History of the Peloponnesian War by Thucydides (free ebooks for android .txt) 📕

this they departed, and the Lacedaemonians did not send out any to

succeed them. They feared for those who went out a deterioration

similar to that observable in Pausanias; besides, they desired to be

rid of the Median War, and were satisfied of the competency of the

Athenians for the position, and of their friendship at the time

towards themselves.

The Athenians, having thus succeeded to the supremacy by the

voluntary act of the allies through their hatred of Pausanias, fixed

which cities were to contribute money against the barbarian, which

ships; their professed object being to retaliate for their

sufferings by ravaging the King’s country. Now was the time that the

office of “Treasurers for Hellas” was first instituted by the

Athenians. These officers received the tribute, as the money

contributed was called. The tribute was first fixed at four hundred

and sixty talents. The common treasury was at Delos, and the

congresses were held in the temple. Their supremacy commenced with

independent allies who acted on the resolutions of a common

congress. It was marked by the following undertakings in war and in

administration during the interval between the Median and the

present war, against the barbarian, against their own rebel allies,

and against the Peloponnesian powers which would come in contact

with them on various occasions. My excuse for relating these events,

and for venturing on this digression, is that this passage of

history has been omitted by all my predecessors, who have confined

themselves either to Hellenic history before the Median War, or the

Median War itself. Hellanicus, it is true, did touch on these events

in his Athenian history; but he is somewhat concise and not accurate

in his dates. Besides, the history of these events contains an

explanation of the growth of the Athenian empire.

First the Athenians besieged and captured Eion on the Strymon from

the Medes, and made slaves of the inhabitants, being under the command

of Cimon, son of Miltiades. Next they enslaved Scyros, the island in

the Aegean, containing a Dolopian population, and colonized it

themselves. This was followed by a war against Carystus, in which

the rest of Euboea remained neutral, and which was ended by

surrender on conditions. After this Naxos left the confederacy, and

a war ensued, and she had to return after a siege; this was the

first instance of the engagement being broken by the subjugation of an

allied city, a precedent which was followed by that of the rest in the

order which circumstances prescribed. Of all the causes of

defection, that connected with arrears of tribute and vessels, and

with failure of service, was the chief; for the Athenians were very

severe and exacting, and made themselves offensive by applying the

screw of necessity to men who were not used to and in fact not

disposed for any continuous labour. In some other respects the

Athenians were not the old popular rulers they had been at first;

and if they had more than their fair share of service, it was

correspondingly easy for them to reduce any that tried to leave the

confederacy. For this the allies had themselves to blame; the wish

to get off service making most of them arrange to pay their share of

the expense in money instead of in ships, and so to avoid having to

leave their homes. Thus while Athens was increasing her navy with

the funds which they contributed, a revolt always found them without

resources or experience for war.

Next we come to the actions by land and by sea at the river

Eurymedon, between the Athenians with their allies, and the Medes,

when the Athenians won both battles on the same day under the

conduct of Cimon, son of Miltiades, and captured and destroyed the

whole Phoenician fleet, consisting of two hundred vessels. Some time

afterwards occurred the defection of the Thasians, caused by

disagreements about the marts on the opposite coast of Thrace, and

about the mine in their possession. Sailing with a fleet to Thasos,

the Athenians defeated them at sea and effected a landing on the

island. About the same time they sent ten thousand settlers of their

own citizens and the allies to settle the place then called Ennea

Hodoi or Nine Ways, now Amphipolis. They succeeded in gaining

possession of Ennea Hodoi from the Edonians, but on advancing into the

interior of Thrace were cut off in Drabescus, a town of the

Edonians, by the assembled Thracians, who regarded the settlement of

the place Ennea Hodoi as an act of hostility. Meanwhile the Thasians

being defeated in the field and suffering siege, appealed to

Lacedaemon, and desired her to assist them by an invasion of Attica.

Without informing Athens, she promised and intended to do so, but

was prevented by the occurrence of the earthquake, accompanied by

the secession of the Helots and the Thuriats and Aethaeans of the

Perioeci to Ithome. Most of the Helots were the descendants of the old

Messenians that were enslaved in the famous war; and so all of them

came to be called Messenians. So the Lacedaemonians being engaged in a

war with the rebels in Ithome, the Thasians in the third year of the

siege obtained terms from the Athenians by razing their walls,

delivering up their ships, and arranging to pay the moneys demanded at

once, and tribute in future; giving up their possessions on the

continent together with the mine.

The Lacedaemonians, meanwhile, finding the war against the rebels in

Ithome likely to last, invoked the aid of their allies, and especially

of the Athenians, who came in some force under the command of Cimon.

The reason for this pressing summons lay in their reputed skill in

siege operations; a long siege had taught the Lacedaemonians their own

deficiency in this art, else they would have taken the place by

assault. The first open quarrel between the Lacedaemonians and

Athenians arose out of this expedition. The Lacedaemonians, when

assault failed to take the place, apprehensive of the enterprising and

revolutionary character of the Athenians, and further looking upon

them as of alien extraction, began to fear that, if they remained,

they might be tempted by the besieged in Ithome to attempt some

political changes. They accordingly dismissed them alone of the

allies, without declaring their suspicions, but merely saying that

they had now no need of them. But the Athenians, aware that their

dismissal did not proceed from the more honourable reason of the

two, but from suspicions which had been conceived, went away deeply

offended, and conscious of having done nothing to merit such treatment

from the Lacedaemonians; and the instant that they returned home

they broke off the alliance which had been made against the Mede,

and allied themselves with Sparta’s enemy Argos; each of the

contracting parties taking the same oaths and making the same alliance

with the Thessalians.

Meanwhile the rebels in Ithome, unable to prolong further a ten

years’ resistance, surrendered to Lacedaemon; the conditions being

that they should depart from Peloponnese under safe conduct, and

should never set foot in it again: any one who might hereafter be

found there was to be the slave of his captor. It must be known that

the Lacedaemonians had an old oracle from Delphi, to the effect that

they should let go the suppliant of Zeus at Ithome. So they went forth

with their children and their wives, and being received by Athens from

the hatred that she now felt for the Lacedaemonians, were located at

Naupactus, which she had lately taken from the Ozolian Locrians. The

Athenians received another addition to their confederacy in the

Megarians; who left the Lacedaemonian alliance, annoyed by a war about

boundaries forced on them by Corinth. The Athenians occupied Megara

and Pegae, and built the Megarians their long walls from the city to

Nisaea, in which they placed an Athenian garrison. This was the

principal cause of the Corinthians conceiving such a deadly hatred

against Athens.

Meanwhile Inaros, son of Psammetichus, a Libyan king of the

Libyans on the Egyptian border, having his headquarters at Marea,

the town above Pharos, caused a revolt of almost the whole of Egypt

from King Artaxerxes and, placing himself at its head, invited the

Athenians to his assistance. Abandoning a Cyprian expedition upon

which they happened to be engaged with two hundred ships of their

own and their allies, they arrived in Egypt and sailed from the sea

into the Nile, and making themselves masters of the river and

two-thirds of Memphis, addressed themselves to the attack of the

remaining third, which is called White Castle. Within it were Persians

and Medes who had taken refuge there, and Egyptians who had not joined

the rebellion.

Meanwhile the Athenians, making a descent from their fleet upon

Haliae, were engaged by a force of Corinthians and Epidaurians; and

the Corinthians were victorious. Afterwards the Athenians engaged

the Peloponnesian fleet off Cecruphalia; and the Athenians were

victorious. Subsequently war broke out between Aegina and Athens,

and there was a great battle at sea off Aegina between the Athenians

and Aeginetans, each being aided by their allies; in which victory

remained with the Athenians, who took seventy of the enemy’s ships,

and landed in the country and commenced a siege under the command of

Leocrates, son of Stroebus. Upon this the Peloponnesians, desirous

of aiding the Aeginetans, threw into Aegina a force of three hundred

heavy infantry, who had before been serving with the Corinthians and

Epidaurians. Meanwhile the Corinthians and their allies occupied the

heights of Geraneia, and marched down into the Megarid, in the

belief that, with a large force absent in Aegina and Egypt, Athens

would be unable to help the Megarians without raising the siege of

Aegina. But the Athenians, instead of moving the army of Aegina,

raised a force of the old and young men that had been left in the

city, and marched into the Megarid under the command of Myronides.

After a drawn battle with the Corinthians, the rival hosts parted,

each with the impression that they had gained the victory. The

Athenians, however, if anything, had rather the advantage, and on

the departure of the Corinthians set up a trophy. Urged by the

taunts of the elders in their city, the Corinthians made their

preparations, and about twelve days afterwards came and set up their

trophy as victors. Sallying out from Megara, the Athenians cut off the

party that was employed in erecting the trophy, and engaged and

defeated the rest. In the retreat of the vanquished army, a

considerable division, pressed by the pursuers and mistaking the road,

dashed into a field on some private property, with a deep trench all

round it, and no way out. Being acquainted with the place, the

Athenians hemmed their front with heavy infantry and, placing the

light troops round in a circle, stoned all who had gone in. Corinth

here suffered a severe blow. The bulk of her army continued its

retreat home.

About this time the Athenians began to build the long walls to the

sea, that towards Phalerum and that towards Piraeus. Meanwhile the

Phocians made an expedition against Doris, the old home of the

Lacedaemonians, containing the towns of Boeum, Kitinium, and

Erineum. They had taken one of these towns, when the Lacedaemonians

under Nicomedes, son of Cleombrotus, commanding for King

Pleistoanax, son of Pausanias, who was still a minor, came to the

aid of the Dorians with fifteen hundred heavy infantry of their own,

and ten thousand of their allies. After compelling the Phocians to

restore the town on conditions, they began their retreat. The route by

sea, across the Crissaean Gulf, exposed them to the risk of being

stopped by the Athenian fleet; that across Geraneia seemed scarcely

safe, the Athenians holding Megara and Pegae. For the pass was