As for those in the quarries, the Syracusans treated them with cruelty during the first period of their captivity. For as they were in a hollow place, and many in a small compass, the sun, as well as the suffocating closeness, distressed them at first, in consequence of their not being under cover; and then, on the contrary, the nights coming on autumnal and cold, soon worked in them an alteration from health to disease, by means of the change. Since, too, in consequence of their want of room, they did everything in the same place; and the dead, moreover, were piled up on one another—such as died from their wounds, and from the change they had experienced, and such like. There were, besides, intolerable stenches; while at the same time they were tormented with hunger and thirst, for during eight months they gave each of them daily only a cotyle[56] of water, and two of corn. And of all the other miseries which it was likely that men thrown into such a place would suffer, there was none that did not fall to their lot. For some seventy days they thus lived all together; then the rest of them were sold, except the Athenians, and whatever Siceliots or Italians had joined them in the expedition.
The total number of those who were taken, though it were difficult to speak with exactness, was still not less than seven thousand. “And this,” says Thucydides in conclusion, “was the greatest Grecian exploit of all that were performed in this war; nay, in my opinion, of all Grecian achievements that we have heard of also; and was at once most splendid for the conquerors, and most disastrous for the conquered. For being altogether vanquished at all points, and having suffered in no slight degree in any respect, they were destroyed (as the saying is) with utter destruction, both army, and navy, and everything; and only a few out of many returned home. Such were the events which occurred in Sicily.”i
FOOTNOTES
[55] [Adolph Holm rates it at thirty thousand men.]
[56] The cotyle was a little more than half an English pint; and the allowance of food here mentioned was only half of that commonly given to a slave.
The Groves of the Academy
CHAPTER XXXVI. CLOSE OF THE PELOPONNESIAN WAR
In the populous and extensive kingdoms of modern Europe, the revolutions of public affairs seldom disturb the humble obscurity of private life; but the national transactions of Greece involved the interest of every family, and deeply affected the fortune and happiness of every individual. Had the arms of the Athenians proved successful in Sicily, each citizen would have derived from that event an immediate accession of wealth, as well as of power, and have felt a proportional increase of honour and security. But their proud hopes perished forever in the harbour of Syracuse. The succeeding disasters shook to the foundation the fabric of their empire.
In one rash enterprise they lost their army, their fleet, the prudence of their experienced generals, and the flourishing vigour of their manly youth—irreparable disasters which totally disabled them to resist the confederacy of Peloponnesus, reinforced by the resentment of a new and powerful enemy. While a Lacedæmonian army invested their city, they had reason to dread that a Syracusan fleet should assault the Piræus; that Athens must finally yield to these combined attacks, and her once prosperous citizens destroyed by the sword, or dragged into captivity, atone by their death or disgrace for the cruelties which they had recently inflicted on the wretched republics of Melos and Scione.
ATHENS AFTER THE SICILIAN DÉBACLE
The dreadful alternative of victory and defeat, renders it little surprising that the Athenians should have rejected intelligence, which they must have received with horror. The first messengers of such sad news were treated with contempt; but it was impossible long to withhold belief from the miserable fugitives, whose squalid and dejected countenances too faithfully attested the public calamity. Such evidence could not be refused; the arrogance of incredulity was abashed, and the whole republic thrown into consternation, or seized with despair. The venerable members of the Areopagus expressed the majesty of silent sorrow; but the piercing cries of woe extended many a mile along the lofty walls which joined the Piræus to the city; and the licentious populace raged with unbridled fury against the diviners and orators, whose blind predictions, and ambitious harangues, had promoted an expedition eternally fatal to their country.
The Athenian allies, or rather subjects, scattered over so many coasts and islands, prepared to assert their independence; the confederates of Sparta, among whom the Syracusans justly assumed the first rank, were unsatisfied with victory, and longed for revenge: even those communities which had hitherto declined the danger of a doubtful contest, meanly solicited to become parties in a war, which they expected must finally terminate in the destruction of Athens. Should all the efforts of such a powerful confederacy still prove insufficient to the ruin of the devoted city, there was yet another enemy behind, from whose strength and animosity the Athenians had everything to fear.
[425-413 B.C.]
The long and peaceful reign of Artaxerxes expired four hundred and twenty-five years before the Christian era. There followed a rapid succession of kings, Xerxes, Sogdianus, Ochus; the last of whom assumed the name of Darius, to which historians have added the epithet of Nothus, the bastard, to distinguish this effeminate prince from his illustrious predecessor. But in the ninth year of his reign Darius was roused from his lethargy by the revolt of Egypt and Lydia. The defection of the latter threatened to tear from his dominion the valuable provinces of Asia Minor; a consequence which he determined to prevent by employing the bravery of Pharnabazus, and the policy of the crafty Tissaphernes, to govern respectively the northern and southern districts of that rich and fertile peninsula. The abilities of these generals not only quelled the rebellion in Lydia, but extended the arms of their master towards the shores of the Ægean, as well as of the Hellespont and Propontis; in direct opposition to the treaty which forty years before had been ratified between the Athenians, then in the height of their prosperity, and the unwarlike Artaxerxes. But the recent misfortunes of that ambitious people flattered the Persian commanders with the hope of restoring the whole Asiatic coast to the Great King, as well as of inflicting exemplary punishment on the proud city, which had resisted the power, dismembered the empire, and tarnished the glory of Persia.
The terror of such a formidable combination might have reduced the Athenians to despair. Their disasters and disgrace in Sicily destroyed at once the real and the ideal supports of their power; the loss of one-third of their citizens made it impossible to supply, with fresh recruits, the exhausted strength of their garrisons in foreign parts; the terror of their fleet was no more; and their multiplied defeats, before the walls of Syracuse, had converted into contempt that admiration in which Athens had been long held by Greeks and barbarians.