History of the Peloponnesian War - Thucydides (classic literature books .TXT) 📗
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more life and effort in war than any other city, and has won for
herself a power greater than any hitherto known, the memory of which
will descend to the latest posterity; even if now, in obedience to the
general law of decay, we should ever be forced to yield, still it will
be remembered that we held rule over more Hellenes than any other
Hellenic state, that we sustained the greatest wars against their
united or separate powers, and inhabited a city unrivalled by any
other in resources or magnitude. These glories may incur the censure
of the slow and unambitious; but in the breast of energy they will
awake emulation, and in those who must remain without them an
envious regret. Hatred and unpopularity at the moment have fallen to
the lot of all who have aspired to rule others; but where odium must
be incurred, true wisdom incurs it for the highest objects. Hatred
also is short-lived; but that which makes the splendour of the present
and the glory of the future remains for ever unforgotten. Make your
decision, therefore, for glory then and honour now, and attain both
objects by instant and zealous effort: do not send heralds to
Lacedaemon, and do not betray any sign of being oppressed by your
present sufferings, since they whose minds are least sensitive to
calamity, and whose hands are most quick to meet it, are the
greatest men and the greatest communities.”
Such were the arguments by which Pericles tried to cure the
Athenians of their anger against him and to divert their thoughts from
their immediate afflictions. As a community he succeeded in convincing
them; they not only gave up all idea of sending to Lacedaemon, but
applied themselves with increased energy to the war; still as
private individuals they could not help smarting under their
sufferings, the common people having been deprived of the little
that they were possessed, while the higher orders had lost fine
properties with costly establishments and buildings in the country,
and, worst of all, had war instead of peace. In fact, the public
feeling against him did not subside until he had been fined. Not
long afterwards, however, according to the way of the multitude,
they again elected him general and committed all their affairs to
his hands, having now become less sensitive to their private and
domestic afflictions, and understanding that he was the best man of
all for the public necessities. For as long as he was at the head of
the state during the peace, he pursued a moderate and conservative
policy; and in his time its greatness was at its height. When the
war broke out, here also he seems to have rightly gauged the power
of his country. He outlived its commencement two years and six months,
and the correctness of his previsions respecting it became better
known by his death. He told them to wait quietly, to pay attention
to their marine, to attempt no new conquests, and to expose the city
to no hazards during the war, and doing this, promised them a
favourable result. What they did was the very contrary, allowing
private ambitions and private interests, in matters apparently quite
foreign to the war, to lead them into projects unjust both to
themselves and to their allies—projects whose success would only
conduce to the honour and advantage of private persons, and whose
failure entailed certain disaster on the country in the war. The
causes of this are not far to seek. Pericles indeed, by his rank,
ability, and known integrity, was enabled to exercise an independent
control over the multitude—in short, to lead them instead of being
led by them; for as he never sought power by improper means, he was
never compelled to flatter them, but, on the contrary, enjoyed so high
an estimation that he could afford to anger them by contradiction.
Whenever he saw them unseasonably and insolently elated, he would with
a word reduce them to alarm; on the other hand, if they fell victims
to a panic, he could at once restore them to confidence. In short,
what was nominally a democracy became in his hands government by the
first citizen. With his successors it was different. More on a level
with one another, and each grasping at supremacy, they ended by
committing even the conduct of state affairs to the whims of the
multitude. This, as might have been expected in a great and
sovereign state, produced a host of blunders, and amongst them the
Sicilian expedition; though this failed not so much through a
miscalculation of the power of those against whom it was sent, as
through a fault in the senders in not taking the best measures
afterwards to assist those who had gone out, but choosing rather to
occupy themselves with private cabals for the leadership of the
commons, by which they not only paralysed operations in the field, but
also first introduced civil discord at home. Yet after losing most
of their fleet besides other forces in Sicily, and with faction
already dominant in the city, they could still for three years make
head against their original adversaries, joined not only by the
Sicilians, but also by their own allies nearly all in revolt, and at
last by the King’s son, Cyrus, who furnished the funds for the
Peloponnesian navy. Nor did they finally succumb till they fell the
victims of their own intestine disorders. So superfluously abundant
were the resources from which the genius of Pericles foresaw an easy
triumph in the war over the unaided forces of the Peloponnesians.
During the same summer the Lacedaemonians and their allies made an
expedition with a hundred ships against Zacynthus, an island lying off
the coast of Elis, peopled by a colony of Achaeans from Peloponnese,
and in alliance with Athens. There were a thousand Lacedaemonian heavy
infantry on board, and Cnemus, a Spartan, as admiral. They made a
descent from their ships, and ravaged most of the country; but as
the inhabitants would not submit, they sailed back home.
At the end of the same summer the Corinthian Aristeus, Aneristus,
Nicolaus, and Stratodemus, envoys from Lacedaemon, Timagoras, a
Tegean, and a private individual named Pollis from Argos, on their way
to Asia to persuade the King to supply funds and join in the war, came
to Sitalces, son of Teres in Thrace, with the idea of inducing him, if
possible, to forsake the alliance of Athens and to march on Potidaea
then besieged by an Athenian force, and also of getting conveyed by
his means to their destination across the Hellespont to Pharnabazus,
who was to send them up the country to the King. But there chanced
to be with Sitalces some Athenian ambassadors—Learchus, son of
Callimachus, and Ameiniades, son of Philemon—who persuaded Sitalces’
son, Sadocus, the new Athenian citizen, to put the men into their
hands and thus prevent their crossing over to the King and doing their
part to injure the country of his choice. He accordingly had them
seized, as they were travelling through Thrace to the vessel in
which they were to cross the Hellespont, by a party whom he had sent
on with Learchus and Ameiniades, and gave orders for their delivery to
the Athenian ambassadors, by whom they were brought to Athens. On
their arrival, the Athenians, afraid that Aristeus, who had been
notably the prime mover in the previous affairs of Potidaea and
their Thracian possessions, might live to do them still more
mischief if he escaped, slew them all the same day, without giving
them a trial or hearing the defence which they wished to offer, and
cast their bodies into a pit; thinking themselves justified in using
in retaliation the same mode of warfare which the Lacedaemonians had
begun, when they slew and cast into pits all the Athenian and allied
traders whom they caught on board the merchantmen round Peloponnese.
Indeed, at the outset of the war, the Lacedaemonians butchered as
enemies all whom they took on the sea, whether allies of Athens or
neutrals.
About the same time towards the close of the summer, the Ambraciot
forces, with a number of barbarians that they had raised, marched
against the Amphilochian Argos and the rest of that country. The
origin of their enmity against the Argives was this. This Argos and
the rest of Amphilochia were colonized by Amphilochus, son of
Amphiaraus. Dissatisfied with the state of affairs at home on his
return thither after the Trojan War, he built this city in the
Ambracian Gulf, and named it Argos after his own country. This was the
largest town in Amphilochia, and its inhabitants the most powerful.
Under the pressure of misfortune many generations afterwards, they
called in the Ambraciots, their neighbours on the Amphilochian border,
to join their colony; and it was by this union with the Ambraciots
that they learnt their present Hellenic speech, the rest of the
Amphilochians being barbarians. After a time the Ambraciots expelled
the Argives and held the city themselves. Upon this the
Amphilochians gave themselves over to the Acarnanians; and the two
together called the Athenians, who sent them Phormio as general and
thirty ships; upon whose arrival they took Argos by storm, and made
slaves of the Ambraciots; and the Amphilochians and Acarnanians
inhabited the town in common. After this began the alliance between
the Athenians and Acarnanians. The enmity of the Ambraciots against
the Argives thus commenced with the enslavement of their citizens; and
afterwards during the war they collected this armament among
themselves and the Chaonians, and other of the neighbouring
barbarians. Arrived before Argos, they became masters of the
country; but not being successful in their attacks upon the town,
returned home and dispersed among their different peoples.
Such were the events of the summer. The ensuing winter the Athenians
sent twenty ships round Peloponnese, under the command of Phormio, who
stationed himself at Naupactus and kept watch against any one
sailing in or out of Corinth and the Crissaean Gulf. Six others went
to Caria and Lycia under Melesander, to collect tribute in those
parts, and also to prevent the Peloponnesian privateers from taking up
their station in those waters and molesting the passage of the
merchantmen from Phaselis and Phoenicia and the adjoining continent.
However, Melesander, going up the country into Lycia with a force of
Athenians from the ships and the allies, was defeated and killed in
battle, with the loss of a number of his troops.
The same winter the Potidaeans at length found themselves no
longer able to hold out against their besiegers. The inroads of the
Peloponnesians into Attica had not had the desired effect of making
the Athenians raise the siege. Provisions there were none left; and so
far had distress for food gone in Potidaea that, besides a number of
other horrors, instances had even occurred of the people having
eaten one another. In this extremity they at last made proposals for
capitulating to the Athenian generals in command against
them—Xenophon, son of Euripides, Hestiodorus, son of Aristocleides,
and Phanomachus, son of Callimachus. The generals accepted their
proposals, seeing the sufferings of the army in so exposed a position;
besides which the state had already spent two thousand talents upon
the siege. The terms of the capitulation were as follows: a free
passage out for themselves, their children, wives and auxiliaries,
with one garment apiece, the women with two, and a fixed sum of
money for their journey. Under this treaty they went out to Chalcidice
and other places, according as was their power. The Athenians,
however, blamed the generals for granting terms without instructions
from home, being of opinion that the place would have had to surrender
at discretion. They afterwards sent settlers of their own to Potidaea,
and colonized it. Such were the events of
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