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431 BC
HISTORY OF THE PELOPONNESIAN WAR
by Thucydides
translated by Richard Crawley
The First Book.
CHAPTER I.
The State of Greece from the earliest Times to the
Commencement of the Peloponnesian War
THUCYDIDES, an Athenian, wrote the history of the war between the
Peloponnesians and the Athenians, 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.
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.
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, 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.
Indeed, they could not unite for this expedition till they had
gained increased familiarity with the sea. 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, 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.
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. 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.
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.
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.
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.
And from this expedition we may infer the character of earlier
enterprises. 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. 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. 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.
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.
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; 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.
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, 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; and even these vessels had not complete decks.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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. 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.
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.
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.
CHAPTER II.
Causes of the War - The Affair of Epidamnus -
The Affair of Potidaea
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.
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.
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; 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.
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.
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.
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.
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:
"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.
"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.
"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.
"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.
"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. 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."
Such were the words of the Corcyraeans. After they had finished, the
Corinthians spoke as follows:
"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.
"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.
"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.
"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.
"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.
"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. 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."
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. 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.
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. 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.
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. 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.
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. 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.
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.
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."
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.
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.
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. 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.
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. 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.
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.
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.
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. 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.
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. 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.
CHAPTER III.
Congress of the Peloponnesian Confederacy
at Lacedaemon
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.
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:
"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?
"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.
"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.
"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.
"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."
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:
"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.
"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.
"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.
"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.
"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. 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.
"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."
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:
"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. 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.
"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.
"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.
"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. 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."
Such were the words of Archidamus. Last came forward Sthenelaidas,
one of the ephors for that year, and spoke to the Lacedaemonians as
follows:
"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."
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.
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.
CHAPTER IV.
From the end of the Persian to the beginning
of the Peloponnesian War - The Progress
from Supremacy to Empire
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.
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. 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.
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.
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.
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. 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.
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. 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 o |