotyles of grain a day. Every other hardship that people trapped in such a place could be expected to suffer also fell on them.

3 They lived like this, all crowded together, for about seventy days. Then the Syracusans sold the others, except the Athenians and any Greeks from Sicily or Italy who had taken part in the expedition.

4 It is hard to give an exact total for the prisoners, but there were at least seven thousand.

5 This proved to be the greatest [Greek] event of this war, and in my opinion the greatest of all Greek events we know of by report. It brought the greatest glory to the victors and the greatest misery to the defeated.

6 They were completely beaten in every way, and their suffering was extreme in every respect. It was, as the saying goes, total destruction: land forces, ships, everything was lost. Out of so many, few returned home. These were the events in Sicily.

Chapter 1

1 After refitting their ships, Gylippus and Pythen coasted along from Tarentum to Epizephyrian Locris. They now received the more correct information that Syracuse was not yet completely invested, but that it was still possible for an army arriving by Epipolae to effect an entrance; and they consulted, accordingly, whether they should keep Sicily on their right and risk sailing in by sea, or leaving it on their left, should first sail to Himera, and taking with them the Himeraeans and any others that might agree to join them, go to Syracuse by land.

2 Finally they determined to sail for Himera, especially as the four Athenian ships which Nicias had at length sent off, on hearing that they were at Locris, had not yet arrived at Rhegium. Accordingly, before these reached their post, the Peloponnesians crossed the strait, and after touching at Rhegium and Messina, came to Himera.

3 Arrived there, they persuaded the Himeraeans to join in the war, and not only to go with them themselves but to provide arms for the seamen from their vessels which they had drawn ashore at Himera; and they sent and appointed a place for the Selinuntines to meet them with all their forces.

4 A few troops were also promised by the Geloans and some of the Sicels, who were now ready to join them with much greater alacrity, owing to the recent death of Archonidas, a powerful Sicel king in that neighborhood and friendly to Athens, and owing also to the vigor shown by Gylippus in coming from Lacedaemon.

5 Gylippus now took with him about seven hundred of his sailors and marines, that number only having arms, a thousand heavy infantry and light troops from Himera with a body of a hundred horse, some light troops and cavalry from Selinus, a few Geloans, and Sicels numbering a thousand in all, and set out on his march for Syracuse.

Chapter 2

1 Meanwhile the Corinthian fleet from Leucas made all haste to arrive; and one of their commanders, Gongylus, starting last with a single ship, was the first to reach Syracuse, a little before Gylippus. Gongylus found the Syracusans on the point of holding an assembly to consider whether they should not put an end to the war. This he prevented, and reassured them by telling them that more vessels were still to arrive, and that Gylippus, son of Cleandridas, had been despatched by the Lacedaemonians to take the command.

2 Upon this the Syracusans took courage, and immediately marched out with all their forces to meet Gylippus, who they found was now close at hand.

3 Meanwhile Gylippus, after taking Ietae, a fort of the Sicels, on his way, formed his army in order of battle, and so arrived at Epipolae, and ascending by Euryelus, as the Athenians had done at first, now advanced with the Syracusans against the Athenian lines.

4 His arrival chanced at a critical moment. The Athenians had already finished a double wall of six or seven furlongs to the great harbor, with the exception of a small portion next to the sea, which they were still engaged upon; and in the remainder of the circle towards Trogilus on the other sea, stones had been laid ready for building for the greater part of the distance, and some points had been left half finished, while others were entirely completed. The danger of Syracuse had indeed been great.

Chapter 3

1 Meanwhile the Athenians, recovering from the confusion into which they had been at first thrown by the sudden approach of Gylippus and the Syracusans, formed in order of battle. Gylippus halted at a short distance off and sent on a herald to tell them that if they would evacuate Sicily with bag and baggage within five days' time, he was willing to make a truce accordingly.

2 The Athenians treated this proposition with contempt, and dismissed the herald without an answer. After this both sides began to prepare for action.

3 Gylippus, observing that the Syracusans were in disorder and did not easily fall into line, drew off his troops more into the open ground, while Nicias did not lead on the Athenians but lay still by his own wall. When Gylippus saw that they did not come on, he led off his army to the citadel of the quarter of Apollo Temenites, and passed the night there.

4 On the following day he led out the main body of his army, and drawing them up in order of battle before the walls of the Athenians to prevent their going to the relief of any other quarter, despatched a strong force against Fort Labdalum and took it, and put all whom he found in it to the sword, the place not being within sight of the Athenians.

5 On the same day an Athenian galley that lay moored off the harbor was captured by the Syracusans.

Chapter 4

1 After this the Syracusans and their allies began to carry a single wall, starting from the city, in a slanting direction up Epipolae, in order that the Athenians, unless they could hinder the work, might be no longer able to invest them.

2 Meanwhile the Athenians, having now finished their wall down to the sea, had come up to the heights; and part of their wall being weak, Gylippus drew out his army by night and attacked it.

3 However, the Athenians who happened to be bivouacking outside took the alarm and came out to meet him, upon seeing which he quickly led his men back again. The Athenians now built their wall higher, and in future kept guard at this point themselves, disposing their confederates along the remainder of the works, at the stations assigned to them.

4 Nicias also determined to fortify Plemmyrium, a promontory over against the city, which juts out and narrows the mouth of the great harbor. He thought that the fortification of this place would make it easier to bring in supplies, as they would be able to carry on their blockade from a less distance, near to the port occupied by the Syracusans; instead of being obliged, upon every movement of the enemy's navy, to put out against them from the bottom of the great harbor. Besides this, he now began to pay more attention to the war by sea, seeing that the coming of Gylippus had diminished their hopes by land.

5 Accordingly, he conveyed over his ships and some troops, and built three forts in which he placed most of his baggage, and moored there for the future the larger craft and men-of-war.

6 This was the first and chief occasion of the losses which the crews experienced. The water which they used was scarce and had to be fetched from far, and the sailors could not go out for firewood without being cut off by the Syracusan horse, who were masters of the country; a third of the enemy's cavalry being stationed at the little town of Olympieum, to prevent plundering incursions on the part of the Athenians at Plemmyrium.

7 Meanwhile Nicias learned that the rest of the Corinthian fleet was approaching, and sent twenty ships to watch for them, with orders to be on the look-out for them about Locris and Rhegium and the approach to Sicily.

Chapter 5

1 Gylippus, meanwhile, went on with the wall across Epipolae, using the stones which the Athenians had laid down for their own wall, and at the same time constantly led out the Syracusans and their allies, and formed them in order of battle in front of the lines, the Athenians forming against him.

2 At last he thought that the moment was come, and began the attack; and a hand-to-hand fight ensued between the lines, where the Syracusan cavalry could be of no use;

3 and the Syracusans and their allies were defeated and took up their dead under truce, while the Athenians erected a trophy. After this Gylippus called the soldiers together, and said that the fault was not theirs but his; he had kept their lines too much within the works, and had thus deprived them of the services of their cavalry and darters.

4 He would now, therefore, lead them on a second time. He begged them to remember that in material force they would be fully a match for their opponents, while with respect to moral advantages, it were intolerable if Peloponnesians and Dorians should not feel confident of overcoming Ionians and islanders with the motley rabble that accompanied them, and of driving them out of the country.

Chapter 6

1 After this he embraced the first opportunity that offered of again leading them against the enemy. Now Nicias and the Athenians were of opinion that even if the Syracusans should not wish to offer battle, it was necessary for them to prevent the building of the cross wall, as it already almost overlapped the extreme point of their own, and if it went any further it would from that moment make no difference whether they fought ever so many successful actions, or never fought at all. They accordingly came out to meet the Syracusans.

2 Gylippus led out his heavy infantry further from the fortifications than on the former occasion, and so joined battle; posting his horse and darters upon the flank of the Athenians in the open space, where the works of the two walls terminated.

3 During the engagement the cavalry attacked and routed the left wing of the Athenians, which was opposed to them; and the rest of the Athenian army was in consequence defeated by the Syracusans and driven headlong within their lines.

4 The night following the Syracusans carried their wall up to the Athenian works and passed them, thus putting it out of their power any longer to stop them, and depriving them, even if victorious in the field, of all chance of investing the city for the future.

Chapter 7

1 After this the remaining twelve vessels of the Corinthians, Ambraciots, and Leucadians sailed into the harbor under the command of Erasinides, a Corinthian, having eluded the Athenian ships on guard, and helped the Syracusans in completing the remainder of the cross wall.

2 Meanwhile Gylippus went into the rest of Sicily to raise land and naval forces, and also to bring over any of the cities that either were lukewarm in the cause or had hitherto kept out of the war altogether.

3 Syracusan and Corinthian envoys were also despatched to Lacedaemon and Corinth to get a fresh force sent over, in any way that might offer, either in merchant vessels or transports, or in any other manner likely to prove successful, as the Athenians too were sending for reinforcements;

4 while the Syracusans proceeded to man a fleet and to exercise, meaning to try their fortune in this way also, and generally became exceedingly confident.

Chapter 8

1 Nicias perceiving this, and seeing the strength of the enemy and his own difficulties daily increasing, himself also sent to Athens. He had before sent frequent reports of events as they occurred, and felt it especially incumbent upon him to do so now, as he thought that they were in a critical position, and that unless speedily recalled or strongly reinforced from home, they had no hope of safety.

2 He feared, however, that the messengers, either through inability to speak, or through failure of memory, or from a wish to please the multitude, might not report the truth, and so though it best to write a letter, to insure that the Athenians should know his own opinion without its being lost in transmission, and be able to decide upon the real facts of the case.

3 His emissaries, accordingly, departed with the letter and the requisite verbal instructions; and he attended to the affairs of the army, making it his aim now to keep on the defensive and to avoid any unnecessary danger.

Chapter 9

1 At the close of the same summer the Athenian general Euetion marched in concert with Perdiccas with a large body of Thracians against Amphipolis, and failing to take it brought some galleys round into the Strymon, and blockaded the town from the river, having his base at Himeraeum.Summer was now over.

Chapter 10

1 The winter ensuing, the persons sent by Nicias, reaching Athens, gave the verbal messages which had been entrusted to them, and answered any questions that were asked them, and delivered the letter. The clerk of the city now came forward and read out to the Athenians the letter, which was as follows:—

Chapter 11

1 ‘Our past operations, Athenians, have been made known to you by many other letters; it is now time for you to become equally familiar with our present condition, and to take your measures accordingly.

2 We had defeated in most of our engagements with them the Syracusans, against whom we were sent, and we had built the works which we now occupy, when Gylippus arrived from Lacedaemon with an army obtained from Peloponnese and from some of the cities in Sicily. In our first battle with him we were victorious; in the battle on the following day we were overpowered by a multitude of cavalry and darters, and compelled to retire within our lines.

3 We have now, therefore, been forced by the numbers of those opposed to us to discontinue the work of circumvallation, and to remain inactive; being unable to make use even of all the force we have, since a large portion of our heavy infantry is absorbed in the defence of our lines. Meanwhile the enemy have carried a single wall past our lines, thus making it impossible for us to invest them in future, until this cross wall be attacked by a strong force and captured.

4 So that the besieger in name has become, at least from the land side, the besieged in reality; as we are prevented by their cavalry from even going for any distance into the country.

Chapter 12

1 Besides this, an embassy has been despatched to Peloponnese to procure reinforcements, and Gylippus has gone to the cities in Sicily, partly in the hope of inducing those that are at present neutral to join him in the war, partly of bringing from his allies additional contingents for the land forces and material for the navy.

2 For I understand that they contemplate a combined attack, upon our lines with their land forces and with their fleet by sea.

3 You must none of you be surprised that I say by sea also. They have discovered that the length of the time we have now been in commission has rotted our ships and wasted our crews, and that with the entireness of our crews and the soundness of our ships the pristine efficiency of our navy has departed.

4 For it is impossible for us to haul our ships ashore and careen them, because, the enemy's vessels being as many or more than our own, we are constantly anticipating an attack.

5 Indeed, they may be seen exercising, and it lies with them to take the initiative; and not having to maintain a blockade, they have greater facilities for drying their ships.

Chapter 13

1 This we should scarcely be able to do, even if we had plenty of ships to spare, and were freed from our present necessity of exhausting all our strength upon the blockade. For it is already difficult to carry in supplies past Syracuse; and were we to relax our vigilance in the slightest degree it would become impossible.

2 The losses which our crews have suffered and still continue to suffer arise from the following causes. Expeditions for fuel and for forage, and the distance from which water has to be fetched, cause our sailors to be cut off by the Syracusan cavalry; the loss of our previous superiority emboldens our slaves to desert; our foreign seamen are impressed by the unexpected appearance of a navy against us, and the strength of the enemy's resistance; such of them as were pressed into the service take the first opportunity of departing to their respective cities; such as were originally seduced by the temptation of high pay, and expected little fighting and large gains, leave us either by desertion to the enemy or by availing themselves of one or other of the various facilities of escape which the magnitude of Sicily affords them. Some even engage in trade themselves and prevail upon the captains to take Hyccaric slaves on board in their place; thus they have ruined the efficiency of our navy.

Chapter 14

1 Now I need not remind you that the time during which a crew is in its prime is short, and that the number of sailors who can start a ship on her way and keep the rowing in time is small.

2 But by far my greatest trouble is, that holding the post which I do, I am prevented by the natural indocility of the Athenian seaman from putting a stop to these evils; and that meanwhile we have no source from which to recruit our crews, which the enemy can do from many quarters, but are compelled to depend both for supplying the crews in service and for making good our losses upon the men whom we brought with us. For our present confederates, Naxos and Catana, are incapable of supplying us.

3 There is only one thing more wanting to our opponents, I mean the defection of our Italian markets. If they were to see you neglect to relieve us from our present condition, and were to go over to the enemy, famine would compel us to evacuate, and Syracuse would finish the war without a blow.

4 I might, it is true, have written to you something different and more agreeable than this, but nothing certainly more useful, if it is desirable for you to know the real state of things here before taking your measures. Besides I know that it is your nature to love to be told the best side of things, and then to blame the teller if the expectations which he has raised in your minds are not answered by the result; and I therefore thought it safest to declare to you the truth.

Chapter 15

1 Now you are not to think that either your generals or your soldiers have ceased to be a match for the forces originally opposed to them. But you are to reflect that a general Sicilian coalition is being formed against us; that a fresh army is expected from Peloponnese, while the force we have here is unable to cope even with our present antagonists; and you must promptly decide either to recall us or to send out to us another fleet and army as numerous again, with a large sum of money, and some one to succeed me, as a disease in the kidneys unfits me for retaining my post.

2 I have, I think, some claim on your indulgence, as while I was in my prime I did you much good service in my commands. But whatever you mean to do, do it at the commencement of spring and without delay as the enemy will obtain his Sicilian reinforcements shortly, those from Peloponnese after a longer interval; and unless you attend to the matter the former will be here before you, while the latter will elude you as they have done before.’

Chapter 16

1 Such were the contents of Nicias' letter. When the Athenians had heard it they refused to accept his resignation, but chose him two colleagues, naming Menander and Euthydemus, two of the officers at the seat of war, to fill their places until their arrival, that Nicias might not be left alone in his sickness to bear the whole weight of affairs. They also voted to send out another army and navy, drawn partly from the Athenians on the muster-roll, partly from the allies.

2 The colleagues chosen for Nicias were Demosthenes, son of Alcisthenes, and Eurymedon, son of Thucles. Eurymedon was sent off at once, about the time of the winter solstice, with ten ships, a hundred and twenty talents of silver, and instructions to tell the army that reinforcements would arrive, and that care would be taken of them;

Chapter 17

1 but Demosthenes stayed behind to organize the expedition, meaning to start as soon as it was spring, and sent for troops to the allies, and meanwhile got together money, ships, and heavy infantry at home.

2 The Athenians also sent twenty vessels round Peloponnese to prevent any one crossing over to Sicily from Corinth or Peloponnese.

3 For the Corinthians, filled with confidence by the favorable alteration in Sicilian affairs which had been reported by the envoys upon their arrival, and convinced that the fleet which they had before sent out had not been without its use, were now preparing to despatch a force of heavy infantry in merchant vessels to Sicily, while the Lacedaemonians did the like for the rest of Peloponnese.

4 The Corinthians also named a fleet of twenty-five vessels, intending to try the result of a battle with the squadron on guard at Naupactus, and meanwhile to make it less easy for the Athenians there to hinder the departure of their merchantmen, by obliging them to keep an eye upon the galleys thus arrayed against them.

Chapter 18

1 In the meantime the Lacedaemonians prepared for their invasion of Attica, in accordance with their own previous resolve, and at the instigation of the Syracusans and Corinthians, who wished for an invasion to arrest the reinforcements which they heard that Athens was about to send to Sicily. Alcibiades also urgently advised the fortification of Decelea, and a vigorous prosecution of the war.

2 But the Lacedaemonians derived most encouragement from the belief that Athens, with two wars on her hands, against themselves and against the Siceliots, would be more easy to subdue, and from the conviction that she had been the first to infringe the truce. In the former war, they considered, the offence had been more on their own side, both on account of the entrance of the Thebans into Plataea in time of peace, and also of their own refusal to listen to the Athenian offer of arbitration, in spite of the clause in the former treaty that where arbitration should be offered there should be no appeal to arms. For this reason they thought that they deserved their misfortunes, and took to heart seriously the disaster at Pylos and whatever else had befallen them.

3 But when, besides the ravages from Pylos, which went on without any intermission, the thirty Athenian ships came out from Argos and wasted part of Epidaurus, Prasiae, and other places; when upon every dispute that arose as to the interpretation of any doubtful point in the treaty, their own offers of arbitration were always rejected by the Athenians,—the Lacedaemonians at length decided that Athens had now committed the very same offence as they had before done, and had become the guilty party; and they began to be full of ardor for the war.

4 They spent this winter in sending round to their allies for iron, and in getting ready the other implements for building their fort; and meanwhile began raising at home, and also by forced requisitions in the rest of Peloponnese, a force to be sent out in the merchantmen to their allies in Sicily. Winter thus ended, and with it the eighteenth year of this war of which Thucydides is the historian.

Chapter 19

1 In the first days of the spring following, at an earlier period than usual, the Lacedaemonians and their allies invaded Attica, under the command of Agis, son of Archidamus, king of the Lacedaemonians. They began by devastating the parts bordering upon the plain, and next proceeded to fortify Decelea, dividing the work among the different cities.

2 Decelea is about thirteen or fourteen miles from the city of Athens, and the same distance or not much further from Boeotia; and the fort was meant to annoy the plain and the richest parts of the country, being in sight of Athens.

3 While the Peloponnesians and their allies in Attica were engaged in the work of fortification, their countrymen at home sent off, at about the same time, the heavy infantry in the merchant vessels to Sicily; the Lacedaemonians furnishing a picked force of Helots and Neodamodes ‘or freedmen), six hundred heavy infantry in all, under the command of Eccritus, a Spartan; and the Boeotians three hundred heavy infantry, commanded by two Thebans, Xenon and Nicon, and by Hegesander, a Thespian.

4 These were among the first to put out into the open sea, starting from Taenarus in Laconia. Not long after their departure the Corinthians sent off a force of five hundred heavy infantry, consisting partly of men from Corinth itself, and partly of Arcadian mercenaries, placed under the command of Alexarchus, a Corinthian. The Sicyonians also sent off two hundred heavy infantry at the same time as the Corinthians, under the command of Sargeus, a Sicyonian.

5 Meantime the five-and-twenty vessels manned by Corinth during the winter, lay confronting the twenty Athenian ships at Naupactus until the heavy infantry in the merchantmen were fairly on their way from Peloponnese; thus fulfilling the object for which they had been manned originally, which was to divert the attention of the Athenians from the merchantmen to the galleys.

Chapter 20

1 During this time the Athenians were not idle. Simultaneously with the fortification of Decelea, at the very beginning of spring, they sent thirty ships round Peloponnese, under Charicles, son of Apollodorus, with instructions to call at Argos and demand a force of their heavy infantry for the fleet, agreeably to the alliance. At the same time they despatched Demosthenes to Sicily,

2 as they had intended, with sixty Athenian and five Chian vessels, twelve hundred Athenian heavy infantry from the muster-roll, and as many of the islanders as could be raised in the different quarters, drawing upon the other subject allies for whatever they could supply that would be of use for the war. Demosthenes was instructed first to sail round with Charicles and to operate with him upon the coasts of Laconia,

3 and accordingly sailed to Aegina and there waited for the remainder of his armament, and for Charicles to fetch the Argive troops.

Chapter 21

1 In Sicily about the same time in this spring, Gylippus came to Syracuse with as many troops as he could bring from the cities which he had persuaded to join.

2 Calling the Syracusans together, he told them that they must man as many ships as possible, and try their hand at a sea-fight, by which he hoped to achieve an advantage in the war not unworthy of the risk.

3 With him Hermocrates actively joined in trying to encourage his countrymen to attack the Athenians at sea, saying that the latter had not inherited their naval prowess nor would they retain it for ever; they had been landsmen even to a greater degree than the Syracusans, and had only become a maritime power when obliged by the Mede. Besides, to daring spirits like the Athenians, a daring adversary would seem the most formidable; and the Athenian plan of paralyzing by the boldness of their attack a neighbor often not their inferior in strength, could now be used against them with as good effect by the Syracusans.

4 He was convinced also that the unlooked-for spectacle of Syracusans daring to face the Athenian navy would cause a terror to the enemy, the advantages of which would far outweigh any loss that Athenian science might inflict upon their inexperience. He accordingly urged them to throw aside their fears and to try their fortune at sea;

5 and the Syracusans, under the influence of Gylippus and Hermocrates, and perhaps some others, made up their minds for the sea-fight and began to man their vessels.

Chapter 22

1 When the fleet was ready, Gylippus led out the whole army by night; his plan being to assault in person the forts of Plemmyrium by land, while thirty-five Syracusan galleys sailed according to appointment against the enemy from the great harbor, and the forty-five remaining came round from the lesser harbor, where they had their arsenal, in order to effect a junction with those inside and simultaneously to attack Plemmyrium, and thus to distract the Athenians by assaulting them on two sides at once.

2 The Athenians quickly manned sixty ships, and with twenty-five of these engaged the thirty-five of the Syracusans in the great harbor, sending the rest to meet those sailing round from the arsenal; and an action now ensued directly in front of the mouth of the great harbor, maintained with equal tenacity on both sides; the one wishing to force the passage, the other to prevent them.

Chapter 23

1 In the meantime, while the Athenians in Plemmyrium were down at the sea, attending to the engagement, Gylippus made a sudden attack on the forts in the early morning and took the largest first, and afterwards the two smaller, whose garrisons did not wait for him, seeing the largest so easily taken.

2 At the fall of the first fort, the men from it who succeeded in taking refuge in their boats and merchantmen, found great difficulty in reaching the camp, as the Syracusans were having the best of it in the engagement in the great harbor, and sent a fast sailing galley to pursue them. But when the two others fell, the Syracusans were now being defeated; and the fugitives from these sailed along shore with more ease.

3 The Syracusan ships fighting off the mouth of the harbor, forced their way through the Athenian vessels and sailing in without any order fell foul of one another, and transferred the victory to the Athenians; who not only routed the squadron in question, but also that by which they were at first being defeated in the harbor,

4 sinking eleven of the Syracusan vessels and killing most of the men, except the crews of three ships whom they made prisoners. Their own loss was confined to three vessels; and after hauling ashore the Syracusan wrecks and setting up a trophy upon the islet in front of Plemmyrium, they retired to their own camp.

Chapter 24

1 Unsuccessful at sea, the Syracusans had nevertheless the forts in Plemmyrium, for which they set up three trophies. One of the two last taken they razed, but put in order and garrisoned the two others.

2 In the capture of the forts a great many men were killed and made prisoners, and a great quantity of property was taken in all. As the Athenians had used them as a magazine, there was a large stock of goods and corn of the merchants inside, and also a large stock belonging to the captains; the masts and other furniture of forty galleys being taken, besides three galleys which had been drawn up on shore.

3 Indeed the first and chiefest cause of the ruin of the Athenian army was the capture of Plemmyrium; even the entrance of the harbor being now no longer safe for carrying in provisions, as the Syracusan vessels were stationed there to prevent it, and nothing could be brought in without fighting; besides the general impression of dismay and discouragement produced upon the army.

Chapter 25

1 After this the Syracusans sent out twelve ships under the command of Agatharchus, a Syracusan. One of these went to Peloponnese with ambassadors to describe the hopeful state of their affairs, and to incite the Peloponnesians to prosecute the war there even more actively than they were now doing, while the eleven others sailed to Italy, hearing that vessels laden with stores were on their way to the Athenians.

2 After falling in with and destroying most of the vessels in question, and burning in the Caulonian territory a quantity of timber for shipbuilding, which had been got ready for the Athenians,

3 the Syracusan squadron went to Locri, and one of the merchantmen from Peloponnese coming in, while they were at anchor there, carrying Thespian heavy infantry,

4 took these on board and sailed along shore towards home. The Athenians were on the look-out for them with twenty ships at Megara, but were only able to take one vessel with its crew; the rest getting clear off to Syracuse.

5 There was also some skirmishing in the harbor about the piles which the Syracusans had driven in the sea in front of the old docks, to allow their ships to lie at anchor inside, without being hurt by the Athenians sailing up and running them down.

6 The Athenians brought up to them a ship of ten thousand talents' burden furnished with wooden turrets and screens, and fastened ropes round the piles from their boats, wrenched them up and broke them, or dived down and sawed them in two. Meanwhile the Syracusans plied them with missiles from the docks, to which they replied from their large vessel; until at last most of the piles were removed by the Athenians.

7 But the most awkward part of the stockade was the part out of sight: some of the piles which had been driven in did not appear above water, so that it was dangerous to sail up, for fear of running the ships upon them, just as upon a reef, through not seeing them. However divers went down and sawed off even these for reward; although the Syracusans drove in others.

8 Indeed there was no end to the contrivances to which they resorted against each other, as might be expected between two hostile armies confronting each other at such a short distance: and skirmishes and all kinds of other attempts were of constant occurrence.

9 Meanwhile the Syracusans sent embassies to the cities composed of Corinthians, Ambraciots, and Lacedaemonians, to tell them of the capture of Plemmyrium, and that their defeat in the sea-fight was due less to the strength of the enemy than to their own disorder; and generally, to let them know that they were full of hope, and to desire them to come to their help with ships and troops, as the Athenians were expected with a fresh army, and if the one already there could be destroyed before the other arrived, the war would be at an end.

Chapter 26

1 While the contending parties in Sicily were thus engaged, Demosthenes, having now got together the armament with which he was to go to the island, put out from Aegina, and making sail for Peloponnese, joined Charicles and the thirty ships of the Athenians. Taking on board the heavy infantry from Argos they sailed to Laconia,

2 and after first plundering part of Epidarus Limera, landed on the coast of Laconia, opposite Cythera, where the temple of Apollo stands, and laying waste part of the country, fortified a sort of isthmus, to which the Helots of the Lacedaemonians might desert, and from whence plundering incursions might be made as from Pylos.

3 Demosthenes helped to occupy this place, and then immediately sailed on to Corcyra to take up some of the allies in that island, and so to proceed without delay to Sicily; while Charicles waited until he had completed the fortification of the place, and leaving a garrison there, returned home subsequently with his thirty ships and the Argives also.

Chapter 27

1 This same summer arrived at Athens thirteen hundred targeteers, Thracian swordsmen of the tribe of the Dii, who were to have sailed to Sicily with Demosthenes.

2 Since they had come too late, the Athenians determined to send them back to Thrace, whence they had come; to keep them for the Decelean war appearing too expensive, as the pay of each man was a drachma a day.

3 Indeed since Decelea had been first fortified by the whole Peloponnesian army during this summer, and then occupied for the annoyance of the country by the garrisons from the cities relieving each other at stated intervals, it had been doing great mischief to the Athenians; in fact this occupation, by the destruction of property and loss of men which resulted from it, was one of the principal causes of their ruin.

4 Previously the invasions were short, and did not prevent their enjoying their land during the rest of the time: the enemy was now permanently fixed in Attica; at one time it was an attack in force, at another it was the regular garrison overrunning the country and making forays for its subsistence, and the Lacedaemonian king, Agis, was in the field and diligently prosecuting the war; great mischief was therefore done to the Athenians.

5 They were deprived of their whole country: more than twenty thousand slaves had deserted, a great part of them artisans, and all their sheep and beasts of burden were lost; and as the cavalry rode out daily upon excursions to Decelea and to guard the country, their horses were either lamed by being constantly worked upon rocky ground, or wounded by the enemy.

Chapter 28

1 Besides, the transport of provisions from Euboea, which had before been carried on so much more quickly over land by Decelea from Oropus, was now effected at great cost by sea round Sunium; everything the city required had to be imported from abroad, and instead of a city it became a fortress.

2 Summer and winter the Athenians were worn out by having to keep guard on the fortifications, during the day by turns, by night all together, the cavalry excepted, at the different military posts or upon the wall.

3 But what most oppressed them was that they had two wars at once, and had thus reached a pitch of frenzy which no one would have believed possible if he had heard of it before it had come to pass. For could any one have imagined that even when besieged by the Peloponnesians entrenched in Attica, they would still, instead of withdrawing from Sicily, stay on there besieging in like manner Syracuse, a town (taken as a town) in no way inferior to Athens, or would so thoroughly upset the Hellenic estimate of their strength and audacity, as to give the spectacle of a people which, at the beginning of the war, some thought might hold out one year, some two, none more than three, if the Peloponnesians invaded their country, now seventeen years after the first invasion, after having already suffered from all the evils of war, going to Sicily and undertaking a new war nothing inferior to that which they already had with the Peloponnesians?

4 These causes, the great losses from Decelea, and the other heavy charges that fell upon them, produced their financial embarrassment; and it was at this time that they imposed upon their subjects, instead of the tribute, the tax of a twentieth upon all imports and exports by sea, which they thought would bring them in more money; their expenditure being now not the same as at first, but having grown with the war while their revenues decayed.

Chapter 29

1 Accordingly, not wishing to incur expense in their present want of money, they sent back at once the Thracians who came too late for Demosthenes, under the conduct of Diitrephes, who was instructed, as they were to pass through the Euripus, to make use of them if possible in the voyage along shore to injure the enemy.

2 Diitrephes first landed them at Tanagra and hastily snatched some booty; he then sailed across the Eurious in the evening from Chalcis in Euboea and disembarking in Boeotia led them against Mycalessus.

3 The night he passed unobserved near the temple of Hermes, not quite two miles from Mycalessus, and at daybreak assaulted and took the town, which is not a large one; the inhabitants being off their guard and not expecting that any one would ever come up so far from the sea to molest them, the wall too being weak, and in some places having tumbled down, while in others it had not been built to any height, and the gates also being left open through their feeling of security.

4 The Thracians bursting into Mycalessus sacked the houses and temples, and butchered the inhabitants, sparing neither youth nor age, but killing all they fell in with, one after the other, children and women, and even beasts of burden, and whatever other living creatures they saw; the Thracian race, like the bloodiest of the barbarians, being ever most so when it has nothing to fear.

5 Everywhere confusion reigned and death in all its shapes; and in particular they attacked a boys' school, the largest that there was in the place, into which the children had just gone, and massacred them all. In short, the disaster falling upon the whole town was unsurpassed in magnitude, and unapproached by any in suddenness and in horror.

Chapter 30

1 Meanwhile the Thebans heard of it and marched to the rescue, and overtaking the Thracians before they had gone far, recovered the plunder and drove them in panic to the Euripus and the sea, where the vessels which brought them were lying.

2 The greatest slaughter took place while they were embarking, as they did not know how to swim, and those in the vessels on seeing what was going on on shore moored them out of bowshot: in the rest of the retreat the Thracians made a very respectable defence against the Theban horse, by which they were first attacked, dashing out and closing their ranks according to the tactics of their country, and lost only a few men in that part of the affair. A good number who were after plunder were actually caught in the town and put to death.

3 Altogether the Thracians had two hundred and fifty killed out of thirteen hundred, the Thebans and the rest who came to the rescue about twenty, troopers and heavy infantry, with Scirphondas, one of the Boetarchs. The Mycalessians lost a large proportion of their population.

Chapter 31

1 While Mycalessus thus experienced a calamity, for its extent, as lamentable as any that happened in the war, Demosthenes, whom we left sailing to Corcyra, after the building of the fort in Laconia, found a merchantman lying at Rhea in Elis, in which the Corinthian heavy infantry were to cross to Sicily. The ship he destroyed, but the men escaped, and subsequently got another in which they pursued their voyage.

2 After this, arriving at Zacynthus and Cephallenia, he took a body of heavy infantry on board, and sending for some of the Messenians from Naupactus, crossed over to the opposite coast of Acarnania, to Alyzia, and to Anactorium which was held by the Athenians.

3 While he was in these parts he was met by Eurymedon returning from Sicily, where he had been sent, as has been mentioned, during the winter, with the money for the army, who told him the news, and also that he had heard, while at sea, that the Syracusans had taken Plemmyrium.

4 Here, also, Conon came to them, the commander at Naupactus, with news that the twenty-five Corinthian ships stationed opposite to him, far from giving over the war, were meditating an engagement; and he therefore begged them to send him some ships, as his own eighteen were not a match for the enemy's twenty-five.

5 Demosthenes and Eurymedon, accordingly, sent ten of their best sailors with Conon to reinforce the squadron at Naupactus, and meanwhile prepared for the muster of their forces; Eurymedon, who was now the colleague of Demosthenes, and had turned back in consequence of his appointment, sailing to Corcyra to tell them to man fifteen ships and to enlist heavy infantry; while Demosthenes raised slingers and darters from the parts about Acarnania.

Chapter 32

1 Meanwhile the envoys, already mentioned, who had gone from Syracuse to the cities after the capture of Plemmyrium, had succeeded in their mission, and were about to bring the army that they had collected, when Nicias got scent of it, and sent to the Centoripae and Alicyaeans and other of the friendly Sicels, who held the passes, not to let the enemy through, but to combine to prevent their passing, there being no other way by which they could even attempt it, as the Agrigentines would not give them a passage through their country.

2 Agreeably to this request the Sicels laid a triple ambuscade for the Siceliots upon their march, and attacking them suddenly, while off their guard, killed about eight hundred of them and all the envoys, the Corinthian only excepted, by whom fifteen hundred who escaped were conducted to Syracuse.

Chapter 33

1 About the same time the Camarinaeans also came to the assistance of Syracuse with five hundred heavy infantry, three hundred darters and as many archers, while the Geloans sent crews for five ships, four hundred darters and two hundred horse.

2 Indeed almost the whole of Sicily, except the Agrigentines, who were neutral, now ceased merely to watch events as it had hitherto done, and actively joined Syracuse against the Athenians.

3 While the Syracusans after the Sicel disaster put off any immediate attack upon the Athenians, Demosthenes and Eurymedon, whose forces from Corcyra and the continent were now ready, crossed the Ionian gulf with all their armament to the Iapygian promontory,

4 and starting from thence touched at the Choerades Isles lying off Iapygia, where they took on board a hundred and fifty Iapygian darters of the Messapian tribe, and after renewing an old friendship with Artas the chief, who had furnished them with the darters, arrived at Metapontium in Italy.

5 Here they persuaded their allies the Metapontines, to send with them three hundred darters and two galleys, and with this reinforcement coasted on to Thurii, where they found the party hostile to Athens recently expelled by a revolution,

6 and accordingly remained there to muster and review the whole army, to see if any had been left behind, and to prevail upon the Thurians resolutely to join them in their expedition, and in the circumstances in which they found themselves to conclude a defensive and offensive alliance with the Athenians.

Chapter 34

1 About the same time the Peloponnesians in the twenty-five ships stationed opposite to the squadron at Naupactus to protect the passage of the transports to Sicily, had got ready for engaging, and manning some additional vessels, so as to be numerically little inferior to the Athenians, anchored off Erineus in Achaia in the Rhypic country.

2 The place off which they lay being in the form of a crescent, the land forces furnished by the Corinthians and their allies on the spot, came up and ranged themselves upon the projecting headlands on either side, while the fleet, under the command of Polyanthes, a Corinthian, held the intervening space and blocked up the entrance.

3 The Athenians under Diphilus now sailed out against them with thirty-three ships from Naupactus,

4 and the Corinthians, at first not moving, at length thought they saw their opportunity, raised the signal, and advanced and engaged the Athenians.

5 After an obstinate struggle, the Corinthians lost three ships, and without sinking any altogether, disabled seven of the enemy, which were struck prow to prow and had their foreships stoven in by the Corinthian vessels, whose cheeks had been strengthened for this very purpose.

6 After an action of this even character, in which either party could claim the victory (although the Athenians became masters of the wrecks through the wind driving them out to sea, the Corinthians not putting out again to meet them) the two combatants parted. No pursuit took place, and no prisoners were made on either side; the Corinthians and Peloponnesians who were fighting near the shore escaping with ease, and none of the Athenian vessels having been sunk.

7 The Athenians now sailed back to Naupactus, and the Corinthians immediately set up a trophy as victors, because they had disabled a greater number of the enemy's ships. Moreover they held that they had not been worsted, for the very same reason that their opponent held that he had not been victorious; the Corinthians considering that they were conquerors, if not decidedly conquered, and the Athenians thinking themselves vanquished, because not decidedly victorious.

8 However, when the Peloponnesians sailed off and their land forces had dispersed, the Athenians also set up a trophy as victors in Achaia, about two miles and a quarter from Erineus, the Corinthian station.

Chapter 35

1 This was the termination of the action at Naupactus. To return to Demosthenes and Eurymedon: the Thurians having now got ready to join in the expedition with seven hundred heavy infantry and three hundred darters, the two generals ordered the ships to sail along the coast to the Crotonian territory, and meanwhile held a review of all the land forces upon the river Sybaris, and then led them through the Thurian country.

2 Arrived at the river Hylias, they here received a message from the Crotonians, saying that they would not allow the army to pass through their country; upon which the Athenians descended towards the shore, and bivouacked near the sea and the mouth of the Hylias, where the fleet also met them, and the next day embarked and sailed along the coast touching at all the cities except Locri, until they came to Petra in the Rhegian territory.

Chapter 36

1 Meanwhile the Syracusans hearing of their approach resolved to make a second attempt with their fleet and their other forces on shore, which they had been collecting for this very purpose in order to do something before their arrival.

2 In addition to other improvements suggested by the former sea-fight which they now adopted in the equipment of their navy, they cut down their prows to a smaller compass to make them more solid and made their cheeks stouter, and from these let stays into the vessel's sides for a length of six cubits within and without, in the same way as the Corinthians had altered their prows before engaging the squadron at Naupactus.

3 The Syracusans thought that they would thus have an advantage over the Athenian vessels, which were not constructed with equal strength, but were slight in the bows, from their being more used to sail round and charge the enemy's side than to meet him prow to prow, and that the battle being in the great harbor, with a great many ships in not much room, was also a fact in their favour. Charging prow to prow, they would stave in the enemy's bows, by striking with solid and stout beaks against hollow and weak ones;

4 and secondly, the Athenians for want of room would be unable to use their favorite manoeuvre of breaking the line or of sailing round, as the Syracusans would do their best not to let them do the one, and want of room would prevent their doing the other.

5 This charging prow to prow which had hitherto been thought want of skill in a helmsman, would be the Syracusans' chief manoeuvre, as being that which they should find most useful, since the Athenians, if repulsed, would not be able to back water in any direction except towards the shore, and that only for a little way, and in the little space in front of their own camp. The rest of the harbor would be commanded by the Syracusans;

6 and the Athenians, if hard pressed, by crowding together in a small space and all to the same point, would run foul of one another and fall into disorder, which was, in fact, the thing that did the Athenians most harm in all the sea-fights, they not having, like the Syracusans, the whole harbor to retreat over. As to their sailing round into the open sea, this would be impossible, with the Syracusans in possession of the way out and in, especially as Plemmyrium would be hostile to them, and the mouth of the harbor was not large.

Chapter 37

1 With these contrivances to suit their skill and ability, and now more confident after the previous sea-fight, the Syracusans attacked by land and sea at once.

2 The town force Gylippus led out a little the first and brought them up to the wall of the Athenians, where it looked towards the city, while the force from the Olympieum, that is to say, the heavy infantry that were there with the horse and the light troops of the Syracusans, advanced against the wall from the opposite side; the ships of the Syracusans and allies sailing out immediately afterwards.

3 The Athenians at first fancied that they were to be attacked by land only, and it was not without alarm that they saw the fleet suddenly approaching as well; and while some were forming upon the walls and in front of them against the advancing enemy, and some marching out in haste against the numbers of horse and darters coming from the Olympieum and from outside, others manned the ships or rushed down to the beach to oppose the enemy, and when the ships were manned put out with seventy-five sail against about eighty of the Syracusans.

Chapter 38

1 After spending a great part of the day in advancing and retreating and skirmishing with each other, without either being able to gain any advantage worth speaking of, except that the Syracusans sank one or two of the Athenian vessels, they parted, the land force at the same time retiring from the lines.

2 The next day the Syracusans remained quiet, and gave no signs of what they were going to do; but Nicias, seeing that the battle had been a drawn one, and expecting that they would attack again, compelled the captains to refit any of the ships that had suffered, and moored merchant vessels before the stockade which they had driven into the sea in front of their ships,

3 to serve instead of an enclosed harbor, at about two hundred feet from each other, in order that any ship that was hard pressed might be able to retreat in safety and sail out again at leisure. These preparations occupied the Athenians all day until nightfall.

Chapter 39

1 The next day the Syracusans began operations at an earlier hour, but with the same plan of attack by land and sea.

2 A great part of the day the rivals spent as before, confronting and skirmishing with each other; until at last Ariston, son of Pyrrhicus, a Corinthian, the ablest helmsman in the Syracusan service, persuaded their naval commanders to send to the officials in the city, and tell them to move the sale market as quickly as they could down to the sea, and oblige every one to bring whatever eatables he had and sell them there, thus enabling the commanders to land the crews and dine at once close to the ships, and shortly afterwards, the selfsame day, to attack the Athenians again when they were not expecting it.

Chapter 40

1 In compliance with this advice a messenger was sent and the market got ready, upon which the Syracusans suddenly backed water and withdrew to the town, and at once landed and took their dinner upon the spot;

2 while the Athenians, supposing that they had returned to the town because they felt they were beaten, disembarked at their leisure and set about getting their dinners and about their other occupations, under the idea that they had done with fighting for that day.

3 Suddenly the Syracusans manned their ships and again sailed against them; and the Athenians, in great confusion and most of them fasting, got on board, and with great difficulty put out to meet them.

4 For some time both parties remained on the defensive without engaging, until the Athenians at last resolved not to let themselves be worn out by waiting where they were, but to attack without delay, and giving a cheer, went into action.

5 The Syracusans received them, and charging prow to prow as they had intended, stove in a great part of the Athenian foreships by the strength of their beaks; the darters on the decks also did great damage to the Athenians, but still greater damage was done by the Syracusans who went about in small boats, ran in upon the oars of the Athenian galleys, and sailed against their sides, and discharged from thence their darts upon the sailors.

Chapter 41

1 At last, fighting hard in this fashion, the Syracusans gained the victory, and the Athenians turned and fled between the merchantmen to their own station.

2 The Syracusan ships pursued them as far as the merchantmen, where they were stopped by the beams armed with dolphins suspended from those vessels over the passage.

3 Two of the Syracusan vessels went too near in the excitement of victory and were destroyed, one of them being taken with its crew.

4 After sinking seven of the Athenian vessels and disabling many, and taking most of the men prisoners and killing others, the Syracusans retired and set up trophies for both the engagements, being now confident of having a decided superiority by sea, and by no means despairing of equal success by land.

Chapter 42

1 In the meantime, while the Syracusans were preparing for a second attack upon both elements, Demosthenes and Eurymedon arrived with the succors from Athens, consisting of about seventy-three ships, including the foreigners; nearly five thousand heavy infantry, Athenian and allied; a large number of darters, Hellenic and barbarian, and slingers and archers and everything else upon a corresponding scale.

2 The Syracusans and their allies were for the moment not a little dismayed at the idea that there was to be no term or ending to their dangers, seeing, in spite of the fortification of Decelea, a new army arrive nearly equal to the former, and the power of Athens proving so great in every quarter. On the other hand, the first Athenian armament regained a certain confidence in the midst of its misfortunes.

3 Demosthenes, seeing how matters stood, felt that he could not drag on and fare as Nicias had done, who by wintering in Catana instead of at once attacking Syracuse had allowed the terror of his first arrival to evaporate in contempt, and had given time to Gylippus to arrive with a force from Peloponnese, which the Syracusans would never have sent for if he had attacked immediately; for they fancied that they were a match for him by themselves, and would not have discovered their inferiority until they were already invested, and even if they then sent for succors, they would no longer have been equally able to profit by their arrival. Recollecting this, and well aware that it was now on the first day after his arrival that he like Nicias was most formidable to the enemy, Demosthenes determined to lose no time in drawing the utmost profit from the consternation at the moment inspired by his army;

4 and seeing that the counter wall of the Syracusans, which hindered the Athenians from investing them, was a single one, and that he who should become master of the way up to Epipolae, and afterwards of the camp there, would find no difficulty in taking it, as no one would even wait for his attack, made all haste to attempt the enterprise.

5 This he took to be the shortest way of ending the war, as he would either succeed and take Syracuse, or would lead back the armament instead of frittering away the lives of the Athenians engaged in the expedition and the resources of the country at large.

6 First therefore the Athenians went out and laid waste the lands of the Syracusans about the Anapus and carried all before them as at first by land and by sea, the Syracusans not offering to oppose them upon either element, unless it were with their cavalry and darters from the Olympieum.

Chapter 43

1 Next Demosthenes resolved to attempt the counter wall first by means of engines. As however the engines that he brought up were burnt by the enemy fighting from the wall, and the rest of the forces repulsed after attacking at many different points, he determined to delay no longer, and having obtained the consent of Nicias and his fellow-commanders, proceeded to put in execution his plan of attacking Epipolae.

2 As by day it seemed impossible to approach and get up without being observed, he ordered provisions for five days, took all the masons and carpenters, and other things, such as arrows, and everything else that they could want for the work of fortification if successful; and after the first watch set out with Eurymedon and Menander and the whole army for Epipolae, Nicias being left behind in the lines.

3 Having come up by the hill of Euryelus (where the former army had ascended at first), unobserved by the enemy's guards, they went up to the fort which the Syracusans had there, and took it, and put to the sword part of the garrison.

4 The greater number, however, escaped at once and gave the alarm to the camps, of which there were three upon Epipolae, defended by outworks, one of the Syracusans, one of the other Siceliots, and one of the allies; and also to the six hundred Syracusans forming the original garrison for this part of Epipolae.

5 These at once advanced against the assailants, and falling in with Demosthenes and the Athenians, were routed by them after a sharp resistance, the victors immediately pushing on, eager to achieve the objects of the attack without giving time for their ardor to cool; meanwhile others from the very beginning were taking the counter wall of the Syracusans, which was abandoned by its garrison, and pulling down the battlements.

6 The Syracusans and the allies, and Gylippus with the troops under his command, advanced to the rescue from the outworks, but engaged in some consternation (a night attack being a piece of audacity which they had never expected), and were at first compelled to retreat.

7 But while the Athenians, flushed with their victory, now advanced with less order, wishing to make their way as quickly as possible through the whole force of the enemy not yet engaged, without relaxing their attack or giving them time to rally, the Boeotians made the first stand against them, attacked them, routed them, and put them to flight.

Chapter 44

1 The Athenians now fell into great disorder and perplexity, so that it was not easy to get from one side or the other any detailed account of the affair. By day certainly the combatants have a clearer notion, though even then by no means of all that takes place, no one knowing much of anything that does not go on in his own immediate neighborhood; but in a night engagement (and this was the only one that occurred between great armies during the war) how could any one know anything for certain?

2 Although there was a bright moon they saw each other only as men do by moonlight, that is to say, they could distinguish the form of the body, but could not tell for certain whether it was a friend or an enemy. Both had great numbers of heavy infantry moving about in a small space.

3 Some of the Athenians were already defeated, while others were coming up yet unconquered for their first attack. A large part also of the rest of their forces either had only just got up, or were still ascending, so that they did not know which way to march. Owing to the rout that had taken place all in front was now in confusion, and the noise made it difficult to distinguish anything.

4 The victorious Syracusans and allies were cheering each other on with loud cries, by night the only possible means of communication, and meanwhile receiving all who came against them; while the Athenians were seeking for one another, taking all in front of them for enemies, even although they might be some of their now flying friends; and by constantly asking for the watchword, which was their only means of recognition, not only caused great confusion among themselves by asking all at once, but also made it known to the enemy,

5 whose own they did not so readily discover, as the Syracusans were victorious and not scattered, and thus less easily mistaken. The result was that if the Athenians fell in with a party of the enemy that was weaker than they, it escaped them through knowing their watchword; while if they themselves failed to answer they were put to the sword.

6 But what hurt them as much, or indeed more than anything else, was the singing of the Paean, from the perplexity which it caused by being nearly the same on either side: the Argives and Corcyraeans and any other Dorian peoples in the army, struck terror into the Athenians whenever they raised their Paean, no less than did the enemy.

7 Thus, after being once thrown into disorder, they ended by coming into collision with each other in many parts of the field, friends with friends, and citizens with citizens, and not only terrified one another, but even came to blows and could only be parted with difficulty.

8 In the pursuit many perished by throwing themselves down the cliffs, the way down from Epipolae being narrow; and of those who got down safely into the plain, although many, especially those who belonged to the first armament, escaped through their better acquaintance with the locality, some of the newcomers lost their way and wandered over the country, and were cut off in the morning by the Syracusan cavalry and killed.

Chapter 45

1 The next day the Syracusans set up two trophies, one upon Epipolae where the ascent had been made, and the other on the spot where the first check was given by the Boeotians; and the Athenians took back their dead under truce.

2 A great many of the Athenians and allies were killed, although still more arms were taken than could be accounted for by the number of the dead, as some of those who were obliged to leap down from the cliffs without their shields escaped with their lives and did not perish like the rest.

Chapter 46

1 After this the Syracusans, recovering their old confidence at such an unexpected stroke of good fortune, despatched Sicanus with fifteen ships to Agrigentum where there was a revolution, to induce if possible the city to join them; while Gylippus again went by land into the rest of Sicily to bring up reinforcements, being now in hope of taking the Athenian lines by storm, after the result of the affair on Epipolae.

Chapter 47

1 In the meantime the Athenian generals consulted upon the disaster which had happened, and upon the general weakness of the army. They saw themselves unsuccessful in their enterprises, and the soldiers disgusted with their stay;

2 disease being rife among them owing to its being the sickly season of the year, and to the marshy and unhealthy nature of the spot in which they were encamped; and the state of their affairs generally being thought desperate.

3 Accordingly, Demosthenes was of opinion that they ought not to stay any longer; but agreeably to his original idea in risking the attempt upon Epipolae, now that this had failed, he gave his vote for going away without further loss of time, while the sea might yet be crossed, and their late reinforcement might give them the superiority at all events on that element.

4 He also said that it would be more profitable for the state to carry on the war against those who were building fortifications in Attica, than against the Syracusans whom it was no longer easy to subdue; besides which it was not right to squander large sums of money to no purpose by going on with the siege.

Chapter 48

1 This was the opinion of Demosthenes. Nicias, without denying the bad state of their affairs, was unwilling to avow their weakness, or to have it reported to the enemy that the Athenians in full council were openly voting for retreat; for in that case they would be much less likely to effect it when they wanted without discovery.

2 Moreover, his own particular information still gave him reason to hope that the affairs of the enemy would soon be in a worse state than their own, if the Athenians persevered in the siege; as they would wear out the Syracusans by want of money, especially with the more extensive command of the sea now given them by their present navy. Besides this, there was a party in Syracuse who wished to betray the city to the Athenians, and kept sending him messages and telling him not to raise the siege.

3 Accordingly, knowing this and really waiting because he hesitated between the two courses and wished to see his way more clearly, in his public speech on this occasion he refused to lead off the army, saying he was sure the Athenians would never approve of their returning without a vote of theirs. Those who would vote upon their conduct, instead of judging the facts as eye-witnesses like themselves and not from what they might hear from hostile critics, would simply be guided by the calumnies of the first clever speaker;

4 while many, indeed most, of the soldiers on the spot, who now so loudly proclaimed the danger of their position, when they reached Athens would proclaim just as loudly the opposite, and would say that their generals had been bribed to betray them and return. For himself, therefore, who knew the Athenian temper, sooner than perish under a dishonorable charge and by an unjust sentence at the hands of the Athenians, he would rather take his chance and die, if die he must, a soldier's death at the hand of the enemy.

5 Besides, after all, the Syracusans were in a worse case than themselves. What with paying mercenaries, spending upon fortified posts, and now for a full year maintaining a large navy, they were already at a loss and would soon be at a standstill: they had already spent two thousand talents and incurred heavy debts besides, and could not lose even ever so small a fraction of their present force through not paying it, without ruin to their cause; depending as they did more upon mercenaries than upon soldiers obliged to serve, like their own.

6 He therefore said that they ought to stay and carry on the siege, and not depart defeated in point of money, in which they were much superior.

Chapter 49

1 Nicias spoke positively because he had exact information of the financial distress at Syracuse, and also because of the strength of the Athenian party there which kept sending him messages not to raise the siege; besides which he had more confidence than before in his fleet, and felt sure at least of its success.

2 Demosthenes, however, would not hear for a moment of continuing the siege, but said that if they could not lead off the army without a decree from Athens, and if they were obliged to stay on, they ought to remove to Thapsus or Catana; where their land forces would have a wide extent of country to overrun, and could live by plundering the enemy, and would thus do them damage; while the fleet would have the open sea to fight in, that is to say, instead of a narrow space which was all in the enemy's favour, a wide sea-room where their science would be of use, and where they could retreat or advance without being confined or circumscribed either when they put out or put in.

3 In any case he was altogether opposed to their staying on where they were, and insisted on removing at once, as quickly and with as little delay as possible; and in this judgment Eurymedon agreed.

4 Nicias however still objecting, a certain diffidence and hesitation came over them, with a suspicion that Nicias might have some further information to make him so positive.

Chapter 50

1 While the Athenians lingered on in this way without moving from where they were, Gylippus and Sicanus now arrived at Syracuse. Sicanus had failed to gain Agrigentum, the party friendly to the Syracusans having been driven out while he was still at Gela; but Gylippus was accompanied not only by a large number of troops raised in Sicily, but by the heavy infantry sent off in the spring from Peloponnese in the merchantmen, who had arrived at Selinus from Libya.

2 They had been carried to Libya by a storm, and having obtained two galleys and pilots from the Cyrenians, on their voyage along shore had taken sides with the Euesperitae and had defeated the Libyans who were besieging them, and from thence coasting on to Neapolis, a Carthaginian mart, and the nearest point to Sicily, from which it is only two days' and a night's voyage, there crossed over and came to Selinus.

3 Immediately upon their arrival the Syracusans prepared to attack the Athenians again by land and sea at once. The Athenian generals seeing a fresh army come to the aid of the enemy, and that their own circumstances, far from improving, were becoming daily worse, and above all distressed by the sickness of the soldiers, now began to repent of not having removed before; and Nicias no longer offering the same opposition, except by urging that there should be no open voting, they gave orders as secretly as possible for all to be prepared to sail out from the camp at a given signal.

4 All was at last ready, and they were on the point of sailing away, when an eclipse of the moon, which was then at the full, took place. Most of the Athenians, deeply impressed by this occurrence, now urged the generals to wait; and Nicias, who was somewhat over-addicted to divination and practices of that kind, refused from that moment even to take the question of departure into consideration, until they had waited the thrice nine days prescribed by the soothsayers.The besiegers were thus condemned to stay in the country;

Chapter 51

1 and the Syracusans getting wind of what had happened, became more eager than ever to press the Athenians, who had now themselves acknowledged that they were no longer their superiors either by sea or by land, as otherwise they would never have planned to sail away. Besides which the Syracusans did not wish them to settle in any other part of Sicily, where they would be more difficult to deal with, but desired to force them to fight at sea as quickly as possible, in a position favorable to themselves.

2 Accordingly they manned their ships and practised for as many days as they thought sufficient. When the moment arrived they assaulted on the first day the Athenian lines, and upon a small force of heavy infantry and horse sallying out against them by certain gates, cut off some of the former and routed and pursued them to the lines, where, as the entrance was narrow, the Athenians lost seventy horses and some few of the heavy infantry.

Chapter 52

1 Drawing off their troops for this day, on the next the Syracusans went out with a fleet of seventy-six sail, and at the same time advanced with their land forces against the lines. The Athenians put out to meet them with eighty-six ships, came to close quarters and engaged. The Syracusans and their allies first defeated the Athenian center,

2 and then caught Eurymedon, the commander of the right wing, who was sailing out from the line more towards the land in order to surround the enemy, in the hollow and recess of the harbor, and killed him and destroyed the ships accompanying him; after which they now chased the whole Athenian fleet before them and drove them ashore.

Chapter 53

1 Gylippus seeing the enemy's fleet defeated and carried ashore beyond their stockades and camp, ran down to the breakwater with some of his troops, in order to cut off the men as they landed and make it easier for the Syracusans to tow off the vessels by the shore being friendly ground.

2 The Tyrrhenians who guarded this point for the Athenians seeing them come on in disorder, advanced out against them and attacked and routed their van, hurling it into the marsh of Lysimeleia.

3 Afterwards the Syracusan and allied troops arrived in greater numbers, and the Athenians fearing for their ships came up also to the rescue and engaged them, and defeated and pursued them to some distance and killed a few of their heavy infantry. They succeeded in rescuing most of their ships and brought them down by their camp; eighteen however were taken by the Syracusans and their allies, and all the men killed.

4 The rest the enemy tried to burn by means of an old merchantman which they filled with faggots and pine-wood, set on fire and let drift down the wind which blew full on the Athenians. The Athenians, however, alarmed for their ships, contrived means for stopping it and putting it out, and checking the flames and the nearer approach of the merchantman, thus escaped the danger.

Chapter 54

1 After this the Syracusans set up a trophy for the sea-fight and for the heavy infantry whom they had cut off up at the lines, where they took the horses; and the Athenians for the rout of the foot driven by the Tyrrhenians into the marsh, and for their own victory with the rest of the army.

Chapter 55

1 The Syracusans had now gained a decisive victory at sea, where until now they had feared the reinforcement brought by Demosthenes, and deep, in consequence, was the despondency of the Athenians, and great their disappointment, and greater still their regret for having come on the expedition.

2 These were the only cities that they had yet encountered, similar to their own in character, under democracies like themselves, which had ships and horses, and were of considerable magnitude. They had been unable to divide and bring them over by holding out the prospect of changes in their governments, or to crush them by their great superiority in force, but had failed in most of their attempts, and being already in perplexity, had now been defeated at sea, where defeat could never have been expected, and were thus plunged deeper in embarrassment than ever.

Chapter 56

1 Meanwhile the Syracusans immediately began to sail freely along the harbor, and determined to close up its mouth, so that the Athenians might not be able to steal out in future, even if they wished.

2 Indeed, the Syracusans no longer thought only of saving themselves, but also how to hinder the escape of the enemy; thinking, and thinking rightly, that they were now much the strongest, and that to conquer the Athenians and their allies by land and sea would win them great glory in Hellas. The rest of the Hellenes would thus immediately be either freed or released from apprehension, as the remaining forces of Athens would be henceforth unable to sustain the war that would be waged against her; while they, the Syracusans, would be regarded as the authors of this deliverance, and would be held in high admiration, not only with all men now living but also with posterity.

3 Nor were these the only considerations that gave dignity to the struggle. They would thus conquer not only the Athenians but also their numerous allies, and conquer not alone, but with their companions-in-arms, commanding side by side with the Corinthians and Lacedaemonians, having offered their city to stand in the van of danger, and having been in a great measure the pioneers of naval success.

4 Indeed, there were never so many peoples assembled before a single city, if we except the grand total gathered together in this war under Athens and Lacedaemon.

Chapter 57

1 The following were the states on either side who came to Syracuse to fight for or against Sicily, to help to conquer or defend the island. Right or community of blood was not the bond of union between them, so much as interest or compulsion as the case might be.

2 The Athenians themselves being Ionians went against the Dorians of Syracuse of their own free will; and the peoples still speaking Attic and using the Athenian laws, the Lemnians, Imbrians, and Aeginetans, that is to say, the then occupants of Aegina, being their colonists, went with them. To these must be also added the Hestiaeans dwelling at Hestiaea in Euboea.

3 Of the rest some joined in the expedition as subjects of the Athenians, others as independent allies, others as mercenaries.

4 To the number of the subjects paying tribute belonged the Eretrians, Chalcidians, Styrians, and Carystians from Euboea; the Ceans, Andrians, and Tenians from the islands; and the Milesians, Samians, and Chians from Ionia. The Chians, however, joined as independent allies, paying no tribute, but furnishing ships. Most of these were Ionians and descended from the Athenians, except the Carystians, who are Dryopes, and although subjects and obliged to serve, were still Ionians fighting against Dorians.

5 Besides these there were men of Aeolic race, the Methymnians, subjects who provided ships, not tribute, and the Tenedians and Aenians who paid tribute. These Aeolians fought against their Aeolian founders, the Boeotians in the Syracusan army, because they were obliged, while the Plataeans, the only native Boeotians opposed to Boeotians, did so upon a just quarrel.

6 Of the Rhodians and Cytherians, both Dorians, the latter, Lacedaemonian colonists, fought in the Athenian ranks against their Lacedaemonian countrymen with Gylippus; while the Rhodians, Argives by race, were compelled to bear arms against the Dorian Syracusans and their own colonists, the Geloans, serving with the Syracusans.

7 Of the islanders round Peloponnese, the Cephallenians and Zacynthians accompanied the Athenians as independent allies, although their insular position really left them little choice in the matter, owing to the maritime supremacy of Athens, while the Corcyraeans, who were not only Dorians but Corinthians, were openly serving against Corinthians and Syracusans, although colonists of the former and of the same race as the latter, under color of compulsion, but really out of free will through hatred of Corinth.

8 The Messenians, as they are now called in Naupactus and from Pylos, then held by the Athenians, were taken with them to the war. There were also a few Megarian exiles, whose fate it was to be now fighting against the Megarian Selinuntines.

9 The engagement of the rest was more of a voluntary nature. It was less the league than hatred of the Lacedaemonians and the immediate private advantage of each individual that persuaded the Dorian Argives to join the Ionian Athenians in a war against Dorians; while the Mantineans and other Arcadian mercenaries, accustomed to go against the enemy pointed out to them at the moment, were led by interest to regard the Arcadians serving with the Corinthians as just as much their enemies as any others. The Cretans and Aetolians also served for hire, and the Cretans who had joined the Rhodians in founding Gela, thus came to consent to fight for pay against, instead of for, their colonists.

10 There were also some Acarnanians paid to serve, although they came chiefly for love of Demosthenes and out of goodwill to the Athenians whose allies they were. These all lived on the Hellenic side of the Ionian gulf.

11 Of the Italiots, there were the Thurians and Metapontines, dragged into the quarrel by the stern necessities of a time of revolution; of the Siceliots, the Naxians and the Catanians; and of the barbarians, the Egestaeans, who called in the Athenians, most of the Sicels, and outside Sicily some Tyrrhenian enemies of Syracuse and Iapygian mercenaries.

Chapter 58

1 Such were the peoples serving with the Athenians. Against these the Syracusans had the Camarinaeans their neighbors, the Geolans who live next them, and then passing over the neutral Agrigentines, the Selinuntines settled on the farther side of the island.

2 These inhabit the part of Sicily looking towards Libya; the Himeraeans came from the side towards the Tyrrhenian sea, being the only Hellenic inhabitants in that quarter, and the only people that came from thence to the aid of the Syracusans.

3 Of the Hellenes in Sicily the above peoples joined in the war, all Dorians and independent, and of the barbarians the Sicels only, that is to say, such as did not go over to the Athenians. Of the Hellenes outside Sicily there were the Lacedaemonians, who provided a Spartan to take the command, and a force of Neodamodes or Freedmen, and of Helots; the Corinthians, who alone joined with naval and land forces, with their Leucadian and Ambraciot kinsmen; some mercenaries sent by Corinth from Arcadia; some Sicyonians forced to serve, and from outside Peloponnese the Boeotians.

4 In comparison, however with these foreign auxiliaries, the great Siceliot cities furnished more in every department—numbers of heavy infantry, ships and horses, and an immense multitude besides having been brought together; while in comparison, again, one may say, with all the rest put together, more was provided by the Syracusans themselves, both from the greatness of the city and from the fact that they were in the greatest danger.

Chapter 59

1 Such were the auxiliaries brought together on either side, all of which had by this time joined, neither party experiencing any subsequent accession.

2 It was no wonder, therefore, if the Syracusans and their allies thought that it would win them great glory if they could follow up their recent victory in the sea-fight by the capture of the whole Athenian armada, without letting it escape either by sea or by land.

3 They began at once to close up the Great Harbor by means of boats, merchant vessels, and galleys moored broadside across its mouth, which is nearly a mile wide, and made all their other arrangements for the event of the Athenians again venturing to fight at sea. There was, in fact, nothing little either in their plans or their ideas.

Chapter 60

1 The Athenians, seeing them closing up the harbor and informed of their further designs, called a council of war.

2 The generals and colonels assembled and discussed the difficulties of the situation; the point which pressed most being that they no longer had provisions for immediate use (having sent on to Catana to tell them not to send any, in the belief that they were going away), and that they would not have any in future unless they could command the sea. They therefore determined to evacuate their upper lines, to enclose with a cross-wall and garrison a small space close to the ships, only just sufficient to hold their stores and sick, and manning all the ships, seaworthy or not, with every man that could be spared from the rest of their land forces, to fight it out at sea, and if victorious, to go to Catana, if not, to burn their vessels, form in close order, and retreat by land for the nearest friendly place they could reach, Hellenic or barbarian.

3 This was no sooner settled than carried into effect: they descended gradually from the upper lines and manned all their vessels, compelling all to go on board who were of age to be in any way of use.

4 They thus succeeded in manning about one hundred and ten ships in all, on board of which they embarked a number of archers and darters taken from the Acarnanians and from the other foreigners, making all other provisions allowed by the nature of their plan and by the necessities which imposed it.

5 All was now nearly ready, and Nicias, seeing the soldiery disheartened by their unprecedented and decided defeat at sea, and by reason of the scarcity of provisions eager to fight it out as soon as possible, called them all together, and first addressed them speaking as follows:—

Chapter 61

1 ‘Soldiers of the Athenians and of the allies, we have all an equal interest in the coming struggle, in which life and country are at stake for us quite as much as they can be for the enemy; since if our fleet wins the day, each can see his native city again, wherever that city may be.

2 You must not lose heart, or be like men without any experience, who fail in a first essay, and ever afterwards fearfully forebode a future as disastrous.

3 But let the Athenians among you who have already had experience of many wars, and the allies who have joined us in so many expeditions, remember the surprises of war, and with the hope that fortune will not be always against us, prepare to fight again in a manner worthy of the number which you see yourselves to be.

Chapter 62

1 Now, whatever we thought would be of service against the crush of vessels in such a narrow harbor, and against the force upon the decks of the enemy, from which we suffered before, has all been considered with the helmsmen, and, as far as our means allowed, provided.

2 A number of archers and darters will go on board, and a multitude that we should not have employed in an action in the open sea, where our science would be crippled by the weight of the vessels; but in the present land-fight that we are forced to make from shipboard all this will be useful.

3 We have also discovered the changes in construction that we must make to meet theirs; and against the thickness of their cheeks, which did us the greatest mischief, we have provided grappling-irons, which will prevent an assailant backing water after charging, if the soldiers on deck here do their duty;

4 since we are absolutely compelled to fight a land battle from the fleet, and it seems to be our interest neither to back water ourselves, nor to let the enemy do so, especially as the shore, except so much of it as may be held by our troops, is hostile ground.

Chapter 63

1 You must remember this and fight on as long as you can, and must not let yourselves be driven ashore, but once alongside must make up your minds not to part company until you have swept the heavy infantry from the enemy's deck.

2 I say this more for the heavy infantry than for the seamen, as it is more the business of the men on deck; and our land forces are even now on the whole the strongest.

3 The sailors I advise, and at the same time implore, not to be too much daunted by their misfortunes, now that we have our decks better armed and a greater number of vessels. Bear in mind how well worth preserving is the pleasure felt by those of you who through your knowledge of our language and imitation of our manners were always considered Athenians, even though not so in reality, and as such were honored throughout Hellas, and had your full share of the advantages of our empire, and more than your share in the respect of our subjects and in protection from ill treatment.

4 You, therefore, with whom alone we freely share our empire, we now justly require not to betray that empire in its extremity, and in scorn of Corinthians, whom you have often conquered, and of Siceliots, none of whom so much as presumed to stand against us when our navy was in its prime, we ask you to repel them, and to show that even in sickness and disaster your skill is more than a match for the fortune and vigor of any other.

Chapter 64

1 For the Athenians among you I add once more this reflection:—you left behind you no more such ships in your docks as these, no more heavy infantry in their flower; if you do aught but conquer, our enemies here will immediately sail thither, and those that are left of us at Athens will become unable to repel their home assailants, reinforced by these new allies. Here you will fall at once into the hands of the Syracusans—I need not remind you of the intentions with which you attacked them—and your countrymen at home will fall into those of the Lacedaemonians.

2 Since the fate of both thus hangs upon this single battle—now, if ever, stand firm, and remember, each and all, that you who are now going on board are the army and navy of the Athenians, and all that is left of the state and the great name of Athens, in whose defence if any man has any advantage in skill or courage, now is the time for him to show it, and thus serve himself and save all.’

Chapter 65

1 After this address Nicias at once gave orders to man the ships. Meanwhile Gylippus and the Syracusans could perceive by the preparations which they saw going on that the Athenians meant to fight at sea. They had also notice of the grappling-irons,

2 against which they specially provided by stretching hides over the prows and much of the upper part of their vessels, in order that the irons when thrown might slip off without taking hold.

3 All being now ready, the generals and Gylippus addressed them in the following terms:—

Chapter 66

1 ‘Syracusans and allies, the glorious character of our past achievements and the no less glorious results at issue in the coming battle are, we think, understood by most of you, or you would never have thrown yourselves with such ardor into the struggle; and if there be any one not as fully aware of the facts as he ought to be, we will declare them to him.

2 The Athenians came to this country first to effect the conquest of Sicily, and after that, if successful, of Peloponnese and the rest of Hellas, possessing already the greatest empire yet known, of present or former times, among the Hellenes. Here for the first time they found in you men who faced their navy which made them masters everywhere; you have already defeated them in the previous sea-fight, and will in all likelihood defeat them again now.

3 When men are once checked in what they consider their special excellence, their whole opinion of themselves suffers more than if they had not at first believed in their superiority, the unexpected shock to their pride causing them to give way more than their real strength warrants; and this is probably now the case with the Athenians.

Chapter 67

1 With us it is different. The original estimate of ourselves which gave us courage in the days of our unskillfulness has been strengthened, while the convictions super-added to it that we must be the best seamen of the time, if we have conquered the best, has given a double measure of hope to every man among us; and, for the most part, where there is the greatest hope, there is also the greatest ardor for action.

2 The means to combat us which they have tried to find in copying our armament are familiar to our warfare, and will be met by proper provisions; while they will never be able to have a number of heavy infantry on their decks, contrary to their custom, and a number of darters (born landsmen, one may say, Acarnanians and others, embarked afloat, who will not know how to discharge their weapons when they have to keep still), without hampering their vessels and falling all into confusion among themselves through fighting not according to their own tactics.

3 For they will gain nothing by the number of their ships—I say this to those of you who may be alarmed by having to fight against odds—as a quantity of ships in a confined space will only be slower in executing the movements required, and most exposed to injury from our means of offence.

4 Indeed, if you would know the plain truth, as we are credibly informed, the excess of their sufferings and the necessities of their present distress have made them desperate; they have no confidence in their force, but wish to try their fortune in the only way they can, and either to force their passage and sail out, or after this to retreat by land, it being impossible for them to be worse off than they are.

Chapter 68

1 The fortune of our greatest enemies having thus betrayed itself, and their disorder being what I have described, let us engage in anger, convinced that, as between adversaries, nothing is more legitimate than to claim to sate the whole wrath of one's soul in punishing the aggressor, and nothing more sweet, as the proverb has it, than the vengeance upon an enemy, which it will now be ours to take.

2 That enemies they are and mortal enemies you all know, since they came here to enslave our country, and if successful had in reserve for our men all that is most dreadful, and for our children and wives all that is most dishonorable, and for the whole city the name which conveys the greatest reproach.

3 None should therefore relent or think it gain if they go away without further danger to us. This they will do just the same, even if they get the victory; while if we succeed, as we may expect, in chastising them, and in handing down to all Sicily her ancient freedom strengthened and confirmed, we shall have achieved no mean triumph. And the rarest dangers are those in which failure brings little loss and success the greatest advantage.’

Chapter 69

1 After the above address to the soldiers on their side, the Syracusan generals and Gylippus now perceived that the Athenians were manning their ships, and immediately proceeded to man their own also.

2 Meanwhile Nicias, appalled by the position of affairs, realizing the greatness and the nearness of the danger now that they were on the point of putting out from shore, and thinking, as men are apt to think in great crises, that when all has been done they have still something left to do, and when all has been said that they have not yet said enough, again called on the captains one by one, addressing each by his father's name and by his own, and by that of his tribe, and adjured them not to belie their own personal renown, or to obscure the hereditary virtues for which their ancestors were illustrious; he reminded them of their country, the freest of the free, and of the unfettered discretion allowed in it to all to live as they pleased; and added other arguments such as men would use at such a crisis, and which, with little alteration, are made to serve on all occasions alike—appeals to wives, children, and national gods,—without caring whether they are thought common-place, but loudly invoking them in the belief that they will be of use in the consternation of the moment.

3 Having thus admonished them, not, he felt, as he would, but as he could, Nicias withdrew and led the troops to the sea, and ranged them in as long a line as he was able, in order to aid as far as possible in sustaining the courage of the men afloat;

4 while Demosthenes, Menander, and Euthydemus, who took the command on board, put out from their own camp and sailed straight to the barrier across the mouth of the harbor and to the passage left open, to try to force their way out.

Chapter 70

1 The Syracusans and their allies had already put out with about the same number of ships as before, a part of which kept guard at the outlet, and the remainder all round the rest of the harbor, in order to attack the Athenians on all sides at once; while the land forces held themselves in readiness at the points at which the vessels might put into the shore. The Syracusan fleet was commanded by Sicanus and Agatharchus, who had each a wing of the whole force, with Pythen and the Corinthians in the center.

2 When the rest of the Athenians came up to the barrier, with the first shock of their charge they overpowered the ships stationed there, and tried to undo the fastenings; after this, as the Syracusans and allies bore down upon them from all quarters, the action spread from the barrier over the whole harbor, and was more obstinately disputed than any of the preceding ones.

3 On either side the rowers showed great zeal in bringing up their vessels at the boatswains' orders, and the helmsmen great skill in maneuvering, and great emulation one with another; while the ships once alongside, the soldiers on board did their best not to let the service on deck be outdone by the others;

4 in short, every man strove to prove himself the first in his particular department. And as many ships were engaged in a small compass (for these were the largest fleets fighting in the narrowest space ever known, being together little short of two hundred), the regular attacks with the beak were few, there being no opportunity of backing water or of breaking the line; while the collisions caused by one ship chancing to run foul of another, either in flying from or attacking a third, were more frequent.

5 So long as a vessel was coming up to the charge the men on the decks rained darts and arrows and stones upon her; but once alongside, the heavy infantry tried to board each other's vessel, fighting hand to hand.

6 In many quarters also it happened, by reason of the narrow room, that a vessel was charging an enemy on one side and being charged herself on another, and that two, or sometimes more ships had perforce got entangled round one, obliging the helmsmen to attend to defence here, offence there, not to one thing at once, but to many on all sides; while the huge din caused by the number of ships crashing together not only spread terror, but made the orders of the boatswains inaudible.

7 The boatswains on either side in the discharge of their duty and in the heat of the conflict shouted incessantly orders and appeals to their men; the Athenians they urged to force the passage out, and now if ever to show their mettle and lay hold of a safe return to their country; to the Syracusans and their allies they cried that it would be glorious to prevent the escape of the enemy, and conquering, to exalt the countries that were theirs.

8 The generals, moreover, on either side, if they saw in any part of the battle backing ashore without being forced to do so, called out to the captain by name and asked him—the Athenians, whether they were retreating because they thought the thrice hostile shore more their own than that sea which had cost them so much labour to win; the Syracusans, whether they were flying from the flying Athenians, whom they well knew to be eager to escape in whatever way they could.

Chapter 71

1 Meanwhile the two armies on shore, while victory hung in the balance, were a prey to the most agonizing and conflicting emotions; the natives thirsting for more glory than they had already won, while the invaders feared to find themselves in even worse plight than before.

2 The all of the Athenians being set upon their fleet, their fear for the event was like nothing they had ever felt; while their view of the struggle was necessarily as checkered as the battle itself.

3 Close to the scene of action and not all looking at the same point at once, some saw their friends victorious and took courage, and fell to calling upon heaven not to deprive them of salvation, while others who had their eyes turned upon the losers, wailed and cried aloud, and, although spectators, were more overcome than the actual combatants. Others, again, were gazing at some spot where the battle was evenly disputed; as the strife was protracted without decision, their swaying bodies reflected the agitation of their minds, and they suffered the worst agony of all, ever just within reach of safety or just on the point of destruction.

4 In short, in that one Athenian army as long as the sea-fight remained doubtful there was every sound to be heard at once, shrieks, cheers, ‘We win,’ ‘We lose,’ and all the other manifold exclamations that a great host would necessarily utter in great peril;

5 and with the men in the fleet it was nearly the same; until at last the Syracusans and their allies, after the battle had lasted a long while, put the Athenians to flight, and with much shouting and cheering chased them in open rout to the shore.

6 The naval force, one one way, one another, as many as were not taken afloat, now ran ashore and rushed from on board their ships to their camp; while the army, no more divided, but carried away by one impulse, all with shrieks and groans deplored the event, and ran down, some to help the ships, others to guard what was left of their wall, while the remaining and most numerous part already began to consider how they should save themselves.

7 Indeed, the panic of the present moment had never been surpassed. They now suffered very nearly what they had inflicted at Pylos; as then the Lacedaemonians with the loss of their fleet lost also the men who had crossed over to the island, so now the Athenians had no hope of escaping by land, without the help of some extraordinary accident.

Chapter 72

1 The sea-fight having been a severe one, and many ships and lives having been lost on both sides, the victorious Syracusans and their allies now picked up their wrecks and dead, and sailed off to the city and set up a trophy.

2 The Athenians, overwhelmed by their misfortune, never even thought of asking leave to take up their dead or wrecks, but wished to retreat that very night.

3 Demosthenes, however, went to Nicias and gave it as his opinion that they should man the ships they had left and make another effort to force their passage out next morning; saying that they had still left more ships fit for service than the enemy, the Athenians having about sixty remaining as against less than fifty of their opponents.

4 Nicias was quite of his mind; but when they wished to man the vessels, the sailors refused to go on board, being so utterly overcome by their defeat as no longer to believe in the possibility of success.

Chapter 73

1 Accordingly they all now made up their minds to retreat by land. Meanwhile the Syracusan Hermocrates suspecting their intention, and impressed by the danger of allowing a force of that magnitude to retire by land, establish itself in some other part of Sicily, and from thence renew the war, went and stated his views to the authorities, and pointed out to them that they ought not to let the enemy get away by night, but that all the Syracusans and their allies should at once march out and block up the roads and seize and guard the passes.

2 The authorities were entirely of his opinion, and thought that it ought to be done, but on the other hand felt sure that the people, who had given themselves over to rejoicing and were taking their ease after a great battle at sea, would not be easily brought to obey; besides, they were celebrating a festival, having on that day a sacrifice to Heracles, and most of them in their rapture at the victory had fallen to drinking at the festival, and would probably consent to anything sooner than to take up their arms and march out at that moment.

3 For these reasons the thing appeared impracticable to the magistrates; and Hermocrates, finding himself unable to do anything further with them, had now recourse to the following stratagem of his own. What he feared was that the Athenians might quietly get the start of them by passing the most difficult places during the night; and he therefore sent, as soon as it was dusk, some friends of his own to the camp with some horsemen who rode up within earshot and called out to some of the men, as though they were well-wishers of the Athenians, and told them to tell Nicias (who had in fact some correspondence who informed him of what went on inside the town), not to lead off the army by night as the Syracusans were guarding the roads, but to make his preparations at his leisure and to retreat by day.

4 After saying this they departed; and their hearers informed the Athenian generals,

Chapter 74

1 who put off going for that night on the strength of this message, not doubting its sincerity.Since after all they had not set out at once, they now determined to stay also the following day to give time to the soldiers to pack up as well as they could the most useful articles, and, leaving everything else behind, to start only with what was strictly necessary for their personal subsistence.

2 Meanwhile the Syracusans and Gylippus marched out and blocked up the roads through the country by which the Athenians were likely to pass, and kept guard at the fords of the stream and rivers, posting themselves so as to receive them and stop the army where they thought best; while their fleet sailed up to the beach and towed off the ships of the Athenians. Some few were burned by the Athenians themselves as they had intended; the rest the Syracusans lashed on to their own at their leisure as they had been thrown up on shore, without any one trying to stop them, and conveyed to the town.

Chapter 75

1 After this, Nicias and Demosthenes now thinking that enough had been done in the way of preparation, the removal of the army took place upon the second day after the sea-fight.

2 It was a lamentable scene, not merely from the single circumstance that they were retreating after having lost all their ships, their great hopes gone, and themselves and the state in peril; but also in leaving the camp there were things most grievous for every eye and heart to contemplate.

3 The dead lay unburied, and each man as he recognized a friend among them shuddered with grief and horror; while the living whom they were leaving behind, wounded or sick, were to the living far more shocking than the dead, and more to be pitied than those who had perished.

4 These fell to entreating and bewailing until their friends knew not what to do, begging them to take them and loudly calling to each individual comrade or relative whom they could see, hanging upon the necks of their tent-fellows in the act of departure, and following as far as they could, and when their bodily strength failed them, calling again and again upon heaven and shrieking aloud as they were left behind. So that the whole army being filled with tears and distracted after this fashion found it not easy to go, even from an enemy's land, where they had already suffered evils too great for tears and in the unknown future before them feared to suffer more.

5 Dejection and self-condemnation were also rife among them. Indeed they could only be compared to a starved-out town, and that no small one, escaping; the whole multitude upon the march being not less than forty thousand men. All carried anything they could which might be of use, and the heavy infantry and troopers, contrary to their wont, while under arms carried their own victuals, in some cases for want of servants, in others through not trusting them; as they had long been deserting and now did so in greater numbers than ever. Yet even thus they did not carry enough, as there was no longer food in the camp.

6 Moreover their disgrace generally, and the universality of their sufferings, however to a certain extent alleviated by being borne in company, were still felt at the moment a heavy burden, especially when they contrasted the splendor and glory of their setting out with the humiliation in which it had ended.

7 For this was by far the greatest reverse that ever befell an Hellenic army. They had come to enslave others, and were departing in fear of being enslaved themselves: they had sailed out with prayer and paeans, and now started to go back with omens directly contrary; travelling by land instead of by sea, and trusting not in their fleet but in their heavy infantry. Nevertheless the greatness of the danger still impending made all this appear tolerable.

Chapter 76

1 Nicias seeing the army dejected and greatly altered, passed along the ranks and encouraged and comforted them as far as was possible under the circumstances, raising his voice still higher and higher as he went from one company to another in his earnestness, and in his anxiety that the benefit of his words might reach as many as possible:—

Chapter 77

1 ‘Athenians and allies, even in our present position we must still hope on, since men have ere now been saved from worse straits than this; and you must not condemn yourselves too severely either because of your disasters or because of your present unmerited sufferings.

2 I myself who am not superior to any of you in strength—indeed you see how I am in my sickness—and who in the gifts of fortune am, I think, whether in private life or otherwise, the equal of any, am now exposed to the same danger as the meanest among you; and yet my life has been one of much devotion towards the gods, and of much justice and without offence towards men.

3 I have, therefore, still a strong hope for the future, and our misfortunes do not terrify me as much as they might. Indeed we may hope that they will be lightened: our enemies have had good fortune enough; and if any of the gods was offended at our expedition, we have been already amply punished.

4 Others before us have attacked their neighbors and have done what men will do without suffering more than they could bear; and we may now justly expect to find the gods more kind, for we have become fitter objects for their pity than their jealousy. And then look at yourselves, mark the numbers and efficiency of the heavy infantry marching in your ranks, and do not give way too much to despondency, but reflect that you are yourselves at once a city wherever you sit down, and that there is no other in Sicily that could easily resist your attack, or expel you when once established.

5 The safety and order of the march is for yourselves to look to; the one thought of each man being that the spot on which he may be forced to fight must be conquered and held as his country and stronghold.

6 Meanwhile we shall hasten on our way night and day alike, as our provisions are scanty; and if we can reach some friendly place of the Sicels, whom fear of the Syracusans still keeps true to us, you may forthwith consider yourselves safe. A message has been sent on to them with directions to meet us with supplies of food.

7 To sum up, be convinced, soldiers, that you must be brave, as there is no place near for your cowardice to take refuge in, and that if you now escape from the enemy, you may all see again what your hearts desire, while those of you who are Athenians will raise up again the great power of the state, fallen though it be. Men make the city and not walls or ships without men in them.’

Chapter 78

1 As he made this address, Nicias went along the ranks, and brought back to their place any of the troops that he saw straggling out of the line; while Demosthenes did as much for his part of the army, addressing them in words very similar.

2 The army marched in a hollow square, the division under Nicias leading, and that of Demosthenes following, the heavy infantry being outside and the baggage-carriers and the bulk of the army in the middle.

3 When they arrived at the ford of the river Anapus they there found drawn up a body of the Syracusans and allies, and routing these, made good their passage and pushed on, harassed by the charges of the Syracusan horse and by the missiles of their light troops.

4 On that day they advanced about four miles and a half, halting for the night upon a certain hill. On the next they started early and got on about two miles further, and descended into a place in the plain and there encamped, in order to procure some eatables from the houses, as the place was inhabited, and to carry on with them water from thence, as for many furlongs in front, in the direction in which they were going, it was not plentiful.

5 The Syracusans meanwhile went on and fortified the pass in front, where there was a steep hill with a rocky ravine on each side of it, called the Acraean cliff.

6 The next day the Athenians advancing found themselves impeded by the missiles and charges of the horse and darters, both very numerous, of the Syracusans and allies; and after fighting for a long while, at length retired to the same camp, where they had no longer provisions as before, it being impossible to leave their position by reason of the cavalry.

Chapter 79

1 Early next morning they started afresh and forced their way to the hill, which had been fortified, where they found before them the enemy's infantry drawn up many shields deep to defend the fortification, the pass being narrow.

2 The Athenians assaulted the work, but were greeted by a storm of missiles from the hill, which told with the greater effect through its being a steep one, and unable to force the passage, retreated again and rested.

3 Meanwhile occurred some claps of thunder and rain, as often happens towards autumn, which still further disheartened the Athenians, who thought all these things to be omens of their approaching ruin.

4 While they were resting Gylippus and the Syracusans sent a part of their army to throw up works in their rear on the way by which they had advanced; however, the Athenians immediately sent some of their men and prevented them;

5 after which they retreated more towards the plain and halted for the night. When they advanced the next day the Syracusans surrounded and attacked them on every side, and disabled many of them, falling back if the Athenians advanced and coming on if they retired, and in particular assaulting their rear, in the hope of routing them in detail, and thus striking a panic into the whole army.

6 For a long while the Athenians persevered in this fashion, but after advancing for four or five furlongs halted to rest in the plain, the Syracusans also withdrawing to their own camp.

Chapter 80

1 During the night Nicias and Demosthenes, seeing the wretched condition of their troops, now in want of every kind of necessary, and numbers of them disabled in the numerous attacks of the enemy, determined to light as many fires as possible, and to lead off the army, no longer by the same route as they had intended, but towards the sea in the opposite direction to that guarded by the Syracusans.

2 The whole of this route was leading the army not to Catana but to the other side of Sicily, towards Camarina, Gela, and the other Hellenic and barbarian towns in that quarter.

3 They accordingly lit a number of fires and set out by night. Now all armies, and the greatest most of all, are liable to fears and alarms, especially when they are marching by night through an enemy's country and with the enemy near; and the Athenians falling into one of these panics,

4 the leading division, that of Nicias, kept together and got on a good way in front, while that of Demosthenes, comprising rather more than half the army, got separated and marched on in some disorder.

5 By morning, however, they reached the sea, and getting into the Helorine Road, pushed on in order to reach the river Cacyparis, and to follow the stream up through the interior, where they hoped to be met by the Sicels whom they had sent for.

6 Arrived at the river, they found there also a Syracusan party engaged in barring the passage of the ford with a wall and a palisade, and forcing this guard, crossed the river and went on to another called the Erineus, according to the advice of their guides.

Chapter 81

1 Meanwhile, when day came and the Syracusans and allies found that the Athenians were gone, most of them accused Gylippus of having let them escape on purpose, and hastily pursuing by the road which they had no difficulty in finding that they had taken, overtook them about dinner-time.

2 They first came up with the troops under Demosthenes, who were behind and marching somewhat slowly and in disorder, owing to the night-panic above referred to, and at once attacked and engaged them, the Syracusan horse surrounding them with more ease now that they were separated from the rest, and hemming them in on one spot.

3 The division of Nicias was five or six miles on in front, as he led them more rapidly, thinking that under the circumstances their safety lay not in staying and fighting, unless obliged, but in retreating as fast as possible, and only fighting when forced to do so.

4 On the other hand, Demosthenes was, generally speaking, harassed more incessantly, as his post in the rear left him the first exposed to the attacks of the enemy; and now, finding that the Syracusans were in pursuit, he omitted to push on, in order to form his men for battle, and so lingered until he was surrounded by his pursuers and himself and the Athenians with him placed in the most distressing position, being huddled into an enclosure with a wall all round it, a road on this side and on that, and olive-trees in great number, where missiles were showered in upon them from every quarter.

5 This mode of attack the Syracusans had with good reason adopted in preference to fighting at close quarters, as to risk a struggle with desperate men was now more for the advantage of the Athenians than for their own; besides, their success had now become so certain that they began to spare themselves a little in order not to be cut off in the moment of victory, thinking too that, as it was, they would be able in this way to subdue and capture the enemy.

Chapter 82

1 In fact, after plying the Athenians and allies all day long from every side with missiles, they at length saw that they were worn out with their wounds and other sufferings; and Gylippus and the Syracusans and their allies made a proclamation, offering their liberty to any of the islanders who chose to come over to them; and some few cities went over.

2 Afterwards a capitulation was agreed upon for all the rest with Demosthenes, to lay down their arms on condition that no one was to be put to death either by violence or imprisonment or want of the necessaries of life.

3 Upon this they surrendered to the number of six thousand in all, laying down all the money in their possession, which filled the hollows of four shields, and were immediately conveyed by the Syracusans to the town.Meanwhile Nicias with his division arrived that day at the river Erineus, crossed over and posted his army upon some high ground upon the other side.

Chapter 83

1 The next day the Syracusans overtook him and told him that the troops under Demosthenes had surrendered, and invited him to follow their example. Incredulous of the fact, Nicias asked for a truce to send a horseman to see,

2 and upon the return of the messenger with the tidings that they had surrendered, sent a herald to Gylippus and the Syracusans, saying that he was ready to agree with them on behalf of the Athenians to repay whatever money the Syracusans had spent upon the war if they would let his army go; and offered until the money was paid to give Athenians as hostages, one for every talent.

3 The Syracusans and Gylippus rejected this proposition, and attacked this division as they had the other, standing all round and plying them with missiles until the evening.

4 Food and necessaries were as miserably wanting to the troops of Nicias as they had been to their comrades; nevertheless they watched for the quiet of the night to resume their march. But as they were taking up their arms the Syracusans perceived it and raised their paean,

5 upon which the Athenians, finding that they were discovered, laid them down again, except about three hundred men who forced their way through the guards and went on during the night as they were able.

Chapter 84

1 As soon as it was day Nicias put his army in motion, pressed, as before, by the Syracusans and their allies, pelted from every side by their missiles, and struck down by their javelins.

2 The Athenians pushed on for the Assinarus, impelled by the attacks made upon them from every side by a numerous cavalry and the swarm of other arms, fancying that they should breathe more freely if once across the river, and driven on also by their exhaustion and craving for water.

3 Once there they rushed in, and all order was at an end, each man wanting to cross first, and the attacks of the enemy making it difficult to cross at all; forced to huddle together, they fell against and trod down one another, some dying immediately upon the javelins, others getting entangled together and stumbling over the articles of baggage, without being able to rise again.

4 Meanwhile the opposite bank, which was steep, was lined by the Syracusans, who showered missiles down upon the Athenians, most of them drinking greedily and heaped together in disorder in the hollow bed of the river.

5 The Peloponnesians also came down and butchered them, especially those in the water, which was thus immediately spoiled, but which they went on drinking just the same, mud and all, bloody as it was, most even fighting to have it.

Chapter 85

1 At last, when many dead now lay piled one upon another in the stream, and part of the army had been destroyed at the river, and the few that escaped from thence cut off by the cavalry, Nicias surrendered himself to Gylippus, whom he trusted more than he did the Syracusans, and told him and the Lacedaemonians to do what they liked with him, but to stop the slaughter of the soldiers.

2 Gylippus, after this, immediately gave orders to make prisoners; upon which the rest were brought together alive, except a large number secreted by the soldiery, and a party was sent in pursuit of the three hundred who had got through the guard during the night, and who were now taken with the rest.

3 The number of the enemy collected as public property was not considerable; but that secreted was very large, and all Sicily was filled with them, no convention having been made in their case as for those taken with Demosthenes.

4 Besides this, a large portion were killed outright, the carnage being very great, and not exceeded by any in this Sicilian war. In the numerous other encounters upon the march, not a few also had fallen. Nevertheless many escaped, some at the moment, others served as slaves, and then ran away subsequently. These found refuge at Catana.

Chapter 86

1 The Syracusans and their allies now mustered and took up the spoils and as many prisoners as they could, and went back to the city.

2 The rest of their Athenian and allied captives were deposited in the quarries, this seeming the safest way of keeping them; but Nicias and Demosthenes were butchered, against the will of Gylippus, who thought that it would be the crown of his triumph if he could take the enemy's generals to Lacedaemon.

3 One of them, as it happened, Demosthenes, was one of her greatest enemies, on account of the affair of the island and of Pylos; while the other, Nicias, was for the same reasons one of her greatest friends, owing to his exertions to procure the release of the prisoners by persuading the Athenians to make peace.

4 For these reasons the Lacedaemonians felt kindly towards him; and it was in this that Nicias himself mainly confided when he surrendered to Gylippus. But some of the Syracusans who had been in correspondence with him were afraid, it was said, of his being put to the torture and troubling their success by his revelations; others, especially the Corinthians, of his escaping, as he was wealthy, by means of bribes, and living to do them further mischief; and these persuaded the allies and put him to death.

5 This or the like was the cause of the death of a man who, of all the Hellenes in my time, least deserved such a fate, seeing that the whole course of his life had been regulated with strict attention to virtue.

Chapter 87

1 The prisoners in the quarries were at first hardly treated by the Syracusans. Crowded in a narrow hole, without any roof to cover them, the heat of the sun and the stifling closeness of the air tormented them during the day, and then the nights which came on autumnal and chilly, made them ill by the violence of the change;

2 besides, as they had to do everything in the same place for want of room, and the bodies of those who died of their wounds or from the variation in the temperature, or from similar causes, were left heaped together one upon another, intolerable stenches arose; while hunger and thirst never ceased to afflict them, each man during eight months having only half a pint of water and a pint of corn given him daily. In short, no single suffering to be apprehended by men thrust into such a place was spared them.

3 For some seventy days they thus lived all together, after which all, except the Athenians and any Siceliots or Italiots who had joined in the expedition, were sold.

4 The total number of prisoners taken it would be difficult to state exactly, but it could not have been less than seven thousand.

5 This was the greatest Hellenic achievement of any in this war, or, in my opinion, in Hellenic history; at once most glorious to the victors, and most calamitous to the conquered.

6 They were beaten at all points and altogether; all that they suffered was great; they were destroyed, as the saying is, with a total destruction, their fleet, their army—everything was destroyed, and few out of many returned home. Such were the events in Sicily.