D2

THUCYDIDES

History of the Pelopon~esian War

Translated by REX WARNER

with an Introduction and Notes by M. I. FINLEY

PENGUIN BOOKS

PENGUIN BOOKS

Published by the Penguin Group Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, U.S.A. Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario,

Canada M4P 2Y3 (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.) Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R ORL, England

Penguin Ireland, 25 St Stephen's Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd)

Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty Ltd}

Penguin Books India Pvt Ltd, II Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi- 110 017, India

Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, North Shore 0745, Auckland, New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd)

Penguin Books (South Mrica) (Pty) Ltd, 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa

Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R ORL, England

This translation first published 1954 Revised with a new introduction and appendices 1972

59 60

Translation copyright 1954 by Rex Warner Introduction and appendices copyright 10 M. I. Finley, 1972

All rights reserved

ISBN 978-0-14-044039-3

Printed in the United States of America Set in Monotype Bembo

Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher's prior consent in any form of binding or cover other

than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

The scanning, uploading and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law.

Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author's rights is appreciated.

CONTENTS

INTROOUCTION by M. 1. Fillfey

TRANSLATOR'S NOTU by Rex l{'amrr

BOOK I

Introduction The Dispute over Epidamnus The Dispute over Corcyra The Dispute over Potidaea The Debate at Sparta and Declaration of War The Pentecontaetia The Allied Congress at Sparta The Stories of Pausanias and Themistocles The Spartan Ultimatum and Pericles' Reply

BOOK II

Outbreak of War The First Year of the War Pericles' Funeral Oration The Plague The Policy of Pericles The Fall of Potidaea The Siege of Plataea Victories of Phormio Thrace and Macedonia

BOOK III

Revolt of Mytilene The Mytilenian Debate The End of Plataea Civil War in Corcyra Operations in Sicily and Greece End of Sixth Year of War

9

33

35 49 53 68 72

87 103 ro8 II8

124 136 143 151 156 165 168 173 187

194 212

223 .236 245 .255

34 TRANSLATOR'S NOTB

in the same dilemma, since he has taken over for himself the words of the great seventeenth-century philosopher. On such occasions I have usually followed his lead, and I have taken something from him, to(), in the knowledge that he would probably wish me to do so, just as my own ambitions would be gratified if some future translator were to see fit to employ some words or phrases of my own. Certainly I would not pretend that in this translation I have improved on Crawley. He is accurate, where Hobbes is not; he has a zeal and a love for his author; he has a clear, flowing, and distin­ guished style. I owe much to him and much to Hobbes, and for my own translation can claim no merit other than the questionable one of modernity. For it is more than three hundred years since Hobbes wrote and nearly eighty since the publication of Crawley's version. Thucydides himself is alive, and it would be a pity if any reader were deterred from studying him by any misapprehension about his antiquity.

Finally I must express my gratitude to Professor Kitto, of Bristol University, for his ·great kindness in reading the proofs, in detecting error, and in making many valuable suggestions.

R.W.

BOOK ONE

INTRODUCTION

1 THUCYDIDES the Athenian wrote the history of the war fought between Athens and Sparta, beginning the account at the very outbreak of the war, in the belief that it was going to be a great war and more worth writing about than any of those which had taken place in the past. My belief was based on the fact that the two sides were at the very height of their power and preparedness, and I saw, too, that the rest of the Hellenic world was committed to one side or the othe,r; even those who were not i~mediately engaged were deliberating on the courses which they were to take later. This was the reate t disturbance in the histor of the ~ting also a 3e part of the non-Hellenic worl4, and indeed, I might almost say, the whole of mankind. For though I have found it impossible, because of its remoteness in time, to acquire ·a really precise knowledge of the distant past or even of the history preceding our own pl·riod, yet, after looking back into it as far as I can, all the evidence leads me to conclude that these

E:.!ods were not great periods either in warfare or in anythin else.

:a It appears, for example, that the country now called Hellas 1 had no setded population in ancient times; instead there was a series of migrations, as the various tribes, being under the constant pressure of invaders who were stronger than they were, were always pre­ pared to abandon their own territory. There was no commerce, and no safe communication either by land or sea; the use they made of their land was limited to the production of necessities; they had no surplus left over for capital, and no regular system of

I. In the Greek language, ancient as well as modern, the name of the country is 'Hellas ', of the people 'Hellenes'. 'He lias' included all Greek communities, wherever they were established, but here Thucydides is referring more narrowly to the Greek peninsula.

36 BOOK ONB

agriculture, since they lacked the protection of fortifications and at any moment an invader might appear and take their land away from them. Thus, in the belief that the day-to-day necessities of life could be secured just as well in one place as in another, they showed no reluctance in moving from their homes, and therefore built no cities of any size or strength, nor acquired any important H'sources. Where the soil was most fertile there were the most frl"qucnt changes of population, as in what is now called Thessaly, m Boeotia, in most of the Peloponnese (except Arcadia), and in others of the richest parts of Hellas. For in these fertile districts it ~sier for individuals to secure greater powers than their neigh­ bours : this led to disunity, which often caused the collapse of tnese states, which in any case weremore likely than others to attract the ~f-foreign..invaderL._

It is interesting to' observe that Attica, which, because of the poverty of her soil, was remarkably free from political disunity, has always been inhabited by the same race of people. Indeed, this is an important example of my theory that it was because of migra­ tions that there was uneven development elsewhere; for when people were driven out from other parts of Greece by war or by disturbances, the most powerful of them took refuge in Athens, as bciug a stab~; then they became citizens, and soon ma<le the city even more populous than it had been before, with the n·sulr that later Attica bec:~mc too small for her inhabitants and colonies were Sl"nt out to Ionia.

3 Another point which seems to me good evidence for the welk- ncss of the early inhabitants of the country is this: we have no rl.'cord of any action taken by Hellas as a whole before the Trojan War. Indeed, my view is that at this time the whole country was not even called 'Hellas'. Before the time of Hellen, the son of Deucalion, the name did not exist at all, and different parts were known by the names of different tribes, with the name 'Pelasgian' predominating. After Hellen and his sons had grown powerful in Phthiotis and had been invited as allies into other states, these states separately and because of their connections with the family of Hellen began to be called 'Hellenic'. But it took a long time before the name ousted all the other names. The best evidence for this can be found in Homer, who, though he was born much later

Introduction 37

than the time of the Trojan War,2 nowhere uses the name 'Hellenic' for the whole force. Instead he keeps this name for the followers of Achilles who came from Phthiotis and were in fact the original Hellenes. For the rest in his poems he uses the words 'Danaans', 'Argives', and 'Achaeans'. He does not even use the term 'foreigners',J and this, in my opinion, is because in his time the Hellenes were not yet known by one name, and so marked off as something separate from the outside world. By 'Hellenic' I mean here both those who took on the name city by city, as the result of a common language, and those who later were all called by the common name. In an:y case these various Helleni~, weak in themselves and lackin in c · · ns with one an-

_5>the!:! _:ook no kind of collective action before the time o the Trojan War. And they could not have united even for the Trojan expedition unless they had previously acquired a greater know­ ledge o seafaring.

4 inos, according to tradition, was the first erson to organize a <navy. e controlled the greater part of what is now ca e t e - lenic Sea; 4 he ruled over the Cyclades, in most of which he founded the first colonies, putting his sons in as govemors after having driven out the Carians. And it is reasonable to ~uppose that he did his best to put down piracy iu order to secure his own revenues.

s For in these early times, as communication by sea became easier, so piracy became a common profession both among the Hellenes and among the barbarians who lived on the coast and in the islands. The leading pirates were powerful men, acting both out of self­ inrert•st and in order to support the weak among their own people. They would descend upon cities which were unprotected by walls and indeed consisted only of scattered settlements; and by plund~r­ ing ~uch places they would gain most of their livelihood. At this time such a rofession so far · ei ded as dis raceful, was considered quite honourable. It is an attitude that can e

2. As is pointed out in the Introduction, p. 17, Thucydides gives no date for the Trojan War.

J. Rex Warner regularly translates the Greek barbaroi by ' foreigners'. It should be noted that the Athenians, for example, would call other Greeks, such as Spartans or Corinthians, .xt11oi, which is also commonly rendered by 'foreigners'.

4· We now say 'Aegean Sea'.

38 BOOK ONB

illustrated even today by some of the inhabitants of the mainland aniong whom successful piracy is regarded as something to be proud of; and in the old poets, too, we find that the regular question always asked of dtose who arrive by sea is 'Are you pirates?' It is never assumed either that those who were so ques­ tioned would shrink from admitting the fact, or that those who were interested in finding out the fact would reproach them with it.

The same system of armed robbery prevailed by land; and even up to the present day much of Hellas still follows the old way of life - among the Ozolian Locrians, for instance, and the Aetolians and the Acamanians and the others who live on the mainland in that area. Among these people the custom of carrying arms still

6 survives from the old days of robbery; for at one time, since houses were unprotected and communications unsafe, this was a general custom throughout the whole of Hellas and it was the r;ormal thing to carry arms on all occasions, as it is now among foreigners. The fact that the peoples I have mentioned still live in this way is evidence that once this was the. general rule among all the Hellenes.

The Athenians were the first to give up the habit o~ C~!Yi~ weapons a1!.d-to...adopt a w~ of living that was more re axed an ~dous. In fact the elder men of the rich families who had these luxurious tastes only recently gave up wearing linen under­ garments and tying their hair behind their heads in a knot fastened with a clasp of golden grasshoppers: the same fashions spread to their kinsmen in Ionia, and lasted there among the old men for some time. It was the Spartans who first began to dress simply and in accordance with our modern taste, with the rich leading a life that was as much as possible like the life of the ordinary people. They, too, were the first to play games naked, to take off their clothes openly, and to rub themselves down with olive oil after their exercise. In ancient times even at the Olympic Games the athletes used to wear coverings for their loins, and indeed this practice was still in existence not very many years ago. Even today many foreigners, especially in Asia, wear these loincloths for box­ ing matches and wrestling bouts. Indeed, one could point to a number of other instances where the manners of the ancient

Introduction 39

Hellenic world are very similar to the manners of foreigners to­ day.

7 Cities were sited differently in the later periods; for, as seafaring became more general and capital reserves came into existence, new walled cities were built actually on the coasts, and isthmuses were occupied for commercial reasons and for purposes of defence against neighbouring powers. Because of the wide prevalence of piracy, the ancient cities, both in the islands and on the mainland, were built at some distance from the sea, and still remain to this day on their odginal sites. For the pirates would rob not only each other but everyone else, seafaring or not, who lived along the coasts.

8 Piracy was just as prevalent in the islands among the Carians and Phoenicians, who in fact colonized most of them. This was proved during this present war, when Delos was officially purified by the Athenians and all the graves in the island were opened up. More than half of these graves were Carian, as could be see11 from the type of weapons buried with the bodies and from the method ofbudal, which was the same as that still used in Caria.s But after Minos had organized a navy, sea communications improved; he sent colonies to most of the islands and drove out the notorious pirates, with the result that those who lived on the sea-coasts were now in a position to acquire wealth and live a more settled life. Some of them, on the strength of their new dches, built walls for their cities. The weaker, because of the general desire to make profits, were content to put up with being governed by the stronger, and those who won superior power by acquiring capital resources brought the smaller cities under their control. Hellas had already developed some way along these lines when the expedition to Troy took place.

9 ~amernnon, it seems to me. must have been the most powerful of the rulers of his dq.: and it was for this reason that he raise ' ' force against Troy, not because the suitors of Helen were b

S· In m, 104 Thucydides explains more fully: burials were henceforth prohibited on Delos because it was declared sacred ground. The archaeologi­ cal evidence suggests that Thucydides, or his source, incorrectly identified early (Geometric) Greek pottery as Carlan; seeR. M. Cook in Annual of tht British School at Athtns, so (I9SS), 266-70.

40 BOOK ONB

follow him b the oaths which the had sworn to T ndareus.6 Pelops, according to the most reliable tra · tion in t e Pe oponnese, came there from Asia. He brought great wealth with him, and, settling in a poor country, acquired such power that, though he was a foreigner, the whole land was called after him. His descen­ dants became still more prosperous. Eurystheus was killed in Attica by the sons of Heracles, and before setting out he had entrusted Mycenae and its government to his relative Atreus, the brother of Eurystheus's mother, who had been exiled by his father because of the death of Chrysippus. When Eurystheus failed to return, Atrem, who had the reputation of a powerful man and who had made himself popular with the Mycenaeans, took over at their request, since they were frightened of the sons ofHeracles, the kingship of Mycenae and of all the land that Eurystheus had ruled. So the descendants ofPelops became more powerful than the descendants of Perseus. It was to this empire that Agamemnon succeeded, and at the same "time he had a stronger navy than any other ruler; thus, in my opinion, fear played a greater part than loyalty in the r~ of th'! expedition against Troy. It appears, if we can believe the evidence of Homer, that Agamemnon himself commanded more al1ips than anyone else and at the same time equipped another fleet for the Arcadians. And in describing the sceptre which Agamem­ non had inherited, Homer calls him:

Of many isla11d.~ a11d all Argos King.

As his power was based on the mainland, he could not have ruled over any islands, except the few that are near the coast, unless he had possessed a considerable navy. And from this expedition we can make reasonable conjectures about other expeditions before

that time. 10 Mycenae certainly was a small place, and many of the towns of

that period do not seem to us today to be particularly imposing; yet that is not good evidence for rejecting what the poets and what general tradition have to say about the size of the expedition.

6. The tradition was that Helen was wooed by many leading Greek kings and nobles, that she was allowed to make her own choice, and that all the suitors sworC' on oath to her father Tyndareus to abide: by her dC'­ cision .

Introduction 41

Suppose, for example, that the city of Sparta were to become de­ serted and that only the temples and foundations of buildings remained, I think that future generations would, as time passed, find it very difficult to believe that the place had really been as powerful as it was represented to be. Yet the Spartans occupy two-fifths of the Peloponnese and stand at the head not only of the whole Peloponnese itself but also of numerous allies beyond its frontiers. Since, however, the city is not regularly planned and contains no temples or monuments of great magnificence, but is simply a collection of villages, in the ancient Hellenic way, its appearance would not come up to expectation. If, on the other hand, the same thing were to happen to Athens, one would con­ jecture from what met the eye that the city had been twice as powerful as in fact it is.

We have no right, therefore, to judge cities by their appearances rather than b~ their actual power, and there is no reason why we should not he ieve that the Tro'an ex 'tion w the teat that

a ever en pl~It is equal y true that it was not on the eo what is done in modem warfare. It is questionable whether we can have complete confidence in Homer's figures, which, since he was a poet, were probably exaggerated. Even if we accept them, how­ ever, it appears that Agamemnon's force was smaller than forces are nowadays. Homer gives the number of ships as 1,200, and says that the crew of each Boeotian ship numbered uo, and the crews of the ships ofPhiloctetes were fifty men for each ship. By this, I imagine, he means to express the maximum and the minimum of the various ships' companies. In any case he gives no other figures for the crews in his catalogue of the ships. The men not only rowed in the ships but also served in the army, as is made clear by the passage about the ships of Philoctetes, when he states that the rowers were all archers. Apart from the kings and the very highest officers, it is unlikely that there were many men aboard who were not sailors; especially as they had to cross the open sea, carrying aU their equipment with them, in ships that had no decks but were built in the old fashion of the pirate fleets. If, therefore, we reckon the numbers by taking an average of the biggest and the smallest ships, they will not appear very great, considering that this was a force representing the united effort of the whole of Hellas.

42 BOOlt ONB

11 The reason for this was not so much shortage of man-po~s :ortage of moneY!.. !-.ack of supplies made them cut down their

~umbers to the point at whiCh they expected they would be able !_O"Iive off the country in which they were fishting. Even after ~ victory which they won on landing (it is clear that there must have been a victory: otherwise they could not have put up the fortifica­ tions round their camp), it does not appear that they brought the whole of their force into action; instead they cultivated the soil of the Chersonese and went on plundering expeditions because of their shortage of supplies. It was because of this dispersal of their forces that the Trojans managed to hold out for ten years of war­ fare, since they were always strong enough to deal with that frac­ tion of the Greek army which at any one time remained in the field. If, however, Agamemnon had had plenty of supplies with him Wlleiilie arnve<I, and if they had used their whole force in making war continuously, without breaking off for _plunaeriilg expeditions and for cultivatin the land ey would have won eas1 y, as 1s obvious from the fact that they coultf containtlre­ -rojiiis wlien the were not m fuliTorce but ~ ing only w atever portion of their arm ha ened to be available. ,tnerr>- ore, t ey ad all settled down to the siege at once, they would

have taken Troy in a shorter time and with less trouble. u As it was, just as lack of money was the reason why previous

expeditions were not really considerable, so in the case of this one, which was more famous than any others before it, we shall find, if we look at the evidence of what was actually done, that it was not so important as it was made out to be and as it is still, through the influence of the poets, believed to have been.

Even after the Trojan War Hellas was in a state of ferment; there were constant resettlements, and so no opportunity for peaceful development. It was long before the army returned from Troy, and this fact in itselfled to many changes. There was party strife in nearly all the cities, and those who were driven into exile founded new cities. Sixty years after the fall ofTroy, the modem Boeotians were driven out of Arne by the Thessalians and settled in what is now Boeotia, but used to be called Cadmeis. (Part of the race bad settled in Boeotia before this time, and some of these joined in the expedition to Troy.) Twenty years later the Dorians with the

Introduction 43

descendants of Heracles made themselves masters of the Pelopon­ nese.

Thus many years passed by and many difficulties were encoun­ tered before Hellas could enjoy any peace or stability, and before tbe period of shifting populations ended. Then came the period of colonization. Ionia and most of the islands were colonized by the Athenians. The Pcloponnesians founded most of the colonies in ltalr and Sicily, and some in other pam ofHellas. All of them were founded after the Trojan War.

13 The old form of government was hereditary monarchy with established rights and limitations; but as Hellas became more powerful and as the importance of acquiring money became more and more evident, tyrannies were established in nearly all the cities, revrnucs increased, shipbuilding flourished, and ambition turned towards sea-power.

The Corinthians are supposed to have been the first to adopt more or less modern methods in shipbuilding, and it is said that the first triremes ever built in Hcllas were laid down in Corinth. Then there is the Corinthian shipwright, Amciuodes, who appears to have built four ships for the Samians. Jt is nearly 300 years ago (dating from the end of this present war) that Ameinocles went to Samos. And the first naval battle on record is the one between the Corinthians and the Corcyracans: this was about 26o years ago. c~)rinth, planted on its isthmus, had been ti·0m time immemorial

an important mercantile centre, though in ancient days traffic had be(n by land rather than by sea. The commuuications between those who lived imide and those who lived outside the Pelopon­ nesc had to pass through Corinthian territory: So Corinth grew to power by her riches, as is showti by the adjective 'wealthy' which is given to her by the ancient poets. Aud when the Greeks began to take more to seafaring, the Coriuthians acquired a fleet, put down piracy, and, being able to provide trading facilities on both the land and the sea routes, made their city powerful from the revenues which came to it by both these ways.

Later the Ionians were a great naval power. This was in the time of Cyrus, the first King of the Persians, and of his son Cambyses. Indeed, when they were fighting against Cyrus, they were for aomc time masters of all the sea in their region.

44 BOOK ONB

Then Polycrates, the tyrant of Samos, made himself powerful by means of his navy. He conquered a number of the islands, among which was Rhenea, which he dedicated to the Delian

Apollo. The Phocaeans, too, when they were founding Marseilles, de-

feated the Carthaginians in a naval engagement. t4 These were the greatest navies of the past, and even these navies,

though many generations later than the Trojan War, do not seem to have possessed many triremes, but to have been still composed, as in the old days, of long-boats and boats of fifty oars. Triremes were first used in any numbers by the Sicilian tyrants and by the Corcyraeans. This was just before the Persian War and the death ofDarius, who was King of Persia after Cambyses. There were no other navies of any importance in Hellas before the time of the expedition of Xerxes. Athens and Aegina and a few other states may have had navies of a sort, but they were mainly composed of . fifty-oared boats. It was at the very end of this period, when Athens was at war with Aegina and when the foreign invasion was expected, that Themistodes persuaded his fellow-citizens to build the ships with which they fought at Salamis. Even these ships were not yet constructed with complete decks.

Is All the same these Hellenic navies, whether in the remote past or in the later periods, although they were as I have described them, were still a great source of strength to the various naval powers. They brought in revenue and they were the foundation of empire. It was by naval action that those powers, and especially those with insufficient land of their own, conquered the islands. Jherc was no warfare on land that resulted in the acquisition of an ~ )Vbat wars there were were simply frontier skirmishes'; no expedition by land was sent far from the country of its origin with the purpose of conquering some other power. There were no alliances of small states under the leadership of the great powers, nor did the smaller states form leagues for action on a basis of equality among themselves. Wars were simply local affairs be­ tween neighbours. The nearest approach to combined action was in the ancient war between Chalcis and Eretria. On this occasion the rest of the Hellenic world did join in with one side or the other.

16 Different states encountered different obstacles to the course of

Introduction 4S

their development. The Ionians, for instance, were a rapidly rising power; but King Cyrus and his Persians, having eliminated Croe­ sus, invaded the country between the river Halys and the sea, and brought the Ionian cities on the mainland into the Persian Empire. Later Darius, with the aid of the Phoenician navy, conquered the islands as well.

17 And in the Hellenic states that were governed by tyrants, the tyrant's first thought was always for himself, for his own personal safety, and for the greatness of his own family. Consequently security was the chief political principle in these governments, and no great action ever came out of them- nothing, in fact, that went beyond their immediate local interests, except for the tyrants in Sicily, who rose to great power. So for a long time the state of affairs everywhere in Hellas was such that nothing very remarkable could be done by any combination of powers and that even the individual cities were lacking in enterprise.

18 Finally, however, the Spartans put down tyranny in the rest of Greece, most of which had been governed by tyrants for much longer than Athens. From the time when the Qorians first settled ~there had been a particularly long period of political disunity; yet the Spartan constitution goes back to a very early date, and the country has never been ruled by tyrants. For rather more than 400 years, dating from the end of the late war, they have had the same system of government, and this has been not only a source of internal strength, but has enabled them to inter­ vene in the affairs of other states.

Not many years after the end of tyrannies in Hellas the battle of Marathon was fought between the Persians and the Athenians. Ten years later the foreign enemy returned with his vast armada for the conquest ofHellas, and at this moment of peril the Spartans, since they were the leading power, were in command of the allied Hellenic forces. In face of the invasion the Athenians decided to abandon their city; the broke u t e , took to their ships, and became a people o · ors. It was by a common eHOrt that tlie oreign invasion wa$ repelled; but not long afterwards the Hellenes - both those who had fought in the war together and those who later revolted from the King of Persia - split into two divisions, one group following ~ns and the other ~parta. These were

~

BOOK ONE 46 the two most owerful states, one bein su reme on land,

the other on the sea. or a ort ttme the war-time a iance he d togethef."but it was not long before quarrels took place and Athens and Sparta, each with her own allies, were at war with each other, while among the rest of the Hellenes states that had their own dif­ ferences now joined one or other of the two sides.7 So from the end of the Persian War till the beginning of the Peloponn_sllil.n ~ ~ome intervals of peace, on the whole these tw~ Powers were either fightin with each other or ~uttm

mvn revolts among t tcir a ies. they were consequently in a high state of military preparedness and had gained their military

experience in the hard school of dang0 19 ~The Spartans did not make their alltes pay tribute, but saw to it~

that they were governed by oligarchies who would work in the Spartan interest. Athens, on the other hand, had in the course of time taken over the fleets of her allies {except for those of Chio~ and Lesbos) and had made them pay contributions of money in­ stead. Thus the forces available to Athens alone for this war were greater than the combined forces had ever been when the alliance

was still intact. ao\ In investigating past history, and in forming the conclusions

which I have formed, it must be admitted that one cannot rely on every detail which has come down to us by way of tradition. People are inclined to accept all stories of ancient times in an un­ critical way - even when these stories concern their own native countries. Most people in Athens, for instance, are under the im­ pression that Hipparchus, who was killed by Harmodius and Aristogiton, was tyrant at the time, not realizing that it was Hippias who was the eldest and the chief of the sons of Pisistratus, and that Hipparchus and Thessalus were his younger brothers. What happened was this: on the very day that had been fixed for their attempt, indeed at the very last moment, Harmodius and Aristogeiton had reason to believe that Hippias had been informed of the plot by some of the conspirators. Believ­ ing him to have been forewarned, they kept away from him, but, as they wanted to perform some daring exploit before they were arrested themselves, they killed Hipparchus when they

7- Ser Appendix 1.

Introduction 4-7

found him by the Leocorium organizing the Panathenaic pro­

cession.s The rest of the Hellenes, too, make many incorrect assmnptions

not only about the dimly remembered past, but also about con­ temporary history. For instance, there is a general belief that the kings of Sparta are each entitled to two votes, whereas in fact they have only one; and it is believed, too, that the Spartans have a company of troops called 'Pitanate'. Such a company has never existed. Most people, in fact, will not take trouble in finding out the truth, but are much more inclined to accept the first story they hear.o

:u However, I do not think that one will be far wrong in accepting the conclusions I have reached from the evidence which I have put forward. It is better evidence than that of the poets, who exaggerate the importance of their themes, or of the prose chroniclers, who are less interested in telling the truth than in catching the attention of tl_teir public, whose authorities cannot be checked, and whose subject-matter, owing to the passage of time, is mostly lost in the unreliable streams of mythology. We may claim instead to have used only the plainest evidence and to have reached ·conclusions which are reasonably accurate, considering that we have been deal­ ing with ancient history. As for this present war, even though people are apt to think that the war in which they are fighting is the greatest of all wars and, when it is over, to relapse again into their admiration of the past, nevertheless, if one looks at the facts themselves, one will see that this. was the greatest war of all.

u lntJUsllistory I have made use of set speeches some of which were delivered just before and others during the war. I have found it difficult to remember the precise words used in the speeches which I listened to myself and my various informants have ex­ perienced the same difficulty; so my method has been, while keep­ ing as closely as possible to the general sense of the words that . were actually used, to make the speakers say what, in my opinion, was called for by each situation.•o

8. In VJ, SJ-9 there is a lengthy digression on the assassination of Hipparchus in SI4 B.C.

9· See the Introduction, p. IS. 10. See the Introduction, pp. :as-9.

48 BOOK ONB

And with regard to my factual reporting of the events of the war I have made it a principle not to write down the first story that came my way, and not even to be guided by my own general impressions; either I was present myself at the events which I have described or else I heard of them from eye-witnesses whose reports I have checked with as much thoroughness as possible. Not that even so the truth was easy to discover: different eye-witnesses give different accounts of the same events, speaking out of partiality for one side or the other or else from imperfect memories. And it may well be that my history will seem less easy to read because of the absence in it of a romantic element. {it will be enough for me, however, if these words of mine are judged useful by those

~ who want to understand clearly the events which happened in the past and which (human nature being what it is) will, at some time or other and in much the same ways, be repeated in the futtt~~y work is no_t...;Lpiece of writing designed to meet the taste of anj mmediate public, but was done to last for " ~ver~

::a3 ,Th!.g~t war J!!!he past was the Persi~; yet in this war the decision was reached quickly as a result of two naval battles and two battles on land.J1te Peloponnesian War, on the other hand, not only lasted for a long time, but throughout its course brought ~suffering for Hell~ever before had~so

-many cities been captured and then devastated, whether by foreign armies or by the Hellenic powers themselves (some of these cities, after capture, were resettled with new inhabitants); never had there been so many exiles; never such loss of life - both in the actual warfare and in internal revoluttons}Old stories of past prodigies, which had not found much co~mation in recent experience, now became credible. Wide areas, for instance, were affected by violent earthquakes; there were more frequent eclipses of the sun than had ever been recorded before; in various parts of the country there were extensive droughts followed by famine; and there was the plague which did more harm and destroyed more life than almost any other single factor. All these calamities fell together upon the Hellenes after the outbreak of war.

War be an when the Athenians and the Pelo onnesi broke the Thirty Y cars Truce w ic a een made after the capture of ..,.-- __,

Tht Dispute over Epidamnus 43.5-3 49

THB DISPUTE OVBR BPIDAMNUS

:&4 The city ofEpidamnus is on the right of the approach to the Ionic Gulf. It is in foreign territory that is inhabited by an Illyrian race called the Taulantians. The place is a colony of Corcyra and it was founded by Phalius, the son of Eratodeides, a Corinthian of the family of the Heraclids. In accordance with the old custom, the founder had been invited from the mother city. Among the colon­ ists there were also a certain number of Corinthians and some other

Dorians. As time went on Epidamnus became both powerful and popu-

lous; but there followed many years of political unrest, caused, they say, by a war with the foreign inhabitants of the country. As a result of this Epidamnus declined and lost most of her power. Pinally,just before the war between Athens and Sparta, the demo­ cratic party drove out the aristocratic party,' who then went over to the foreign enemies of the city and joined them in making piratical attacks on it both by sea and by land. The democrats in­ side the city now found themselves in difficulties and sent an embassy to Corcyra, begging their mother country not to allow them to perish, and asking for help both in making some settle­ ment with the exiled party and in putting an end to the war with the foreigners. The ambassadors took up their position in the temple of Hera in Corcyra, and there made their requests, but th~

n. Io <446-S B.c.

so BOOK ONB

people of Corcyra refused to receive the ambassadors and sent them back without having achieved anything.

2.5 When the people in Epidamnus realized that no help was forth­ coming from Corcyra, they were at a loss how to deal with the situation. They therefore sent to Delphi to inquire from the god whether they should hand over their city to the Corinthians, who had founded it, and so get help from that quarter. The reply from Delphi was that they should hand over their city and accept the leadership of Corinth. So, in obedience to the oracle, they sent to Corinth, and made over the colony to the Corinthians. They pointed out that the original founder had come from Corinth; they made public the reply which they had received from Delphi, and they begged the Corinthians to come to their help and not allow them to be destroyed.

The Corinthians agreed to come to their assistance. They felt they had a good right to do so, since they regarded the colony as be­ longing just as much to them as to Corcyra; and at the same time they hated the Corcyraeans because they failed to show to Corinth the respect due from a colony to the mother city. Unlike their other colonies, the Corcyraeans did not give to Corinthians the usual rights and honours at public festivals or allow them the correct facilities for making sacrifices. Instead they looked down upon their mother city, claiming that their fmancial power at this time made them equal with the richest states in Hellas and that their military resources were greater than those of Corinth. In particular they boasted of their naval superiority, sometimes even basing this claim on the~ that those famous sailors the Phaeacians had inhabited~ before them. This belief did in fact encourage them to give particular attention to their navy, which was by no means an inconsiderable one. They had, at the outbreak of war, a fleet of 120 triremes.

:a6 All this caused ill feeling, and so the Corinthians were glad enough to send to Epidamnus the help required. They advertised for volunteers to settle there, and sent out a force consisting of Ambraciots, Leucadians, and their own citizens. This force marched by land to Apollonia, a Corinthian colony, avoiding the sea route out of fear that they might be intercepted by the Corcyraeans.

When the Corcyraeans discovered that the settlers and the

The Dispute over Epidamnus 435-3 SI ~

troops had arrived at and that the colony had been handed over to rint ey reacted violently. As soon as the news arrived they put to sea with twenty-five ships, which were 100n followed by another fleet. Sailing up to Epidamnus, they demanded in the most threatening and abusive language first that the Epidamnians should reinstate the exiled party. These exiles, meanwhile, had come to Corcyra, had appealed to the claims of their family connections (pointing out the tombs of their own an­ cestors there), and begged for help in being brought back. Secondly they demanded that the Epidamnians should send away the troops and settlers that had come from Corinth.

The Epidamnians rejected both demands, and the Corcyraeans began operations against them with a fleet offorty ships. They had with them the exiles, whom they promised to restore to power, and also the Ulyrian army. Taking up their positions in front of the city, they proclaimed an offer ofimmunity to all, whether citizem or not, who would abandon the city; those who failed to take ad­ vantage of the opportunity would be treated as enemies. Then, since there was no response to this offer, they began to besiege the city, which stands on an isthmus.

0.7 Messengers soon arrived at Corinth with the news that Epidam­ nus was being besieged, and the Corinthians began to equip a relief force. At the same time they advertised for volunteers to form a new colony at Epidamnus. Those who went out there were to have absolutely equal rights, and those who were not prepared to sail at once, but still wanted to have a share in the colony, could buy this share, together with the right of remaining behind, by putting down the sum of fifty Corinthian drachmae. There was a wide response to this offer both from people who wanted to sail at once and from people who paid the deposit. Various cities were asked to help with ship~ to escort the convoy in case the Corcyraeans attempted to intercept it. Megara provided eight ships; Pale, the Cephallenian city, provided four; five ships came from Epidaurus, one from Hermione, two from Troezen, ten from Leucas, and eight from Ambracia. The Thebans and Phliasians were asked to provide money, the Eleans were asked for money and also for bulls. The Corinthians themselves equipped a fleet of thirty ships

and 3,000 hoplites.

52 BOOK ONB

28 When the Corcyraeans heard of these preparations they sent an embassy to Corinth, accompanied by some envoys from Sparta and Sicyon to support them. There they demanded that Corinth should withdraw her troops and colonists from Epidamnus, since Epidamnus was no concern ofhers. They were prepared, however, if Corinth wished to put in a counter claim, to accept arbitration. Cities in the Peloponnese should be chosen by mutual agreement to act as arbitrators, and the colony should go to whichever side the arbitrators awarded it. Alternatively, they proposed referring the matter to the oracle at Delphi. They urged Corinth not to start a war, saying that, if she did, they themselves, through no fault of their own, would be forced in sheer self-defence to make friends elsewhere and in quarters where they had no wish to make friends.

The Corinthian reply to this was that if Corcyra withdrew the fleet and the foreign army from Epidamnus, then discussion might be profitable; but it was quite absurd to talk of arbitration while the city was still being besieged.

The Corcyraeans countered by saying that 'if the Corinthians also withdrew their forces from Epidamnus, they would do as was suggested. Or, they were prepared to let both sides stay 'in their present positions and to arrange an armistice to remain in opera• tion until the result of the arbitration was declared.

29 None of these proposals was acceptable to the Corinthians. By this time their ships were manned and their allies were ready. They sent in front of them a herald to declare war, and then set sail with a force of seventy-five ships and 2,000 hoplites to fight against the Corcyraeans at Epidamnus. The Beet was under the command of Aristeus, the son of Pellichas, Callicrates, the son of Callias, and Timanor, the son ofTimanthes. The land forces were commanded by Archetimus, the son of Eurytimus; a~d Isarchidas, the son of Isarchus.

They sailed on as far as Actium in Anactoria, at the mouth of the Ambracian Gulf, where the temple of Apollo stands. Here they were met by a herald from the Corcyraeans who had sailed out in . a light boat with instructions to urge them not to attack. At the same time the Corcyraeans were manning their ships; they had fitted new crossbeams in the old vessels to make them sea-worthy and had seen to it that the rest of their fleet was ready for action.

The Dispute over Corcyra 433 Sj

By the time their herald had returned and reported that his offers of peace had been rejected, the ships, eighty of them in all, were manned (forty were still engaged in the siege ofEpidamnus). They then put out to sea against the enemy, formed line, and went into action. The result of the engagement was a decisive victory for the Corcyraeans, who destroyed fifteen Corinthian ships. It happened that on the very saiue day tht: besiegers ofEpidamnus had forced the city to surrender, the terms being that all foreign troops and settlers in the garrison should be sold as slaves and that Corinthian citizens should be held as prisoners pending a further decision.

30 After the battle the Corcyraeans put up a trophy on Leukimme, a headland of Corcyra. They then put all their prisoners to death, with the exception of the Corinthians, whom they still kept in custody.

The Corinthians and their allies went back home after their defeat in the sea battle, and now Corcyra had complete control of the seas in her own area. A Corcyraean fleet descended on Leucas, a colony of Corinth, and laid its territory waste. They also burnt Cyllene, the Elean port, because the Eleans had provided Corinth with ships and money. So for most of the time after the battle the Corcyraeans kept control of the sea and sent fleets to attack the allies of Corinth. Finally, however, at the beginning of the follow­ ing summer, Corinth, seeing the difficulties in which her allies were placed, sent out a fleet and an army. This force, in order to protect Leucas and the other friendly cities, held and fortified posi­ tions at Actium and round Chimerium in Thesprotis. The Cor­ cyraeans, also with naval and land forces, took up positions opposite them at Leukimme. Here they stayed for the rest of the summer, neither side making any move, and it was not until the beginning of winter that they both retired to their home bases.

THE DISPUTE OVBR CORCYRA

31 In Corinth tempers were running high over the war with Corcyra . All through the year following the sea battle and in the year after that the Corinthians were building ships and doing everything possible to increase the efficiency of their navy. Rowers were

S4 BOOK ONB

collected from the Peloponnese itself, and good terms were offered to bring them also from the rest of Hellas.

In Corcyra the news of the preparations provoked alarm. They had no allies in Hellas, since they had not enrolled themselves either in the Spartan or in the Athenian league. They decided therefore to go to Athens, to join the A then ian alliance, and see whether they could get any support from that quarter.

When the news of this move reached Corinth, the Corinthians aho sent representatives to Athens, fearing that the combined strength of the navies of.Athens and Corcyra would prevent them from having their own way in the war with Corcyra. An assembly was held and the arguments on both sides were put forward. The representatives of Corcyra spoke as follows:

32 'Athenians, in a situation like this, it is right and proper that first of all certain points should be made dear. We have come to ask you for help, but cannot claim that this help is due to us because of any great services we have done to you in the past or on the basis of any existing alliance. We must therefore convince you first that by giving us this help you will be acting in your own interests, or certainly not against your own interests; and then we must show that our gratitude can be depended upon. If on all these points you fmd our arguments unconvincing, we must not be surprised if our mission ends in failure.

'Now Corcyra has sent us to you in the conviction that in ask­ ing for your alliance we can also satisfy you on these points. What has happened is that our policy in the past appears to have been against our own pre~ent interests, and at the same time makes it look inconsistent of us to be asking help from you. It certainly looks inconsistent to be coming here to ask for help when in the past we have deliberately avoided all alliances; and it is because of this very policy that we are now left entirely alone to face a war with Corinth. We used to think that our neutrality was a wise thing, since it prevented us being dragged into danger by other people's policies; now we see it clearly as a lack of foresight and as a source of weakness.

'It is certainly true that in the recent naval battle we defeated the Corinthians single-handed. But now they are coming against us with a much greater force drawn from the Peloponnese and from

The Dispute over Corcyra 433 ss the rest of Hellas. We recognize that, if we have nothing but our own national resources, it is impossible for us to survive, and we can imagine what lies in store for us if they overpower us. We are therefore forced to ask for assistance, both· from you and from everyone else; and it should not be held against us that now we have faced the facts and are reversing our old policy of keeping ourselves to ourselves. There is nothing ·sinister in our action; we

merely recognize that we made a mistake. u • If you grant our request, you will find that in many ways it wat

a good thing that wr made it at this particular time. First of all, you will not be helping aggressors, but people who are the victims of aggression. Secondly, we are now in extreme peril, and if you welcome our alliance at this moment you will win our undying gratitude. And then, we are, a~ter you, the greatest naval power in Hellas. You would have paid a lot of money and still have been very grateful to have us on your side. Is it not, then, an extraordi­ nary stroke of good luck for you (and one which will cause heart­ burning among your enemies) to have us coming over voluntaril}' into your camp, giving ourselves up to you without involving you in any dangers or any expense? It is a situation where we, whom you are helping, will be grateful to you, the world in general will admire you for your generosity, and you yourselves will be stronger than you were before. There is scarcely a case in history where all these advantages have been available at the same time, nor has it often happened before that a power looking for an alliance can say to those whose help it asks that it can give as much honour and as much security as it will receive.

'In case of war we should obviously be useful to you, but some of you may think that there is no immediate danger of war. Those who think along those lines are deceiving themselves; they do not see the facts that Sparta is frightened of you and wants war, that Corinth is your enemy and is also influential at Sparta. Corinth has attacked us first in order to attack you afterwards. She has no wish to make enemies of us both at once and find us standing to­ gether against her. What she wants is to get an initial advantage over you in one of two ways- either by destroying our power or by forcing us to use it in her interests. But it is our policy to be one move ahead, which is why we want you to accept the alliance

s6 BOOK ONB

which we offer. It is better to have the initiative in these matters­ to take our own measures first, rather than be forced to counter the intrigues that are made against us by others.

34 'If the Corinthians say that you have no right to receive one of their colonies into your alliance, they should be told that every colony, if it is treated properly, honours its mother city, and only becomes estranged when it has been treated badly. Colonists are not sent abroad to be the slaves of those who remain behind, but to be their equals. And it is quite clear that Corinth was in the wrong so far as we are concerned. We asked them to settle the affair of Epidamnus by arbitration; but they chose to prosecute their claims by war instead of by a reasonable settlement. Indeed, the way in which they are treating us, their kinsmen, ought to be a warning to you and ought to prevent you from falling into their deceitful traps or listening to what may appear to be their straight­ forward demands. ~s concessions to one's enemies, one regrets it afterwards, and the fewe~e safer one 1s hkely f01>e:

3S -It is not a breach of your treaty with Sparta if you receive us into your alliance. We are neutrals, and it is expressly written down in your treaty that any Hellenic state which is in this condition is free to ally itself with whichever side it chooses. What is really monstrous is a situation where Corinth can find sailors for her ships both from her own allies and from the rest ofHellas, including in particular your own subjects, while we are shut off from a perfeccly legitimate alliance, and indeed from getting help from anywhere: and then, on top of that, they will actually accuse you of behaving illegally if you grant our request. In fact it is we who shall have far greater reasons to complain of you if you are not willing to help us; you will be rejecting us, who are no enemies of yours, in the hour of our peril, and as for the others, who are enemies of yours and are also the aggressors, you will not only be doing nothing to stop them, but will actually be allowing them to build up their strength from the resources of your own empire. Is this right? Surely you ought either to stop them from engaging troops from your own subjects, or else to give us, too, whatever assistance you think proper. Best of all would be for you to receive us in open alliance and help us in that way.

The Dispute over Corcyra 433 57

'We have already suggested that such a course would be very much in your own interests. Perhaps the greatest advantage to you is that you can entirely depend on us because your enemies are the same as ours, and strong ones, too, quite capable of doing damage to those who revolt from them. And then it is quite a different matter for you if you reject alliance with a naval power than if you do the same thing with a land power. Your aim, no doubt, should be, if it were ossible to e else havin a na at all: t next est thin is to have on our side the stron est na that there is.

36 'Some of you may admit that we have shown that the alliance would be in your interests, and yet may still feel apprehensive about a breach of your treaty with Sparta. Those who think in this way should remember that, whether you feel apprehensive or not, you will certainly have become stronger, and that this fact will make your enemies think twice before attacking you; whereas if you reject us, however confident you may feel, you will in fact be the weaker for it, and consequently less likely to be treated with re­ spect by a strong enemy. Remember, too, that your decision is going to affect Athens just as much as Corcyra. At the moment your thoughts are on the coming war- a war, in fact, which has almost broken out already. Certainly you will not be showing very much foresight for your own city if, at this time, you are in two minds whether to have on your side a power like Corcyra, whose friendship can be so valuable and whose hostility so dangerous to you. Apart from all other advantages, Corcyra lies in an ex­ cellent position on the coastal route to Italy and Sicily, and is thus able to prevent naval reinforcements coming to the Pelo­ ponnese from there, or going from the Peloponnese to those countries.

'The whole thing can be put very shortly, and these few words will give you the gist of the whole argument why you should not abandon us. There are three considerable naval powers in Hellas - Athens, Corcyra, and Corinth. If Corinth gets control of us first and you allow our navy to be united with hers, you will have to fight against the combined fleets of Corcyra and the Peloponncse. But if you receive us into your alliance, you will enter upon the war with our ships as well as your own.'

ss BOOK ONB

After this speech from the Corcyraean side, the representative of 37 Corinth spoke as follows: 'These Corcyraeans have not confined

their argument to the lfUestion of whether or not you should ac­ cept their alliance. They have named us as aggressors and have stated that they are the victims of an unjust war. Before, therefore, we go on to the rest of our argument, we must deal first with these two points. Our aim will be to give you a clear idea of what exactly we are claiming from you, and to show that there are good reasons why you should reject the appeal of Corcyra.

' "Wisdom" and" Moderation" are the words used by Corcyra in describing her old policy of avoiding alliances. In fact the mo­ tives were entirely evil, and there was nothing good about them at all. She wanted no allies because her actions were wrong, and she was ashamed of calling in others to witness her own misdoings. The geographical situation of Corcyra gives its inhabitants a certain independence. The ships of other states are forced to put in to their harbours much more often than Corcyraean ships visit the harbours of other states. So in cases where a Corcyraean has been guilty of injuring some other national, the Corcyraeans are themselves their own judges, and there is no question of having the case tried by independent judges appointed by treaty .... So this neutrality of theirs, which sounds so innocent, was in fact a disguise adopted ~ preserve them from having to share in the wron =<loings of others, 'l:ut in or e o tve t em a r ectl free and to do wron them· se ves, ma 'ng awa with other eo le's ~~by orce, when l strong enough, cheatml!: them. whenever thev can man· a e to dOso, and en (lvin t an vesti e of shame. Yet 1 t ey really were the honourable people they preten t o be;-­ this very independence of theirs would have given them the best possible opportunity of showing their good qualities in the rela· tions of common justice.

38 'In fact they have not acted honourably either towards us or to- wards anyone else. Though they are colonists of ours, they have never been loyal to us and are now at war with us. They were not sent out in the first place, they say, to be ill treated. And we say that we did not found colonies in order to be insulted by them, but rather to retain our leadership and to be treated with proper respect. At all events our other colonies do respect us, and indeed they treat

The Dispute over Corcyra 433 59

6o BOOK ONB

not be right or just for you to receive them as allies. Though there may be a clause in the treaty stating that any city not included in the original agreement is free to join whichever side it likes, this cannot refer to cases where the object of joining an alliance is to injure other powers; it cannot refer to a case where a city is only looking for security because it is in revolt, and where the result of accepting its alliance, if one looks at the matter dispassionately, will be, not peace, but war. And this is what may well happen to you, if you will not take our advice. You would not only be help­ ing them, but making war on us, who are bound to you by treaty. If you join them in attacking us, we shall be forced to defend ourselves against you as well as against them.

'The right course, surely, is either for you to preserve a strict neutrality or else to join us against them. At least you have treaty obligations towards Corinth, whereas you have never even had a peace trea · Corcyra. What you ought not to do is to estab- lish a recedent which~ o ive into its alliance t e revolte other ower. At the time w.hen Samos revolted from you and when the Pe oponnesian states were divided on the question whether to help them or not, we were not one of those who voted against you; on the contrary, we openly opposed the others and said that every power should have the right to control its own allies. Now, if you are going to welcome and assist people who have done wrong to us, you will find just as many of your own people coming over to our side, and you will be establishing

41 a precedent that is likely to harm you even more than us. All this we have a perfect right to claim from you by Hellenic law and custom. We should like also to give you some advice and to men­ tion that we have some title to your gratitude. We are not enemies who are going to attack you, and we are not on such friendly terms that such services are quite normal. We say, therefore, that the time has come for you to repay us for what we did for you in

the past. 'You were short of warships when you were fighting Aegina,

just before the Persian invasion. Corinth then gave you twenty ships. As a result of this act of kindness you were able to conquer Aegina, and as a result of our other good tum to you, when we prevented the Peloponnesian states from helping Samos, you were

The Dispute Ot't' Corcyra 433 61

able to punish that island. And these acts of ours were done at critical periods, periods when people are very apt to tum upon their enemies and disregard every other consideration except vic­ tory. At such times people regard even former enemies as their friends, so long as they are on their side, and even genuine friends as their enemies, if they stand in their way; in · fact their over­ mastering desire for victory makes them neglect their own best

interests.

4 , 'We should like you to thiuk carefully over these points; we

should like your young men to ask their elders about them, and for you to decide that you ought to behave towards us as we have behaved towards you. Do not think: "the Corinthians are quite right in what they say, but in the event of war all this is not in our interest." It is generally the best policy to make the fewest errors of judgement, and you must remember that, though Corcyra is try­ ing to frighten you into doing wrong by this idea of a coming war, there is no certainty that a war will come. You may think that Corinth will be your enemy in the future, but it is not worth your while to be carried away by this idea and to make open enemies of us now. A much wiser course would be to remove the suspicions which we already feel towards you in connection with Megara. And you will find that an act of kindness done at the right moment has a power to dispel old grievances quite out of propor-

tion to the act itself. 'Do not be influenced by the fact that they are offering you a

great naval alliance. The power that deals fairly with its equals finds a truer security than the one which is hurried into snatching

43 some apparent but dangerous advantage. We ourselves are now in the position that you were in at the time when, during the discus­ sions at Sparta, we laid down the principle that every power should have the right to punish its own allies. We claim that you should uphold this principle, and, since our vote helped you then, you should not injure us now by voting against us. No, you should deal with us as we have dealt with you, and you should be con­ scious that we are in one of those critical situations where real friendship is to be gained from helping us and real hostility from opposing us. Do not go against us by receiving these Corcyraeans into your alliance. Do not aid and abet them in their crimes. Thus

62 BOOK ONE

you will be acting as you ought to act and at the same time you will be making the wisest decision in your own interests.'

44 This was the speech of the Corinthian delegation. The Athen­ ians, after listening to both sides, discussed the matter at two assemblies. At the first of these, · opinion seemed to incline in favour of the Corinthian arguments, but at the second thrre was a change, and they decided on entering into some kind of alliance with Corcyra. This was not to be a total alliance involving the two parties in any war which either of them might have on hand; for the Athenians realized that if Corcyra required them to join in an attack on Corinth, that would constitute a breach of their treaty with the Pelopmmese. Instead the alliance was to be of a defensive character and would only operate if Athens or Corcyra or any of their allies were attacked from outside.

The general belief was that, whatever happened, war with the Peloponnese was bound to come. Athens had no wish to see_the strong navy ofCorcyra ass into the hands of Cormth. At the same time s e was not averse from letting t e two Powers weaken each other by fighting together; since in this way, if war did come, Athens herself would be stronger in relation to Corinth and to the other naval Powers. Then, too, it was a fact that Corcyra lay very conveniently on the coastal route to Italy and Sicily.

45 So, with these considerations in mind, Athens made her alliance with Corcyra. The Corinthian representatives returned to Corinth, and soon afterwards Athens sent ten ships as a reinforcement to Corcyra. These ships were under the command ofLacedaimonius, the son of Cimon, Diotimus, the son of Strombichus, and Pro teas, the son ofEpicles. Their instructions were to avoid battle with the Corinthians except under the following circumstances. If the Cor­ inthians sailed against Corcyra with the intention oflanding on the island itself or at any point in Corcyraean territory, then they were to do whatever they could to prevent it. These instructions were given in order to avoid breaking the existing treaty.

46 The ten ships reached Corcyra, and now the Corinthians had completed their preparations and sailed for the island with a fleet of ISO ships. Ten of these came from Elis, twelve from Megara, ten from Leucas, twenty-seven from Ambracia, one from Anac­ torium, and ninety from Corinth hersel£ Each contingent had its

The Dispute over Corcyra 433 63

own officers; the Corinthian admiral, who had four subordinate commanders, was Xenoclides, the son of Euthycles.

This fleet sailed out from Leucas to the mainland opposite Cor­ cyra and came to anchor at Chimerium in the territory ofThes­ protis. There is a harbour here, and above it, at some distance from the sea, is the city ofEphyre in the Elean district. Ncar Ephyre the waters of the Acherusian Lake flow into the sea. It gets its name from the river Acheron, which flows through Thesprotis and falls into the lake. The other river in the district is the Thyamis, which forms the boundary between Thesprotis and Cestrine . .Between the mouths of these two rivers is the high promontory of Chimer­ ium. It was at this point of the mainland that the Corinthians came to anchor and made an encampment.

47 The Corcyraeans, as soon as they heard of their enemies' ap­ proach, manned 110 ships, commanded by Miciades, Aisimides, and Eurybatus, and made a camp on one of the group of islands which are called' Sybota'. The ten Athenian ships were with them. Their land forces were posted on the headland of Leukimme and had been reinforced by a contingent of 1,000 hoplites from Zacyn­ thus. The Corinthians, too, on the mainland received considerable reinforcements from the natives of those parts, who had always been on friendly terms with them.

48 When the Corinthians had finished their preparations, they took with them rations for three days and put out to sea by night from Chimerium with the intention of engaging the enemy. At dawn they came in sight of the Corcyraean ships already in the open sea and bearing down upon them. As soon as they saw each other, both sides took up their positions for battle. The Athenian ships were on the right of the Corcyraean line, which otherivise con­ sisted of their own ships in three squadrons, each under the com­ mand of one of their admirals. This was the Corcyraean order of battle. On the other side the ships of Megara and of Ambracia were on the right, the other allies were variously distributed in the centre, and the Corinthians themselves, with the best ships at their disposal, held the left of the line, facing the Athenians and the right wing of the Corcyraeans.

49 Then, after the signals had been hoisted on both sides, they joined battle. The fighting was of a somewhat old-fashioned kind,

64 BOOK ONB

since they were still behindhand in naval matters, both sides having numbers ofhoplites 12 aboard their ships, together with archers and javelin throwers. But the fighting was hard enough, in spite of the lack of skill shown.: indeed, it was more like a battle on land than a naval engagement. When the ships came into collision it was diffi­ cult for them to break away clear, because of the number engaged and of their close formation. In fact both sides relied more for victory on their hoplites, who were on the decks and who fought a regular pitched battle there while the ships remained motionless. No one attempted the manoeuvre of encirclement; in fact it was a battle where courage and sheer strength played a greater part than scientific methods. Everywhere in the battle confusion reigned, and there was shouting on all sides.

The Athenian ships would come. up in support of the Cor­ cyraeans whenever they were hard pressed and would so help to alarm their enemies, but they did not openly join the battle, since the commanders were afraid of acting contrary to the instructions they had received at Athens.

The right of the Corinthian line was in the greatest difficulties. Here a Corcyraean squadron of twenty ships routed their enemies and drove them back in confusion to the mainland. Sailing right up to their camp, they landed, set fire to the empty tents, and plundered the property they found there. Here, then, the Cor­ cyraeans won a victory and the Corinthians and their allies suffered a defeat. But on the left, where the Corinthians themselves were, things went very differently. The Corcyraeans were in any case in inferior numbers, and they also lacked the support of the twenty ships engaged in the pursuit. And now the Athenians, seeing that the Corcyraeans were in difficulties, began to support them more openly. At first they refrained from actually ramming any Corin­ thian ship; but finally, when there was no doubt about the defeat and the Corinthians were still pressing on, there came a point where everyone joined in and nothing was barred. Thus a situation in­ evitably came about where Corinthians and Athenians were openly fighting with each other.

u. The hoplites were the heavily accoutred infantry. Since: they were responsible for providing their own arms and armour, they wert' drawn solely from the wealthier sections of thr. population.

The Dispute over Corcyra 433 6s

so After their victory, the Corinthians, instead of taking into tow and dragging away the ships that they had put out of action, turned their attention to the men. They sailed in and out of the wreckage, killing rather than taking prisoners. Thus they unknow­ ingly killed some of their own friends, since they did not realize that those on the right of their line had been defeated. Many ships had been engaged on both sides and the action had been an exten­ sive one, so that, once battle was joined, it was not easy to make out who were winning and who were being defeated. Indeed, so far as numbers of ships were concerned, this was the biggest battle that had ever taken place between two Hellenic states.

After they had driven the Corcyraeans to the land, the Corin­ thians gave their attention to the wrecks and to their own dead, most of whom they were able to recover and bring back to Sybota, not an inhabited place, but a harbour in Thesprotis, where the land army of their native allies was stationed in their support. They then formed up again and sailed out against the Corcyraeans.

The Corcyraeans, fearing that they might attempt to make a landing on their island, came out to meet them with every avail­ able ship, including the ten Athenian ships as well as the remainder of their own fleet.

It was already late in the day, and both sides had sung the paean before attacking, when suddenly the Corinthian ships began to back water. They had seen in the distance twenty more Athenian ships approaching. These had been sent out later from Athens to reinforce the original ten, since the Athenians feared (quite rightly, as it turned out) that the Corcyraeans might be defeated and that

51 their own ten ships would not be enough to support them. It was this new force that the Corinthians saw. They suspected that they came from Athens, and thought that there might be still mor~ behind the ships that were visible. Therefore they began to retire.

The Corcyraeans were making their attack from a direction where visibility was not so good, and had not sighted the ships. They were amazed when they saw the Corinthians backing water. Finally someone sighted them and shouted out that there were ships ahead. Then they also retired, since it was already getting dark and the Corinthians had turned and broken off contact with them. The Corcyraeans went back to their camp on Leukimme,

66 BOOK ONB

and the twenty Athenian ships, which were under the command of Glaucon, the son of Leagrus, and Andocides, the son of Leo­ goras, sailed up to their camp, making their way through the wrecks and the dead bodies. They arrived not very long after they had originally been sighted, but it was now night and the Cor­ cyraeans feared that they might be enemy ships. However, they were recognized and came safely to anchor.

tl Next day the thirty Athenian ships with all the Corcyraean ships that could put to sea sailed out to the harbour ofSybota, where the Corinthians lay at anchor, to see whether they were prepared to fight. The Corinthians put out from shore and formed a line in the open sea. There they remained, having no intention of starting an engagement. They saw that a fresh fleet had arrived from Athens, and they were conscious of their own difficulties: the prisoners whom they had aboard their ships had to be guarded, and in the desolate place where they were there were no facilities for repair­ ing their vessels. What particularly worried them was the thought of how they were to make their voyage home. They feared that the Athenians might consider that the treaty had been broken by the recent fighting and might intercept them on their way back.

S3 They therefore decided to put some of their men, not carrying a herald's wand, on board a boat and to send them to the Athenians to find out how matters stood.

This was done, and the Corinthian messengers made the follow­ ing speech: 'Athenians, you are putting yourselves in the wrong. You are starting a war and you are not abiding by the treaty. We are here in order to deal with our own enemies, and now you are standing in our path and have taken up arms against us. Now if your intention is to prevent us from sailing against Corcyra or anywhere else that we wish, if, in other words, you intend to break the treaty, then make us who are here your first prisoners, and treat us as enemies.'

After this speech of the Corinthians, all those in the Corcyraean forces who had been within hearing shouted out in favour of making prisoners of them at once and then putting them to death. The Athenians, however, replied as follows: 'Peloponnesians, we are not starting a war and we are not breaking the treaty. These Corcyraeans are our allies, and we came here to help them. We

The Dispute over Corcyra 433 67

shall do nothing to stop you if you wish to sail in any other direc­ tion; but if you sail against Corcyra or against any part of her territory, then we shall do our best to prevent you.'

S4 When they received this reply from the Athenians, the Corin­ thians began to prepare for their voyage home. They also put up a trophy to commemorate their victory on the part ofSybota that is on the mainland. Meanwhile the Corcyraeans salvaged the wreck­ age of their ships and took up the bodies of their own dead. These had been washed towards them by the current and by a wind which got up during the night and scattered them in all directions. They then put up a trophy on the island of Sybota, claiming that the victory had been theirs.

The reasons that each side had for claiming the victory and set­ ting up a trophy were as follows. The Corinthians had had the upper hand in the fighting until nightfall: thus they had brought in most of the disabled ships and their own dead: they held at least 1,000 prisoners and they had sunk about seventy enemy ships. The Corcyraeans had destroyed about thirty ships and, after the arrival of the Athenians, they had recovered off their coast their own dead and their disabled vessels. Then on the day after the battle the Corinthians, on seeing the Athenian fleet, had backed water and retired before them, and after the Athenians had arrived, had not come out from Sybota to fight. So both sides claimed the victory.

s s On their voyage home the Corinthians took Anactorium, at the mouth of the Ambracian Gulf. It was a place in which both Cor­ inth and Corcyra had rights and it was given up to the Corinthians by treachery. Before sailing home the Corinthians put settlers of their own into Anactorium. They sold Soo of the Corcyraean prisoners who were slaves, and they kept in captivity zso whom they treated with great consideration, hoping that a time would come when they would return and win over the island to Corinth. Most of them were in fact people of great power and influence in Corcyra.

So Corcyra remained undefeated in her war with Corinth and the Athenian fleet left the island. But this gave Corindt her first cause for war against Athens, the reason bein that Athens had fought agamst ough the peace treaty wa1

still in force. .......

68 BOOK ONB

THB DISPUTE OVER POTIDAEA

56 Almost immediately aftt>rwards it happened that there was another dispute between Athens and the Pdoponnese. This also contributed to the breaking out of tbe war. It concerned the pt'oplc ofPotidaea who live on the isthmus of Pallene, and who, though colonists of Corinth, were allies of Athens in the tribme-paying class. Corinth was searching for means of retaliation against Athcus, and Athens had no illusions about the hatred felt for her by Corinth. She therefore made the following demands ofPotidaea : they were to pull down the fortifications looking towards Pallene, to send hos­ tages to Athens, to banish their Corinthian magistrates, and in future not to receive those who were sent out annually from Corinth to replace them. These demands were made because Athens feared that, under the influence of Pcrdiccas and of the Corinthians, Potidaea might be induced to revolt and might draw

S7 into the revolt the other allied cities in the Thracian area. It was directly after the sea battle off Corcyra that the Athenians took these precautions with regard to Potidaea. Corinth was now quite openly hostile, and though Perdiccas, the son of Alexander and ~~g of ~ed~~;· had in the past been a friend and an ally, he

a now en e into an enemy. This had come about because the Athenians had entered into an alliance with his brother Philip and with Derdas, who had joined forces together against Perdiccas. Perdiccas was alarmed by these moves and not only sent his agents to Sparta in order to try to involve Athens in a war with the Peloponnese, but also was approaching Corinth in order to get support for a revolt in Potidaea. He was also in communication with the Chalcidians in Thrace and with the Bottiaeans, and was urging them to revolt at the same time. All these places bordered on his own country, and his idea was that if he had them as his allies, their support would make his own military position easier.

The Athenians knew what he was doing and wished to anticipate the revolt of these cities. They were just on the point of sending out to Macedonia a force of thirty ships and 1,000 h<;>plites under the command of Archestratus, the son ofLycomedes, with other commanders. Now, these officers were instructed to take hostages

The Dispute over Potidaea 432 69 from the Potidaeans, to destroy the fortification, and to keep a close watch on the neighbouring cities so as to prevent any move­ ment of revolt.

sB Meanwhile the Potidaeans had sent representatives to Athens in the hope of persuading the Athenians not to make any alterations in the existing state of affairs. They also sent representatives with the Corinthians to Sparta in order to win support there in case it should be necessary. After long negotiations at Athens nothing. valuable was achieved; in spite of all their efforts, the Beet for Macedonia was ordered to sail against them too. The Spartan authorities, however romised t invade Attica if the Athenians attac e Potidaca. This, then, seemed to the Potidaeans to be the moment: they made common cause with the Chalcidians and the Bottiaeans and revolted from Athens.

Perdiccas, at this point, persuaded the Chalcidians to pull down and abandon their cities on the coast, and to setde inland at Olyn­ thus, making that into one big city. To those who left their homes in this way he offered the use for the duration of the war with Athens of some of his own territory in Mygdonia round Lake Bolbe. The Chalcidians therefore, after destroying their cities,

S9 settled inland and prepared for war. When the thirty Athenian ships arrived in Thrace they found that Potidaea and the other cities were already in a state of revolt. Their commanders con­ sidered that with the forces at their disposal it was impossible to make war both against Perdiccas and against the league of revolted cities; they therefore turned their attention to Macedonia, which had been their original objective. They established themselves on the coast and made war in cooperation with Philip and the brothers ofDerdas, who had invaded the country from the interior.

6o Now that Potidaea had revolted and the thirty Athenian ships were off the coast of Macedonia, the Corinthians feared that the place might be lost and regarded its safety as their own responsi­ bility. They therefore sent out a force of volunteers from Corinth itself and of mercenaries from the rest of the Peloponnese. Alto­ gether this force amounted to 1 ,6oo hoplites and 400 light troops. It was under the command of Aristeus, the son of Adeimantus, who had always been a staunch friend to the people of Potidaea. And it was largely because of his personal popularity that most of

70 BOOK ONB

the Corinthian volunteers joined the expedition. This force reached Thrace forty days after the revolt of Potidaea.

~ ~..,,

61 The Athenians also had received the news immediately after the revolt of the cities. They heard, too, of the reinforcements under ¥ steus, and they sent out against the places in revolt an arm of ~ooo ci~o~s and a Beet of for tps. · s force was commanded by Callias, the son ofcalhacles, wtth four other com­ manders. First they arrived at Macedonia, where they found that the original force of x,ooo had just captured Therme and were now besieging Pydna. They therefore joined in the operations against

,~\ , ,.;X ~~

I Pydna. The siege lasted for a time, but fmally they came to an agreement with Perdiccas and made an alliance with him. They were forced into doing this by the need to hurry on with the campaign at Potidaea and by the arrival there of Aristeus.

Leaving Macedonia, then, they came to Beroea and from there went on to Strepsa. After making an unsuccessful attempt at cap­ turing the place, they marched on by land to Potidaea. They had 3,000 hoplites of their own, apart from a large force of allies and 6oo Macedonian cavalry from the army of Philip and Pausanias. The seventy ships sailed with them along the coast. Proceeding by short marches, they reached Gigonus on the third day and camped there.

62 The people of Potidaea and · the Peloponnesian army under Aristeus had been expecting the Athenians and had made their camp on the isthmus facing Olynthus; a market for the troops had been established outside the city. The allies had chosen Aristeus as commander-in-chief of all the infantry, and given the command of the cavalry to Perdiccas. The latter had immediately once again broken his treaty of alliance with Athens and was now fighting on the side of the Potidaeans. Instead ofheing there in person, he sent Iolaus as deputy commander.

The plan of Aristeus was as follows: he would he on the isthmus with his own force and would there wait for an Athenian attack; the Chalcidians, the other allies from outside the isthmus, and the 200 cavalry ofPerdiccas were to stay in Olynthus; this force, when the Athenians attacked the positions on the isthmus, was to take them in the rear and thus place the enemy between the two armies.

However, the Athenian general Callias and his colleagues sent

The Dispute over Potidaea 432 71

out to Olynthus their Macedonian cavalry and a small force of allied troops to prevent reinforcements coming from there. They then broke up their camp and marched on Potidaea. Arriving at the isthmus, they saw the enemy making ready for battle. They, too, formed up in battle order, and soon the forces were engaged. The wing commanded by Aristeus, where the Corinthians and other picked troops were fighting, routed the troops in front of it and went after them for some distance in pursuit. But the rest of the army of Potidaeans and Peloponnesians was defeated by the Athenians and fled hack behind their fortifications. Thus, when

63 Aristeus turned back from the pursuit and saw that the other part 'of his army had been defeated, it was difficult for him to decide which was the safest direction in which to go, whether to Olynthus or into Potidaea. In the erid he decided to concentrate his troops into as small a space as possible and to force his way through into Potidaea at the double. He managed to do this by going along by the breakwater through the sea; but it was not an easy operation, as arrows and javelins were falling among his men and, though he got most of them through safely, he lost a certain number.

At the beginning of the battle, signals were shown, and those who were meant to reinforce the Potidaeans from Olynthus (which is about seven miles away and in sight of Potidaea) advanced a little way with the object of joining in. At the same time the Mace­ donian cavalry took up their positions to intercept them. But victory soon went to the Athenians, and the signals were lowered. The troops from Olynthus thereupon fell back ~gain and the Macedonians rejoined the Athenians. There was therefore no cavalry in action on either side.

After the battle the Athenians put up a trophy and granted an armistice to the Potidaeans so that they could recover their dead. Nearly 300 of the Potidaeans and their allies had been killed; the Athenians had lost ISO of their own citizens, including their general, Callias.

64 The Athenians at once built and manned a counter wall to the north of the wall across the isthmus. They did not build fortifica­ tions opposite Pallene, since they did not think they were strong enough both to man their wall on the isthmus and also to cross over to Pallene and build a wall there; they were afraid that, if they

72 BOOK ONB

divided their force in two, the Potidaeans and their allies would attack them.

When it was reported in Athens that no fortifications had been raised against Pallene, the Athenians sent out some time later a force of x,6oo citizen hoplites under the command ofPhormio, the son of Asopius. Phormio arrived at Pallene and, basing himself at Aphytis, moved slowly forward towards Potidaea, ravaging the country on his way. The Potidaeans did not come out to fight, and so he built a counter wall cutting them off from Pallene. Now, therefore, Potidaea was 6.rmly invested by land on both sides, and at the saine time Athenian ships were blockading the place from

65 the sea. Cut off as it was, Aristeus had no hope that it could survive unless some miracle happened or else events in the Peloponnese took a different tum. The advice he gave to the Potidaeans was to watch for a favourable wind and then sail away, leaving behind a garrison of soo, amongst whom the food would last longer. He himself volunteered to stay with those who were left behind. His advice, however, was not taken, and, wishing to do what he thought was best under the circumstances and at the same time to organize help from outside, he slipped through the Athenian blockade and sailed out of the town. He then lived with the Chal­ cidians and helped them in the fighting. Among his other actions, he organized an ambush near the city of Sermyle and destroyed a number of men there. He was also in touch with the Peloponnese and was trying to arrange for help from that quarter.

Phormio, now that the blockade had been completed, used his 1,6oo troops in laying waste the country of Chalcidice and Bot­ tiaea. He also captured some of their towns.

THB DBBATB AT SPARTA AND

DECLARATION OF WAR

The Debate at Sparta and Declaration of War 432 73

nesians; thtt had supported the ~evolt of a city which was in aDtance wi her and which paid hCr tribute...and they had o~y joined the Potidaeans in fig_hting against her. In spite of thiSJthe truce was still in force and war had not yet broken out. What had been done so far had been done on the private initiative of Corinth.

67 Now, however, Corinth brought matters into the open. Potidaea was under blockade, some ofher own citizens were inside, and she feared that the place might be lost. She therefore immediately urged the allies to send delegates to Sparta.13 There her own dele­ gates violently attacked the Athenians for having broken the truce and co~mmttte acts of aggression against the Peloponnese. The people o egin were on her side. Out of fear of Athens they had not sent a ormal delegation, but behind the scenes they played a considerable part in fomenting war, saying that they had not been given the independence promised to them by the treaty. The Spartans also issued an invitation to their own allies and to anyone else who claimed to have suffered from Athenian aggression. They then held their usual assembly, and gave an opportunity there for delegates to express their views. Many came forward with various complaints. In particular the delegates from Megara, after men­ tioning a number of other grievances, pointed out that, contrary to the terrns of the treaty, they were excluded from all the ports in the Athenian empire and from the market of Athens itself. The Corinthians were the last to come forward and speak, having allowed the previous speakers to do their part in hardening Spartan opinion against Athens. The Corinthian speech was as follows:

68 •spartans, what makes you somewhat reluctant to listen to us others, if we have ideas to put forward, is the great trust and confi­ dence which you have in your own constitution and in your own way of life. This is a quality which certainly makes you moderate in your judgements; it is also, perhaps, responsible for a kind of ignorance which you show when you are dealing with foreign affairs. Many times before now we have told you what we were likely to suffer from Athens, and on each occasion, instead of taking to heart what we were telling you, you chose instead to suspect our motives and to consider that we were speaking only about our own grievances. The result has been that you did not call together

13. On the procedure, see Appendix I.

74 BOOK ONB

this meeting of our allies before the damage was done; you waited until now, when we are actually suffering from it. And of all these allies, we have perhaps the best right to speak now, since we have the most serious complaints to make. We have to complain of Athens for her insolent aggression and of Sparta for her neglect of our advice.

'If there were anything doubtful or obscure about this aggression on the whole ofHellas; our task would have been to try to put the facts before you and show you something that you did not know. As it is, long speeches are unnecessary. You can see yourselves how Athens has deprived some states of their freedom and is scheming to do the same thing for others, especially among our own allies. and that she herself has for a long time been preparing for the eventuality of war. Why otherwise should she have forcibly taken over from us the control of Corcyra? Why is she besieging Poti­ daea? Potidaea is the best possible base for any campaign in Thrace, and Corcyra might have contributed a very large fleet to the Peloponnesian League.

69 'And it is you who are responsible for all this. It was you who in the first place allowed the Athenians to fortify their city and build the Long Walls after the Persian War. Since then and up to the present day you have withheld freedom not only from those who have been enslaved by Athens but even from your own allies. When one is deprived of one's liberty one is right in blaming not so much the man who puts the fetters on as the one who had the power to prevent him, but did not use it - especially when such a one rejoices in the glorious reputation of having been the liberator ofHellas.

'Even at this stage it has not been easy 'to arrange this meeting. and even at this meeting there are no definite proposals. Why are we still considering whether aggression has taken place instead of how we can resist it? Men who are capable of real action first make their plans and then go forward without hesitation while their enemies have still not made up their minds. As for the Athenians, we know their methods and how they gradually encroach upon their neighbours. Now they are proceeding slowly because they think that your insensitiveness to the situation enables them to go on their way unnoticed; you will find that they will develop their

The Debate at Sparta and Declaration of War 432 75

full strength once they realize that you do see what is happening awl:-are still doing nothing to prevent it.

\ 'You Spartans are the only people in Hellas who wait calmly on events. relying for your defence not on action but on making people think that you will act. You alone do nothing in the early atages to prevent an enemy's expansion; you wait until your enemy has doubled his strength. Certainly you used to have the reputation of being safe and sure enough: now one wonders whether this reputation was deserved. The Persians, as we know ourselves, came from the ends .of the earth and got as far as the Peloponnese before you were able to put a proper force into the field to meet them. The Athenians, unlike the Persians, live close to you. yet still you do not appear to notice them; instead of going out to meet them, you prefer to stand still and wait till you are attacked, thus hazarding everything by fighting with~onents who have grown far stronger than they were original} .

'In fact you know that the chief reason for the fai ure of the Persian invasion was the mistaken policy of the Persians them­ aelves; and you know, too, that there have been many occasions when, if we managed to stand up to Athenian aggression, it was more because of Athenian mistakes than because of any help we got from you. Indeed, we can think of instances already where those who have relied on you and remained unprepared have been ruined by the confidence they placed in you.

'We should not like any of you to think that we are speaking in an unfriendly spirit. We are only remonstrating with you, as i5 natural when one's friends are making mistakes. Real accusations must be kept for one's enemies who have actually done one harm.

70 'Then also we think we have as much right as anyone else to point out faults in our neighbours, especially when we consider the enormous difference between you and the Athenians. To our minds. you are quite unaware of this difference; you have never yet tried to imagine what sort of people these Athenians are against whom you will have to fight- how much, indeed how completely different from you; An Athenian is always an innovator, quick to form a resolution and quick at carrying it out. You, on the other hand, are good at keeping things as they are; you never originate an idea. and your action tends to stop short ofits aim. Then again,

76 BOOK ONB

Athenian daring will outrun its own resources; they will take risks against their better judgement, and still, in the midst of danger, remain confident. But your nature is always to do less than you could have done, to mistrust your own judgement, however sound it may be, and to assume that dangers will last for ever. Think of this, too: while you are hanging back, they never hesi­ tate; while you· stay at home, they are always abroad; for they think that the farther they go the more they will get, while you

·think that any movement may endanger what you have already. If they win a victory, they follow it up at once, and if they suffer a defeat, they scarcely fall back at all. As . for their bodies, they regard them as expendable for their city's sake, as though they were not their own; but each man cultivates his own intelligence, again with a view to doing something notable for his city. If they aim at something and do not get it, they think that they have been depriv~J of what belonged to them already; whereas, if their enterprise is successful, they regard that success as nothing com­ pared to what they will do next. Suppose they fail in some under­ taking; they make good the loss immediately by setting their hopes in some other direction. Of them alone it may be said that they possess a thing almost as soon as they have begun to desire it, so quickly with them does action follow upon decision. And so they go on working away in hardship and danger all the days of their lives, seldom enjoying their possessions because they are always adding to them. Their view of a holiday is to do what needs doing; they prefer hardship and activity to peace and quiet._!!!_!. word, they are by nature incapable of either living ~quiet life themselves or of allowing anyone else to do so.

71 -.That is the character of the c1ty which is opposed to you. Yet you still hang back;you will not see that the likeliest way of secur­ ~ is this: only to use one's ower in the caus of ustree:but ~o make It er ec am t at one is reso ved tolerate aggres­ ~On the contrary, your i ea of proper behaviour is, first y, to avoid harming others, and then to avoid being harmed yourselves, even if it is a matter of defending your own interests. Even if you had on your frontiers a power holding the same principles as you do, it is hard to see how such a policy could have been a success. But at the present time, as we have just pointed out to you, your

The Debate at Sparta and Declaration of War 432 77

are. ---<y;1r inactivity has done harm enough. Now let there be an

end of it. Give your allies, and especially Potidaea, the help you promised, and invade Attica at once. Do not let your friends and kinsmen fall into the hands of the bitter enemies. Do not force the rest of us in despair to join a different alliance. If we did so, no one could rightly blame us- neither the gods who witnessed our oaths nor any man capable of appreciating our situation. The people who break a treaty of alliance are the ones who fail to give the help they swore to give, not those who have to look elsewhere because they have been left in the lurch. But if you will only make up your minds to act, we will stand by you. It would be an unnatural thing for us to make a change, nor could we find other allies with whom we have such close bonds. You have heard what we have to say. Think carefully over your deeision. From your fathers was handed down to you the leadership of the Peloponnese. Maintain its greatness.'

7'- This was the speech of the Corinthians. There happened to be already in Sparta some Athenian representatives who had come there on other business. When they heard the speeches that had been made, they decided that they, too, ought to claim a hearing. Not that they had any intention of defending themselves against any of the charges that had been made against Athens by the various cities, but they wished to make a general statement and to point out that this was an affair which needed further consideration and ought not to be decided upon at once. They wanted also to make clear how powerful their city was, to remind the elder members of the assembly of facts that were known to them, and to inform the younger ones of matters in which they were ignorant. In this way they hoped to divert their audience from the idea· of war and make them incline towards letting matters rest. They therefore

78 BOOK ONB

approached the Spartans and said that, if there was no objection, they, too, would like to make a speech before the assembly. The Spartans invited them to do so, and they came forward and spoke as follows:

73 'This delegation of ours did not come here to enter into a con- troversy with your allies, but to deal with the business on which our city sent us. We observe, however, that extraordinary attacks have been made on us, and so we have come forward to speak. We shall make no reply to the charges which these cities have made against us. Your assembly is not a court oflaw, competent to listen to pleas either from them or from us. Our aim is to prevent you from coming to the wrong decision on a matter of great impor­ tance through paying too much attention to the views of your allies. At the same time we should like to examine the general principles of the argument used against us and to make you see that our gains have been reasonable enough and that our city is one that deserves a certain consideration.

'There is no need to talk about what happened long ago: there our evidence would be that of hearsay rather than that of eye­ witnesses amongst our audience. But we must refer to the Persian War, to events well known to you all, even though you may be tired of constantly hearing the story. In our actions at that time we ventured everything for the common good; you have your share in what was gained; do not deprive us of all our share of glory and of the good that it may do us. We shall not be speaking in the spirit of one who is asking a favour, but of one who is producing evidence. Our aim is to show you what sort of a city you will have to fight against, if you make the wrong decision.

'This is our record. At Marathon we stood out against the Per­ sians and faced them single-handed. In the later invasion, when we were unable to meet the enemy on land, we and all our people took to our ships, and joined in the battle at Salamis. It was this battle that prevented the PersiansTrom sailing against the Pelopon­ nese and destroying the cities one by one; for no system of mutual defence could have been organized in face of the Persian naval superiority. The best proof of this is in the conduct of the Persians themselves. Once they had lost the battle at sea they realized that their force was crippled and they immediately withdrew most of

The Debate at Sparta and Declaration of War 432 79

7-4 their army. That, then was the result, and it proved that the fate of Hellas depended on her navy. Now, we contributed to this result in three important ways: we produced most of the ships, we pro­ vided the most intelligent of the generals, and we displayed the most unflinching courage. Out of the 400 ships, nearly two-thirds were ours: the commander was Themistocles, who was mainly responsible for the battle being fought in the straits, and this, ob­ viously, was what saved us. You yourselves in fact, because of this, treated him with more distinction than you have ever treated any visitor from abroad. And the courage, the daring that we showed were without parallel. With no help coming to us by land, with all the states up to our frontier already enslaved, we chose to abandon our city and to sacrifice our property; then, so far from deserting the rest of our allies in the common cause or making our­ selves useless to them by dispersing our forces, we took to our ships and chose the path of danger, with no grudges against you for not having come to our help earlier. So it is that we can claim to have given more than we received. There were still people liv­ ing in the cities which you left behind you, and you were .fighting to preserve them; when you sent out your forces you feared for yourselves much more than for us (at all events, you never put in· an appearance until we· had lost everything). Behind us, on the other hand, was a city that had ceased to exist; yet we still went forward and ventured our lives for this city that seemed so impos­ sible to recover. Thus we joined you and helped to save not only ourselves but you also. But if we, like others, had been frightened about our land and had made terms with the Persians before you arrived, or if, later, we had regarded ourselves as irretrievably ruined and had lacked the courage to take to our ships, then there would no longer have been any point in your fighting the enemy at sea, since you would not have had enough ships. Instead things would have gone easily and quietly just as the Persians wished.

7S 'Surely, Spartans, the courage, the resolution, and the ability which we showed then ought not to be repaid by such immoderate hostility from the Hellenes - especially so far as our empire is concerned. We did not gain this empire by force. It came to us at a time when you were unwilling to fight on to the end against the Persians. At this time our allies came to us of their own accord and

So BOOK ONB

begged us to lead them. Jt was the actual course of events which first compelled us to increase our ~ower to its present extent: fear of Persia was our duef motive, t ough ~erwards we thought, too, of our own hollQULalld our own interest. Finally there came a time when we were surrounded by enemies, when we had al­ ready crushed some revolts, when you had lost the friendly feelings that you used to have for us and had turned against us and begun to arouse our suspicion: at this point it was clearly no longer safe for us to risk letting our empire go, especially as any allies that left us would go over to you. And ':X hen tre~~ndous d.~ers _Me involved no one can be blamed for looking to IS own mterest.

76 'Certainly you Spartans, in your leadership of the Peloponnese, have arranged the affairs of the various states so as to suit your­ selves. And if, in the years of which we were speaking, you had gone on taking an active part in the war and had become unpopu­ lar ,as.we did, in the course of exercising your leadership, we have little doubt that you would have been just as hard upon your allies as we were, and that you would have been forced either to govern strongly or to endanger your own security.

'So it is with us. ""'!fe have done nothing extraordinary, nothing ntrary to human nature in accepting an empire when it was

offered to us and then in refusin tOive it u . Three v power­ fu motives prevent us from oing so - cun , onou , an~ ~.And we were not the first to act in this way. Far from it. It has alwa s been a rule that the weak should be subject to the strong; and s1 es, we consider that we are worth o our power. Up tiU t e present moment you, too, used to think that we were; but now after cal.GU!ating o~ ou are beginning to talk in ferms o ng an wrong. · erations o thlSiciBd

ave never yet turn e from the opportunities of aggrandizement offered· by superior strength. Those who really deserve raise are the people who, while human enou h to en·~

ower, nevert e ess pay more attention to justice than they are compelled to do by their s1tuat1on. Certainly we think that Tr anyone else was in our position 1t wo-uld soon be evident whether we act with moderation or not. Yet, unreasonably enough, our very consideration for others has brought us more blame than

77 praise. For example, in law-suits with our allies arising out of con·

The Debate at Sparta and Declaration of War 432 81

tracts we have put ourselves at a disadvantage, and when we ar­ range to have such cases tried by impartial courts in Athens, people merely say that we are overfond of going to law. No one bothen to inquire why this reproach is not made against other imperial Powers, who treat their subjects much more harshly than we do: the fact being, of course, that where force can be used there is no need to bring in the law. Our subjects, on the other hand, are used to being treated as equals; consequently, when they are disap­ pointed in what they think right and suffer even the smallest dis­ advantage because of a judgement in our courts or because of the power that our empire gives us, they cease to feel grateful to us for all the advantages which we have left to them: indeed, they feel more bitterly over this slight disparity than they would feel if we, from the first, had set the law aside and had openly enriched ourselves at their expense. Under those conditions they would certainly not have disputed the fact that the weak must give in to the strongj>eople. in fact. seem to feel more strongly about their

3gal wrongs than about the wrongs inflicted on them by violence. In the first case they think they are being Ot't@ne by an equalJ!,J the second case that the are be' com lied b a su rior. Cer­ tainly ey put up wi mu worse sufferings than these when they were under the Persians, but now they think that our govern­ ment is oppressive. That is natural enough, perhaps, since subject

•les always find the present time most hard to bear. But on one pomt we are qu1te certain: if you were to destroy us and to take over our empire, you would soon lose all the goodwill which you have gained because of others being afraid of us - that is, if you are going to stick to those principles of behaviour which you showed before, in the short time when you led Hellas against the Penians. Your own regulated ways of life do not mix well with the ways of others. Also it is a fact that when one of you goes abroad he follows neither his own ~es nor those of the rest of Hellas.

71 'Take time, then, over your decision, which is an important one. Do not allow considerations of other people's opinions and other people's complaints to involve you in difficulties which you will feel yourselves. Think, too, of the great part that is played by the unpredictable in war: think of it now, before you are actually committed to war. The longer a war lasts, the more things tend to

82 BOOK ONB

depend on accidents. Neither you nor we can see into them,! we have to abide their outcome in the dark. And when people are entering upon a war they do things the wrong way round. Action comes first, and it is only when they have already suffered that they begin to think. We, however, are still far removed from such a mistaken attitude; so, to the best of our belief, are you. And so we urge you, now, while we are both still free to make sensible decisions, do not break the peace, do not go back upon your oaths; instead let us settle our differences by arbitration, as is laid down in ~ If you will not do so, we shall have as our witnesses the gods who heard our oaths. You will have begun the war, and we shall attempt to meet you in any .and every field of action that you may choose.'

79 The Athenians spoke as I have described. Now the Spartans had heard the complaints made by their allies against Athens and also the Athenian reply. They therefore requested all outsiders to leave and discussed the situation among themselves. Most people's viewa tended to the same conclusion- namely, that Athens was already acting aggressively and that war should be declared without delay. However, the Spartan Kin~, a man who had a repu­ tation for both intelligenceatldlll<>eiation, came forward and made the following speech:

So 'Spartans, in the course of my life I have taken part in many wars, and I see among you people of the same age as I am. They and I have had experience, and so are not likely to share in what may be a general enthusiasm for war, nor to think that war is a good thing or a safe thing. And you will find, if you look carefully into the matter, that this present war which you are now discussing is not likely to be anything on a small scale. When we are engaged with Peloponnesians and neighbours, the forces on both sides are of the same type, and we can strike rapidly where we wish to strike. With Athens it is different. Here we shall be engaged with people who live· far off, people also who have the widest experi­ ence of the sea and who are extremely well equipped in all other directions, very wealthy both as individuals and as a state, with ships and cavalry and hoplites, with a population bigger than that of any other place in Hellas, and then, too, with numbers of allies who pay tribute to them. How, then, can we irresponsibly start a

The Debate at Sparta and Declaration of War 432 83

war with such a people? What have we to rely upon if we rush into it unprepared? Our navy? It is inferior to theirs, and if we are to give proper attention to it and builJ it up to their strength, that will take time. Or arc we relying on our wealth? Here we are at an even greater disadvantage: we have no public funds, and it is

81 no easy matter to secure contributions from private sources. Per­ haps there is ground for confidence in the superiority which we have in heavy infantry and in actual numbers, assets which will enable us to invade and devastate their land. Athens, however, controls plenty of land outside Attica and can import what she wants by sea. And if we try tomah· her allies revolt from her, we shall have to support them with a flet~t, since most of them arc on the islands. What sort of war, then, are we going to fight? If we can neither defeat them at sea nor take away from them the re­ sources on which their navy depends, we shall do ourselves more harm than good. we shall then find that we can 110 longer even make an honourable peace, especially if it is thought that it was we who began the quarrel. For we must not bolster ourselves up with the false hope that if we devastate their land, the war will soon be over. I fear that it is more likely that we shall be leaving it to our children after us. So convinced am I that the Athenians have too much pride to become the slaves of their own land, or to shrink back from warfare as though they were inexperienced in it.

12 'Not that I am suggesting that we should calmly allow them to injure our allies and should turn a blind eye to their machinations. What I do suggest is that we should not take up arms at the present moment; instead we should send to them and put our grievances before them; we should not threaten war too openly, though at the same time we should make it clear that we are not going to let them have their own way. In the meantime we should be making our own preparations by winning over new allies both ·among Hellenes and among foreigners- from any quarter, in fact, where we can increase our naval and financial resources. No one can blame us for securing our own safety by taking foreigners as well as Greeks into our alliance when we are, as is the fact, having our position undermined by the Athenians. At the same time we must put our own affairs in order. If they pay attention to our diplomatic

84 BOOK ONB

protests, so much the better. If they do not, then, after two or three years have passed, we shall be in a much sounder position and can attack them, if we decide to do so. And perhaps when they see that our actual strength is keeping pace with the language that we use, they will be more inclined to give way, since their land will still be untouched and, in making up their minds, they will be thinking of advantages which they still possess and which have not yet been destroyed. For you must think of their land as though it was a hostage in your possession, and all the more valuable the better it is looked after. You should spare it up to the last possible moment, and avoid driving them to a state of desperation in which you will find them much harder to deal with. If now in our present state of unpreparedness we lay their land waste, hurried into tlus course by the complaints of our allies, I warn you to take care that our action does not bring to the Peloponnese still more shame and still greater difficulties. As for complaints, whether they come from cities or from private individuals, they are capable of arrangement; but when war is declared by our whole confederacy for the sake of the interests of some of us, and when it is impossible to foresee the course that the war will take, then an honourable settlement is not an easy thing at all.

8 3 'Let no one call it cowardice if we, in all our numbers, hesitate before attacking a .single city. They have just as many allies as we have, and their allie~ pay tribute. And war is not so much a matter of armaments as of the mone which makes armaments effective: particularly is t is true in a war fought between a and power ana a sea power. So let us first of all see to our finances ancl-;- until"WC have done so, avoid being swept away by speeches from our allies. It is we who shall bear most of the responsibility for what happens later, whether it is good or bad; we should therefore be allowed the time to look into some of these possibilities at our leisure.

!14 'As for being slow and cautious - which is the usual criticism made against us - there is nothing to be ashamed of in that. If you take sometlllng on before you are ready for it, hurry at the begin­ ning will mean delay at the end. Besides, the city in which we live has always been free and always famous. :•stow" and "cautious" can equally well be "wise" and "sensible". Certainly it is because we possess these qualities that we are the only people who do not

The Debate at Sparta and Declaration of War 432 Ss

tltcy tryto sour us on orcterectllte we are bo

is base<l on cour~And we are wise because we are educated as to look down on ou aws and cus s a are t rigorously trained in self-control to be able to disobey them. We

a re trained to avoid being too clever in matters that are of no use - such as being able to produce an excellent theoretical criticism of one's enemies' dispositions, and then failing in practice to do quite so well against them. Instead we are taught that there is not a great deal of difference between the way we think and the way others think, and that it is impossible to calculate accurately events that are determined by chance. The practical measures that we take are always based on the assumption that our enemies are not unintelli­ gent. And it is right and proper for us to put our hopes in the reliability of our own precautions rather than in the possibility of our opponent making mistakes. There is no need to suppose that human beings differ very much one from another:·but it is true that the ones who come out on top are the ones who have been trained in the hardest scho~

1!5 'Let us never give up t is discipline which our fathers have handed down to us and which we still preserve and which has always done us good. Let us not be hurried, and in one short day's space come to a decision which will so profoundly affect the lives of men and their fortunes, the fates of cities and their national honour. We ought to take time over such a decision. And we, more than others, can afford to take time, because we are strong. As for the Athenians, I advise sending a mission to them about Potidaea and also about the other cases where our allies daim to have been ill treated. Especially is this the right thing to do since the Athenians themselves are prepared to submit to arbitration, and when one party offers this it is quite illegal to attack him fust, a~ though he was definitely in the wrong. And at the same time

86 BOOK ONE

carry pn your preparations for war. This decision is the best o·ne you can make for yourselves, and is also the one most likely to inspire fear in your enemies.'

After this speech of Archidamus, Sthenclaidas, one of the cphors of that year, came forward to make the final speech, which was as follows:

86 'I do not understand these long sreeches which the Athenians make. Though they said a great deal in prais~: of themselves, they made no attempt to contradict the fact that they an: acting aggn:s­ sively against our allies and against the Pdoponncsc. And surely, if it is the fact that thq• had a good record in the past agaiust the Persians and now have a bad record as regards us, then they deserve to pay double for it, since, though they were once good, they have now turned out bad. We are the same then and now, and if we are sensible, we shall not allow any aggression against our allies and ahall not wait before we come to their help. They are no longer waiting before being ill treated. Others may have a lot of money and ships and horses, but we have good allies, and we ought not to betray them to the Athenians. And this is not a matter to be settled by law-suits and by words: it is not' because of words that our own interests are suffering. Instead we should come to the help of our allies quickly and with all our might. And let no one try to tell us t!ut when we are being attacked we~ matters; these long discussions are rather for those who are medi­

_!!!!.ng aggression themselves. Therefore, Spartans, cast your votes for the honour of Sparta anctfor war! Do not allow the Athenians to grow still stronger! Do not entirely betray your allies! Instead let us, with the help ofh<.."aven, go forward to meet the aggressor!'

17 After this speech he himself, in his capacity of ephor, put the question to the Spartan assembly. They make their decisions by acclamation, not by voting, and Sthenelaidas said at first that he could not decide on which side the acclamations were the louder. This was because he wanted to make them show their opinions openly and so make them all the more enthusiastic for war. He therefore said: 'Spartans, those of you who think that the treaty has been broken and that the Athenians are aggressors, get up and atand on one side. Those who do not think so, stand on the other aide,' and he pointed out to them where they were to stand. They

The Pentecontaetia 479-435 8?

then rose to their feet and separated into two divisions. The great majority were of the opinion that the treaty had been broken.

They then summoned their allies to the assembly and told them that they had decided that Athens was acting aggressively, but that they wanted to have all their allies with them when they put the vote, so that, if they decided to make war, it should be done on the basis of a unanimous resolution.

Afterwards the allied delegates, having got their own way, re­ turned home. Later the Athenian representatives, when they had finished the business for which they had come, also returned. This decision of the assembly that the treaty had been broken took place in the fourteenth year of the thirty years' truce which was made

88 after the affair ofEuboea. T_kSpartans voted that the treaty_had been broken and that war should be declared not so much becau~

ey were influenced b t ec · all" cause they were a ai of the furt A ·an ower seeing,th t ey did, that already the greater part of Hellas was under e control of Athens.

THE PENTBCONTABTIA 14

19 The following is an account of how Athens came to be in the position to gain such strength.

After the Persians had retreated from Europe, defeated by the Hellenes on sea and land, and after those of them who had fled by sea to Mycale had been destroyed, the Spartan king Leotychides, who had commanded the Hellenes at Mycale, returned home, taking with him the allies from the Peloponnese. The Athenians, however, with the allies from Ionia and the Hellespont who had already revolted from the king of Persia, stayed behind and be­ sieged the city of Sestos, which was occupied by the Persians. They spent the winter there and finally took the place after the Persians had evacuated it. They then sailed out of the Hellespont and dis­ persed to their own cities.

Meanwhile the Athenian people, as soon as their land was free from foreign occupation, began to bring back their children and

14. On this digression, see the introduction, pp. 15-16, 18.

2.12 BOOK THRBB

THB MYTILENIAN DEBATBlO

36 When Salaethus and the other prisoners reached Athens, the ~ immediately put Salaethus to death in spite of the fact that he undertook, among other things, to have the Peloponne­ sians withdrawn from Plataea, which was still being besieged. They then discussed what was to be done with the other prisoners ahd, in their angry mood, decided to put to death not only those now in their hands but also the entire adult male population of Mytilene, and to make slaves of the women and ch1ldien. What they held against Mytilene was the fact that it had revoltecl even though it was not a subject state, like the others, and the bitterness of their feelings was considerably increased by the fact that the Peloponnesian Beet had actually dared to cross over to Ionia to support the revolt. This, it was thought, could never have hap­ pened unless the revolt had been long premeditated. So they sent a trireme to Paches to inform him of what had been decided, with orders to put the Mytilenians to death immediately.

Next day, however, there was a sudden change of feeling and people began to think how cruel and how unprecedented such a decision was - to destroy not only the guilty, but the entire population of a state. Observing this, the deputation from·Myti­ lene which was in Athens and the Athenians who were supporting them approached the authorities with a view to having the ques­ tion debated again. They won their point the more easily because the authorities themselves saw clearly that most of the citizens were wanting someone to give them a chance of reconsidering the mat­ ter. So an assembly was called at once. Various opinions were expressed on both sides, and Cleon, the son of Cleaenetus, spoke again. It was he who had been responsible for passing the original motion for putting the Mytilenians to death. He was remarkable among the Athenians for the violence of his character, and at this time he exercised far the greatest influence over the people.31 He spoke as follows:

JO. See the Introduction, pp. 27. 31. This wording is echoed by Thucydides in VI, 3S when he introduCCI

the Syracusan 'demagogue' Athenagoras.

The Mytilenian Debate 427 213

214 BOOK THREE

guilty party. After a lapse of time the injured party will lose the edge of his anger when he comes to act against those who have wronged him; whereas the best punishment and the one most fitted to the crime is when reprisals follow immediatel . I shall be amaze , too, i anyone contra tcts me an attempts to prove that the harm done to us by Mytilene is really a good thing for us, or tha~ when we suffer ourselves we are somehow doing harm to our allies. It is obvious that anyone who is going to say this must either have such confidence in his powers as an orator that he will struggle to persuade you that what has been finally settled was, on the con­ trary, not decided at all, or else he must have been bribed to put together some elaborate speech with which he will try to lead you out of the right track. But in competitions of this sort the prizes go to others and the state takes all the danger for herself. The blame is yours, for stupidly instituting these competitive displays. You have become regular speech-goers, and as for action, you merely listen to accounts of it; if something is to be done in the future you estimate the possibilities by hearing a good speech on the subject, and as for the past you rely not so much on the facts which you have seen with your own eyes as on what you have heard about them in some clever piece of verbal criticism. Any novelty in an argument deceives you at once, but when the argument is tried and proved you become unwilling to follow it; you look with suspicion on what is normal and are the slaves of every paradox that comes your way. The chief wish of each one of you is to be able to make a speech himself, and, if you cannot do that, the next best thing is to compete with those who can make this sort of speech by not looking as though you were at all out of your depth while you listen to the views put forward, by applauding a good point even before it is made, and by being as quick. at seeing how an argument is going to be developed as you are slow at under­ standing what in the end it will lead to. What you are looking for all the time is something that is, I should say, outside the range of ordinary experience, and yet you cannot even think straight about the facts oflife that are before you. 'Ygu are simply victims of your own Ieasure in listenin , and are more like an audi sittin at

- t oLa_ professiona ecturer than a__parliament discussing matters of state.

The Mytilenian Debate 427 2IS

39 'I am trying to stop you behaving like this, and I say that no single city has ever done you the harm that Mytilene has done. Personally I can make allowances for those who revolt because they find your rule intolerable or because they have been forced into it by enemy action. Here, however, we have the case of people living on an island, behind their own fortifications, with nothing to fear from our enemies except an attack by sea against which they were adequately protected by their own force of triremes; they had their own independent government and they were treated by us with the greatest consideration. Now, to act as they acted is not what I should call a revolt (for People only revolt when they have been badly treated) ; it i~ case calculated a gression, of aeliberately taking sides with our bitterest enemies in or erto ...,~roy us. And this is far worse than if they had made war against us s1mply to increase their own power. They learned nothing from the fate of those of their neighbours who had already revolted and been subdued; the prosperity which they enjoyed did not make them hesitate before running into danger; confident in the future, they declared war on us, with hopes that indeed extended beyond their means, though still fell short of their desires. They made up their minds to put might first and right second; choosing the moment when they thought they would win, and then making their unprovoked attack upon us.

'The fact is that when great pros rity comes suddenly and un­ e~oectecl to a state, 1t usua y ree s arrogance; m most cases It IS

safer or peo e to en'oy an average amount o success rat er t an somet mg which is out o a proportion; ~d it 1s easier, I sho':!!d sa , to ward off hardshi than to maintain happiness. What we should have done long ago wit t e Myti emans was to treat them in exactly the same way as all the rest; then they would never have grown so arrogant; for it is a eneral rule of human nature that .:¥: people des ise those who treat them well and look up to those w o rna e no concession.s. Let them now there ore ave t e pums - ~ ment which their crime deserves. _Do not put~ blame on the ~ut~ aristocracy and say that the people were innocent. The tact 1S"'fllai ..._ ~ the whole lot of them attacked you together, although the people might have come over to us and, if they had, would now be back again in control of their city. Yet, instead of doing this, they

The Mytilenian Debate 427

*

- ~

~~

218 BOOK THRBB

two reate des to wise counsel- haste, that usually goes with o y, anger, that is the mark of rimittve and narrow mmds. And

anyone w o mamtams t at wo.r s cannot a gu1 e to act1on must be either a fool or one with some personal interest at stake; he is a fool, if he imagines that it is possible to deal with the uncertainties of the future by any other medium, and he is personally interested if his aim is to persuade you into some disgraceful action, and, knowing that he cannot make a ood speech in a bad cause, he tries to ng ten his o onents an 1s earers by some good­ size pieces o misre resentation. Then still more mto era e are

ose w o go further and accuse a speaker of making a kind of exhibition of himself, because he is paid for it. If it was only ig­ norance with which he was being charged, a speaker who failed to win his case could retire from the debate and still be thought an honest man, if not a very intelligent one. But when corruption is imputed, he will be suspect if he wins his case, and if he loses it, will be regarded as dishonest and stupid at the same time. This sort of thing does the city no good; her counsellors will be afraid to speak and she will be deprived of their services. Though certainly it would be the best possible thing for the city if these gentlemen whom I have been describing lacked the power to express them­ selves; we should not then be persuaded into making so many mistakes.

'The good citizen, instead of trying to terrify the opposition, ought to prove his case in fair argument; and a wise state, without giving special honours to its best counsellors, will certainly not deprive them of the honour they already enjoy; and when a man's advice is not taken, he should not even be disgraced, far less penalized. In this way successful speakers will be less likely to pur­ sue further honours by speaking against their own convictions in order to make themselves popular, and unsuccessful speakers, too,

43 will not struggle to win over the people by the same acts of flattery. What we do here, however, is exactly the opposite. Then, too, if a man gives the best possible advice but is under the slightest sus­ picion of being influenced by his own private profit, we are so embittered by the idea (a wholly unproved one) of this profit of his, that we do not allow the state to receive the certain benefit of his good advice. So a state of affairs has been reached where a good

The Mytilenian Debate 427 219

BOOK THRBB The Mytilenian Debate 427

222 BOOK THRBB

47 'Consider what a mistake you would be making on this very point, if you took Clean's advice. As things are now, in all the cities the democracy is friendly to you; either it does not join in with the oligarchies in revolting, or, if it is forced to do so, it remains all the time hostile to the rebels, so that when you go to war with them, you have the people on your side. But if you des­ troy the democratic party at Mytilenc, who never took any hand in the revolt and who, as soon as they got arms, voluntarily gave the city up to you, you will~f all be uil of killing those who have helped you, an , con , you will oin exact what the reachonarf lasses want most. or now, when t ey start ~a revolt, ti1ey will ave the people on their side from the begin- ning, because you have already made it clear that the same punish­ ment is laid down both for the guilty and the innocent. In fact,

~..,~..olb.owever, ~ven if the were uilt , o~ should retend that the -:!"~ were not m order to kee on our stde t e one element that .f' 1s st1 not opposed to you:-It is far more useful to us, I think, in

preservmg our empire, that we should voluntarily put up with injustice than that we should justly put to death the wrong people. As for Cleon' s point - that in this act of vengeance both justice and self-interest arc combined - this is not a case where such a combina­

tion is at all possible. 48 'I call upon you, therefore, to accept my proposal as the better

one. Do not be swayed too much b i or b ordinar decent feelin s. , no more an eon, wts ou to be influenced b such _£motions. It is simp yon the basis oft e argument which you ave heard tliat I ask you to be guided by me, to try at your leisure the men whom Paches has considered guilty and sent to Athens, and to allow the rest to live in their own city. In following this course you will be acting wisely for the future and will be doing something which will make your enemies fear you now. Fort~ who make wise decisions are more formidable to their

49 ·1 ms was tne speecn or u1uuu~u~. And now, when these two mo- tions, each so opposed to each, had been put forward, the Athen· ians, in spite of the recent change of feeling, still held conflicting opinions, and at the show of hands the votes were nearly equal. However, the motion ofDiodotus was passed.

The End ofPlataea 427 223

Immediately another trireme was sent out in all haste, since they feared that, unless it overtook the first trireme, they would find on their arrival that the city had been destroyed. The first trireme had a start of about twenty-four hours. The ambassadors from Mytilene provided wine and barley for the crew and promised great rewards if they arrived in time, and so the men made such speed on the voyage that they kept on rowing while they took their food (which was barley mixed with oil and wine) and rowed continual­ ly, taking it in turn to sleep. Luckily they had no wind against them, and as the first ship was not hurrying on its distasteful mis­ sion, while they were pressing on with such speed, what happened was that the first ship arrived so little ahead of them that Paches had just had time to read the decree and to prepare to put it into force, when the second ship put in to the harbour and prevented the massacre. So narrow had been the escape of Mytilene.

so The other Mytilenians whom Paches had sent to Athens as being the ones chiefly responsible for the revolt were, on the motion of Cleon, put to death by the Athenians. There were rather more than x,ooo of them. The Athenians also destroyed the fortifications of Mytilene and took over their navy. Afterwards, instead of im­ posing a tribute on Lesbos, they divided all the land, except that belonging to the Methymnians, into 3,000 holdings, 300 of which were set apart as sacred for the gods, while the remainder was dis­ tributed by lot to Athenian shareholders, who were sent out to Lesbos. The Lesbians agreed with these shareholders to pay a yearly rent of two minae for each holding, and cultivated the land them­ selves. The Athenians also took over all the towns on the mainland that had been under the control of Mytilene. So for the future the Mytilenians became subjects of Athens. This completes the account of what took place in Lesbos.

THE BND OF PLAT ABA

SI In the same summer, and after the conquest of Lesbos, the Athenians, under the command of Nicias, the son of Niceratus, lllade an expedition against the island of Minoa, which lies off Megara. The Megarians had built a tower there and used the island

400 BOOK FIVB

complaints against Perdiccas were that he had sworn alliance with Argos and Sparta, and that he had failed in his duty as an ally of Athens at the time when the Athenians had prepared an expedition against the Chalcidians in Thrace and against Amphipolis, under the command ofNicias, the son ofNiceratus; this expedition had had to be broken up chiefly because Perdiccas had not played hi. part. He was therefore declared an enemy.

So this winter ended, and so ended the fifteenth year of the war.

THE MBLIAN DIALOGUB40

8• Next summer Alcibiades sailed to Argos with twenty ahips and seized 300 Argive citizens who were still suspected of being pro­ Spartan. These were put by the Athenians into the nearby island~ under Athenian control.

The Athenians also made an expedition against the island of Melos. They had thirty of their own ships, six from Chios, and two from Lesbos; 1,200 hoplites, 300 archers, and twenty mounted archers, all from Athens; and about 1,500 hoplites from the alliea and the islanders.

The Melians are a colony from Sparta. They had refused to join the Athenian empire like the other islanders, and at first had re­ mained neutral without helping either side; but afterwards, when the Athenians had brought force to bear on them by laying waste their land, they had become open enemies of Athens.

Now the generals Cleomedes, the son ofLycomedes, and Tisiaa, the son ofTisimachus, encamped with the above force in Mdiaa territory and, before doing any harm to the land, first of all sent representatives to negotiate. The Melians did not invite thete representatives to speak before the people, but asked them to make the statement for which they had come in front of the governing body and the few. The Athenian representatives then spoke • follows:

as 'So we are not to speak before the people, no doubt in case the mass of the people should hear once and for all and without

40. See Appendix 3·

The Melian Dialogue 416/5 401

interruption an argument from us which is both persuasive and incontrovertible, and should so be led astray. Tllis, we realize, is your motive in bringing us here to speak before the few. Now sup­ pose that you who sit here should make assurance doubly sure. Suppose that you, too, should refrain from dealing with every point in detail in a set speech, and should instead interrupt us whenever we say something controversial and deal with that before going on to the next point? Tell us first whether you approve of this suggestion of ours.'

86 The Council of the Melians replied as follows: 'No one can object to each of us putting forward our own views

in a calm atmosphere. That is perfectly reasonable. What is scarcely consistent with such a proposal is the present threat, indeed the certainty, of your making war on us. We see that you have come prepared to judge the argument yourselves, and that the likely end ofit all will be either war, if we prove that we are in the right, and so refuse to surrender, or else slavery.'

87 Athenians: If you are going to spend the time in enumerating your suspicions about the future, or if you have met here for any other reason except to look the facts in the face and on the basis of these facts to consider how you can save your city from des­ truction, there is no point in our going on with this discussion. If, however, you will do as we suggest, then we will speak on.

88 Melians: It is natural and understandable that people who are placed as we are should have recourse to all kinds of arguments and different points of view. However, you are right in saying that we are met together here to discuss the safety of our country and, if you will have it so, the discussion shall proceed on the lines that you have laid down.

19 Athenians: Then we on our side will use no fine phrases saying, for example, that we have a right to our empire because we de­ feated the Persians, or that we have come against you now because of the injuries you have done us - a great mass of words that nobody would believe. And we ask you on your side not to im­ agine that you will influence us by saying that you, though a colony of Sparta, have not joined Sparta in the war, or that you have never done us any harm. Instead we recommend that you should try to get what it is possible for you to get, taking into consideration

402 BOOK FIVB

91

93

9S

1'he Me/ian Dialogue 416/5 403

¢ Melians: Is that your subjects' idea offair play- that no distinc­ tion should be made between people who are quite unconnected with you and people who arc mostly your own colonists or else rebels whom you have conquered?

97 Athenia,s: So far as right and wrong are concerned they think

that there is no difference betwee the two that those who still reserve 1c1r in e

that if we fail to attack them it i conquerin ou we sh ncrease not he size but the se­ ~ o our empire .. We rule the sea and you are islanders, and weaker islanders too than the others; it is therefore particularly important that you should not escape.

9s Melians: But do you think there is no security for you in what we suggest? For here again, since you will not let us mention justice, but tell us to give in to your interests, we, too, must tell you what our interests are and, if yours and ours happen to coin­ cide, we must try to persuade you of the fact. Is it not certain that you will make enemies of all states who are at present neutral, when they see what is happening here and naturally conclude that in course of time you will attack them too? Does not this mean that you are strengthening the enemies you have already and are forcing others to become your enemies even against their intention• and their inclinations?

99 Athenians: As a matter of fact we are not so much frightened of states on the continent. They have their liberty, and this means that it will be a long time before they begin to take precautions against us. We are more concerned about islanders like yourselves, who are still unsubdued, or subjects who have already become embit­ tered by the constrai~t which our empire imposes on them. These are the people who are most likely to act in a reckless manner and to bring themselves and us, too, into the most obvious danger.

roo Melians: Then surely, if such hazards are taken by you to keep your empire and by your subjects to escape from it, we who are still free would show ourselves great cowards and weaklings if we failed to face everything that comes rather than submit to slavery.

101 Athenians: No, not if you are sensible. This is no fair fight, with honour on one side and shame on the other. It is rather a question

404 BOOK FIVE I

of saving your lives and not resisting those who are far too strong for you. .C:......... ·

10.2 Melians: Yet we know that in ~r for~ sometimes makes the odds more level than could be expected-from the difference in num­ bers of the two sides. And if we surrender, then all our hope is lost

· ~nee, whereas, so long as we remain in action, there is still a ·~ that we may yet stand upright.

103 Athenians: Hope, that comforter in danger! If one already has solid advantages to fall back upon, one can indulge in hope. It may do harm, hut will not destroy one. But hope is by nature an ex­ pensive commodity, and those who are risking their all on one cast find out what it means only when they are already ruined; it never fails them in the· period when -such a knowledge would enable them to take precautions. Do not let this happen to you, you who are weak and whose fate depends on a single movement of the scale. And do not be like those people who, as so commonly happens, miss the chance of saving themselves in a human and practical way, and, when every clear and distinct hope has left them in their adversity, turn to what is blind and vague, to prophecies and oracles and such things which by encouraging hope lead men to ruin.

104 Melians: It is difficult, and you may be sure that we know it, for us to oppose your power and fortune, unless the terms be equal. Neverthe trust that the gods will ive us fortune as ood as _yours; because we are stan mg for what is rig 1t a ainst what is wrong; an as or w at we ac m power, we trust t at it will be

-made up for by our alliance with the Spartans, who are bound, if for no other reason, then for honour's sake, and because we are their kinsmen, to come to our help. Our confidence, therefore, is not so entirely irrational as you think.

ros Athenians: So far as the favour of the gods is concerned, we think we have as much right to that as you have. Our aims and our actions are perfectly consistent with the beliefs men hold about the gods and with the principles which govern their own conduct. Our opinion of the gods and our knowledge of men lead us to conclude that it is a general and necessary law of nature to rule whate~ one can. This is not a law that we made ourselves, nor were ~t to act upon it when it was made. We found it already

The Melian Dialogue 416/5 405

in existence, and we shall leave it to exist for ever among those who come after us. We are merely acting in accordance with it, and we know that you or anybody else with the same power as ours would be acting in precisely the same way. And therefore, so far as the gods are concerned, we see no good reason why we should fear to be at a disadvantage. But with regard to your views about Sparta and your confidence that she, out of a sense of hon­ our, will come to your aid, we must say that we congratulate you on our sim lid but do not en ou our foll . In matters 'that concern themselves or their own constitution e Spartans are quite remarkably good; as for their relations with others, that is a long story, hut it can be expressed shortly and dearly by saying that of all people we know the Spartans are most conspic­ uous for believing that what they like doing is honourable and what suits their interests is just. And this kind of attitude is not going to be of much help to you in your absurd quest for safety at the moment.

ro<i Melians: But this is the very point where we can feel most sure. Their own self-interest will make them refuse to betray their own colonists, the Melians, for that would mean losing the confidence of their friends among the Hellenes and doing good to their enemies.

107 Athenians: You seem to for et that if one follows one's self­ interest one wants to e safe, whereas e path of justice an honour involves one m danger. And, where danger is concerned, the Spartans are not, as a rule, very venturesome.

Io8 Melians: But we think that they would even endanger them- selves for our sake and count the risk more worth taking than in the case of others, because we are so close to the Peloponnese that they could operate more easily, and because they can depend on us more than on others, since we are of the same race and share the same feelings.

109 Athenians: Goodwill shown by the party that is asking for help does not mean security for the prospective ally. What is looked for is a positive preponderance of power in action. And th~ Spartans pay attention to this point even more than others do. Certainly they distrust their own native resources so much that when they attack a neighbour they bring a great army of allies with them.

406 BOOK FIVE

It is hardly likely therefore that, while we are in control of the sea, they will cross over to an island.

rro Melians: But they still might send others. The Cretan sea is a wide one, and it is harder for those who control it to intercept others than for those who want to slip through to do so safely. And even if they were to fail in this, they would turn against your own land and against those of your allies left unvisited by Brasidas. So, instead of troubling about a country which has nothing to do with you, you will find trouble nearer home, among your allies, and in your own country.

r 11 Athenians: It is a possibility, something that has in fact happened before. It may happen in your case, hut you are well aware that the Athenians have never yet relinquished a single siege operation through fear of others. But we are somewhat shocked to find that, though you announced your intention of discussing how you could preserve yourselves, in all this talk you have said absolu tely nothing which could justify a man in thinking that he could be preserved. Your chief points are concerned with what you hope may happen in the future, while your actual resources are too scanty to give you a chance of survival against the forces that are opposed to you at this moment. You will therefore be showing an extraordinary lack of common sense if, after you have asked us to retire from this meeting, you still fail to reach a conclusion wiser than anything you have mentioned so far. Do not be led astray b a false sense of honour - a thing wJljcb often brings men to ruin Wilen the are faced with an obvious danger that somehow affects their pride. For in many cases men 1ave still been able to see the dangers ahead of them, but this thing called dishonour, this word, by its own force of seduction, has drawn them into a state w here they have surrendered to an idea, while in fact they have fallen voluntarily into irrevocable disaster, in dishonour that is all the more dishonourable because it has come to them from their own fo lly rather than their misfortune. You, if you take the right view, will be careful to avoid this. You will see that there is nothing disgraceful in giving way to the greatest city in Hellas when she is offering you such reasonable terms - alliance on a tribute-paying basis and liberty to enjoy your own property. And, when you are allowed to choose between war and safety, you will not be so

The Melian Dialogue 416{ 5 407

insensitively arrogant as to make the wrong choice. This is thcr safe rule - _to stand up to one's equals, to behave with deference ~one's su eriors and to treat one's inferiors with modera­ tion. ink it over again, then, w en we ave wtt rawn rom

t"he meeting, and let this be a point that constantly recurs to your minds- that you are discussing the fate of your country, that you have only one country, and that its future for good or ill depends on this one single decision which you are going to make.

1 u The Athenians then withdrew from the discussion. The Melians,

left to themselves, reached a conclusion which was much the same as they had indicated in their previous replies. Their answer was

as follows: 'Our decision, Athenians, is just the same as it was at first. We

are not prepared to give up in a short moment the liberty which our city has enjoyed from its foundation for 700 years. We put our trust in the fortune that the gods will send and which has saved us up to now, and in the help of men - that is, of the Spartans; and so we shall try to save ourselves. But we invite you to allow us to be fr iends of yours and enemies to neither side,. to make a treaty which shall be agreeable to both you and us, and so to leave our

country.' I13 The Melians made this reply, and the Athenians, just as they

were breaking off the discussion, said: 'Well, at any rate, judging from this decision of yours, you

seem to us quite unique in your ability to consider the future as something more certain than what is before your eyes, and to see uncertainties as realities, simply because you would like them to be so. As you have staked most on· and trusted most in S artans, luck, an o es in ill find ourselves most

~ II4 The Athenian representatives then went back to the army, and

the Athenian generals, finding that the Melians would not submit, immediately commenced hostilities and built a wall completely round the city ofMelos, dividing the work out among the various states. Later they left behind a garrison of some of their own and some allied troops to blockade the place by land and sea, and with the greater part of their army returned home. The force left behind stayed on and continued with the siege.

408 BOOK FIVE

n~ About the same time the Argives invaded Phliasia and were am­ bushed by the Phliasians and the exiles from Argos, losing about eighty men.

Then, too, the Athenians at Pylos captured a great quantity of plunder from Spartan territory. Not even after this did the Spar­ tans renounce the treaty and make war, but they issued a procla­ mation saying that any of their people who wished to do so were free to make raids on the Athenians. The Corinthians also made some attacks on the Athenians because of private quarrels of their own, but the rest of the Peloponnesians stayed quiet.

Meanwhile the Melians made a night attack and captured the part of the Athenian lines opposite the market-place. They killed some of the troops, and then, after bringing in corn and everything else useful that they could lay their hands on, retired again and made no fimher move, while the Athenians took measures to make their blockade more efficient in future. So the summer came to an end.

n6 In the following winter the Spartans planned to invade the territory of Argos, but when the sacrifices for crossing the frontier turned out unfavourably, they gave up the expedition. The fact that they had intended to invade made the Argives suspect certain people in their city, some of whom they arrested, though others succeeded in e~caping.

About this same time the Melians again captured another part of the Athenian lines where there were only a few of the garrison on guard. As a result of this, another force carne out afterwards from Athens under the command of Philocrates, the son of De­ meas. Siege operations were now carried on vigorously and, as there was also some treachery from inside, the Melians surrendered unconditionally to the Athenians, who put to death all the men of military age whom they took, and sold the women and children as slaves. Melos itself they took over for themselves, sending out later a colony of soo men.•'

41. That there were Melian survivors, who w~:re restored by Lysander at the end of the war, is ~tated by Xenophon (He/lenica, 11, 2, 9).

BOOK SIX

SICILIAN ANTIQUITIES

1 IN the same winter the Athenians resolved to sail again against Sicily with larger forces than those V'{.hich Laches and Eurymedon had commanded, and, if possible, to conquer it. They were for the most part ignorant of the size of the island and of the numbers of its inhabitants, both Hellenic and native, and they did not realize that they were taking on a war of almost the same magnitude as their war against the Peloponnesians.

The voyage round Sicily takes rather under eight days in a mer­ chant ship, yet, in spite of the size of the island, it is ~eparated from

a the mainland only.by two miles of sea. The settlement of the place in ancient times and the peoples who inhabited it are as follows: It is said that the earliest inhabitants of any part of the country were the Cyclopes and Laestrygonians. I cannot say what kind of people these were or where they came from or where they went in the end. On these points we must be content with what the poets have said and what anyone else may happen to know. The next settlers after them seem to have been the Sicanians, though ac-­ cording to the Sicanians themselves they were there first and were the original inhabitants of the country. The truth is, however, that they were Iberians who were driven out by the Ligurians from the district of the river Sicanus in Iberia. The island, which used to be called Trinacria, was in their time called Sicania after them, and they still live up to the present time in the western part of Sicily.

After the fall of Troy, some of the Trojans escaped from the Achaeans and came in ships to Sicily, where they settled next to the Sicanians and were all called by the name ofElymi. Their cities Were Eryx and Egesta, and there also came to live in these settle­ Dlents some of the Phocians who had been carried by storms on their way from Troy first to Libya and afterwards to Sicily.