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Annotation of text copyright ©2007 David Trumbull, Agathon Associates. All Rights Reserved.
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INTRODUCTION (chapters 1 through 23)
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Here Begins Thucydides' History of the Peloponnesian War.
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¶ Thucydides justifies writing of the Peloponnesian War.
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[1] Thucydides /1.1/, an Athenian, wrote the history of the
war between
the Peloponnesians and the Athenians /1.2/, beginning at the moment
that it broke out, and believing that it would be a great war
and more worthy of relation than any that had preceded it.
This belief was not without its grounds. The preparations of
both the combatants were in every department in the last state
of perfection; and he could see the rest of the Hellenic race
taking sides in the quarrel; those who delayed doing so at once
having it in contemplation. Indeed this was the greatest movement
yet known in history, not only of the Hellenes, but of a large
part of the barbarian world--I had almost said of mankind. For
though the events of remote antiquity, and even those that more
immediately preceded the war, could not from lapse of time be
clearly ascertained, yet the evidences which an inquiry carried
as far back as was practicable leads me to trust, all point to
the conclusion that there was nothing on a great scale, either in
war or in other matters.
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GREECE FROM PREHISTORIC TIMES UP TO THE FINAL YEARS
BEFORE THE PELOPONNESIAN WAR (Chapters 2 through 22)
¶ Of Greece in prehistoric times.
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[2] For instance, it is evident that the country now called Hellas
had in ancient times no settled population; on the contrary,
migrations were of frequent occurrence, the several tribes
readily abandoning their homes under the pressure of superior
numbers. Without commerce, without freedom of communication
either by land or sea, cultivating no more of their territory
than the exigencies of life required, destitute of capital,
never planting their land (for they could not tell when an invader
might not come and take it all away, and when he did come they
had no walls to stop him), thinking that the necessities of
daily sustenance could be supplied at one place as well as
another, they cared little for shifting their habitation, and
consequently neither built large cities nor attained to any other
form of greatness. The richest soils were always most subject
to this change of masters; such as the district now called
Thessaly, Boeotia, most of the Peloponnese, Arcadia excepted,
and the most fertile parts of the rest of Hellas. The goodness
of the land favoured the aggrandizement of particular individuals,
and thus created faction which proved a fertile source of ruin.
It also invited invasion. Accordingly Attica, from the poverty
of its soil enjoying from a very remote period freedom from
faction, never changed its inhabitants. And here is no
inconsiderable exemplification of my assertion that the migrations
were the cause of there being no correspondent growth in other
parts. The most powerful victims of war or faction from
the rest of Hellas took refuge with the Athenians as a safe
retreat; and at an early period, becoming naturalized,
swelled the already large population of the city to such a
height that Attica became at last too small to hold them, and
they had to send out colonies to Ionia.
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¶ At first, and for long duration of time, there
was no common idenfication as Greek.
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[3] There is also another circumstance that contributes not a little
to my conviction of the weakness of ancient times. Before the Trojan
war there is no indication of any common action in Hellas, nor
indeed of the universal prevalence of the name; on the contrary,
before the time of Hellen, son of Deucalion /3.1/, no such appellation
existed, but the country went by the names of the different tribes, in
particular of the Pelasgian. It was not till Hellen and his sons
grew strong in Phthiotis, and were invited as allies into the other
cities, that one by one they gradually acquired from the connection
the name of Hellenes; though a long time elapsed before that name
could fasten itself upon all. The best proof of this is furnished by
Homer. Born long after the Trojan War, he nowhere calls all of them by
that name, nor indeed any of them except the followers of Achilles
from Phthiotis, who were the original Hellenes: in his poems they
are called Danaans, Argives, and Achaeans. He does not even use the
term barbarian, probably because the Hellenes had not yet been
marked off from the rest of the world by one distinctive
appellation. It appears therefore that the several Hellenic
communities, comprising not only those who first acquired the name,
city by city, as they came to understand each other, but also those
who assumed it afterwards as the name of the whole people, were before
the Trojan war prevented by their want of strength and the absence
of mutual intercourse from displaying any collective action.
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¶ Minos establishes the first Greek navy.
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Indeed, they could not unite for this expedition till they had
gained increased familiarity with the sea. [4] And the first person
known to us by tradition as having established a navy is Minos. He
made himself master of what is now called the Hellenic sea, and
ruled over the Cyclades /4.1/, into most of which he sent the first
colonies, expelling the Carians and appointing his own sons governors;
and thus did his best to put down piracy in those waters, a
necessary step to secure the revenues for his own use.
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¶ Of the prevalence of piracy in former times.
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[5] For in early times the Hellenes and the barbarians of the coast
and islands, as communication by sea became more common, were
tempted to turn pirates, under the conduct of their most powerful men;
the motives being to serve their own cupidity and to support the
needy. They would fall upon a town unprotected by walls, and
consisting of a mere collection of villages, and would plunder it;
indeed, this came to be the main source of their livelihood, no
disgrace being yet attached to such an achievement, but even some
glory. An illustration of this is furnished by the honour with which
some of the inhabitants of the continent still regard a successful
marauder, and by the question we find the old poets everywhere
representing the people as asking of voyagers--"Are they pirates?"--as
if those who are asked the question would have no idea of
disclaiming the imputation, or their interrogators of reproaching them
for it. The same rapine prevailed also by land.
And even at the present day many of Hellas still follow the old
fashion, the Ozolian Locrians for instance, the Aetolians, the
Acarnanians, and that region of the continent; and the custom of
carrying arms is still kept up among these continentals, from the
old piratical habits. [6] The whole of Hellas used once to carry arms,
their habitations being unprotected and their communication with
each other unsafe; indeed, to wear arms was as much a part of everyday
life with them as with the barbarians. And the fact that the people in
these parts of Hellas are still living in the old way points to a time
when the same mode of life was once equally common to all. The
Athenians were the first to lay aside their weapons, and to adopt an
easier and more luxurious mode of life; indeed, it is only lately that
their rich old men left off the luxury of wearing undergarments of
linen, and fastening a knot of their hair with a tie of golden
grasshoppers, a fashion which spread to their Ionian kindred and
long prevailed among the old men there. On the contrary, a modest
style of dressing, more in conformity with modern ideas, was first
adopted by the Lacedaemonians, the rich doing their best to assimilate
their way of life to that of the common people. They also set the
example of contending naked, publicly stripping and anointing
themselves with oil in their gymnastic exercises. Formerly, even in
the Olympic contests, the athletes who contended wore belts across
their middles; and it is but a few years since that the practice
ceased. To this day among some of the barbarians, especially in
Asia, when prizes for boxing and wrestling are offered, belts are worn
by the combatants. And there are many other points in which a likeness
might be shown between the life of the Hellenic world of old and the
barbarian of to-day.
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¶ Of the rise of walled towns.
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[7] With respect to their towns, later on, at an era of increased
facilities of navigation and a greater supply of capital, we find
the shores becoming the site of walled towns, and the isthmuses
being occupied for the purposes of commerce and defence against a
neighbour. But the old towns, on account of the great prevalence of
piracy, were built away from the sea, whether on the islands or the
continent, and still remain in their old sites. For the pirates used
to plunder one another, and indeed all coast populations, whether
seafaring or not.
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¶ Of the Greek settlements on the islands.
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[8] The islanders, too, were great pirates. These islanders were Carians
and Phoenicians, by whom most of the islands were colonized, as was
proved by the following fact. During the purification of Delos by
Athens in this war all the graves in the island were taken up, and
it was found that above half their inmates were Carians: they were
identified by the fashion of the arms buried with them, and by the
method of interment, which was the same as the Carians still follow.
But as soon as Minos had formed his navy, communication by sea
became easier, as he colonized most of the islands, and thus
expelled the malefactors. The coast population now began to apply
themselves more closely to the acquisition of wealth, and their life
became more settled; some even began to build themselves walls on
the strength of their newly acquired riches. For the love of gain
would reconcile the weaker to the dominion of the stronger, and the
possession of capital enabled the more powerful to reduce the
smaller towns to subjection. And it was at a somewhat later stage of
this development that they went on the expedition against Troy.
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¶ Of the wealth of Agamemnon that enabled him to prosecute the Trojan War.
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[9] What enabled Agamemnon to raise the armament was more, in my
opinion, his superiority in strength, than the oaths of Tyndareus,
which bound the suitors to follow him. Indeed, the account given by
those Peloponnesians who have been the recipients of the most credible
tradition is this. First of all Pelops, arriving among a needy
population from Asia with vast wealth, acquired such power that,
stranger though he was, the country was called after him; and this
power fortune saw fit materially to increase in the hands of his
descendants. Eurystheus had been killed in Attica by the Heraclids.
Atreus was his mother's brother; and to the hands of his relation, who
had left his father on account of the death of Chrysippus, Eurystheus,
when he set out on his expedition, had committed Mycenae and the
government. As time went on and Eurystheus did not return, Atreus
complied with the wishes of the Mycenaeans, who were influenced by
fear of the Heraclids--besides, his power seemed considerable, and he
had not neglected to court the favour of the populace--and assumed
the sceptre of Mycenae and the rest of the dominions of Eurystheus.
And so the power of the descendants of Pelops came to be greater
than that of the descendants of Perseus. To all this Agamemnon
succeeded. He had also a navy far stronger than his contemporaries, so
that, in my opinion, fear was quite as strong an element as love in
the formation of the confederate expedition. The strength of his
navy is shown by the fact that his own was the largest contingent, and
that of the Arcadians was furnished by him; this at least is what
Homer says, if his testimony is deemed sufficient. Besides, in his
account of the transmission of the sceptre, he calls him
Of many an isle, and of all Argos king.
Now Agamemnon's was a continental power; and he could not have been
master of any except the adjacent islands (and these would not be
many), but through the possession of a fleet.
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¶ Thucydides warns the reader not to judge the greatness of
any ancient city on the material remains, for while Athens, with her
great temples and other public works is manifestly a great power,
Sparta is no less a great power, even though she lives simply and,
in future ages, will leave behind little material evidence of her greatness.
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And from this expedition we may infer the character of earlier
enterprises.
[10] Now Mycenae may have been a small place, and many of
the towns of that age may appear comparatively insignificant, but no
exact observer would therefore feel justified in rejecting the
estimate given by the poets and by tradition of the magnitude of the
armament. For I suppose if Lacedaemon were to become desolate, and the
temples and the foundations of the public buildings were left, that as
time went on there would be a strong disposition with posterity to
refuse to accept her fame as a true exponent of her power. And yet
they occupy two-fifths of Peloponnese and lead the whole, not to speak
of their numerous allies without. Still, as the city is neither
built in a compact form nor adorned with magnificent temples and
public edifices, but composed of villages after the old fashion of
Hellas, there would be an impression of inadequacy. Whereas, if Athens
were to suffer the same misfortune, I suppose that any inference
from the appearance presented to the eye would make her power to
have been twice as great as it is. We have therefore no right to be
sceptical, nor to content ourselves with an inspection of a town to
the exclusion of a consideration of its power; but we may safely
conclude that the armament in question surpassed all before it, as
it fell short of modern efforts; if we can here also accept the
testimony of Homer's poems, in which, without allowing for the
exaggeration which a poet would feel himself licensed to employ, we
can see that it was far from equalling ours. He has represented it
as consisting of twelve hundred vessels; the Boeotian complement of
each ship being a hundred and twenty men, that of the ships of
Philoctetes fifty. By this, I conceive, he meant to convey the maximum
and the minimum complement: at any rate, he does not specify the
amount of any others in his catalogue of the ships. That they were all
rowers as well as warriors we see from his account of the ships of
Philoctetes, in which all the men at the oar are bowmen. Now it is
improbable that many supernumeraries sailed, if we except the kings
and high officers; especially as they had to cross the open sea with
munitions of war, in ships, moreover, that had no decks, but were
equipped in the old piratical fashion. So that if we strike the
average of the largest and smallest ships, the number of those who
sailed will appear inconsiderable, representing, as they did, the
whole force of Hellas.
[11] And this was due not so much to scarcity of men
as of money. Difficulty of subsistence made the invaders reduce the
numbers of the army to a point at which it might live on the country
during the prosecution of the war. Even after the victory they
obtained on their arrival--and a victory there must have been, or the
fortifications of the naval camp could never have been built--there
is no indication of their whole force having been employed; on the
contrary, they seem to have turned to cultivation of the Chersonese
and to piracy from want of supplies. This was what really enabled
the Trojans to keep the field for ten years against them; the
dispersion of the enemy making them always a match for the
detachment left behind. If they had brought plenty of supplies with
them, and had persevered in the war without scattering for piracy
and agriculture, they would have easily defeated the Trojans in the
field, since they could hold their own against them with the
division on service. In short, if they had stuck to the siege, the
capture of Troy would have cost them less time and less trouble. [12] But
as want of money proved the weakness of earlier expeditions, so from
the same cause even the one in question, more famous than its
predecessors, may be pronounced on the evidence of what it effected to
have been inferior to its renown and to the current opinion about it
formed under the tuition of the poets.
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¶ Even after the Trojan War, Greece was a very unsettled place.
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Even after the Trojan War, Hellas was still engaged in removing
and settling, and thus could not attain to the quiet which must
precede growth. The late return of the Hellenes from Ilium caused many
revolutions, and factions ensued almost everywhere; and it was the
citizens thus driven into exile who founded the cities. Sixty years
after the capture of Ilium, the modern Boeotians were driven out of
Arne by the Thessalians, and settled in the present Boeotia, the
former Cadmeis; though there was a division of them there before, some
of whom joined the expedition to Ilium. Twenty years later, the
Dorians and the Heraclids became masters of Peloponnese; so that
much had to be done and many years had to elapse before Hellas could
attain to a durable tranquillity undisturbed by removals, and could
begin to send out colonies, as Athens did to Ionia and most of the
islands, and the Peloponnesians to most of Italy and Sicily and some
places in the rest of Hellas. All these places were founded
subsequently to the war with Troy.
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¶ As the power of Greece grew, so did the navies of the
several cities; the first naval battle was between Corinth and Corcyra
(modern Corfu) in about 664 B.C.
¶ Themistocles (c. 524-c.459 B.C.) persuades the
Athenians, in the early 480s or late 490s, to built up the navy against
the barbarian invasion.
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[13] But as the power of Hellas grew, and the acquisition of wealth
became more an object, the revenues of the states increasing,
tyrannies were by their means established almost everywhere--the old
form of government being hereditary monarchy with definite
prerogatives--and Hellas began to fit out fleets and apply herself
more closely to the sea. It is said that the Corinthians were the
first to approach the modern style of naval architecture, and that
Corinth was the first place in Hellas where galleys were built; and
we have Ameinocles, a Corinthian shipwright, making four ships for
the Samians. Dating from the end of this war, it is nearly three
hundred years ago that Ameinocles went to Samos. Again, the earliest
sea-fight in history was between the Corinthians and Corcyraeans /13.1/; this
was about two hundred and sixty years ago, dating from the same time.
Planted on an isthmus, Corinth had from time out of mind been a
commercial emporium; as formerly almost all communication between the
Hellenes within and without Peloponnese was carried on overland, and
the Corinthian territory was the highway through which it travelled.
She had consequently great money resources, as is shown by the epithet
"wealthy" bestowed by the old poets on the place, and this enabled
her, when traffic by sea became more common, to procure her navy and
put down piracy; and as she could offer a mart for both branches of
the trade, she acquired for herself all the power which a large
revenue affords. Subsequently the Ionians attained to great naval
strength in the reign of Cyrus, the first king of the Persians, and of
his son Cambyses, and while they were at war with the former commanded
for a while the Ionian sea. Polycrates also, the tyrant of Samos,
had a powerful navy in the reign of Cambyses, with which he reduced
many of the islands, and among them Rhenea, which he consecrated to
the Delian Apollo. About this time also the Phocaeans, while they were
founding Marseilles, defeated the Carthaginians in a sea-fight.
[14] These were the most powerful navies. And even these, although so
many generations had elapsed since the Trojan war, seem to have been
principally composed of the old fifty-oars and long-boats, and to have
counted few galleys among their ranks. Indeed it was only shortly
the Persian war /14.1/, and the death of Darius the successor of Cambyses,
that the Sicilian tyrants and the Corcyraeans acquired any large
number of galleys. For after these there were no navies of any account
in Hellas till the expedition of Xerxes; Aegina, Athens, and others
may have possessed a few vessels, but they were principally
fifty-oars. It was quite at the end of this period that the war with
Aegina and the prospect of the barbarian invasion enabled Themistocles
to persuade the Athenians to build the fleet with which they fought at
Salamis /14.2/; and even these vessels had not complete decks.
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¶ The ancient Greeks fought mostly at sea, with few if any
land battles of anything beyong local significance.
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[15] The navies, then, of the Hellenes during the period we have
traversed were what I have described. All their insignificance did not
prevent their being an element of the greatest power to those who
cultivated them, alike in revenue and in dominion. They were the means
by which the islands were reached and reduced, those of the smallest
area falling the easiest prey. Wars by land there were none, none at
least by which power was acquired; we have the usual border
contests, but of distant expeditions with conquest for object we
hear nothing among the Hellenes. There was no union of subject
cities round a great state, no spontaneous combination of equals for
confederate expeditions; what fighting there was consisted merely of
local warfare between rival neighbours. The nearest approach to a
coalition took place in the old war between Chalcis and Eretria;
this was a quarrel in which the rest of the Hellenic name did to
some extent take sides.
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[16] Various, too, were the obstacles which the national growth
encountered in various localities. The power of the Ionians was
advancing with rapid strides, when it came into collision with Persia,
under King Cyrus, who, after having dethroned Croesus and overrun
everything between the Halys and the sea, stopped not till he had
reduced the cities of the coast; the islands being only left to be
subdued by Darius and the Phoenician navy.
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[17] Again, wherever there were tyrants, their habit of providing
simply for themselves, of looking solely to their personal comfort and
family aggrandizement, made safety the great aim of their policy,
and prevented anything great proceeding from them; though they would
each have their affairs with their immediate neighbours. All this is
only true of the mother country, for in Sicily they attained to very
great power. Thus for a long time everywhere in Hellas do we find
causes which make the states alike incapable of combination for
great and national ends, or of any vigorous action of their own.
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¶ Of the Greecian victory over the barbarians at the battle
of Marathon, 490 B.C.
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[18] But at last a time came when the tyrants of Athens and the far older
tyrannies of the rest of Hellas were, with the exception of those in
Sicily, once and for all put down by Lacedaemon; for this city, though
after the settlement of the Dorians, its present inhabitants, it
suffered from factions for an unparalleled length of time, still at
a very early period obtained good laws, and enjoyed a freedom from
tyrants which was unbroken; it has possessed the same form of
government for more than four hundred years, reckoning to the end of
the late war, and has thus been in a position to arrange the affairs
of the other states. Not many years after the deposition of the
tyrants, the battle of Marathon was fought between the Medes and the
Athenians. Ten years afterwards, the barbarian returned with the
armada for the subjugation of Hellas. In the face of this great
danger, the command of the confederate Hellenes was assumed by the
Lacedaemonians in virtue of their superior power; and the Athenians,
having made up their minds to abandon their city, broke up their
homes, threw themselves into their ships, and became a naval people.
This coalition, after repulsing the barbarian, soon afterwards split
into two sections, which included the Hellenes who had revolted from
the King, as well as those who had aided him in the war. At the end of
the one stood Athens, at the head of the other Lacedaemon, one the
first naval, the other the first military power in Hellas. For a short
time the league held together, till the Lacedaemonians and Athenians
quarrelled and made war upon each other with their allies, a duel into
which all the Hellenes sooner or later were drawn, though some might
at first remain neutral. So that the whole period from the Median
war to this, with some peaceful intervals, was spent by each power
in war, either with its rival, or with its own revolted allies, and
consequently afforded them constant practice in military matters,
and that experience which is learnt in the school of danger.
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¶ Sparta kept her allies in line by installing oligarchies
favorable to Spartan interest; Athens imposed contributions of money on her allies.
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[19] The policy of Lacedaemon was not to exact tribute from her allies,
but merely to secure their subservience to her interests by
establishing oligarchies among them; Athens, on the contrary, had by
degrees deprived hers of their ships, and imposed instead
contributions in money on all except Chios and Lesbos. Both found
their resources for this war separately to exceed the sum of their
strength when the alliance flourished intact.
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¶ Of the inadequecies of other historians.
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[20] Having now given the result of my inquiries into early times, I
grant that there will be a difficulty in believing every particular
detail. The way that most men deal with traditions, even traditions of
their own country, is to receive them all alike as they are delivered,
without applying any critical test whatever. The general Athenian
public fancy that Hipparchus was tyrant when he fell by the hands of
Harmodius and Aristogiton, not knowing that Hippias, the eldest of the
sons of Pisistratus, was really supreme, and that Hipparchus and
Thessalus were his brothers; and that Harmodius and Aristogiton
suspecting, on the very day, nay at the very moment fixed on for the
deed, that information had been conveyed to Hippias by their
accomplices, concluded that he had been warned, and did not attack
him, yet, not liking to be apprehended and risk their lives for
nothing, fell upon Hipparchus near the temple of the daughters of
Leos, and slew him as he was arranging the Panathenaic procession.
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There are many other unfounded ideas current among the rest of the
Hellenes, even on matters of contemporary history, which have not been
obscured by time. For instance, there is the notion that the
Lacedaemonian kings have two votes each, the fact being that they have
only one; and that there is a company of Pitane, there being simply no
such thing. So little pains do the vulgar take in the investigation of
truth, accepting readily the first story that comes to hand.
[21] On the
whole, however, the conclusions I have drawn from the proofs quoted
may, I believe, safely be relied on. Assuredly they will not be
disturbed either by the lays of a poet displaying the exaggeration
of his craft, or by the compositions of the chroniclers that are
attractive at truth's expense; the subjects they treat of being out of
the reach of evidence, and time having robbed most of them of
historical value by enthroning them in the region of legend. Turning
from these, we can rest satisfied with having proceeded upon the
clearest data, and having arrived at conclusions as exact as can be
expected in matters of such antiquity. To come to this war: despite
the known disposition of the actors in a struggle to overrate its
importance, and when it is over to return to their admiration of
earlier events, yet an examination of the facts will show that it
was much greater than the wars which preceded it.
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¶ Thucydides defends his relating of "speeches" that he was not
present to hear.
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[22] With reference to the speeches in this history, some were
delivered before the war began, others while it was going on; some I
heard myself, others I got from various quarters; it was in all
cases difficult to carry them word for word in one's memory, so my
habit has been to make the speakers say what was in my opinion
demanded of them by the various occasions, of course adhering as
closely as possible to the general sense of what they really said. And
with reference to the narrative of events, far from permitting
myself to derive it from the first source that came to hand, I did not
even trust my own impressions, but it rests partly on what I saw
myself, partly on what others saw for me, the accuracy of the report
being always tried by the most severe and detailed tests possible.
My conclusions have cost me some labour from the want of coincidence
between accounts of the same occurrences by different eye-witnesses,
arising sometimes from imperfect memory, sometimes from undue
partiality for one side or the other. The absence of romance in my
history will, I fear, detract somewhat from its interest; but if it be
judged useful by those inquirers who desire an exact knowledge of
the past as an aid to the interpretation of the future, which in the
course of human things must resemble if it does not reflect it, I
shall be content. In fine, I have written my work, not as an essay
which is to win the applause of the moment, but as a possession for
all time.
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¶ According to Thucydides, the real cause of the Peloponnesian War
was "The growth of the power of Athens,
and the alarm which this inspired in Lacedaemon, made war
inevitable," a point made again in chapter 88.
¶ In the balance of this book Thucycides will detail the events
leading up to the dissolution of the 30-years' truce between Athens and Sparta.
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[23] The Median War, the greatest achievement of past times, yet found
a speedy decision in two actions by sea and two by land. The
Peloponnesian War was prolonged to an immense length, and, long as
it was, it was short without parallel for the misfortunes that it
brought upon Hellas. Never had so many cities been taken and laid
desolate, here by the barbarians, here by the parties contending
(the old inhabitants being sometimes removed to make room for others);
never was there so much banishing and blood-shedding, now on the field
of battle, now in the strife of faction. Old stories of occurrences
handed down by tradition, but scantily confirmed by experience,
suddenly ceased to be incredible; there were earthquakes of
unparalleled extent and violence; eclipses of the sun occurred with
a frequency unrecorded in previous history; there were great
droughts in sundry places and consequent famines, and that most
calamitous and awfully fatal visitation, the plague. All this came
upon them with the late war, which was begun by the Athenians and
Peloponnesians by the dissolution of the thirty years' truce made
after the conquest of Euboea. To the question why they broke the
treaty, I answer by placing first an account of their grounds of
complaint and points of difference, that no one may ever have to ask
the immediate cause which plunged the Hellenes into a war of such
magnitude. The real cause I consider to be the one which was
formally most kept out of sight. The growth of the power of Athens,
and the alarm which this inspired in Lacedaemon, made war
inevitable. Still it is well to give the grounds alleged by either
side which led to the dissolution of the treaty and the breaking out
of the war.
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THE DISPUTE OVER EPIDAMNUS, 435-433 B.C. (chapters 24 through 30)
¶ Epidamnus was a colony from Corcyra but also contained some Corinthians;
during a time of internal upheaval the Epidamnians appealed to Corcyra
for aid but were declined.
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[24] The city of Epidamnus stands on the right of the entrance of the
Ionic Gulf. Its vicinity is inhabited by the Taulantians, an
Illyrian people. The place is a colony from Corcyra, founded by
Phalius, son of Eratocleides, of the family of the Heraclids, who
had according to ancient usage been summoned for the purpose from
Corinth, the mother country. The colonists were joined by some
Corinthians, and others of the Dorian race. Now, as time went on,
the city of Epidamnus became great and populous; but falling a prey to
factions arising, it is said, from a war with her neighbours the
barbarians, she became much enfeebled, and lost a considerable
amount of her power. The last act before the war was the expulsion
of the nobles by the people. The exiled party joined the barbarians,
and proceeded to plunder those in the city by sea and land; and the
Epidamnians, finding themselves hard pressed, sent ambassadors to
Corcyra beseeching their mother country not to allow them to perish,
but to make up matters between them and the exiles, and to rid them of
the war with the barbarians. The ambassadors seated themselves in
the temple of Hera as suppliants, and made the above requests to the
Corcyraeans. But the Corcyraeans refused to accept their supplication,
and they were dismissed without having effected anything.
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¶ Receiving no assistance from Corcyra, the Epidamnians inquired of the god
at Delphi and received the answer that they should seek the protection
of the Corinthians.
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[25] When the Epidamnians found that no help could be expected from
Corcyra, they were in a strait what to do next. So they sent to Delphi
and inquired of the God whether they should deliver their city to
the Corinthians and endeavour to obtain some assistance from their
founders. The answer he gave them was to deliver the city and place
themselves under Corinthian protection. So the Epidamnians went to
Corinth and delivered over the colony in obedience to the commands
of the oracle. They showed that their founder came from Corinth, and
revealed the answer of the god; and they begged them not to allow them
to perish, but to assist them. This the Corinthians consented to do.
Believing the colony to belong as much to themselves as to the
Corcyraeans, they felt it to be a kind of duty to undertake their
protection. Besides, they hated the Corcyraeans for their contempt
of the mother country. Instead of meeting with the usual honours
accorded to the parent city by every other colony at public
assemblies, such as precedence at sacrifices, Corinth found herself
treated with contempt by a power which in point of wealth could
stand comparison with any even of the richest communities in Hellas,
which possessed great military strength, and which sometimes could not
repress a pride in the high naval position of an, island whose
nautical renown dated from the days of its old inhabitants, the
Phaeacians. This was one reason of the care that they lavished on
their fleet, which became very efficient; indeed they began the war
with a force of a hundred and twenty galleys.
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¶ The Corinthians agreed and sent troops and settlers to Epidamnus, which
enraged the Corcyraeans who laid seige to Epidamnus.
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[26] All these grievances made Corinth eager to send the promised aid
to Epidamnus. Advertisement was made for volunteer settlers, and a
force of Ambraciots, Leucadians, and Corinthians was dispatched.
They marched by land to Apollonia, a Corinthian colony, the route by
sea being avoided from fear of Corcyraean interruption. When the
Corcyraeans heard of the arrival of the settlers and troops in
Epidamnus, and the surrender of the colony to Corinth, they took fire.
Instantly putting to sea with five-and-twenty ships, which were
quickly followed by others, they insolently commanded the
Epidamnians to receive back the banished nobles--(it must be premised
that the Epidamnian exiles had come to Corcyra and, pointing to the
sepulchres of their ancestors, had appealed to their kindred to
restore them)--and to dismiss the Corinthian garrison and settlers.
But to all this the Epidamnians turned a deaf ear. Upon this the
Corcyraeans commenced operations against them with a fleet of forty
sail. They took with them the exiles, with a view to their
restoration, and also secured the services of the Illyrians. Sitting
down before the city, they issued a proclamation to the effect that
any of the natives that chose, and the foreigners, might depart
unharmed, with the alternative of being treated as enemies. On their
refusal the Corcyraeans proceeded to besiege the city, which stands on
an isthmus;
[27] and the Corinthians, receiving intelligence of the
investment of Epidamnus, got together an armament and proclaimed a
colony to Epidamnus, perfect political equality being guaranteed to
all who chose to go. Any who were not prepared to sail at once
might, by paying down the sum of fifty Corinthian drachmae, have a
share in the colony without leaving Corinth. Great numbers took
advantage of this proclamation, some being ready to start directly,
others paying the requisite forfeit. In case of their passage being
disputed by the Corcyraeans, several cities were asked to lend them
a convoy. Megara prepared to accompany them with eight ships, Pale
in Cephallonia with four; Epidaurus furnished five, Hermione one,
Troezen two, Leucas ten, and Ambracia eight. The Thebans and
Phliasians were asked for money, the Eleans for hulls as well; while
Corinth herself furnished thirty ships and three thousand heavy
infantry.
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¶ The Corcyraeans sent messengers to Corinth bidding her to (1) recall
her expedition to Epidamnus as she had no business being there; or (2) submit
the claim to arbitration; or (3) refer the matter to the oracle at Delphi.
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[28] When the Corcyraeans heard of their preparations they came to
Corinth with envoys from Lacedaemon and Sicyon, whom they persuaded to
accompany them, and bade her recall the garrison and settlers, as
she had nothing to do with Epidamnus. If, however, she had any
claims to make, they were willing to submit the matter to the
arbitration of such of the cities in Peloponnese as should be chosen
by mutual agreement, and that the colony should remain with the city
to whom the arbitrators might assign it. They were also willing to
refer the matter to the oracle at Delphi. If, in defiance of their
protestations, war was appealed to, they should be themselves
compelled by this violence to seek friends in quarters where they
had no desire to seek them, and to make even old ties give way to
the necessity of assistance. The answer they got from Corinth was
that, if they would withdraw their fleet and the barbarians from
Epidamnus, negotiation might be possible; but, while the town was
still being besieged, going before arbitrators was out of the
question. The Corcyraeans retorted that if Corinth would withdraw
her troops from Epidamnus they would withdraw theirs, or they were
ready to let both parties remain in statu quo, an armistice being
concluded till judgment could be given.
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¶ The Corinthian rejected all three proposals and declared for war; the
Corcyraeans asked once more for peace but were again refused; in the naval
battle that ensued the Corcyraeans were victorious over the Corinthians who
were kept as prisoners of war while all other foreigners were to be sold into slavery.
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[29] Turning a deaf ear to all these proposals, when their ships were
manned and their allies had come in, the Corinthians sent a herald
before them to declare war and, getting under way with seventy-five
ships and two thousand heavy infantry, sailed for Epidamnus to give
battle to the Corcyraeans. The fleet was under the command of
Aristeus, son of Pellichas, Callicrates, son of Callias, and
Timanor, son of Timanthes; the troops under that of Archetimus, son of
Eurytimus, and Isarchidas, son of Isarchus. When they had reached
Actium in the territory of Anactorium, at the mouth of the mouth of
the Gulf of Ambracia, where the temple of Apollo stands, the
Corcyraeans sent on a herald in a light boat to warn them not to
sail against them. Meanwhile they proceeded to man their ships, all of
which had been equipped for action, the old vessels being
undergirded to make them seaworthy. On the return of the herald
without any peaceful answer from the Corinthians, their ships being
now manned, they put out to sea to meet the enemy with a fleet of
eighty sail (forty were engaged in the siege of Epidamnus), formed
line, and went into action, and gained a decisive victory, and
destroyed fifteen of the Corinthian vessels. The same day had seen
Epidamnus compelled by its besiegers to capitulate; the conditions
being that the foreigners should be sold, and the Corinthians kept
as prisoners of war, till their fate should be otherwise decided.
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¶ The Corcyraeans celebrated their victory by killing all captives except
the Corinthians; defeated at sea, the Corinthians and their allies repaired home,
leaving the Corcyraeans masters of the sea about those parts.
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[30] After the engagement the Corcyraeans set up a trophy on Leukimme,
a headland of Corcyra, and slew all their captives except the
Corinthians, whom they kept as prisoners of war. Defeated at sea,
the Corinthians and their allies repaired home, and left the
Corcyraeans masters of all the sea about those parts. Sailing to
Leucas, a Corinthian colony, they ravaged their territory, and burnt
Cyllene, the harbour of the Eleans, because they had furnished ships
and money to Corinth. For almost the whole of the period that followed
the battle they remained masters of the sea, and the allies of Corinth
were harassed by Corcyraean cruisers. At last Corinth, roused by the
sufferings of her allies, sent out ships and troops in the fall of the
summer, who formed an encampment at Actium and about Chimerium, in
Thesprotis, for the protection of Leucas and the rest of the
friendly cities. The Corcyraeans on their part formed a similar
station on Leukimme. Neither party made any movement, but they
remained confronting each other till the end of the summer, and winter
was at hand before either of them returned home.
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THE DISPUTE OVER CORCYRA, 433 B.C. (chapters 31 through 55)
¶ Corinth built up their fleet for an invasion of Corcyra, and
the Corcyraeans appeal to Athens for an alliance.
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[31] Corinth, exasperated by the war with the Corcyraeans, spent the
whole of the year after the engagement and that succeeding it in
building ships, and in straining every nerve to form an efficient
fleet; rowers being drawn from Peloponnese and the rest of Hellas by
the inducement of large bounties. The Corcyraeans, alarmed at the news
of their preparations, being without a single ally in Hellas (for they
had not enrolled themselves either in the Athenian or in the
Lacedaemonian confederacy), decided to repair to Athens in order to
enter into alliance and to endeavour to procure support from her.
Corinth also, hearing of their intentions, sent an embassy to Athens
to prevent the Corcyraean navy being joined by the Athenian, and her
prospect of ordering the war according to her wishes being thus
impeded. An assembly was convoked, and the rival advocates appeared:
the Corcyraeans spoke as follows:
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¶ The Corcyraeans set forth their proofs that an alliance with Athens will be,
for the Athenians, safe, expedient, and rewarding, and they acknowledged
that their former shunning of alliances was a poorly, but honestly, conceived
policy.
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HERE BEGINS THE SPEECH OF THE CORCYRAEANS
[32] "Athenians! when a people that have not rendered any important
service or support to their neighbours in times past, for which they
might claim to be repaid, appear before them as we now appear before
you to solicit their assistance, they may fairly be required to
satisfy certain preliminary conditions. They should show, first,
that it is expedient or at least safe to grant their request; next,
that they will retain a lasting sense of the kindness. But if they
cannot clearly establish any of these points, they must not be annoyed
if they meet with a rebuff. Now the Corcyraeans believe that with
their petition for assistance they can also give you a satisfactory
answer on these points, and they have therefore dispatched us
hither. It has so happened that our policy as regards you with respect
to this request, turns out to be inconsistent, and as regards our
interests, to be at the present crisis inexpedient. We say
inconsistent, because a power which has never in the whole of her past
history been willing to ally herself with any of her neighbours, is
now found asking them to ally themselves with her. And we say
inexpedient, because in our present war with Corinth it has left us in
a position of entire isolation, and what once seemed the wise
precaution of refusing to involve ourselves in alliances with other
powers, lest we should also involve ourselves in risks of their
choosing, has now proved to be folly and weakness. It is true that
in the late naval engagement we drove back the Corinthians from our
shores single-handed. But they have now got together a still larger
armament from Peloponnese and the rest of Hellas; and we, seeing our
utter inability to cope with them without foreign aid, and the
magnitude of the danger which subjection to them implies, find it
necessary to ask help from you and from every other power. And we hope
to be excused if we forswear our old principle of complete political
isolation, a principle which was not adopted with any sinister
intention, but was rather the consequence of an error in judgment.
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¶ An alliance ought to be entered because, first, say the Corcyraeans, the aid would be given to the victim
of an injustice; second, the good deed will be remembered and returned by
the Corcyraeans; and, finally, the navy of Corcyra will be a great aid to Athens
in case of war with the Peloponnesians.
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[33] "Now there are many reasons why in the event of your compliance
you will congratulate yourselves on this request having been made to
you. First, because your assistance will be rendered to a power which,
herself inoffensive, is a victim to the injustice of others. Secondly,
because all that we most value is at stake in the present contest, and
your welcome of us under these circumstances will be a proof of
goodwill which will ever keep alive the gratitude you will lay up in
our hearts. Thirdly, yourselves excepted, we are the greatest naval
power in Hellas. Moreover, can you conceive a stroke of good fortune
more rare in itself, or more disheartening to your enemies, than
that the power whose adhesion you would have valued above much
material and moral strength should present herself self-invited,
should deliver herself into your hands without danger and without
expense, and should lastly put you in the way of gaining a high
character in the eyes of the world, the gratitude of those whom you
shall assist, and a great accession of strength for yourselves? You
may search all history without finding many instances of a people
gaining all these advantages at once, or many instances of a power
that comes in quest of assistance being in a position to give to the
people whose alliance she solicits as much safety and honour as she
will receive. But it will be urged that it is only in the case of a
war that we shall be found useful. To this we answer that if any of
you imagine that that war is far off, he is grievously mistaken, and
is blind to the fact that Lacedaemon regards you with jealousy and
desires war, and that Corinth is powerful there--the same, remember,
that is your enemy, and is even now trying to subdue us as a
preliminary to attacking you. And this she does to prevent our
becoming united by a common enmity, and her having us both on her
hands, and also to ensure getting the start of you in one of two ways,
either by crippling our power or by making its strength her own. Now
it is our policy to be beforehand with her--that is, for Corcyra to
make an offer of alliance and for you to accept it; in fact, we
ought to form plans against her instead of waiting to defeat the plans
she forms against us.
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¶ The alliance, they say, is justified because Corinth has injured Corcyra and, therefore,
is no longer due the deference normal due from a colony.
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[34] "If she asserts that for you to receive a colony of hers into
alliance is not right, let her know that every colony that is well
treated honours its parent state, but becomes estranged from it by
injustice. For colonists are not sent forth on the understanding
that they are to be the slaves of those that remain behind, but that
they are to be their equals. And that Corinth was injuring us is
clear. Invited to refer the dispute about Epidamnus to arbitration,
they chose to prosecute their complaints war rather than by a fair
trial. And let their conduct towards us who are their kindred be a
warning to you not to be misled by their deceit, nor to yield to their
direct requests; concessions to adversaries only end in self-reproach,
and the more strictly they are avoided the greater will be the
chance of security.
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¶ Further, they add, an alliance is no breach of the truce between Athens and the
Peloponnesians, because the treaty allows neutrals to freely free side with
either block, and, beside, Corinth is recruting assistance from all of Greece, even
among Athenian dependencies.
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[35] "If it be urged that your reception of us will be a breach of the
treaty existing between you and Lacedaemon, the answer is that we
are a neutral state, and that one of the express provisions of that
treaty is that it shall be competent for any Hellenic state that is
neutral to join whichever side it pleases. And it is intolerable for
Corinth to be allowed to obtain men for her navy not only from her
allies, but also from the rest of Hellas, no small number being
furnished by your own subjects; while we are to be excluded both
from the alliance left open to us by treaty, and from any assistance
that we might get from other quarters, and you are to be accused of
political immorality if you comply with our request. On the other
hand, we shall have much greater cause to complain of you, if you do
not comply with it; if we, who are in peril and are no enemies of
yours, meet with a repulse at your hands, while Corinth, who is the
aggressor and your enemy, not only meets with no hindrance from you,
but is even allowed to draw material for war from your dependencies.
This ought not to be, but you should either forbid her enlisting men
in your dominions, or you should lend us too what help you may think
advisable.
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¶ Finally, the Corcyraeans argue that an alliance with Athens is as much
in Athens' interest, as they share a common enemy in the Corinthians and
rather than allow the Corcyraean navy to fall into Corinthian hands to be used
in a combined force against Athens, this alliance will give Athens the
use of the Corcyraean navy against Corinth in the event of war.
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"But your real policy is to afford us avowed countenance and
support. The advantages of this course, as we premised in the
beginning of our speech, are many. We mention one that is perhaps
the chief. Could there be a clearer guarantee of our good faith than
is offered by the fact that the power which is at enmity with you is
also at enmity with us, and that that power is fully able to punish
defection? And there is a wide difference between declining the
alliance of an inland and of a maritime power. For your first
endeavour should be to prevent, if possible, the existence of any
naval power except your own; failing this, to secure the friendship of
the strongest that does exist.
[36] And if any of you believe that what
we urge is expedient, but fear to act upon this belief, lest it should
lead to a breach of the treaty, you must remember that on the one
hand, whatever your fears, your strength will be formidable to your
antagonists; on the other, whatever the confidence you derive from
refusing to receive us, your weakness will have no terrors for a
strong enemy. You must also remember that your decision is for Athens
no less than Corcyra, and that you are not making the best provision
for her interests, if at a time when you are anxiously scanning the
horizon that you may be in readiness for the breaking out of the war
which is all but upon you, you hesitate to attach to your side a
place whose adhesion or estrangement is alike pregnant with the most
vital consequences. For it lies conveniently for the coast-navigation
in the direction of Italy and Sicily, being able to bar the passage
of naval reinforcements from thence to Peloponnese, and from
Peloponnese thither; and it is in other respects a most desirable
station. To sum up as shortly as possible, embracing both general
and particular considerations, let this show you the folly of
sacrificing us. Remember that there are but three considerable
naval powers in Hellas--Athens, Corcyra, and Corinth--and that if you
allow two of these three to become one, and Corinth to secure us for
herself, you will have to hold the sea against the united fleets of
Corcyra and Peloponnese. But if you receive us, you will have our
ships to reinforce you in the struggle."
HERE ENDS THE SPEECH OF THE CORCYRAEANS
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¶ The Corinthians respond that the former isolationism of the Corcyraeans
was not an innocent miscalculation, but a deliberate policy of
putting themselves out of the juridiction of any ally who would correct her bad behavior.
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[37] Such were the words of the Corcyraeans. After they had finished, the
Corinthians spoke as follows:
HERE BEGINS THE SPEECH OF THE CORINTHIANS
"These Corcyraeans in the speech we have just heard do not confine
themselves to the question of their reception into your alliance. They
also talk of our being guilty of injustice, and their being the
victims of an unjustifiable war. It becomes necessary for us to
touch upon both these points before we proceed to the rest of what
we have to say, that you may have a more correct idea of the grounds
of our claim, and have good cause to reject their petition.
According to them, their old policy of refusing all offers of alliance
was a policy of moderation. It was in fact adopted for bad ends, not
for good; indeed their conduct is such as to make them by no means
desirous of having allies present to witness it, or of having the
shame of asking their concurrence. Besides, their geographical
situation makes them independent of others, and consequently the
decision in cases where they injure any lies not with judges appointed
by mutual agreement, but with themselves, because, while they seldom
make voyages to their neighbours, they are constantly being visited by
foreign vessels which are compelled to put in to Corcyra. In short,
the object that they propose to themselves, in their specious policy
of complete isolation, is not to avoid sharing in the crimes of
others, but to secure monopoly of crime to themselves--the licence of
outrage wherever they can compel, of fraud wherever they can elude,
and the enjoyment of their gains without shame. And yet if they were
the honest men they pretend to be, the less hold that others had
upon them, the stronger would be the light in which they might have
put their honesty by giving and taking what was just.
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¶ To the charge that Corinth had ill-treated Corcyra they respond that
the bad faith and action were on the part of the Corcyraeans, as witnessed
by the fact that they alone of Corinth's colonies are complaining.
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[38] "But such has not been their conduct either towards others or
towards us. The attitude of our colony towards us has always been
one of estrangement and is now one of hostility; for, say they: 'We
were not sent out to be ill-treated.' We rejoin that we did not
found the colony to be insulted by them, but to be their head and to
be regarded with a proper respect. At any rate our other colonies
honour us, and we are much beloved by our colonists; and clearly, if
the majority are satisfied with us, these can have no good reason
for a dissatisfaction in which they stand alone, and we are not acting
improperly in making war against them, nor are we making war against
them without having received signal provocation. Besides, if we were
in the wrong, it would be honourable in them to give way to our
wishes, and disgraceful for us to trample on their moderation; but
in the pride and licence of wealth they have sinned again and again
against us, and never more deeply than when Epidamnus, our dependency,
which they took no steps to claim in its distress upon our coming to
relieve it, was by them seized, and is now held by force of arms.
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¶ As to the allegation that Corcyra sought arbitration rather than arms, the Corinthians
respond that Corcyra had already taken up arms first before asking for arbitration.
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[39] "As to their allegation that they wished the question to be first
submitted to arbitration, it is obvious that a challenge coming from
the party who is safe in a commanding position cannot gain the
credit due only to him who, before appealing to arms, in deeds as well
as words, places himself on a level with his adversary. In their case,
it was not before they laid siege to the place, but after they at
length understood that we should not tamely suffer it, that they
thought of the specious word arbitration. And not satisfied with their
own misconduct there, they appear here now requiring you to join
with them not in alliance but in crime, and to receive them in spite
of their being at enmity with us. But it was when they stood firmest
that they should have made overtures to you, and not at a time when we
have been wronged and they are in peril; nor yet at a time when you
will be admitting to a share in your protection those who never
admitted you to a share in their power, and will be incurring an equal
amount of blame from us with those in whose offences you had no
hand. No, they should have shared their power with you before they
asked you to share your fortunes with them.
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¶ The Corinthians argue that the treaty provision for neutrals cannot be
construed to permit an alliance clearly aimed at harming one of the parties, and
that that is why when Athens had trouble with their ally the Samians the Corinthians
supported Athens rather than aiding Samos and thus illicitly gaining a new ally and
harming Athens.
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[40] "So then the reality of the grievances we come to complain of, and
the violence and rapacity of our opponents, have both been proved. But
that you cannot equitably receive them, this you have still to
learn. It may be true that one of the provisions of the treaty is that
it shall be competent for any state, whose name was not down on the
list, to join whichever side it pleases. But this agreement is not
meant for those whose object in joining is the injury of other powers,
but for those whose need of support does not arise from the fact of
defection, and whose adhesion will not bring to the power that is
mad enough to receive them war instead of peace; which will be the
case with you, if you refuse to listen to us. For you cannot become
their auxiliary and remain our friend; if you join in their attack,
you must share the punishment which the defenders inflict on them. And
yet you have the best possible right to be neutral, or, failing
this, you should on the contrary join us against them. Corinth is at
least in treaty with you; with Corcyra you were never even in truce.
But do not lay down the principle that defection is to be
patronized. Did we on the defection of the Samians record our vote
against you, when the rest of the Peloponnesian powers were equally
divided on the question whether they should assist them? No, we told
them to their face that every power has a right to punish its own
allies. Why, if you make it your policy to receive and assist all
offenders, you will find that just as many of your dependencies will
come over to us, and the principle that you establish will press
less heavily on us than on yourselves.
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¶ The Corinthians recount how they aided Athens with ships to use against Aegina and by
bringing about an outcome favorable to the Athenians in the Samian case, both these
inspite of the deep distrust between Corinth and Athens.
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[41] "This then is what Hellenic law entitles us to demand as a right.
But we have also advice to offer and claims on your gratitude,
which, since there is no danger of our injuring you, as we are not
enemies, and since our friendship does not amount to very frequent
intercourse, we say ought to be liquidated at the present juncture.
When you were in want of ships of war for the war against the
Aeginetans, before the Persian invasion, Corinth supplied you with
twenty vessels. That good turn, and the line we took on the Samian
question, when we were the cause of the Peloponnesians refusing to
assist them, enabled you to conquer Aegina and to punish Samos. And we
acted thus at crises when, if ever, men are wont in their efforts
against their enemies to forget everything for the sake of victory,
regarding him who assists them then as a friend, even if thus far he
has been a foe, and him who opposes them then as a foe, even if he has
thus far been a friend; indeed they allow their real interests to
suffer from their absorbing preoccupation in the struggle.
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¶ Finally, to the argument that Athens needs to ally with Corcyra to perpare
for likely war with Corinth, the Corinthians respond that war is not certain, but
that such an alliance may be just the thing to bring it on.
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[42] "Weigh well these considerations, and let your youth learn what they
are from their elders, and let them determine to do unto us as we have
done unto you. And let them not acknowledge the justice of what we
say, but dispute its wisdom in the contingency of war. Not only is the
straightest path generally speaking the wisest; but the coming of
the war, which the Corcyraeans have used as a bugbear to persuade
you to do wrong, is still uncertain, and it is not worth while to be
carried away by it into gaining the instant and declared enmity of
Corinth. It were, rather, wise to try and counteract the
unfavourable impression which your conduct to Megara has created.
For kindness opportunely shown has a greater power of removing old
grievances than the facts of the case may warrant. And do not be
seduced by the prospect of a great naval alliance. Abstinence from all
injustice to other first-rate powers is a greater tower of strength
than anything that can be gained by the sacrifice of permanent
tranquillity for an apparent temporary advantage.
[43] It is now our turn
to benefit by the principle that we laid down at Lacedaemon, that
every power has a right to punish her own allies. We now claim to
receive the same from you, and protest against your rewarding us for
benefiting you by our vote by injuring us by yours. On the contrary,
return us like for like, remembering that this is that very crisis in
which he who lends aid is most a friend, and he who opposes is most a
foe. And for these Corcyraeans--neither receive them into alliance in
our despite, nor be their abettors in crime. So do, and you will act
as we have a right to expect of you, and at the same time best consult
your own interests."
HERE ENDS THE SPEECH OF THE CORINTHIANS
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¶ The Athenians first lean toward the Corinthians, but settle, at
last, on a defensive, but not offensive, alliance with Corcyra, and sent ships to her aid.
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[44] Such were the words of the Corinthians.
When the Athenians had heard both out, two assemblies were held.
In the first there was a manifest disposition to listen to the
representations of Corinth; in the second, public feeling had
changed and an alliance with Corcyra was decided on, with certain
reservations. It was to be a defensive, not an offensive alliance.
It did not involve a breach of the treaty with Peloponnese: Athens
could not be required to join Corcyra in any attack upon Corinth.
But each of the contracting parties had a right to the other's
assistance against invasion, whether of his own territory or that of
an ally. For it began now to be felt that the coming of the
Peloponnesian war was only a question of time, and no one was
willing to see a naval power of such magnitude as Corcyra sacrificed
to Corinth; though if they could let them weaken each other by
mutual conflict, it would be no bad preparation for the struggle which
Athens might one day have to wage with Corinth and the other naval
powers. At the same time the island seemed to lie conveniently on
the coasting passage to Italy and Sicily.
[45] With these views, Athens
received Corcyra into alliance and, on the departure of the
Corinthians not long afterwards, sent ten ships to their assistance.
They were commanded by Lacedaemonius, the son of Cimon, Diotimus,
the son of Strombichus, and Proteas, the son of Epicles. Their
instructions were to avoid collision with the Corinthian fleet
except under certain circumstances. If it sailed to Corcyra and
threatened a landing on her coast, or in any of her possessions,
they were to do their utmost to prevent it. These instructions were
prompted by an anxiety to avoid a breach of the treaty.
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¶ Likewise the Corinthians sailed against Corcyra with 150 ships and were
met by a fleet of 110 ships prepared to defend Corcyra.
|
[46] Meanwhile the Corinthians completed their preparations, and sailed
for Corcyra with a hundred and fifty ships. Of these Elis furnished
ten, Megara twelve, Leucas ten, Ambracia twenty-seven, Anactorium one,
and Corinth herself ninety. Each of these contingents had its own
admiral, the Corinthian being under the command of Xenoclides, son of
Euthycles, with four colleagues. Sailing from Leucas, they made land
at the part of the continent opposite Corcyra. They anchored in the
harbour of Chimerium, in the territory of Thesprotis, above which,
at some distance from the sea, lies the city of Ephyre, in the Elean
district. By this city the Acherusian lake pours its waters into the
sea. It gets its name from the river Acheron, which flows through
Thesprotis and falls into the lake. There also the river Thyamis
flows, forming the boundary between Thesprotis and Kestrine; and
between these rivers rises the point of Chimerium. In this part of the
continent the Corinthians now came to anchor, and formed an
encampment.
[47] When the Corcyraeans saw them coming, they manned a
hundred and ten ships, commanded by Meikiades, Aisimides, and
Eurybatus, and stationed themselves at one of the Sybota isles; the
ten Athenian ships being present. On Point Leukimme they posted
their land forces, and a thousand heavy infantry who had come from
Zacynthus to their assistance. Nor were the Corinthians on the
mainland without their allies. The barbarians flocked in large numbers
to their assistance, the inhabitants of this part of the continent
being old allies of theirs.
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¶ The sea-fight was obstinate, more like a battle on land, with hopes
of victory laying on heavy infantry on deck; manoeuvring the breaking line was not
tried, rather strength and pluck had more share than science.
¶ While the Corinthian allies
on the right wing were defeated, the Corinthians on the left routed the Corcyraeans, upon which the Athenians
came to the aid of the Corcyraeans--and so Corinthians and Athenians were in battle against each other.
|
[48] When the Corinthian preparations were completed, they took three
days' provisions and put out from Chimerium by night, ready for
action. Sailing with the dawn, they sighted the Corcyraean fleet out
at sea and coming towards them. When they perceived each other, both
sides formed in order of battle. On the Corcyraean right wing lay
the Athenian ships, the rest of the line being occupied by their own
vessels formed in three squadrons, each of which was commanded by
one of the three admirals. Such was the Corcyraean formation. The
Corinthian was as follows: on the right wing lay the Megarian and
Ambraciot ships, in the centre the rest of the allies in order.
[49] But the left was composed of the best sailers in the Corinthian navy, to
encounter the Athenians and the right wing of the Corcyraeans. As soon
as the signals were raised on either side, they joined battle. Both
sides had a large number of heavy infantry on their decks, and a large
number of archers and darters, the old imperfect armament still
prevailing. The sea-fight was an obstinate one, though not
remarkable for its science; indeed it was more like a battle by
land. Whenever they charged each other, the multitude and crush of the
vessels made it by no means easy to get loose; besides, their hopes of
victory lay principally in the heavy infantry on the decks, who
stood and fought in order, the ships remaining stationary. The
manoeuvre of breaking the line was not tried; in short, strength and
pluck had more share in the fight than science. Everywhere tumult
reigned, the battle being one scene of confusion; meanwhile the
Athenian ships, by coming up to the Corcyraeans whenever they were
pressed, served to alarm the enemy, though their commanders could
not join in the battle from fear of their instructions. The right wing
of the Corinthians suffered most. The Corcyraeans routed it, and
chased them in disorder to the continent with twenty ships, sailed
up to their camp, and burnt the tents which they found empty, and
plundered the stuff. So in this quarter the Corinthians and their
allies were defeated, and the Corcyraeans were victorious. But where
the Corinthians themselves were, on the left, they gained a decided
success; the scanty forces of the Corcyraeans being further weakened
by the want of the twenty ships absent on the pursuit. Seeing the
Corcyraeans hard pressed, the Athenians began at length to assist them
more unequivocally. At first, it is true, they refrained from charging
any ships; but when the rout was becoming patent, and the
Corinthians were pressing on, the time at last came when every one set
to, and all distinction was laid aside, and it came to this point,
that the Corinthians and Athenians raised their hands against each
other.
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¶ The battle was the largest thus far.
¶ After the initial rout of the Corcyraeans the Corinthians mustered anew, but seeing some
Athenian ships arrive (and expecting there to be more) they retired; the Corcyraeans
also retired as it was getting dark.
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[50] After the rout, the Corinthians, instead of employing themselves
in lashing fast and hauling after them the hulls of the vessels
which they had disabled, turned their attention to the men, whom
they butchered as they sailed through, not caring so much to make
prisoners. Some even of their own friends were slain by them, by
mistake, in their ignorance of the defeat of the right wing For the
number of the ships on both sides, and the distance to which they
covered the sea, made it difficult, after they had once joined, to
distinguish between the conquering and the conquered; this battle
proving far greater than any before it, any at least between Hellenes,
for the number of vessels engaged. After the Corinthians had chased
the Corcyraeans to the land, they turned to the wrecks and their dead,
most of whom they succeeded in getting hold of and conveying to
Sybota, the rendezvous of the land forces furnished by their barbarian
allies. Sybota, it must be known, is a desert harbour of Thesprotis.
This task over, they mustered anew, and sailed against the
Corcyraeans, who on their part advanced to meet them with all their
ships that were fit for service and remaining to them, accompanied
by the Athenian vessels, fearing that they might attempt a landing
in their territory. It was by this time getting late, and the paean
had been sung for the attack, when the Corinthians suddenly began to
back water. They had observed twenty Athenian ships sailing up,
which had been sent out afterwards to reinforce the ten vessels by the
Athenians, who feared, as it turned out justly, the defeat of the
Corcyraeans and the inability of their handful of ships to protect
them.
[51] These ships were thus seen by the Corinthians first. They
suspected that they were from Athens, and that those which they saw
were not all, but that there were more behind; they accordingly
began to retire. The Corcyraeans meanwhile had not sighted them, as
they were advancing from a point which they could not so well see, and
were wondering why the Corinthians were backing water, when some
caught sight of them, and cried out that there were ships in sight
ahead. Upon this they also retired; for it was now getting dark, and
the retreat of the Corinthians had suspended hostilities. Thus they
parted from each other, and the battle ceased with night. The
Corcyraeans were in their camp at Leukimme, when these twenty ships
from Athens, under the command of Glaucon, the son of Leagrus, and
Andocides, son of Leogoras, bore on through the corpses and the
wrecks, and sailed up to the camp, not long after they were sighted.
It was now night, and the Corcyraeans feared that they might be
hostile vessels; but they soon knew them, and the ships came to
anchor.
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¶ The next day, with the arrival of more Athenian ships, the Corinthians
began to doubt whether they could even make it home safely.
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[52] The next day the thirty Athenian vessels put out to sea, accompanied
by all the Corcyraean ships that were seaworthy, and sailed to the
harbour at Sybota, where the Corinthians lay, to see if they would
engage. The Corinthians put out from the land and formed a line in the
open sea, but beyond this made no further movement, having no
intention of assuming the offensive. For they saw reinforcements
arrived fresh from Athens, and themselves confronted by numerous
difficulties, such as the necessity of guarding the prisoners whom
they had on board and the want of all means of refitting their ships
in a desert place. What they were thinking more about was how their
voyage home was to be effected; they feared that the Athenians might
consider that the treaty was dissolved by the collision which had
occurred, and forbid their departure.
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¶ Corinthians messengers reproached the Athenians for breaking the truce;
the Athenians responded that they had no fight with the Corinthians, however, should the Corinthians attack Corcyra, the
Athenians will aid an ally.
|
[53] Accordingly they resolved to put some men on board a boat, and
send them without a herald's wand to the Athenians, as an
experiment. Having done so, they spoke as follows: "You do wrong,
Athenians, to begin war and break the treaty. Engaged in chastising
our enemies, we find you placing yourselves in our path in arms
against us. Now if your intentions are to prevent us sailing to
Corcyra, or anywhere else that we may wish, and if you are for
breaking the treaty, first take us that are here and treat us as
enemies." Such was what they said, and all the Corcyraean armament
that were within hearing immediately called out to take them and
kill them. But the Athenians answered as follows: "Neither are we
beginning war, Peloponnesians, nor are we breaking the treaty; but
these Corcyraeans are our allies, and we are come to help them. So
if you want to sail anywhere else, we place no obstacle in your way;
but if you are going to sail against Corcyra, or any of her
possessions, we shall do our best to stop you."
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¶ Each side saved face by declaring victory, the Corinthians
for their initial successes at sea; the Corcyraeans for that that
the Corinthians had retired before the Athenian force.
|
[54] Receiving this answer from the Athenians, the Corinthians
commenced preparations for their voyage home, and set up a trophy in
Sybota, on the continent; while the Corcyraeans took up the wrecks and
dead that had been carried out to them by the current, and by a wind
which rose in the night and scattered them in all directions, and
set up their trophy in Sybota, on the island, as victors. The
reasons each side had for claiming the victory were these. The
Corinthians had been victorious in the sea-fight until night; and
having thus been enabled to carry off most wrecks and dead, they
were in possession of no fewer than a thousand prisoners of war, and
had sunk close upon seventy vessels. The Corcyraeans had destroyed
about thirty ships, and after the arrival of the Athenians had taken
up the wrecks and dead on their side; they had besides seen the
Corinthians retire before them, backing water on sight of the Athenian
vessels, and upon the arrival of the Athenians refuse to sail out
against them from Sybota. Thus both sides claimed the victory.
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¶ Thucydies notes that this was the first cause of the war that
Corinth had against the Athenians, viz. , that they had fought
against them with the Corcyraeans in time of treaty.
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[55] The Corinthians on the voyage home took Anactorium, which stands
at the mouth of the Ambracian gulf. The place was taken by
treachery, being common ground to the Corcyraeans and Corinthians.
After establishing Corinthian settlers there, they retired home. Eight
hundred of the Corcyraeans were slaves; these they sold; two hundred
and fifty they retained in captivity, and treated with great
attention, in the hope that they might bring over their country to
Corinth on their return; most of them being, as it happened, men of
very high position in Corcyra. In this way Corcyra maintained her
political existence in the war with Corinth, and the Athenian
vessels left the island. This was the first cause of the war that
Corinth had against the Athenians, viz. , that they had fought
against them with the Corcyraeans in time of treaty.
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THE DISPUTE OVER POTIDAEA (chapters 56 through 65)
¶ Potidaea was a Corinthian colony but also an ally of Athens who,
fearing rebellion, ordered the Potidaeans to reduce their
defenses and dismiss the Corinthian magistrates; meanwhile Perdiccas the
Macedonian, a foe of the Athenians, urged the Corinthians to stir up revolt
in Potidaea against the Athenians.
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[56] Almost immediately after this, fresh differences arose between the
Athenians and Peloponnesians, and contributed their share to the
war. Corinth was forming schemes for retaliation, and Athens suspected
her hostility. The Potidaeans, who inhabit the isthmus of Pallene,
being a Corinthian colony, but tributary allies of Athens, were
ordered to raze the wall looking towards Pallene, to give hostages, to
dismiss the Corinthian magistrates, and in future not to receive the
persons sent from Corinth annually to succeed them. It was feared that
they might be persuaded by Perdiccas and the Corinthians to revolt,
and might draw the rest of the allies in the direction of Thrace to
revolt with them.
[57] These precautions against the Potidaeans were
taken by the Athenians immediately after the battle at Corcyra. Not
only was Corinth at length openly hostile, but Perdiccas, son of
Alexander, king of the Macedonians, had from an old friend and ally
been made an enemy. He had been made an enemy by the Athenians
entering into alliance with his brother Philip and Derdas, who were in
league against him. In his alarm he had sent to Lacedaemon to try
and involve the Athenians in a war with the Peloponnesians, and was
endeavouring to win over Corinth in order to bring about the revolt of
Potidaea. He also made overtures to the Chalcidians in the direction
of Thrace, and to the Bottiaeans, to persuade them to join in the
revolt; for he thought that if these places on the border could be
made his allies, it would be easier to carry on the war with their
co-operation. Alive to all this, and wishing to anticipate the
revolt of the cities, the Athenians acted as follows. They were just
then sending off thirty ships and a thousand heavy infantry for his
country under the command of Archestratus, son of Lycomedes, with four
colleagues. They instructed the captains to take hostages of the
Potidaeans, to raze the wall, and to be on their guard against the
revolt of the neighbouring cities.
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¶ The Potidaeans appealed to the Athenians for respite and to the Corinthians for assistance.
¶ Athenians sail against Perdiccas and the Potidaeans; the
Corinthians assure the Potidaeans of assistance;
Potidaea joins with the Chalcidians and Bottiaeans in revolt against Athens.
¶ The Athenians found Potidaea in revolt, but faced with two tasks, they turned to the fight in
Macedonia, leaving Potidaea for later.
¶ The Corinthians sent a force of 2,000 with Aristeus in command, to the defense of Potidaea;
the Athenians responded by sending 2,000 men and 40 ships
under the command of Callias.
¶ The Athenians arrived first in Macedonia and forced Perdiccas into
an alliance; they then proceded to Potidaea with 3,000 heavy infantry and 70 ships.
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[58] Meanwhile the Potidaeans sent envoys to Athens on the chance of
persuading them to take no new steps in their matters; they also
went to Lacedaemon with the Corinthians to secure support in case of
need. Failing after prolonged negotiation to obtain anything
satisfactory from the Athenians; being unable, for all they could say,
to prevent the vessels that were destined for Macedonia from also
sailing against them; and receiving from the Lacedaemonian
government a promise to invade Attica, if the Athenians should
attack Potidaea, the Potidaeans, thus favoured by the moment, at
last entered into league with the Chalcidians and Bottiaeans, and
revolted. And Perdiccas induced the Chalcidians to abandon and
demolish their towns on the seaboard and, settling inland at Olynthus,
to make that one city a strong place: meanwhile to those who
followed his advice he gave a part of his territory in Mygdonia
round Lake Bolbe as a place of abode while the war against the
Athenians should last. They accordingly demolished their towns,
removed inland and prepared for war.
[59] The thirty ships of the
Athenians, arriving before the Thracian places, found Potidaea and the
rest in revolt. Their commanders, considering it to be quite
impossible with their present force to carry on war with Perdiccas and
with the confederate towns as well turned to Macedonia, their original
destination, and, having established themselves there, carried on
war in co-operation with Philip, and the brothers of Derdas, who had
invaded the country from the interior.
[60] Meanwhile the Corinthians, with Potidaea in revolt and the
Athenian ships on the coast of Macedonia, alarmed for the safety of
the place and thinking its danger theirs, sent volunteers from
Corinth, and mercenaries from the rest of Peloponnese, to the number
of sixteen hundred heavy infantry in all, and four hundred light
troops. Aristeus, son of Adimantus, who was always a steady friend
to the Potidaeans, took command of the expedition, and it was
principally for love of him that most of the men from Corinth
volunteered. They arrived in Thrace forty days after the revolt of
Potidaea.
[61] The Athenians also immediately received the news of the revolt of
the cities. On being informed that Aristeus and his reinforcements
were on their way, they sent two thousand heavy infantry of their
own citizens and forty ships against the places in revolt, under the
command of Callias, son of Calliades, and four colleagues. They
arrived in Macedonia first, and found the force of a thousand men that
had been first sent out, just become masters of Therme and besieging
Pydna. Accordingly they also joined in the investment, and besieged
Pydna for a while. Subsequently they came to terms and concluded a
forced alliance with Perdiccas, hastened by the calls of Potidaea
and by the arrival of Aristeus at that place. They withdrew from
Macedonia, going to Beroea and thence to Strepsa, and, after a
futile attempt on the latter place, they pursued by land their march
to Potidaea with three thousand heavy infantry of their own
citizens, besides a number of their allies, and six hundred Macedonian
horsemen, the followers of Philip and Pausanias. With these sailed
seventy ships along the coast. Advancing by short marches, on the
third day they arrived at Gigonus, where they encamped.
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¶ The Potidaeans and the Peloponnesians chose Aristeus general of the
infantry, with Perdiccas, who once again switched sides, commanding the cavalry;
Aristeus kept his own force on the isthmus, leaving allies
outside the isthmus, and cavalry from Perdiccas at the Athenian rear, and thus placing the enemy between two
fires.
¶ Callias the Athenian dispatched the Macedonian horse and a few allies to Olynthus,
and the Athenians marched against Potidaea; Aristeus, with the Corinthians routed the wing opposed them but the rest of the Potidaeans and
Peloponnesians were defeated by the Athenians, and took refuge.
¶ Aristeus seeing
defeat brought off most of his men safe; the Athenians set up
a trophy--the Potidaeans and allies lost 300 and
the Athenians 150 and Callias their general.
¶ The Athenians sent 1,600 heavy infantry under the command of Phormio to lay
seige to Potidaea
¶ Seeing no hope, Aristeus
sailed off and lay an ambuscade near Sermylia; he
also sought help from the Peloponnese; while Phormio having seiged Potidaea and
ravaged Chalcidice and Bottica.
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[62] Meanwhile the Potidaeans and the Peloponnesians with Aristeus were
encamped on the side looking towards Olynthus on the isthmus, in
expectation of the Athenians, and had established their market outside
the city. The allies had chosen Aristeus general of all the
infantry; while the command of the cavalry was given to Perdiccas, who
had at once left the alliance of the Athenians and gone back to that
of the Potidaeans, having deputed Iolaus as his general: The plan of
Aristeus was to keep his own force on the isthmus, and await the
attack of the Athenians; leaving the Chalcidians and the allies
outside the isthmus, and the two hundred cavalry from Perdiccas in
Olynthus to act upon the Athenian rear, on the occasion of their
advancing against him; and thus to place the enemy between two
fires. While Callias the Athenian general and his colleagues
dispatched the Macedonian horse and a few of the allies to Olynthus,
to prevent any movement being made from that quarter, the Athenians
themselves broke up their camp and marched against Potidaea. After
they had arrived at the isthmus, and saw the enemy preparing for
battle, they formed against him, and soon afterwards engaged. The wing
of Aristeus, with the Corinthians and other picked troops round him,
routed the wing opposed to it, and followed for a considerable
distance in pursuit. But the rest of the army of the Potidaeans and of
the Peloponnesians was defeated by the Athenians, and took refuge
within the fortifications.
[63] Returning from the pursuit, Aristeus
perceived the defeat of the rest of the army. Being at a loss which of
the two risks to choose, whether to go to Olynthus or to Potidaea,
he at last determined to draw his men into as small a space as
possible, and force his way with a run into Potidaea. Not without
difficulty, through a storm of missiles, he passed along by the
breakwater through the sea, and brought off most of his men safe,
though a few were lost. Meanwhile the auxiliaries of the Potidaeans
from Olynthus, which is about seven miles off and in sight of
Potidaea, when the battle began and the signals were raised,
advanced a little way to render assistance; and the Macedonian horse
formed against them to prevent it. But on victory speedily declaring
for the Athenians and the signals being taken down, they retired
back within the wall; and the Macedonians returned to the Athenians.
Thus there were no cavalry present on either side. After the battle
the Athenians set up a trophy, and gave back their dead to the
Potidaeans under truce. The Potidaeans and their allies had close upon
three hundred killed; the Athenians a hundred and fifty of their own
citizens, and Callias their general.
[64] The wall on the side of the isthmus had now works at once raised
against it, and manned by the Athenians. That on the side of Pallene
had no works raised against it. They did not think themselves strong
enough at once to keep a garrison in the isthmus and to cross over
to Pallene and raise works there; they were afraid that the Potidaeans
and their allies might take advantage of their division to attack
them. Meanwhile the Athenians at home learning that there were no
works at Pallene, some time afterwards sent off sixteen hundred
heavy infantry of their own citizens under the command of Phormio, son
of Asopius. Arrived at Pallene, he fixed his headquarters at
Aphytis, and led his army against Potidaea by short marches,
ravaging the country as he advanced. No one venturing to meet him in
the field, he raised works against the wall on the side of Pallene. So
at length Potidaea was strongly invested on either side, and from
the sea by the ships co-operating in the blockade.
[65] Aristeus, seeing
its investment complete, and having no hope of its salvation, except
in the event of some movement from the Peloponnese, or of some other
improbable contingency, advised all except five hundred to watch for a
wind and sail out of the place, in order that their provisions might
last the longer. He was willing to be himself one of those who
remained. Unable to persuade them, and desirous of acting on the
next alternative, and of having things outside in the best posture
possible, he eluded the guardships of the Athenians and sailed out.
Remaining among the Chalcidians, he continued to carry on the war;
in particular he laid an ambuscade near the city of the Sermylians,
and cut off many of them; he also communicated with Peloponnese, and
tried to contrive some method by which help might be brought.
Meanwhile, after the completion of the investment of Potidaea, Phormio
next employed his sixteen hundred men in ravaging Chalcidice and
Bottica: some of the towns also were taken by him.
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THE DEBATE AT SPARTA AND DECLARATION OF WAR, 432 B.C. (chapters 66 through 88)
¶ The complaint of Corinth was that her colony Potidaea was besieged;
that of the Athenians that the Peloponnesians had incited an ally of Athens
to revolt.
¶ The Corinthians summoned allies to Lacedaemon to accuse the Athenians
of breaking the truce; the Aeginetans were especially vocal; the Corinthians
speak before the assembly.
|
[66] The Athenians and Peloponnesians had these antecedent grounds of
complaint against each other: the complaint of Corinth was that her
colony of Potidaea, and Corinthian and Peloponnesian citizens within
it, were being besieged; that of Athens against the Peloponnesians
that they had incited a town of hers, a member of her alliance and a
contributor to her revenue, to revolt, and had come and were openly
fighting against her on the side of the Potidaeans. For all this,
war had not yet broken out: there was still truce for a while; for
this was a private enterprise on the part of Corinth.
[67] But the siege of Potidaea put an end to her inaction; she had men
inside it: besides, she feared for the place. Immediately summoning
the allies to Lacedaemon, she came and loudly accused Athens of breach
of the treaty and aggression on the rights of Peloponnese. With her,
the Aeginetans, formally unrepresented from fear of Athens, in
secret proved not the least urgent of the advocates for war, asserting
that they had not the independence guaranteed to them by the treaty.
After extending the summons to any of their allies and others who
might have complaints to make of Athenian aggression, the
Lacedaemonians held their ordinary assembly, and invited them to
speak. There were many who came forward and made their several
accusations; among them the Megarians, in a long list of grievances,
called special attention to the fact of their exclusion from the ports
of the Athenian empire and the market of Athens, in defiance of the
treaty. Last of all the Corinthians came forward, and having let those
who preceded them inflame the Lacedaemonians, now followed with a
speech to this effect:
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¶ The Corinthians say that the Spartas show limited knowledge of foreign
politics, for when the Corinthians formerly warned them of Athenian
agression when it might have been prevented, they suspected the speakers of acting on private interest; now
that harm has been inflicted the Spartan finally begin to listen.
¶ And if any doubt of Athenian agression, the Corinthians say consider how she
took Corcyra by fraud and how she now besieges Potidaea.
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HERE BEGINS THE SPEECH OF THE CORINTHIANS
[68] "Lacedaemonians! the confidence which you feel in your
constitution and social order, inclines you to receive any reflections
of ours on other powers with a certain scepticism. Hence springs
your moderation, but hence also the rather limited knowledge which you
betray in dealing with foreign politics. Time after time was our voice
raised to warn you of the blows about to be dealt us by Athens, and
time after time, instead of taking the trouble to ascertain the
worth of our communications, you contented yourselves with
suspecting the speakers of being inspired by private interest. And so,
instead of calling these allies together before the blow fell, you
have delayed to do so till we are smarting under it; allies among whom
we have not the worst title to speak, as having the greatest
complaints to make, complaints of Athenian outrage and Lacedaemonian
neglect. Now if these assaults on the rights of Hellas had been made
in the dark, you might be unacquainted with the facts, and it would be
our duty to enlighten you. As it is, long speeches are not needed
where you see servitude accomplished for some of us, meditated for
others--in particular for our allies--and prolonged preparations in
the aggressor against the hour of war. Or what, pray, is the meaning
of their reception of Corcyra by fraud, and their holding it against
us by force? what of the siege of Potidaea?--places one of which lies
most conveniently for any action against the Thracian towns; while the
other would have contributed a very large navy to the Peloponnesians?
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¶ The Corinthians argue that Sparta is responsible because she allowed
Athens to fortity and erect the long walls after the Persian War, and now
she permits Athens to enslave the rest of the Greeks.
¶ The time is past, say the Corinthians, for debating whether Athens is
a threat; it is time to band together and oppose the threat.
¶ And, say the Corinthians, the Peloponnese ought to learn from the
Persian War, for that was a close-run thing notwithstanding that the Persians
were a long way off, whereas Athens stands nearby ready to strike; furthermore,
it was Athens who in the last war was the rock that broke
the mightly Persians.
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[69] "For all this you are responsible. You it was who first allowed them
to fortify their city after the Median war, and afterwards to erect
the long walls--you who, then and now, are always depriving of
freedom not only those whom they have enslaved, but also those who
have as yet been your allies. For the true author of the subjugation
of a people is not so much the immediate agent, as the power which
permits it having the means to prevent it; particularly if that
power aspires to the glory of being the liberator of Hellas. We are at
last assembled. It has not been easy to assemble, nor even now are our
objects defined. We ought not to be still inquiring into the fact of
our wrongs, but into the means of our defence. For the aggressors with
matured plans to oppose to our indecision have cast threats aside
and betaken themselves to action. And we know what are the paths by
which Athenian aggression travels, and how insidious is its
progress. A degree of confidence she may feel from the idea that
your bluntness of perception prevents your noticing her; but it is
nothing to the impulse which her advance will receive from the
knowledge that you see, but do not care to interfere. You,
Lacedaemonians, of all the Hellenes are alone inactive, and defend
yourselves not by doing anything but by looking as if you would do
something; you alone wait till the power of an enemy is becoming twice
its original size, instead of crushing it in its infancy. And yet
the world used to say that you were to be depended upon; but in your
case, we fear, it said more than the truth. The Mede, we ourselves
know, had time to come from the ends of the earth to Peloponnese,
without any force of yours worthy of the name advancing to meet him.
But this was a distant enemy. Well, Athens at all events is a near
neighbour, and yet Athens you utterly disregard; against Athens you
prefer to act on the defensive instead of on the offensive, and to
make it an affair of chances by deferring the struggle till she has
grown far stronger than at first. And yet you know that on the whole
the rock on which the barbarian was wrecked was himself, and that if
our present enemy Athens has not again and again annihilated us, we
owe it more to her blunders than to your protection; Indeed,
expectations from you have before now been the ruin of some, whose
faith induced them to omit preparation.
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¶ The Corinthians remonstrate as with an erring friend, contrasting the two
national characters of Athens and Sparta: Athens is addicted to innovation, is adverturous
beyond her power, and daring beyond prudence; Sparta seeks to preserve what she has, attempts
less that she can do, and doubt her ability for even want is clearly within her power.
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[70] "We hope that none of you will consider these words of
remonstrance to be rather words of hostility; men remonstrate with
friends who are in error, accusations they reserve for enemies who
have wronged them. Besides, we consider that we have as good a right
as any one to point out a neighbour's faults, particularly when we
contemplate the great contrast between the two national characters;
a contrast of which, as far as we can see, you have little perception,
having never yet considered what sort of antagonists you will
encounter in the Athenians, how widely, how absolutely different
from yourselves. The Athenians are addicted to innovation, and their
designs are characterized by swiftness alike in conception and
execution; you have a genius for keeping what you have got,
accompanied by a total want of invention, and when forced to act you
never go far enough. Again, they are adventurous beyond their power,
and daring beyond their judgment, and in danger they are sanguine;
your wont is to attempt less than is justified by your power, to
mistrust even what is sanctioned by your judgment, and to fancy that
from danger there is no release. Further, there is promptitude on
their side against procrastination on yours; they are never at home,
you are never from it: for they hope by their absence to extend
their acquisitions, you fear by your advance to endanger what you have
left behind. They are swift to follow up a success, and slow to recoil
from a reverse. Their bodies they spend ungrudgingly in their
country's cause; their intellect they jealously husband to be employed
in her service. A scheme unexecuted is with them a positive loss, a
successful enterprise a comparative failure. The deficiency created by
the miscarriage of an undertaking is soon filled up by fresh hopes;
for they alone are enabled to call a thing hoped for a thing got, by
the speed with which they act upon their resolutions. Thus they toil
on in trouble and danger all the days of their life, with little
opportunity for enjoying, being ever engaged in getting: their only
idea of a holiday is to do what the occasion demands, and to them
laborious occupation is less of a misfortune than the peace of a quiet
life. To describe their character in a word, one might truly say
that they were born into the world to take no rest themselves and to
give none to others.
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¶ You see, say the Corinthians, Athens ready to strike, and yet you
debate whether to prepare for a war that is already determined; in peaceful times
your prudence and principal are admirable, but in unsettled times as these they are folly
and conceit.
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[71] "Such is Athens, your antagonist. And yet, Lacedaemonians, you still
delay, and fail to see that peace stays longest with those, who are
not more careful to use their power justly than to show their
determination not to submit to injustice. On the contrary, your
ideal of fair dealing is based on the principle that, if you do not
injure others, you need not risk your own fortunes in preventing
others from injuring you. Now you could scarcely have succeeded in
such a policy even with a neighbour like yourselves; but in the
present instance, as we have just shown, your habits are old-fashioned
as compared with theirs. It is the law as in art, so in politics, that
improvements ever prevail; and though fixed usages may be best for
undisturbed communities, constant necessities of action must be
accompanied by the constant improvement of methods. Thus it happens
that the vast experience of Athens has carried her further than you on
the path of innovation.
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¶ The Corinthians conclude by urging the Spartans to a speedy invasion of Attica, the
region of Greece of which Athens is the principle city.
|
"Here, at least, let your procrastination end. For the present,
assist your allies and Potidaea in particular, as you promised, by a
speedy invasion of Attica, and do not sacrifice friends and kindred to
their bitterest enemies, and drive the rest of us in despair to some
other alliance. Such a step would not be condemned either by the
Gods who received our oaths, or by the men who witnessed them. The
breach of a treaty cannot be laid to the people whom desertion compels
to seek new relations, but to the power that fails to assist its
confederate. But if you will only act, we will stand by you; it
would be unnatural for us to change, and never should we meet with
such a congenial ally. For these reasons choose the right course,
and endeavour not to let Peloponnese under your supremacy degenerate
from the prestige that it enjoyed under that of your ancestors."
HERE ENDS THE SPEECH OF THE CORINTHIANS
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¶ There happened to be some Athenian envoys in Sparta on other business who, hearing
the Corinthians' speech asked to be heard as well, which was granted.
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[72] Such were the words of the Corinthians. There happened to be
Athenian envoys present at Lacedaemon on other business. On hearing
the speeches they thought themselves called upon to come before the
Lacedaemonians. Their intention was not to offer a defence on any of
the charges which the cities brought against them, but to show on a
comprehensive view that it was not a matter to be hastily decided
on, but one that demanded further consideration. There was also a wish
to call attention to the great power of Athens, and to refresh the
memory of the old and enlighten the ignorance of the young, from a
notion that their words might have the effect of inducing them to
prefer tranquillity to war. So they came to the Lacedaemonians and
said that they too, if there was no objection, wished to speak to
their assembly. They replied by inviting them to come forward. The
Athenians advanced, and spoke as follows:
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¶ The Athenians remind the Spartans that it was Athens that saved Greece
when the Persians invaded in 490 and 480 B.C.: at Marathon Athenians were
in the front; and in the second invasion it was Athenians, forsaking
their city and taking to the ships, that brought the victory at Salamis.
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HERE BEGINS THE SPEECH OF THE ATHENIANS
[73] "The object of our mission here was not to argue with your allies,
but to attend to the matters on which our state dispatched us.
However, the vehemence of the outcry that we hear against us has
prevailed on us to come forward. It is not to combat the accusations
of the cities (indeed you are not the judges before whom either we
or they can plead), but to prevent your taking the wrong course on
matters of great importance by yielding too readily to the persuasions
of your allies. We also wish to show on a review of the whole
indictment that we have a fair title to our possessions, and that
our country has claims to consideration. We need not refer to remote
antiquity: there we could appeal to the voice of tradition, but not to
the experience of our audience. But to the Median War and contemporary
history we must refer, although we are rather tired of continually
bringing this subject forward. In our action during that war we ran
great risk to obtain certain advantages: you had your share in the
solid results, do not try to rob us of all share in the good that
the glory may do us. However, the story shall be told not so much to
deprecate hostility as to testify against it, and to show, if you
are so ill advised as to enter into a struggle with Athens, what
sort of an antagonist she is likely to prove. We assert that at
Marathon we were at the front, and faced the barbarian
single-handed. That when he came the second time, unable to cope
with him by land we went on board our ships with all our people, and
joined in the action at Salamis. This prevented his taking the
Peloponnesian states in detail, and ravaging them with his fleet; when
the multitude of his vessels would have made any combination for
self-defence impossible. The best proof of this was furnished by the
invader himself. Defeated at sea, he considered his power to be no
longer what it had been, and retired as speedily as possible with
the greater part of his army.
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¶ What, say the Athenians was the salvation of Greece but her navy, and Athens contributed
the most ships (two-thirds of the total) and the ablest commander, Themistocles.
¶ In order to save Greece, the Athenians say, they left behind their city and staked their
lives on a desperate hope.
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[74] "Such, then, was the result of the matter, and it was clearly proved
that it was on the fleet of Hellas that her cause depended. Well, to
this result we contributed three very useful elements, viz., the
largest number of ships, the ablest commander, and the most
unhesitating patriotism. Our contingent of ships was little less
than two-thirds of the whole four hundred; the commander was
Themistocles, through whom chiefly it was that the battle took place
in the straits, the acknowledged salvation of our cause. Indeed,
this was the reason of your receiving him with honours such as had
never been accorded to any foreign visitor. While for daring
patriotism we had no competitors. Receiving no reinforcements from
behind, seeing everything in front of us already subjugated, we had
the spirit, after abandoning our city, after sacrificing our
property (instead of deserting the remainder of the league or
depriving them of our services by dispersing), to throw ourselves into
our ships and meet the danger, without a thought of resenting your
neglect to assist us. We assert, therefore, that we conferred on you
quite as much as we received. For you had a stake to fight for; the
cities which you had left were still filled with your homes, and you
had the prospect of enjoying them again; and your coming was
prompted quite as much by fear for yourselves as for us; at all
events, you never appeared till we had nothing left to lose. But we
left behind us a city that was a city no longer, and staked our
lives for a city that had an existence only in desperate hope, and
so bore our full share in your deliverance and in ours. But if we
had copied others, and allowed fears for our territory to make us give
in our adhesion to the Mede before you came, or if we had suffered our
ruin to break our spirit and prevent us embarking in our ships, your
naval inferiority would have made a sea-fight unnecessary, and his
objects would have been peaceably attained.
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¶ And why now, say the Athenians, should you hate us for our empire? we acquired it not by violence
but because Sparta was unwilling to prosecute the war
to its finish and because the allies attached themselves to Athens and spontaneously asked her to
lead the Greeks.
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[75] "Surely, Lacedaemonians, neither by the patriotism that we displayed
at that crisis, nor by the wisdom of our counsels, do we merit our
extreme unpopularity with the Hellenes, not at least unpopularity
for our empire. That empire we acquired by no violent means, but
because you were unwilling to prosecute to its conclusion the war
against the barbarian, and because the allies attached themselves to
us and spontaneously asked us to assume the command. And the nature of
the case first compelled us to advance our empire to its present
height; fear being our principal motive, though honour and interest
afterwards came in. And at last, when almost all hated us, when some
had already revolted and had been subdued, when you had ceased to be
the friends that you once were, and had become objects of suspicion
and dislike, it appeared no longer safe to give up our empire;
especially as all who left us would fall to you. And no one can
quarrel with a people for making, in matters of tremendous risk, the
best provision that it can for its interest.
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¶ Further, say the Athenians, you Spartans have used your supremacy to
settle the states in Peloponnese as is agreeable to you.
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[76] "You, at all events, Lacedaemonians, have used your supremacy to
settle the states in Peloponnese as is agreeable to you. And if at the
period of which we were speaking you had persevered to the end of
the matter, and had incurred hatred in your command, we are sure
that you would have made yourselves just as galling to the allies, and
would have been forced to choose between a strong government and
danger to yourselves. It follows that it was not a very wonderful
action, or contrary to the common practice of mankind, if we did
accept an empire that was offered to us, and refused to give it up
under the pressure of three of the strongest motives, fear, honour,
and interest. And it was not we who set the example, for it has always
been law that the weaker should be subject to the stronger. Besides,
we believed ourselves to be worthy of our position, and so you thought
us till now, when calculations of interest have made you take up the
cry of justice--a consideration which no one ever yet brought forward
to hinder his ambition when he had a chance of gaining anything by
might. And praise is due to all who, if not so superior to human
nature as to refuse dominion, yet respect justice more than their
position compels them to do.
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¶ The Athenians state that they abate theri rights
causing disputes with allies to be decided by impartial laws,
while other imperial powers treat their subjects with less moderation.
¶ Indeed, Athenian subjects are habituated to associated with Athens as equals.
¶ They note that the allies suffered worse treatment by the Persians, but resent the
Athenians because men's indignation is more excited by legal wrong which seems like
being cheated than by being compelled by a superior.
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"We imagine that our moderation would be best demonstrated by the
conduct of others who should be placed in our position; but even our
equity has very unreasonably subjected us to condemnation instead of
approval.
[77] Our abatement of our rights in the contract trials with
our allies, and our causing them to be decided by impartial laws at
Athens, have gained us the character of being litigious. And none care
to inquire why this reproach is not brought against other imperial
powers, who treat their subjects with less moderation than we do;
the secret being that where force can be used, law is not needed.
But our subjects are so habituated to associate with us as equals that
any defeat whatever that clashes with their notions of justice,
whether it proceeds from a legal judgment or from the power which
our empire gives us, makes them forget to be grateful for being
allowed to retain most of their possessions, and more vexed at a
part being taken, than if we had from the first cast law aside and
openly gratified our covetousness. If we had done so, not even would
they have disputed that the weaker must give way to the stronger.
Men's indignation, it seems, is more excited by legal wrong than by
violent wrong; the first looks like being cheated by an equal, the
second like being compelled by a superior. At all events they
contrived to put up with much worse treatment than this from the Mede,
yet they think our rule severe, and this is to be expected, for the
present always weighs heavy on the conquered. This at least is
certain. If you were to succeed in overthrowing us and in taking our
place, you would speedily lose the popularity with which fear of us
has invested you, if your policy of to-day is at all to tally with the
sample that you gave of it during the brief period of your command
against the Mede. Not only is your life at home regulated by rules and
institutions incompatible with those of others, but your citizens
abroad act neither on these rules nor on those which are recognized by
the rest of Hellas.
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¶ Finally, the Athenians warn that nothing is certain in war except for
the danger of the uncertainty of war.
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[78] "Take time then in forming your resolution, as the matter is of
great importance; and do not be persuaded by the opinions and
complaints of others to bring trouble on yourselves, but consider
the vast influence of accident in war, before you are engaged in it.
As it continues, it generally becomes an affair of chances, chances
from which neither of us is exempt, and whose event we must risk in
the dark. It is a common mistake in going to war to begin at the wrong
end, to act first, and wait for disaster to discuss the matter. But we
are not yet by any means so misguided, nor, so far as we can see,
are you; accordingly, while it is still open to us both to choose
aright, we bid you not to dissolve the treaty, or to break your oaths,
but to have our differences settled by arbitration according to our
agreement. Or else we take the gods who heard the oaths to witness,
and if you begin hostilities, whatever line of action you choose, we
will try not to be behindhand in repelling you."
HERE ENDS THE SPEECH OF THE ATHENIANS
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¶ The Spartans lean toward war, but king Archidamus speaks for caution.
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[79] Such were the words of the Athenians. After the Lacedaemonians had
heard the complaints of the allies against the Athenians, and the
observations of the latter, they made all withdraw, and consulted by
themselves on the question before them. The opinions of the majority
all led to the same conclusion; the Athenians were open aggressors,
and war must be declared at once. But Archidamus, the Lacedaemonian
king, came forward, who had the reputation of being at once a wise and
a moderate man, and made the following speech:
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¶ Archidamus warns against bringing on the misfortunes of war from inexperience or a belief
in its advantage and safety.
¶ He points out that Sparta is inferior in number of ships and in money and while
she has a strong infantry for an invasion of Attica, Athens is has other lands and allies
who can supply her.
¶ Furthermore, Sparta, as the agressor, will be bound to carry on the fight even if
it goes not well.
¶ He urges the Spartans to continue to pursue a peaceful solution--perhaps peace can be
maintained, and, at any rate, two or three years of continued negotiations will give Sparta
time to better prepare for war.
¶ Also he notes that so long was Sparta has not laid waste the lands of Athens, the threat
of invasion may bring Athens to an accomidation, but once the land is devastated, desperate men
are wont to do desperate things.
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HERE BEGINS THE SPEECH OF SPARTAN KING ARCHIDAMUS
[80] "I have not lived so long, Lacedaemonians, without having had the
experience of many wars, and I see those among you of the same age
as myself, who will not fall into the common misfortune of longing for
war from inexperience or from a belief in its advantage and its
safety. This, the war on which you are now debating, would be one of
the greatest magnitude, on a sober consideration of the matter. In a
struggle with Peloponnesians and neighbours our strength is of the
same character, and it is possible to move swiftly on the different
points. But a struggle with a people who live in a distant land, who
have also an extraordinary familiarity with the sea, and who are in
the highest state of preparation in every other department; with
wealth private and public, with ships, and horses, and heavy infantry,
and a population such as no one other Hellenic place can equal, and
lastly a number of tributary allies--what can justify us in rashly
beginning such a struggle? wherein is our trust that we should rush on
it unprepared? Is it in our ships? There we are inferior; while if
we are to practise and become a match for them, time must intervene.
Is it in our money? There we have a far greater deficiency. We neither
have it in our treasury, nor are we ready to contribute it from our
private funds.
[81] Confidence might possibly be felt in our superiority in
heavy infantry and population, which will enable us to invade and
devastate their lands. But the Athenians have plenty of other land
in their empire, and can import what they want by sea. Again, if we
are to attempt an insurrection of their allies, these will have to
be supported with a fleet, most of them being islanders. What then
is to be our war? For unless we can either beat them at sea, or
deprive them of the revenues which feed their navy, we shall meet with
little but disaster. Meanwhile our honour will be pledged to keeping
on, particularly if it be the opinion that we began the quarrel. For
let us never be elated by the fatal hope of the war being quickly
ended by the devastation of their lands. I fear rather that we may
leave it as a legacy to our children; so improbable is it that the
Athenian spirit will be the slave of their land, or Athenian
experience be cowed by war.
[82] "Not that I would bid you be so unfeeling as to suffer them to
injure your allies, and to refrain from unmasking their intrigues; but
I do bid you not to take up arms at once, but to send and
remonstrate with them in a tone not too suggestive of war, nor again
too suggestive of submission, and to employ the interval in perfecting
our own preparations. The means will be, first, the acquisition of
allies, Hellenic or barbarian it matters not, so long as they are an
accession to our strength naval or pecuniary--I say Hellenic or
barbarian, because the odium of such an accession to all who like us
are the objects of the designs of the Athenians is taken away by the
law of self-preservation--and secondly the development of our home
resources. If they listen to our embassy, so much the better; but if
not, after the lapse of two or three years our position will have
become materially strengthened, and we can then attack them if we
think proper. Perhaps by that time the sight of our preparations,
backed by language equally significant, will have disposed them to
submission, while their land is still untouched, and while their
counsels may be directed to the retention of advantages as yet
undestroyed. For the only light in which you can view their land is
that of a hostage in your hands, a hostage the more valuable the
better it is cultivated. This you ought to spare as long as
possible, and not make them desperate, and so increase the
difficulty of dealing with them. For if while still unprepared,
hurried away by the complaints of our allies, we are induced to lay it
waste, have a care that we do not bring deep disgrace and deep
perplexity upon Peloponnese. Complaints, whether of communities or
individuals, it is possible to adjust; but war undertaken by a
coalition for sectional interests, whose progress there is no means of
foreseeing, does not easily admit of creditable settlement.
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¶ Remember also, Archidamus warns, that Athens has allies who pay her tribute and
war is not so much a matter of arms as of money.
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[83] "And none need think it cowardice for a number of confederates to
pause before they attack a single city. The Athenians have allies as
numerous as our own, and allies that pay tribute, and war is a
matter not so much of arms as of money, which makes arms of use. And
this is more than ever true in a struggle between a continental and
a maritime power. First, then, let us provide money, and not allow
ourselves to be carried away by the talk of our allies before we
have done so: as we shall have the largest share of responsibility for
the consequences be they good or bad, we have also a right to a
tranquil inquiry respecting them.
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¶ He says that Spartan slowness and procrastination, of which the Potidaeans
complained, are wise practices that have proved profitable to the Spartans.
¶ Furthermore, it is not wise to decide, in a single day, something which
touches the lives and fortunes of some many and which is bound up in the honor
of Sparta.
¶ He concludes by urging the Spartans to prepare for, but not precipitate, war
with Athens.
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[84] "And the slowness and procrastination, the parts of our character
that are most assailed by their criticism, need not make you blush. If
we undertake the war without preparation, we should by hastening its
commencement only delay its conclusion: further, a free and a famous
city has through all time been ours. The quality which they condemn is
really nothing but a wise moderation; thanks to its possession, we
alone do not become insolent in success and give way less than
others in misfortune; we are not carried away by the pleasure of
hearing ourselves cheered on to risks which our judgment condemns;
nor, if annoyed, are we any the more convinced by attempts to
exasperate us by accusation. We are both warlike and wise, and it is
our sense of order that makes us so. We are warlike, because
self-control contains honour as a chief constituent, and honour
bravery. And we are wise, because we are educated with too little
learning to despise the laws, and with too severe a self-control to
disobey them, and are brought up not to be too knowing in useless
matters--such as the knowledge which can give a specious criticism of
an enemy's plans in theory, but fails to assail them with equal
success in practice--but are taught to consider that the schemes of
our enemies are not dissimilar to our own, and that the freaks of
chance are not determinable by calculation. In practice we always base
our preparations against an enemy on the assumption that his plans are
good; indeed, it is right to rest our hopes not on a belief in his
blunders, but on the soundness of our provisions. Nor ought we to
believe that there is much difference between man and man, but to
think that the superiority lies with him who is reared in the severest
school.
[85] These practices, then, which our ancestors have delivered to
us, and by whose maintenance we have always profited, must not be
given up. And we must not be hurried into deciding in a day's brief
space a question which concerns many lives and fortunes and many
cities, and in which honour is deeply involved--but we must decide
calmly. This our strength peculiarly enables us to do. As for the
Athenians, send to them on the matter of Potidaea, send on the
matter of the alleged wrongs of the allies, particularly as they are
prepared with legal satisfaction; and to proceed against one who
offers arbitration as against a wrongdoer, law forbids. Meanwhile do
not omit preparation for war. This decision will be the best for
yourselves, the most terrible to your opponents."
HERE ENDS THE SPEECH OF SPARTAN KING ARCHIDAMUS
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¶ Next spoke a Spartan ephor.
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Such were the words of Archidamus. Last came forward Sthenelaidas,
one of the ephors for that year, and spoke to the Lacedaemonians as
follows:
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¶ The ephor says that the Athenians, in their long speech, praised
themselves but did not deny the charges against them and that if the Athenians acted well
in the war with Persia then they
are all the more blameworthy for their current bad behaviour, having shown they know and are capable of good behavior.
¶ He concludes that while Athens may have ships and money, Sparta has
allies to whom help is due and from whom help can be raised to pursue this
war which touches on the honor of Sparta.
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HERE BEGINS THE SPEECH OF THE SPARTAN EPHOR
[86] "The long speech of the Athenians I do not pretend to understand.
They said a good deal in praise of themselves, but nowhere denied that
they are injuring our allies and Peloponnese. And yet if they
behaved well against the Mede then, but ill towards us now, they
deserve double punishment for having ceased to be good and for
having become bad. We meanwhile are the same then and now, and shall
not, if we are wise, disregard the wrongs of our allies, or put off
till to-morrow the duty of assisting those who must suffer to-day.
Others have much money and ships and horses, but we have good allies
whom we must not give up to the Athenians, nor by lawsuits and words
decide the matter, as it is anything but in word that we are harmed,
but render instant and powerful help. And let us not be told that it
is fitting for us to deliberate under injustice; long deliberation
is rather fitting for those who have injustice in contemplation.
Vote therefore, Lacedaemonians, for war, as the honour of Sparta
demands, and neither allow the further aggrandizement of Athens, nor
betray our allies to ruin, but with the gods let us advance against
the aggressors."
HERE ENDS THE SPEECH OF THE SPARTAN EPHOR
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¶ There was a division of the assembly and those for war were clearly in the majoriy.
¶ War was declared in the fourteenth year of the 30-years truce entered into after the affair of Euboea.
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[87] With these words he, as ephor, himself put the question to the
assembly of the Lacedaemonians. He said that he could not determine
which was the loudest acclamation (their mode of decision is by
acclamation not by voting); the fact being that he wished to make them
declare their opinion openly and thus to increase their ardour for
war. Accordingly he said: "All Lacedaemonians who are of opinion
that the treaty has been broken, and that Athens is guilty, leave your
seats and go there," pointing out a certain place; "all who are of the
opposite opinion, there." They accordingly stood up and divided; and
those who held that the treaty had been broken were in a decided
majority. Summoning the allies, they told them that their opinion
was that Athens had been guilty of injustice, but that they wished
to convoke all the allies and put it to the vote; in order that they
might make war, if they decided to do so, on a common resolution.
Having thus gained their point, the delegates returned home at once;
the Athenian envoys a little later, when they had dispatched the
objects of their mission. This decision of the assembly, judging
that the treaty had been broken, was made in the fourteenth year of
the thirty years' truce, which was entered into after the affair of
Euboea.
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[88] The Lacedaemonians voted that the treaty had been broken, and that
the war must be declared, not so much because they were persuaded by
the arguments of the allies, as because they feared the growth of
the power of the Athenians, seeing most of Hellas already subject to
them.
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DIGRESSION ON THE PENTECONTAETIA OR ROUGHLY 50-YEAR PERIOD, 479-435 B.C.
(chapters 89 through 117)
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[89] The way in which Athens came to be placed in the circumstances
under which her power grew was this. After the Medes had returned
from Europe, defeated by sea and land by the Hellenes, and after
those of them who had fled with their ships to Mycale had been
destroyed, Leotychides, king of the Lacedaemonians, the commander of
the Hellenes at Mycale, departed home with the allies from
Peloponnese. But the Athenians and the allies from Ionia and
Hellespont, who had now revolted from the King, remained and laid
siege to Sestos, which was still held by the Medes. After wintering
before it, they became masters of the place on its evacuation by the
barbarians; and after this they sailed away from Hellespont to their
respective cities. Meanwhile the Athenian people, after the departure
of the barbarian from their country, at once proceeded to carry over
their children and wives, and such property as they had left, from
the places where they had deposited them, and prepared to rebuild
their city and their walls. For only isolated portions of the
circumference had been left standing, and most of the houses were in
ruins; though a few remained, in which the Persian grandees had taken
up their quarters.
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[90] Perceiving what they were going to do, the Lacedaemonians sent an
embassy to Athens. They would have themselves preferred to see neither
her nor any other city in possession of a wall; though here they acted
principally at the instigation of their allies, who were alarmed at
the strength of her newly acquired navy and the valour which she had
displayed in the war with the Medes. They begged her not only to
abstain from building walls for herself, but also to join them in
throwing down the walls that still held together of the
ultra-Peloponnesian cities. The real meaning of their advice, the
suspicion that it contained against the Athenians, was not proclaimed;
it was urged that so the barbarian, in the event of a third
invasion, would not have any strong place, such as he now had in
Thebes, for his base of operations; and that Peloponnese would suffice
for all as a base both for retreat and offence.
After the
Lacedaemonians had thus spoken, they were, on the advice of
Themistocles, immediately dismissed by the Athenians, with the
answer that ambassadors should be sent to Sparta to discuss the
question. Themistocles told the Athenians to send him off with all
speed to Lacedaemon, but not to dispatch his colleagues as soon as
they had selected them, but to wait until they had raised their wall
to the height from which defence was possible. Meanwhile the whole
population in the city was to labour at the wall, the Athenians, their
wives, and their children, sparing no edifice, private or public,
which might be of any use to the work, but throwing all down. After
giving these instructions, and adding that he would be responsible for
all other matters there, he departed. Arrived at Lacedaemon he did not
seek an audience with the authorities, but tried to gain time and made
excuses. When any of the government asked him why he did not appear in
the assembly, he would say that he was waiting for his colleagues, who
had been detained in Athens by some engagement; however, that he
expected their speedy arrival, and wondered that they were not yet
there.
[91] At first the Lacedaemonians trusted the words of
Themistocles, through their friendship for him; but when others
arrived, all distinctly declaring that the work was going on and
already attaining some elevation, they did not know how to
disbelieve it. Aware of this, he told them that rumours are deceptive,
and should not be trusted; they should send some reputable persons
from Sparta to inspect, whose report might be trusted. They dispatched
them accordingly. Concerning these Themistocles secretly sent word
to the Athenians to detain them as far as possible without putting
them under open constraint, and not to let them go until they had
themselves returned. For his colleagues had now joined him,
Abronichus, son of Lysicles, and Aristides, son of Lysimachus, with
the news that the wall was sufficiently advanced; and he feared that
when the Lacedaemonians heard the facts, they might refuse to let them
go.
So the Athenians detained the envoys according to his message, and
Themistocles had an audience with the Lacedaemonians, and at last
openly told them that Athens was now fortified sufficiently to protect
its inhabitants; that any embassy which the Lacedaemonians or their
allies might wish to send to them should in future proceed on the
assumption that the people to whom they were going was able to
distinguish both its own and the general interests. That when the
Athenians thought fit to abandon their city and to embark in their
ships, they ventured on that perilous step without consulting them;
and that on the other hand, wherever they had deliberated with the
Lacedaemonians, they had proved themselves to be in judgment second to
none. That they now thought it fit that their city should have a wall,
and that this would be more for the advantage of both the citizens
of Athens and the Hellenic confederacy; for without equal military
strength it was impossible to contribute equal or fair counsel to
the common interest. It followed, he observed, either that all the
members of the confederacy should be without walls, or that the
present step should be considered a right one.
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[92] The Lacedaemonians did not betray any open signs of anger against
the Athenians at what they heard. The embassy, it seems, was
prompted not by a desire to obstruct, but to guide the counsels of
their government: besides, Spartan feeling was at that time very
friendly towards Athens on account of the patriotism which she had
displayed in the struggle with the Mede. Still the defeat of their
wishes could not but cause them secret annoyance. The envoys of each
state departed home without complaint.
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[93] In this way the Athenians walled their city in a little while. To
this day the building shows signs of the haste of its execution; the
foundations are laid of stones of all kinds, and in some places not
wrought or fitted, but placed just in the order in which they were
brought by the different hands; and many columns, too, from tombs, and
sculptured stones were put in with the rest. For the bounds of the
city were extended at every point of the circumference; and so they
laid hands on everything without exception in their haste.
Themistocles also persuaded them to finish the walls of Piraeus, which
had been begun before, in his year of office as archon; being
influenced alike by the fineness of a locality that has three
natural harbours, and by the great start which the Athenians would
gain in the acquisition of power by becoming a naval people. For he
first ventured to tell them to stick to the sea and forthwith began to
lay the foundations of the empire. It was by his advice, too, that
they built the walls of that thickness which can still be discerned
round Piraeus, the stones being brought up by two wagons meeting
each other. Between the walls thus formed there was neither rubble nor
mortar, but great stones hewn square and fitted together, cramped to
each other on the outside with iron and lead. About half the height
that he intended was finished. His idea was by their size and
thickness to keep off the attacks of an enemy; he thought that they
might be adequately defended by a small garrison of invalids, and
the rest be freed for service in the fleet. For the fleet claimed most
of his attention. He saw, as I think, that the approach by sea was
easier for the king's army than that by land: he also thought
Piraeus more valuable than the upper city; indeed, he was always
advising the Athenians, if a day should come when they were hard
pressed by land, to go down into Piraeus, and defy the world with
their fleet. Thus, therefore, the Athenians completed their wall,
and commenced their other buildings immediately after the retreat of
the Mede.
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[94] Meanwhile Pausanias, son of Cleombrotus, was sent out from
Lacedaemon as commander-in-chief of the Hellenes, with twenty ships
from Peloponnese. With him sailed the Athenians with thirty ships, and
a number of the other allies. They made an expedition against Cyprus
and subdued most of the island, and afterwards against Byzantium,
which was in the hands of the Medes, and compelled it to surrender.
This event took place while the Spartans were still supreme.
[95] But the violence of Pausanias had already begun to be disagreeable to the
Hellenes, particularly to the Ionians and the newly liberated
populations. These resorted to the Athenians and requested them as
their kinsmen to become their leaders, and to stop any attempt at
violence on the part of Pausanias. The Athenians accepted their
overtures, and determined to put down any attempt of the kind and to
settle everything else as their interests might seem to demand. In the
meantime the Lacedaemonians recalled Pausanias for an investigation of
the reports which had reached them. Manifold and grave accusations had
been brought against him by Hellenes arriving in Sparta; and, to all
appearance, there had been in him more of the mimicry of a despot than
of the attitude of a general. As it happened, his recall came just
at the time when the hatred which he had inspired had induced the
allies to desert him, the soldiers from Peloponnese excepted, and to
range themselves by the side of the Athenians. On his arrival at
Lacedaemon, he was censured for his private acts of oppression, but
was acquitted on the heaviest counts and pronounced not guilty; it
must be known that the charge of Medism formed one of the principal,
and to all appearance one of the best founded, articles against him.
The Lacedaemonians did not, however, restore him to his command, but
sent out Dorkis and certain others with a small force; who found the
allies no longer inclined to concede to them the supremacy. Perceiving
this they departed, and the Lacedaemonians did not send out any to
succeed them. They feared for those who went out a deterioration
similar to that observable in Pausanias; besides, they desired to be
rid of the Median War, and were satisfied of the competency of the
Athenians for the position, and of their friendship at the time
towards themselves.
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[96] The Athenians, having thus succeeded to the supremacy by the
voluntary act of the allies through their hatred of Pausanias, fixed
which cities were to contribute money against the barbarian, which
ships; their professed object being to retaliate for their
sufferings by ravaging the King's country. Now was the time that the
office of "Treasurers for Hellas" was first instituted by the
Athenians. These officers received the tribute, as the money
contributed was called. The tribute was first fixed at four hundred
and sixty talents. The common treasury was at Delos, and the
congresses were held in the temple.
[97] Their supremacy commenced with
independent allies who acted on the resolutions of a common
congress. It was marked by the following undertakings in war and in
administration during the interval between the Median and the
present war, against the barbarian, against their own rebel allies,
and against the Peloponnesian powers which would come in contact
with them on various occasions. My excuse for relating these events,
and for venturing on this digression, is that this passage of
history has been omitted by all my predecessors, who have confined
themselves either to Hellenic history before the Median War, or the
Median War itself. Hellanicus, it is true, did touch on these events
in his Athenian history; but he is somewhat concise and not accurate
in his dates. Besides, the history of these events contains an
explanation of the growth of the Athenian empire.
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[98] First the Athenians besieged and captured Eion on the Strymon from
the Medes, and made slaves of the inhabitants, being under the command
of Cimon, son of Miltiades. Next they enslaved Scyros, the island in
the Aegean, containing a Dolopian population, and colonized it
themselves. This was followed by a war against Carystus, in which
the rest of Euboea remained neutral, and which was ended by
surrender on conditions. After this Naxos left the confederacy, and
a war ensued, and she had to return after a siege; this was the
first instance of the engagement being broken by the subjugation of an
allied city, a precedent which was followed by that of the rest in the
order which circumstances prescribed.
[99] Of all the causes of
defection, that connected with arrears of tribute and vessels, and
with failure of service, was the chief; for the Athenians were very
severe and exacting, and made themselves offensive by applying the
screw of necessity to men who were not used to and in fact not
disposed for any continuous labour. In some other respects the
Athenians were not the old popular rulers they had been at first;
and if they had more than their fair share of service, it was
correspondingly easy for them to reduce any that tried to leave the
confederacy. For this the allies had themselves to blame; the wish
to get off service making most of them arrange to pay their share of
the expense in money instead of in ships, and so to avoid having to
leave their homes. Thus while Athens was increasing her navy with
the funds which they contributed, a revolt always found them without
resources or experience for war.
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[100] Next we come to the actions by land and by sea at the river
Eurymedon, between the Athenians with their allies, and the Medes,
when the Athenians won both battles on the same day under the
conduct of Cimon, son of Miltiades, and captured and destroyed the
whole Phoenician fleet, consisting of two hundred vessels. Some time
afterwards occurred the defection of the Thasians, caused by
disagreements about the marts on the opposite coast of Thrace, and
about the mine in their possession. Sailing with a fleet to Thasos,
the Athenians defeated them at sea and effected a landing on the
island. About the same time they sent ten thousand settlers of their
own citizens and the allies to settle the place then called Ennea
Hodoi or Nine Ways, now Amphipolis. They succeeded in gaining
possession of Ennea Hodoi from the Edonians, but on advancing into the
interior of Thrace were cut off in Drabescus, a town of the
Edonians, by the assembled Thracians, who regarded the settlement of
the place Ennea Hodoi as an act of hostility.
[101] Meanwhile the Thasians
being defeated in the field and suffering siege, appealed to
Lacedaemon, and desired her to assist them by an invasion of Attica.
Without informing Athens, she promised and intended to do so, but
was prevented by the occurrence of the earthquake, accompanied by
the secession of the Helots and the Thuriats and Aethaeans of the
Perioeci to Ithome. Most of the Helots were the descendants of the old
Messenians that were enslaved in the famous war; and so all of them
came to be called Messenians. So the Lacedaemonians being engaged in a
war with the rebels in Ithome, the Thasians in the third year of the
siege obtained terms from the Athenians by razing their walls,
delivering up their ships, and arranging to pay the moneys demanded at
once, and tribute in future; giving up their possessions on the
continent together with the mine.
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[102] The Lacedaemonians, meanwhile, finding the war against the rebels in
Ithome likely to last, invoked the aid of their allies, and especially
of the Athenians, who came in some force under the command of Cimon.
The reason for this pressing summons lay in their reputed skill in
siege operations; a long siege had taught the Lacedaemonians their own
deficiency in this art, else they would have taken the place by
assault. The first open quarrel between the Lacedaemonians and
Athenians arose out of this expedition. The Lacedaemonians, when
assault failed to take the place, apprehensive of the enterprising and
revolutionary character of the Athenians, and further looking upon
them as of alien extraction, began to fear that, if they remained,
they might be tempted by the besieged in Ithome to attempt some
political changes. They accordingly dismissed them alone of the
allies, without declaring their suspicions, but merely saying that
they had now no need of them. But the Athenians, aware that their
dismissal did not proceed from the more honourable reason of the
two, but from suspicions which had been conceived, went away deeply
offended, and conscious of having done nothing to merit such treatment
from the Lacedaemonians; and the instant that they returned home
they broke off the alliance which had been made against the Mede,
and allied themselves with Sparta's enemy Argos; each of the
contracting parties taking the same oaths and making the same alliance
with the Thessalians.
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[103] Meanwhile the rebels in Ithome, unable to prolong further a ten
years' resistance, surrendered to Lacedaemon; the conditions being
that they should depart from Peloponnese under safe conduct, and
should never set foot in it again: any one who might hereafter be
found there was to be the slave of his captor. It must be known that
the Lacedaemonians had an old oracle from Delphi, to the effect that
they should let go the suppliant of Zeus at Ithome. So they went forth
with their children and their wives, and being received by Athens from
the hatred that she now felt for the Lacedaemonians, were located at
Naupactus, which she had lately taken from the Ozolian Locrians. The
Athenians received another addition to their confederacy in the
Megarians; who left the Lacedaemonian alliance, annoyed by a war about
boundaries forced on them by Corinth. The Athenians occupied Megara
and Pegae, and built the Megarians their long walls from the city to
Nisaea, in which they placed an Athenian garrison. This was the
principal cause of the Corinthians conceiving such a deadly hatred
against Athens.
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[104] Meanwhile Inaros, son of Psammetichus, a Libyan king of the
Libyans on the Egyptian border, having his headquarters at Marea,
the town above Pharos, caused a revolt of almost the whole of Egypt
from King Artaxerxes and, placing himself at its head, invited the
Athenians to his assistance. Abandoning a Cyprian expedition upon
which they happened to be engaged with two hundred ships of their
own and their allies, they arrived in Egypt and sailed from the sea
into the Nile, and making themselves masters of the river and
two-thirds of Memphis, addressed themselves to the attack of the
remaining third, which is called White Castle. Within it were Persians
and Medes who had taken refuge there, and Egyptians who had not joined
the rebellion.
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[105] Meanwhile the Athenians, making a descent from their fleet upon
Haliae, were engaged by a force of Corinthians and Epidaurians; and
the Corinthians were victorious. Afterwards the Athenians engaged
the Peloponnesian fleet off Cecruphalia; and the Athenians were
victorious. Subsequently war broke out between Aegina and Athens,
and there was a great battle at sea off Aegina between the Athenians
and Aeginetans, each being aided by their allies; in which victory
remained with the Athenians, who took seventy of the enemy's ships,
and landed in the country and commenced a siege under the command of
Leocrates, son of Stroebus. Upon this the Peloponnesians, desirous
of aiding the Aeginetans, threw into Aegina a force of three hundred
heavy infantry, who had before been serving with the Corinthians and
Epidaurians. Meanwhile the Corinthians and their allies occupied the
heights of Geraneia, and marched down into the Megarid, in the
belief that, with a large force absent in Aegina and Egypt, Athens
would be unable to help the Megarians without raising the siege of
Aegina. But the Athenians, instead of moving the army of Aegina,
raised a force of the old and young men that had been left in the
city, and marched into the Megarid under the command of Myronides.
After a drawn battle with the Corinthians, the rival hosts parted,
each with the impression that they had gained the victory. The
Athenians, however, if anything, had rather the advantage, and on
the departure of the Corinthians set up a trophy. Urged by the
taunts of the elders in their city, the Corinthians made their
preparations, and about twelve days afterwards came and set up their
trophy as victors.
[106] Sallying out from Megara, the Athenians cut off the
party that was employed in erecting the trophy, and engaged and
defeated the rest. In the retreat of the vanquished army, a
considerable division, pressed by the pursuers and mistaking the road,
dashed into a field on some private property, with a deep trench all
round it, and no way out. Being acquainted with the place, the
Athenians hemmed their front with heavy infantry and, placing the
light troops round in a circle, stoned all who had gone in. Corinth
here suffered a severe blow. The bulk of her army continued its
retreat home.
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[107] About this time the Athenians began to build the long walls to the
sea, that towards Phalerum and that towards Piraeus. Meanwhile the
Phocians made an expedition against Doris, the old home of the
Lacedaemonians, containing the towns of Boeum, Kitinium, and
Erineum. They had taken one of these towns, when the Lacedaemonians
under Nicomedes, son of Cleombrotus, commanding for King
Pleistoanax, son of Pausanias, who was still a minor, came to the
aid of the Dorians with fifteen hundred heavy infantry of their own,
and ten thousand of their allies. After compelling the Phocians to
restore the town on conditions, they began their retreat. The route by
sea, across the Crissaean Gulf, exposed them to the risk of being
stopped by the Athenian fleet; that across Geraneia seemed scarcely
safe, the Athenians holding Megara and Pegae. For the pass was a
difficult one, and was always guarded by the Athenians; and, in the
present instance, the Lacedaemonians had information that they meant
to dispute their passage. So they resolved to remain in Boeotia, and
to consider which would be the safest line of march. They had also
another reason for this resolve. Secret encouragement had been given
them by a party in Athens, who hoped to put an end to the reign of
democracy and the building of the Long Walls.
[108] Meanwhile the
Athenians marched against them with their whole levy and a thousand
Argives and the respective contingents of the rest of their allies.
Altogether they were fourteen thousand strong. The march was
prompted by the notion that the Lacedaemonians were at a loss how to
effect their passage, and also by suspicions of an attempt to
overthrow the democracy. Some cavalry also joined the Athenians from
their Thessalian allies; but these went over to the Lacedaemonians
during the battle.
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The battle was fought at Tanagra in Boeotia. After heavy loss on
both sides, victory declared for the Lacedaemonians and their
allies. After entering the Megarid and cutting down the fruit trees,
the Lacedaemonians returned home across Geraneia and the isthmus.
Sixty-two days after the battle the Athenians marched into Boeotia
under the command of Myronides, defeated the Boeotians in battle at
Oenophyta, and became masters of Boeotia and Phocis. They dismantled
the walls of the Tanagraeans, took a hundred of the richest men of the
Opuntian Locrians as hostages, and finished their own long walls. This
was followed by the surrender of the Aeginetans to Athens on
conditions; they pulled down their walls, gave up their ships, and
agreed to pay tribute in future. The Athenians sailed round
Peloponnese under Tolmides, son of Tolmaeus, burnt the arsenal of
Lacedaemon, took Chalcis, a town of the Corinthians, and in a
descent upon Sicyon defeated the Sicyonians in battle.
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[109] Meanwhile the Athenians in Egypt and their allies were still
there, and encountered all the vicissitudes of war. First the
Athenians were masters of Egypt, and the King sent Megabazus a Persian
to Lacedaemon with money to bribe the Peloponnesians to invade
Attica and so draw off the Athenians from Egypt. Finding that the
matter made no progress, and that the money was only being wasted,
he recalled Megabazus with the remainder of the money, and sent
Megabuzus, son of Zopyrus, a Persian, with a large army to Egypt.
Arriving by land he defeated the Egyptians and their allies in a
battle, and drove the Hellenes out of Memphis, and at length shut them
up in the island of Prosopitis, where he besieged them for a year
and six months. At last, draining the canal of its waters, which he
diverted into another channel, he left their ships high and dry and
joined most of the island to the mainland, and then marched over on
foot and captured it.
[110] Thus the enterprise of the Hellenes came to ruin
after six years of war. Of all that large host a few travelling
through Libya reached Cyrene in safety, but most of them perished. And
thus Egypt returned to its subjection to the King, except Amyrtaeus,
the king in the marshes, whom they were unable to capture from the
extent of the marsh; the marshmen being also the most warlike of the
Egyptians. Inaros, the Libyan king, the sole author of the Egyptian
revolt, was betrayed, taken, and crucified. Meanwhile a relieving
squadron of fifty vessels had sailed from Athens and the rest of the
confederacy for Egypt. They put in to shore at the Mendesian mouth
of the Nile, in total ignorance of what had occurred. Attacked on
the land side by the troops, and from the sea by the Phoenician
navy, most of the ships were destroyed; the few remaining being
saved by retreat. Such was the end of the great expedition of the
Athenians and their allies to Egypt.
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[111] Meanwhile Orestes, son of Echecratidas, the Thessalian king, being
an exile from Thessaly, persuaded the Athenians to restore him. Taking
with them the Boeotians and Phocians their allies, the Athenians
marched to Pharsalus in Thessaly. They became masters of the
country, though only in the immediate vicinity of the camp; beyond
which they could not go for fear of the Thessalian cavalry. But they
failed to take the city or to attain any of the other objects of their
expedition, and returned home with Orestes without having effected
anything. Not long after this a thousand of the Athenians embarked
in the vessels that were at Pegae (Pegae, it must be remembered, was
now theirs), and sailed along the coast to Sicyon under the command of
Pericles, son of Xanthippus. Landing in Sicyon and defeating the
Sicyonians who engaged them, they immediately took with them the
Achaeans and, sailing across, marched against and laid siege to
Oeniadae in Acarnania. Failing however to take it, they returned home.
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[112] Three years afterwards a truce was made between the Peloponnesians
and Athenians for five years. Released from Hellenic war, the
Athenians made an expedition to Cyprus with two hundred vessels of
their own and their allies, under the command of Cimon. Sixty of these
were detached to Egypt at the instance of Amyrtaeus, the king in the
marshes; the rest laid siege to Kitium, from which, however, they were
compelled to retire by the death of Cimon and by scarcity of
provisions. Sailing off Salamis in Cyprus, they fought with the
Phoenicians, Cyprians, and Cilicians by land and sea, and, being
victorious on both elements departed home, and with them the
returned squadron from Egypt. After this the Lacedaemonians marched
out on a sacred war, and, becoming masters of the temple at Delphi, it
in the hands of the Delphians. Immediately after their retreat, the
Athenians marched out, became masters of the temple, and placed it
in the hands of the Phocians.
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[113] Some time after this, Orchomenus, Chaeronea, and some other places
in Boeotia being in the hands of the Boeotian exiles, the Athenians
marched against the above-mentioned hostile places with a thousand
Athenian heavy infantry and the allied contingents, under the
command of Tolmides, son of Tolmaeus. They took Chaeronea, and made
slaves of the inhabitants, and, leaving a garrison, commenced their
return. On their road they were attacked at Coronea by the Boeotian
exiles from Orchomenus, with some Locrians and Euboean exiles, and
others who were of the same way of thinking, were defeated in
battle, and some killed, others taken captive. The Athenians evacuated
all Boeotia by a treaty providing for the recovery of the men; and the
exiled Boeotians returned, and with all the rest regained their
independence.
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[114] This was soon afterwards followed by the revolt of Euboea from
Athens. Pericles had already crossed over with an army of Athenians to
the island, when news was brought to him that Megara had revolted,
that the Peloponnesians were on the point of invading Attica, and that
the Athenian garrison had been cut off by the Megarians, with the
exception of a few who had taken refuge in Nisaea. The Megarians had
introduced the Corinthians, Sicyonians, and Epidaurians into the
town before they revolted. Meanwhile Pericles brought his army back in
all haste from Euboea. After this the Peloponnesians marched into
Attica as far as Eleusis and Thrius, ravaging the country under the
conduct of King Pleistoanax, the son of Pausanias, and without
advancing further returned home /114.1/. The Athenians then crossed over again
to Euboea under the command of Pericles, and subdued the whole of
the island: all but Histiaea was settled by convention; the Histiaeans
they expelled from their homes, and occupied their territory
themselves.
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[115] Not long after their return from Euboea, they made a truce with
the Lacedaemonians and their allies for thirty years, giving up the
posts which they occupied in Peloponnese--Nisaea, Pegae, Troezen, and
Achaia. In the sixth year of the truce, war broke out between the
Samians and Milesians about Priene. Worsted in the war, the
Milesians came to Athens with loud complaints against the Samians.
In this they were joined by certain private persons from Samos itself,
who wished to revolutionize the government. Accordingly the
Athenians sailed to Samos with forty ships and set up a democracy;
took hostages from the Samians, fifty boys and as many men, lodged
them in Lemnos, and after leaving a garrison in the island returned
home. But some of the Samians had not remained in the island, but
had fled to the continent. Making an agreement with the most
powerful of those in the city, and an alliance with Pissuthnes, son of
Hystaspes, the then satrap of Sardis, they got together a force of
seven hundred mercenaries, and under cover of night crossed over to
Samos. Their first step was to rise on the commons, most of whom
they secured; their next to steal their hostages from Lemnos; after
which they revolted, gave up the Athenian garrison left with them
and its commanders to Pissuthnes, and instantly prepared for an
expedition against Miletus. The Byzantines also revolted with them.
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[116] As soon as the Athenians heard the news, they sailed with sixty
ships against Samos. Sixteen of these went to Caria to look out for
the Phoenician fleet, and to Chios and Lesbos carrying round orders
for reinforcements, and so never engaged; but forty-four ships under
the command of Pericles with nine colleagues gave battle, off the
island of Tragia, to seventy Samian vessels, of which twenty were
transports, as they were sailing from Miletus. Victory remained with
the Athenians. Reinforced afterwards by forty ships from Athens, and
twenty-five Chian and Lesbian vessels, the Athenians landed, and
having the superiority by land invested the city with three walls;
it was also invested from the sea. Meanwhile Pericles took sixty ships
from the blockading squadron, and departed in haste for Caunus and
Caria, intelligence having been brought in of the approach of the
Phoenician fleet to the aid of the Samians; indeed Stesagoras and
others had left the island with five ships to bring them.
[117] But in the
meantime the Samians made a sudden sally, and fell on the camp,
which they found unfortified. Destroying the look-out vessels, and
engaging and defeating such as were being launched to meet them,
they remained masters of their own seas for fourteen days, and carried
in and carried out what they pleased. But on the arrival of
Pericles, they were once more shut up. Fresh reinforcements afterwards
arrived--forty ships from Athens with Thucydides, Hagnon, and
Phormio; twenty with Tlepolemus and Anticles, and thirty vessels
from Chios and Lesbos. After a brief attempt at fighting, the Samians,
unable to hold out, were reduced after a nine months' siege and
surrendered on conditions; they razed their walls, gave hostages,
delivered up their ships, and arranged to pay the expenses of the
war by instalments. The Byzantines also agreed to be subject as
before.
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THE ALLIED CONGRESS AT SPARTA, 432 B.C.
(chapters 118 through 125)
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[118] After this, though not many years later, we at length come to what
has been already related, the affairs of Corcyra and Potidaea, and the
events that served as a pretext for the present war. All these actions
of the Hellenes against each other and the barbarian occurred in the
fifty years' interval between the retreat of Xerxes and the
beginning of the present war. During this interval the Athenians
succeeded in placing their empire on a firmer basis, and advanced
their own home power to a very great height. The Lacedaemonians,
though fully aware of it, opposed it only for a little while, but
remained inactive during most of the period, being of old slow to go
to war except under the pressure of necessity, and in the present
instance being hampered by wars at home; until the growth of the
Athenian power could be no longer ignored, and their own confederacy
became the object of its encroachments. They then felt that they could
endure it no longer, but that the time had come for them to throw
themselves heart and soul upon the hostile power, and break it, if
they could, by commencing the present war. And though the
Lacedaemonians had made up their own minds on the fact of the breach
of the treaty and the guilt of the Athenians, yet they sent to
Delphi and inquired of the God whether it would be well with them if
they went to war; and, as it is reported, received from him the answer
that if they put their whole strength into the war, victory would be
theirs, and the promise that he himself would be with them, whether
invoked or uninvoked.
[119] Still they wished to summon their allies
again, and to take their vote on the propriety of making war. After
the ambassadors from the confederates had arrived and a congress had
been convened, they all spoke their minds, most of them denouncing the
Athenians and demanding that the war should begin. In particular the
Corinthians. They had before on their own account canvassed the cities
in detail to induce them to vote for the war, in the fear that it
might come too late to save Potidaea; they were present also on this
occasion, and came forward the last, and made the following speech:
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[120] "Fellow allies, we can no longer accuse the Lacedaemonians of having
failed in their duty: they have not only voted for war themselves, but
have assembled us here for that purpose. We say their duty, for
supremacy has its duties. Besides equitably administering private
interests, leaders are required to show a special care for the
common welfare in return for the special honours accorded to them by
all in other ways. For ourselves, all who have already had dealings
with the Athenians require no warning to be on their guard against
them. The states more inland and out of the highway of communication
should understand that, if they omit to support the coast powers,
the result will be to injure the transit of their produce for
exportation and the reception in exchange of their imports from the
sea; and they must not be careless judges of what is now said, as if
it had nothing to do with them, but must expect that the sacrifice
of the powers on the coast will one day be followed by the extension
of the danger to the interior, and must recognize that their own
interests are deeply involved in this discussion. For these reasons
they should not hesitate to exchange peace for war. If wise men remain
quiet, while they are not injured, brave men abandon peace for war
when they are injured, returning to an understanding on a favourable
opportunity: in fact, they are neither intoxicated by their success in
war, nor disposed to take an injury for the sake of the delightful
tranquillity of peace. Indeed, to falter for the sake of such delights
is, if you remain inactive, the quickest way of losing the sweets of
repose to which you cling; while to conceive extravagant pretensions
from success in war is to forget how hollow is the confidence by which
you are elated. For if many ill-conceived plans have succeeded through
the still greater fatuity of an opponent, many more, apparently well
laid, have on the contrary ended in disgrace. The confidence with
which we form our schemes is never completely justified in their
execution; speculation is carried on in safety, but, when it comes
to action, fear causes failure.
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[121] "To apply these rules to ourselves, if we are now kindling war it is
under the pressure of injury, with adequate grounds of complaint;
and after we have chastised the Athenians we will in season desist. We
have many reasons to expect success--first, superiority in numbers
and in military experience, and secondly our general and unvarying
obedience in the execution of orders. The naval strength which they
possess shall be raised by us from our respective antecedent
resources, and from the moneys at Olympia and Delphi. A loan from
these enables us to seduce their foreign sailors by the offer of
higher pay. For the power of Athens is more mercenary than national;
while ours will not be exposed to the same risk, as its strength
lies more in men than in money. A single defeat at sea is in all
likelihood their ruin: should they hold out, in that case there will
be the more time for us to exercise ourselves in naval matters; and as
soon as we have arrived at an equality in science, we need scarcely
ask whether we shall be their superiors in courage. For the advantages
that we have by nature they cannot acquire by education; while their
superiority in science must be removed by our practice. The money
required for these objects shall be provided by our contributions:
nothing indeed could be more monstrous than the suggestion that, while
their allies never tire of contributing for their own servitude, we
should refuse to spend for vengeance and self-preservation the
treasure which by such refusal we shall forfeit to Athenian rapacity
and see employed for our own ruin.
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[122] "We have also other ways of carrying on the war, such as revolt of
their allies, the surest method of depriving them of their revenues,
which are the source of their strength, and establishment of fortified
positions in their country, and various operations which cannot be
foreseen at present. For war of all things proceeds least upon
definite rules, but draws principally upon itself for contrivances
to meet an emergency; and in such cases the party who faces the
struggle and keeps his temper best meets with most security, and he
who loses his temper about it with correspondent disaster. Let us also
reflect that if it was merely a number of disputes of territory
between rival neighbours, it might be borne; but here we have an enemy
in Athens that is a match for our whole coalition, and more than a
match for any of its members; so that unless as a body and as
individual nationalities and individual cities we make an unanimous
stand against her, she will easily conquer us divided and in detail.
That conquest, terrible as it may sound, would, it must be known, have
no other end than slavery pure and simple; a word which Peloponnese
cannot even hear whispered without disgrace, or without disgrace see
so many states abused by one. Meanwhile the opinion would be either
that we were justly so used, or that we put up with it from cowardice,
and were proving degenerate sons in not even securing for ourselves
the freedom which our fathers gave to Hellas; and in allowing the
establishment in Hellas of a tyrant state, though in individual states
we think it our duty to put down sole rulers. And we do not know how
this conduct can be held free from three of the gravest failings, want
of sense, of courage, or of vigilance. For we do not suppose that
you have taken refuge in that contempt of an enemy which has proved so
fatal in so many instances--a feeling which from the numbers that it
has ruined has come to be called not contemptuous but contemptible.
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[123] "There is, however, no advantage in reflections on the past
further than may be of service to the present. For the future we
must provide by maintaining what the present gives us and redoubling
our efforts; it is hereditary to us to win virtue as the fruit of
labour, and you must not change the habit, even though you should have
a slight advantage in wealth and resources; for it is not right that
what was won in want should be lost in plenty; no, we must boldly
advance to the war for many reasons; the god has commanded it and
promised to be with us, and the rest of Hellas will all join in the
struggle, part from fear, part from interest. You will be the first to
break a treaty which the god, in advising us to go to war, judges to
be violated already, but rather to support a treaty that has been
outraged: indeed, treaties are broken not by resistance but by
aggression.
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[124] "Your position, therefore, from whatever quarter you may view it,
will amply justify you in going to war; and this step we recommend
in the interests of all, bearing in mind that identity of interest
is the surest of bonds, whether between states or individuals. Delay
not, therefore, to assist Potidaea, a Dorian city besieged by Ionians,
which is quite a reversal of the order of things; nor to assert the
freedom of the rest. It is impossible for us to wait any longer when
waiting can only mean immediate disaster for some of us, and, if it
comes to be known that we have conferred but do not venture to protect
ourselves, like disaster in the near future for the rest. Delay not,
fellow allies, but, convinced of the necessity of the crisis and the
wisdom of this counsel, vote for the war, undeterred by its
immediate terrors, but looking beyond to the lasting peace by which it
will be succeeded. Out of war peace gains fresh stability, but to
refuse to abandon repose for war is not so sure a method of avoiding
danger. We must believe that the tyrant city that has been established
in Hellas has been established against all alike, with a programme
of universal empire, part fulfilled, part in contemplation; let us
then attack and reduce it, and win future security for ourselves and
freedom for the Hellenes who are now enslaved."
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[125] Such were the words of the Corinthians. The Lacedaemonians, having
now heard all, give their opinion, took the vote of all the allied
states present in order, great and small alike; and the majority voted
for war. This decided, it was still impossible for them to commence at
once, from their want of preparation; but it was resolved that the
means requisite were to be procured by the different states, and
that there was to be no delay. And indeed, in spite of the time
occupied with the necessary arrangements, less than a year elapsed
before Attica was invaded, and the war openly begun.
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PAUSANIAS AND THEMISTOCLES (chapters 126 through 138)
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[126] This interval was spent in sending embassies to Athens charged
with complaints, in order to obtain as good a pretext for war as
possible, in the event of her paying no attention to them. The first
Lacedaemonian embassy was to order the Athenians to drive out the
curse of the goddess; the history of which is as follows. In former
generations there was an Athenian of the name of Cylon, a victor at
the Olympic games, of good birth and powerful position, who had
married a daughter of Theagenes, a Megarian, at that time tyrant of
Megara. Now this Cylon was inquiring at Delphi; when he was told by
the god to seize the Acropolis of Athens on the grand festival of
Zeus. Accordingly, procuring a force from Theagenes and persuading his
friends to join him, when the Olympic festival in Peloponnese came, he
seized the Acropolis, with the intention of making himself tyrant,
thinking that this was the grand festival of Zeus, and also an
occasion appropriate for a victor at the Olympic games. Whether the
grand festival that was meant was in Attica or elsewhere was a
question which he never thought of, and which the oracle did not offer
to solve. For the Athenians also have a festival which is called the
grand festival of Zeus Meilichios or Gracious, viz., the Diasia. It is
celebrated outside the city, and the whole people sacrifice not real
victims but a number of bloodless offerings peculiar to the country.
However, fancying he had chosen the right time, he made the attempt.
As soon as the Athenians perceived it, they flocked in, one and all,
from the country, and sat down, and laid siege to the citadel. But
as time went on, weary of the labour of blockade, most of them
departed; the responsibility of keeping guard being left to the nine
archons, with plenary powers to arrange everything according to
their good judgment. It must be known that at that time most political
functions were discharged by the nine archons. Meanwhile Cylon and his
besieged companions were distressed for want of food and water.
Accordingly Cylon and his brother made their escape; but the rest
being hard pressed, and some even dying of famine, seated themselves
as suppliants at the altar in the Acropolis. The Athenians who were
charged with the duty of keeping guard, when they saw them at the
point of death in the temple, raised them up on the understanding that
no harm should be done to them, led them out, and slew them. Some
who as they passed by took refuge at the altars of the awful goddesses
were dispatched on the spot. From this deed the men who killed them
were called accursed and guilty against the goddess, they and their
descendants. Accordingly these cursed ones were driven out by the
Athenians, driven out again by Cleomenes of Lacedaemon and an Athenian
faction; the living were driven out, and the bones of the dead were
taken up; thus they were cast out. For all that, they came back
afterwards, and their descendants are still in the city.
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[127] This, then was the curse that the Lacedaemonians ordered them to
drive out. They were actuated primarily, as they pretended, by a
care for the honour of the gods; but they also know that Pericles, son
of Xanthippus, was connected with the curse on his mother's side,
and they thought that his banishment would materially advance their
designs on Athens. Not that they really hoped to succeed in
procuring this; they rather thought to create a prejudice against
him in the eyes of his countrymen from the feeling that the war
would be partly caused by his misfortune. For being the most
powerful man of his time, and the leading Athenian statesman, he
opposed the Lacedaemonians in everything, and would have no
concessions, but ever urged the Athenians on to war.
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[128] The Athenians retorted by ordering the Lacedaemonians to drive out
the curse of Taenarus. The Lacedaemonians had once raised up some
Helot suppliants from the temple of Poseidon at Taenarus, led them
away and slain them; for which they believe the great earthquake at
Sparta to have been a retribution. The Athenians also ordered them
to drive out the curse of the goddess of the Brazen House; the history
of which is as follows. After Pausanias the Lacedaemonian had been
recalled by the Spartans from his command in the Hellespont (this is
his first recall), and had been tried by them and acquitted, not being
again sent out in a public capacity, he took a galley of Hermione on
his own responsibility, without the authority of the Lacedaemonians,
and arrived as a private person in the Hellespont. He came
ostensibly for the Hellenic war, really to carry on his intrigues with
the King, which he had begun before his recall, being ambitious of
reigning over Hellas. The circumstance which first enabled him to
lay the King under an obligation, and to make a beginning of the whole
design, was this. Some connections and kinsmen of the King had been
taken in Byzantium, on its capture from the Medes, when he was first
there, after the return from Cyprus. These captives he sent off to the
King without the knowledge of the rest of the allies, the account
being that they had escaped from him. He managed this with the help of
Gongylus, an Eretrian, whom he had placed in charge of Byzantium and
the prisoners. He also gave Gongylus a letter for the King, the
contents of which were as follows, as was afterwards discovered:
"Pausanias, the general of Sparta, anxious to do you a favour, sends
you these his prisoners of war. I propose also, with your approval, to
marry your daughter, and to make Sparta and the rest of Hellas subject
to you. I may say that I think I am able to do this, with your
co-operation. Accordingly if any of this please you, send a safe man
to the sea through whom we may in future conduct our correspondence."
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[129] This was all that was revealed in the writing, and Xerxes was
pleased with the letter. He sent off Artabazus, son of Pharnaces, to
the sea with orders to supersede Megabates, the previous governor in
the satrapy of Daskylion, and to send over as quickly as possible to
Pausanias at Byzantium a letter which he entrusted to him; to show him
the royal signet, and to execute any commission which he might receive
from Pausanias on the King's matters with all care and fidelity.
Artabazus on his arrival carried the King's orders into effect, and
sent over the letter, which contained the following answer: "Thus
saith King Xerxes to Pausanias. For the men whom you have saved for me
across sea from Byzantium, an obligation is laid up for you in our
house, recorded for ever; and with your proposals I am well pleased.
Let neither night nor day stop you from diligently performing any of
your promises to me; neither for cost of gold nor of silver let them
be hindered, nor yet for number of troops, wherever it may be that
their presence is needed; but with Artabazus, an honourable man whom I
send you, boldly advance my objects and yours, as may be most for
the honour and interest of us both."
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[130] Before held in high honour by the Hellenes as the hero of Plataea,
Pausanias, after the receipt of this letter, became prouder than ever,
and could no longer live in the usual style, but went out of Byzantium
in a Median dress, was attended on his march through Thrace by a
bodyguard of Medes and Egyptians, kept a Persian table, and was
quite unable to contain his intentions, but betrayed by his conduct in
trifles what his ambition looked one day to enact on a grander
scale. He also made himself difficult of access, and displayed so
violent a temper to every one without exception that no one could come
near him. Indeed, this was the principal reason why the confederacy
went over to the Athenians.
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[131] The above-mentioned conduct, coming to the ears of the
Lacedaemonians, occasioned his first recall. And after his second
voyage out in the ship of Hermione, without their orders, he gave
proofs of similar behaviour. Besieged and expelled from Byzantium by
the Athenians, he did not return to Sparta; but news came that he
had settled at Colonae in the Troad, and was intriguing with the
barbarians, and that his stay there was for no good purpose; and the
ephors, now no longer hesitating, sent him a herald and a scytale with
orders to accompany the herald or be declared a public enemy.
Anxious above everything to avoid suspicion, and confident that he
could quash the charge by means of money, he returned a second time to
Sparta. At first thrown into prison by the ephors (whose powers enable
them to do this to the King), soon compromised the matter and came out
again, and offered himself for trial to any who wished to institute an
inquiry concerning him.
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[132] Now the Spartans had no tangible proof against him--neither his
enemies nor the nation--of that indubitable kind required for the
punishment of a member of the royal family, and at that moment in high
office; he being regent for his first cousin King Pleistarchus,
Leonidas's son, who was still a minor. But by his contempt of the laws
and imitation of the barbarians, he gave grounds for much suspicion of
his being discontented with things established; all the occasions on
which he had in any way departed from the regular customs were
passed in review, and it was remembered that he had taken upon himself
to have inscribed on the tripod at Delphi, which was dedicated by
the Hellenes as the first-fruits of the spoil of the Medes, the
following couplet:
The Mede defeated, great Pausanias raised
This monument, that Phoebus might be praised.
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At the time the Lacedaemonians had at once erased the couplet, and
inscribed the names of the cities that had aided in the overthrow of
the barbarian and dedicated the offering. Yet it was considered that
Pausanias had here been guilty of a grave offence, which,
interpreted by the light of the attitude which he had since assumed,
gained a new significance, and seemed to be quite in keeping with
his present schemes. Besides, they were informed that he was even
intriguing with the Helots; and such indeed was the fact, for he
promised them freedom and citizenship if they would join him in
insurrection and would help him to carry out his plans to the end.
Even now, mistrusting the evidence even of the Helots themselves,
the ephors would not consent to take any decided step against him;
in accordance with their regular custom towards themselves, namely, to
be slow in taking any irrevocable resolve in the matter of a Spartan
citizen without indisputable proof. At last, it is said, the person
who was going to carry to Artabazus the last letter for the King, a
man of Argilus, once the favourite and most trusty servant of
Pausanias, turned informer. Alarmed by the reflection that none of the
previous messengers had ever returned, having counterfeited the
seal, in order that, if he found himself mistaken in his surmises,
or if Pausanias should ask to make some correction, he might not be
discovered, he undid the letter, and found the postscript that he
had suspected, viz. an order to put him to death.
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[133] On being shown the letter, the ephors now felt more certain.
Still, they wished to hear Pausanias commit himself with their own
ears. Accordingly the man went by appointment to Taenarus as a
suppliant, and there built himself a hut divided into two by a
partition; within which he concealed some of the ephors and let them
hear the whole matter plainly. For Pausanias came to him and asked him
the reason of his suppliant position; and the man reproached him
with the order that he had written concerning him, and one by one
declared all the rest of the circumstances, how he who had never yet
brought him into any danger, while employed as agent between him and
the King, was yet just like the mass of his servants to be rewarded
with death. Admitting all this, and telling him not to be angry
about the matter, Pausanias gave him the pledge of raising him up from
the temple, and begged him to set off as quickly as possible, and
not to hinder the business in hand.
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[134] The ephors listened carefully, and then departed, taking no action
for the moment, but, having at last attained to certainty, were
preparing to arrest him in the city. It is reported that, as he was
about to be arrested in the street, he saw from the face of one of the
ephors what he was coming for; another, too, made him a secret signal,
and betrayed it to him from kindness. Setting off with a run for the
temple of the goddess of the Brazen House, the enclosure of which
was near at hand, he succeeded in taking sanctuary before they took
him, and entering into a small chamber, which formed part of the
temple, to avoid being exposed to the weather, lay still there. The
ephors, for the moment distanced in the pursuit, afterwards took off
the roof of the chamber, and having made sure that he was inside, shut
him in, barricaded the doors, and staying before the place, reduced
him by starvation. When they found that he was on the point of
expiring, just as he was, in the chamber, they brought him out of
the temple, while the breath was still in him, and as soon as he was
brought out he died. They were going to throw him into the Kaiadas,
where they cast criminals, but finally decided to inter him
somewhere near. But the god at Delphi afterwards ordered the
Lacedaemonians to remove the tomb to the place of his death--where he
now lies in the consecrated ground, as an inscription on a monument
declares--and, as what had been done was a curse to them, to give
back two bodies instead of one to the goddess of the Brazen House.
[135] So they had two brazen statues made, and dedicated them as a
substitute for Pausanias. the Athenians retorted by telling the
Lacedaemonians to drive out what the god himself had pronounced to
be a curse.
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To return to the Medism of Pausanias. Matter was found in the course
of the inquiry to implicate Themistocles; and the Lacedaemonians
accordingly sent envoys to the Athenians and required them to punish
him as they had punished Pausanias. The Athenians consented to do
so. But he had, as it happened, been ostracized, and, with a residence
at Argos, was in the habit of visiting other parts of Peloponnese.
So they sent with the Lacedaemonians, who were ready to join in the
pursuit, persons with instructions to take him wherever they found
him.
[136] But Themistocles got scent of their intentions, and fled from
Peloponnese to Corcyra, which was under obligations towards him. But
the Corcyraeans alleged that they could not venture to shelter him
at the cost of offending Athens and Lacedaemon, and they conveyed
him over to the continent opposite. Pursued by the officers who hung
on the report of his movements, at a loss where to turn, he was
compelled to stop at the house of Admetus, the Molossian king,
though they were not on friendly terms. Admetus happened not to be
indoors, but his wife, to whom he made himself a suppliant, instructed
him to take their child in his arms and sit down by the hearth. Soon
afterwards Admetus came in, and Themistocles told him who he was,
and begged him not to revenge on Themistocles in exile any
opposition which his requests might have experienced from Themistocles
at Athens. Indeed, he was now far too low for his revenge; retaliation
was only honourable between equals. Besides, his opposition to the
king had only affected the success of a request, not the safety of his
person; if the king were to give him up to the pursuers that he
mentioned, and the fate which they intended for him, he would just
be consigning him to certain death.
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[137] The King listened to him and raised him up with his son, as he was
sitting with him in his arms after the most effectual method of
supplication, and on the arrival of the Lacedaemonians not long
afterwards, refused to give him up for anything they could say, but
sent him off by land to the other sea to Pydna in Alexander's
dominions, as he wished to go to the Persian king. There he met with a
merchantman on the point of starting for Ionia. Going on board, he was
carried by a storm to the Athenian squadron which was blockading
Naxos. In his alarm--he was luckily unknown to the people in the
vessel--he told the master who he was and what he was flying for, and
said that, if he refused to save him, he would declare that he was
taking him for a bribe. Meanwhile their safety consisted in letting no
one leave the ship until a favourable time for sailing should arise.
If he complied with his wishes, he promised him a proper recompense.
The master acted as he desired, and, after lying to for a day and a
night out of reach of the squadron, at length arrived at Ephesus.
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After having rewarded him with a present of money, as soon as he
received some from his friends at Athens and from his secret hoards at
Argos, Themistocles started inland with one of the coast Persians, and
sent a letter to King Artaxerxes, Xerxes's son, who had just come to
the throne. Its contents were as follows:
"I, Themistocles, am come to
you, who did your house more harm than any of the Hellenes, when I was
compelled to defend myself against your father's invasion--harm,
however, far surpassed by the good that I did him during his
retreat, which brought no danger for me but much for him. For the
past, you are a good turn in my debt"--here he mentioned the warning
sent to Xerxes from Salamis to retreat, as well as his finding the
bridges unbroken, which, as he falsely pretended, was due to him--
"for the present, able to do you great service, I am here, pursued
by the Hellenes for my friendship for you. However, I desire a
year's grace, when I shall be able to declare in person the objects of
my coming."
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[138] It is said that the King approved his intention, and told him to
do as he said. He employed the interval in making what progress he
could in the study of the Persian tongue, and of the customs of the
country. Arrived at court at the end of the year, he attained to
very high consideration there, such as no Hellene has ever possessed
before or since; partly from his splendid antecedents, partly from the
hopes which he held out of effecting for him the subjugation of
Hellas, but principally by the proof which experience daily gave of
his capacity. For Themistocles was a man who exhibited the most
indubitable signs of genius; indeed, in this particular he has a claim
on our admiration quite extraordinary and unparalleled. By his own
native capacity, alike unformed and unsupplemented by study, he was at
once the best judge in those sudden crises which admit of little or of
no deliberation, and the best prophet of the future, even to its
most distant possibilities. An able theoretical expositor of all
that came within the sphere of his practice, he was not without the
power of passing an adequate judgment in matters in which he had no
experience. He could also excellently divine the good and evil which
lay hid in the unseen future. In fine, whether we consider the
extent of his natural powers, or the slightness of his application,
this extraordinary man must be allowed to have surpassed all others in
the faculty of intuitively meeting an emergency.
Disease was the
real cause of his death; though there is a story of his having ended
his life by poison, on finding himself unable to fulfil his promises
to the king. However this may be, there is a monument to him in the
marketplace of Asiatic Magnesia. He was governor of the district,
the King having given him Magnesia, which brought in fifty talents a
year, for bread, Lampsacus, which was considered to be the richest
wine country, for wine, and Myos for other provisions. His bones, it
is said, were conveyed home by his relatives in accordance with his
wishes, and interred in Attic ground. This was done without the
knowledge of the Athenians; as it is against the law to bury in Attica
an outlaw for treason. So ends the history of Pausanias and
Themistocles, the Lacedaemonian and the Athenian, the most famous
men of their time in Hellas.
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THE SPARTAN ULTIMATUM AND PERICLES' REPLY, 432-431 B.C.
(chapters 139 through 145)
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[139] To return to the Lacedaemonians. The history of their first embassy,
the injunctions which it conveyed, and the rejoinder which it
provoked, concerning the expulsion of the accursed persons, have
been related already. It was followed by a second, which ordered
Athens to raise the siege of Potidaea, and to respect the independence
of Aegina. Above all, it gave her most distinctly to understand that
war might be prevented by the revocation of the Megara decree,
excluding the Megarians from the use of Athenian harbours and of the
market of Athens. But Athens was not inclined either to revoke the
decree, or to entertain their other proposals; she accused the
Megarians of pushing their cultivation into the consecrated ground and
the unenclosed land on the border, and of harbouring her runaway
slaves. At last an embassy arrived with the Lacedaemonian ultimatum.
The ambassadors were Ramphias, Melesippus, and Agesander. Not a word
was said on any of the old subjects; there was simply this:
"Lacedaemon wishes the peace to continue, and there is no reason why
it should not, if you would leave the Hellenes independent." Upon this
the Athenians held an assembly, and laid the matter before their
consideration. It was resolved to deliberate once for all on all their
demands, and to give them an answer. There were many speakers who came
forward and gave their support to one side or the other, urging the
necessity of war, or the revocation of the decree and the folly of
allowing it to stand in the way of peace. Among them came forward
Pericles, son of Xanthippus, the first man of his time at Athens,
ablest alike in counsel and in action, and gave the following advice:
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[140] "There is one principle, Athenians, which I hold to through
everything, and that is the principle of no concession to the
Peloponnesians. I know that the spirit which inspires men while they
are being persuaded to make war is not always retained in action; that
as circumstances change, resolutions change. Yet I see that now as
before the same, almost literally the same, counsel is demanded of me;
and I put it to those of you who are allowing yourselves to be
persuaded, to support the national resolves even in the case of
reverses, or to forfeit all credit for their wisdom in the event of
success. For sometimes the course of things is as arbitrary as the
plans of man; indeed this is why we usually blame chance for
whatever does not happen as we expected. Now it was clear before
that Lacedaemon entertained designs against us; it is still more clear
now. The treaty provides that we shall mutually submit our differences
to legal settlement, and that we shall meanwhile each keep what we
have. Yet the Lacedaemonians never yet made us any such offer, never
yet would accept from us any such offer; on the contrary, they wish
complaints to be settled by war instead of by negotiation; and in
the end we find them here dropping the tone of expostulation and
adopting that of command. They order us to raise the siege of
Potidaea, to let Aegina be independent, to revoke the Megara decree;
and they conclude with an ultimatum warning us to leave the Hellenes
independent. I hope that you will none of you think that we shall be
going to war for a trifle if we refuse to revoke the Megara decree,
which appears in front of their complaints, and the revocation of
which is to save us from war, or let any feeling of self-reproach
linger in your minds, as if you went to war for slight cause. Why,
this trifle contains the whole seal and trial of your resolution. If
you give way, you will instantly have to meet some greater demand,
as having been frightened into obedience in the first instance;
while a firm refusal will make them clearly understand that they
must treat you more as equals.
[141] Make your decision therefore at once,
either to submit before you are harmed, or if we are to go to war,
as I for one think we ought, to do so without caring whether the
ostensible cause be great or small, resolved against making
concessions or consenting to a precarious tenure of our possessions.
For all claims from an equal, urged upon a neighbour as commands
before any attempt at legal settlement, be they great or be they
small, have only one meaning, and that is slavery.
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"As to the war and the resources of either party, a detailed
comparison will not show you the inferiority of Athens. Personally
engaged in the cultivation of their land, without funds either private
or public, the Peloponnesians are also without experience in long wars
across sea, from the strict limit which poverty imposes on their
attacks upon each other. Powers of this description are quite
incapable of often manning a fleet or often sending out an army:
they cannot afford the absence from their homes, the expenditure
from their own funds; and besides, they have not command of the sea.
Capital, it must be remembered, maintains a war more than forced
contributions. Farmers are a class of men that are always more ready
to serve in person than in purse. Confident that the former will
survive the dangers, they are by no means so sure that the latter will
not be prematurely exhausted, especially if the war last longer than
they expect, which it very likely will. In a single battle the
Peloponnesians and their allies may be able to defy all Hellas, but
they are incapacitated from carrying on a war against a power
different in character from their own, by the want of the single
council-chamber requisite to prompt and vigorous action, and the
substitution of a diet composed of various races, in which every state
possesses an equal vote, and each presses its own ends, a condition of
things which generally results in no action at all. The great wish
of some is to avenge themselves on some particular enemy, the great
wish of others to save their own pocket. Slow in assembling, they
devote a very small fraction of the time to the consideration of any
public object, most of it to the prosecution of their own objects.
Meanwhile each fancies that no harm will come of his neglect, that
it is the business of somebody else to look after this or that for
him; and so, by the same notion being entertained by all separately,
the common cause imperceptibly decays.
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[142] "But the principal point is the hindrance that they will
experience from want of money. The slowness with which it comes in
will cause delay; but the opportunities of war wait for no man. Again,
we need not be alarmed either at the possibility of their raising
fortifications in Attica, or at their navy. It would be difficult
for any system of fortifications to establish a rival city, even in
time of peace, much more, surely, in an enemy's country, with Athens
just as much fortified against it as it against Athens; while a mere
post might be able to do some harm to the country by incursions and by
the facilities which it would afford for desertion, but can never
prevent our sailing into their country and raising fortifications
there, and making reprisals with our powerful fleet. For our naval
skill is of more use to us for service on land, than their military
skill for service at sea. Familiarity with the sea they will not
find an easy acquisition. If you who have been practising at it ever
since the Median invasion have not yet brought it to perfection, is
there any chance of anything considerable being effected by an
agricultural, unseafaring population, who will besides be prevented
from practising by the constant presence of strong squadrons of
observation from Athens? With a small squadron they might hazard an
engagement, encouraging their ignorance by numbers; but the
restraint of a strong force will prevent their moving, and through
want of practice they will grow more clumsy, and consequently more
timid. It must be kept in mind that seamanship, just like anything
else, is a matter of art, and will not admit of being taken up
occasionally as an occupation for times of leisure; on the contrary,
it is so exacting as to leave leisure for nothing else.
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[143] "Even if they were to touch the moneys at Olympia or Delphi, and try
to seduce our foreign sailors by the temptation of higher pay, that
would only be a serious danger if we could not still be a match for
them by embarking our own citizens and the aliens resident among us.
But in fact by this means we are always a match for them; and, best of
all, we have a larger and higher class of native coxswains and sailors
among our own citizens than all the rest of Hellas. And to say nothing
of the danger of such a step, none of our foreign sailors would
consent to become an outlaw from his country, and to take service with
them and their hopes, for the sake of a few days' high pay.
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"This, I think, is a tolerably fair account of the position of the
Peloponnesians; that of Athens is free from the defects that I have
criticized in them, and has other advantages of its own, which they
can show nothing to equal. If they march against our country we will
sail against theirs, and it will then be found that the desolation
of the whole of Attica is not the same as that of even a fraction of
Peloponnese; for they will not be able to supply the deficiency except
by a battle, while we have plenty of land both on the islands and
the continent. The rule of the sea is indeed a great matter.
Consider for a moment. Suppose that we were islanders; can you
conceive a more impregnable position? Well, this in future should,
as far as possible, be our conception of our position. Dismissing
all thought of our land and houses, we must vigilantly guard the sea
and the city. No irritation that we may feel for the former must
provoke us to a battle with the numerical superiority of the
Peloponnesians. A victory would only be succeeded by another battle
against the same superiority: a reverse involves the loss of our
allies, the source of our strength, who will not remain quiet a day
after we become unable to march against them. We must cry not over the
loss of houses and land but of men's lives; since houses and land do
not gain men, but men them. And if I had thought that I could persuade
you, I would have bid you go out and lay them waste with your own
hands, and show the Peloponnesians that this at any rate will not make
you submit.
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[144] "I have many other reasons to hope for a favourable issue, if you
can consent not to combine schemes of fresh conquest with the
conduct of the war, and will abstain from wilfully involving
yourselves in other dangers; indeed, I am more afraid of our own
blunders than of the enemy's devices. But these matters shall be
explained in another speech, as events require; for the present
dismiss these men with the answer that we will allow Megara the use of
our market and harbours, when the Lacedaemonians suspend their alien
acts in favour of us and our allies, there being nothing in the treaty
to prevent either one or the other: that we will leave the cities
independent, if independent we found them when we made the treaty, and
when the Lacedaemonians grant to their cities an independence not
involving subservience to Lacedaemonian interests, but such as each
severally may desire: that we are willing to give the legal
satisfaction which our agreements specify, and that we shall not
commence hostilities, but shall resist those who do commence them.
This is an answer agreeable at once to the rights and the dignity of
Athens. It must be thoroughly understood that war is a necessity;
but that the more readily we accept it, the less will be the ardour of
our opponents, and that out of the greatest dangers communities and
individuals acquire the greatest glory. Did not our fathers resist the
Medes not only with resources far different from ours, but even when
those resources had been abandoned; and more by wisdom than by
fortune, more by daring than by strength, did not they beat off the
barbarian and advance their affairs to their present height? We must
not fall behind them, but must resist our enemies in any way and in
every way, and attempt to hand down our power to our posterity
unimpaired."
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[145] Such were the words of Pericles. The Athenians, persuaded of the
wisdom of his advice, voted as he desired, and answered the
Lacedaemonians as he recommended, both on the separate points and in
the general; they would do nothing on dictation, but were ready to
have the complaints settled in a fair and impartial manner by the
legal method, which the terms of the truce prescribed. So the envoys
departed home and did not return again.
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These were the charges and differences existing between the rival
powers before the war, arising immediately from the affair at
Epidamnus and Corcyra. Still intercourse continued in spite of them,
and mutual communication. It was carried on without heralds, but not
without suspicion, as events were occurring which were equivalent to a
breach of the treaty and matter for war.
Here Ends Book I of Thucydides' History of the Peloponnesian War;
the history continues in Book II
NOTES.
/1.1/
Thucydides (c. 460 B.C.–c. 395 B.C.)
/1.2/
Peloponnesian War (431–404 BC) fought by Athens and its empire against the Peloponnesian League, led by Sparta; Thucydides reports
on the war from it's beginning through 411 B.C.
/3.1/
Hellen, mythological patriarch of the Hellenes, the son of Deucalion who in Greek mythology was the survivor, along with his wife Pyrrha, of the great flood.
/4.1/
Minos was mythical king of the island of Crete, son of Zeus and Europa. After his death, Minos became a judge of the dead in Hades
/13.1/
Corcyra (modern Corfu) is a Greek island in the Ionian Sea. It lies off the coast of Albania, from which it is separated by
straits varying in breadth from two to 15 miles. It was a colony of Corinth.
/14.1/
Persian War, also called Median War, refers to Persian invasions of the Greek mainland in 490 B.C. and in 480-479 B.C. as related by Herodotus in
his Histories).
/14.2/
Salamis. Island in Greece's Saronic Gulf, where
Themistocles defeated the Persian fleet in 480 B.C. Also the title of lost poem by Solon, urging Athenians
to fight to hold Salamis.
/114.1/
Plutarch (Life of Pericles, 22)
reports that Pericles bribed Cleandrides, the advisor to the Spartan king Pleistoanax,
to advise the king to quit Attica.
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