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

them, but oblige them by accepting. And from this friendship

consider the advantages that are likely to follow: when Attica and

Sparta are at one, the rest of Hellas, be sure, will remain in

respectful inferiority before its heads.”

Such were the words of the Lacedaemonians, their idea being that the

Athenians, already desirous of a truce and only kept back by their

opposition, would joyfully accept a peace freely offered, and give

back the men. The Athenians, however, having the men on the island,

thought that the treaty would be ready for them whenever they chose to

make it, and grasped at something further. Foremost to encourage

them in this policy was Cleon, son of Cleaenetus, a popular leader

of the time and very powerful with the multitude, who persuaded them

to answer as follows: First, the men in the island must surrender

themselves and their arms and be brought to Athens. Next, the

Lacedaemonians must restore Nisaea, Pegae, Troezen, and Achaia, all

places acquired not by arms, but by the previous convention, under

which they had been ceded by Athens herself at a moment of disaster,

when a truce was more necessary to her than at present. This done they

might take back their men, and make a truce for as long as both

parties might agree.

To this answer the envoys made no reply, but asked that

commissioners might be chosen with whom they might confer on each

point, and quietly talk the matter over and try to come to some

agreement. Hereupon Cleon violently assailed them, saying that he knew

from the first that they had no right intentions, and that it was

clear enough now by their refusing to speak before the people, and

wanting to confer in secret with a committee of two or three. No, if

they meant anything honest let them say it out before all. The

Lacedaemonians, however, seeing that whatever concessions they might

be prepared to make in their misfortune, it was impossible for them to

speak before the multitude and lose credit with their allies for a

negotiation which might after all miscarry, and on the other hand,

that the Athenians would never grant what they asked upon moderate

terms, returned from Athens without having effected anything.

Their arrival at once put an end to the armistice at Pylos, and

the Lacedaemonians asked back their ships according to the convention.

The Athenians, however, alleged an attack on the fort in contravention

of the truce, and other grievances seemingly not worth mentioning, and

refused to give them back, insisting upon the clause by which the

slightest infringement made the armistice void. The Lacedaemonians,

after denying the contravention and protesting against their bad faith

in the matter of the ships, went away and earnestly addressed

themselves to the war. Hostilities were now carried on at Pylos upon

both sides with vigour. The Athenians cruised round the island all day

with two ships going different ways; and by night, except on the

seaward side in windy weather, anchored round it with their whole

fleet, which, having been reinforced by twenty ships from Athens

come to aid in the blockade, now numbered seventy sail; while the

Peloponnesians remained encamped on the continent, making attacks on

the fort, and on the lookout for any opportunity which might offer

itself for the deliverance of their men.

Meanwhile the Syracusans and their allies in Sicily had brought up

to the squadron guarding Messina the reinforcement which we left

them preparing, and carried on the war from thence, incited chiefly by

the Locrians from hatred of the Rhegians, whose territory they had

invaded with all their forces. The Syracusans also wished to try their

fortune at sea, seeing that the Athenians had only a few ships

actually at Rhegium, and hearing that the main fleet destined to

join them was engaged in blockading the island. A naval victory,

they thought, would enable them to blockade Rhegium by sea and land,

and easily to reduce it; a success which would at once place their

affairs upon a solid basis, the promontory of Rhegium in Italy and

Messina in Sicily being so near each other that it would be impossible

for the Athenians to cruise against them and command the strait. The

strait in question consists of the sea between Rhegium and Messina, at

the point where Sicily approaches nearest to the continent, and is the

Charybdis through which the story makes Ulysses sail; and the

narrowness of the passage and the strength of the current that pours

in from the vast Tyrrhenian and Sicilian mains, have rightly given

it a bad reputation.

In this strait the Syracusans and their allies were compelled to

fight, late in the day, about the passage of a boat, putting out

with rather more than thirty ships against sixteen Athenian and

eight Rhegian vessels. Defeated by the Athenians they hastily set off,

each for himself, to their own stations at Messina and Rhegium, with

the loss of one ship; night coming on before the battle was

finished. After this the Locrians retired from the Rhegian

territory, and the ships of the Syracusans and their allies united and

came to anchor at Cape Pelorus, in the territory of Messina, where

their land forces joined them. Here the Athenians and Rhegians

sailed up, and seeing the ships unmanned, made an attack, in which

they in their turn lost one vessel, which was caught by a grappling

iron, the crew saving themselves by swimming. After this the

Syracusans got on board their ships, and while they were being towed

alongshore to Messina, were again attacked by the Athenians, but

suddenly got out to sea and became the assailants, and caused them

to lose another vessel. After thus holding their own in the voyage

alongshore and in the engagement as above described, the Syracusans

sailed on into the harbour of Messina.

Meanwhile the Athenians, having received warning that Camarina was

about to be betrayed to the Syracusans by Archias and his party,

sailed thither; and the Messinese took this opportunity to attack by

sea and land with all their forces their Chalcidian neighbour,

Naxos. The first day they forced the Naxians to keep their walls,

and laid waste their country; the next they sailed round with their

ships, and laid waste their land on the river Akesines, while their

land forces menaced the city. Meanwhile the Sicels came down from

the high country in great numbers, to aid against the Messinese; and

the Naxians, elated at the sight, and animated by a belief that the

Leontines and their other Hellenic allies were coming to their

support, suddenly sallied out from the town, and attacked and routed

the Messinese, killing more than a thousand of them; while the

remainder suffered severely in their retreat home, being attacked by

the barbarians on the road, and most of them cut off. The ships put in

to Messina, and afterwards dispersed for their different homes. The

Leontines and their allies, with the Athenians, upon this at once

turned their arms against the now weakened Messina, and attacked,

the Athenians with their ships on the side of the harbour, and the

land forces on that of the town. The Messinese, however, sallying

out with Demoteles and some Locrians who had been left to garrison the

city after the disaster, suddenly attacked and routed most of the

Leontine army, killing a great number; upon seeing which the Athenians

landed from their ships, and falling on the Messinese in disorder

chased them back into the town, and setting up a trophy retired to

Rhegium. After this the Hellenes in Sicily continued to make war on

each other by land, without the Athenians.

Meanwhile the Athenians at Pylos were still besieging the

Lacedaemonians in the island, the Peloponnesian forces on the

continent remaining where they were. The blockade was very laborious

for the Athenians from want of food and water; there was no spring

except one in the citadel of Pylos itself, and that not a large one,

and most of them were obliged to grub up the shingle on the sea

beach and drink such water as they could find. They also suffered from

want of room, being encamped in a narrow space; and as there was no

anchorage for the ships, some took their meals on shore in their turn,

while the others were anchored out at sea. But their greatest

discouragement arose from the unexpectedly long time which it took

to reduce a body of men shut up in a desert island, with only brackish

water to drink, a matter which they had imagined would take them

only a few days. The fact was that the Lacedaemonians had made

advertisement for volunteers to carry into the island ground corn,

wine, cheese, and any other food useful in a siege; high prices

being offered, and freedom promised to any of the Helots who should

succeed in doing so. The Helots accordingly were most forward to

engage in this risky traffic, putting off from this or that part of

Peloponnese, and running in by night on the seaward side of the

island. They were best pleased, however, when they could catch a

wind to carry them in. It was more easy to elude the lookout of the

galleys, when it blew from the seaward, as it became impossible for

them to anchor round the island; while the Helots had their boats

rated at their value in money, and ran them ashore, without caring how

they landed, being sure to find the soldiers waiting for them at the

landing-places. But all who risked it in fair weather were taken.

Divers also swam in under water from the harbour, dragging by a cord

in skins poppyseed mixed with honey, and bruised linseed; these at

first escaped notice, but afterwards a lookout was kept for them.

In short, both sides tried every possible contrivance, the one to

throw in provisions, and the other to prevent their introduction.

At Athens, meanwhile, the news that the army was in great

distress, and that corn found its way in to the men in the island,

caused no small perplexity; and the Athenians began to fear that

winter might come on and find them still engaged in the blockade. They

saw that the convoying of provisions round Peloponnese would be then

impossible. The country offered no resources in itself, and even in

summer they could not send round enough. The blockade of a place

without harbours could no longer be kept up; and the men would

either escape by the siege being abandoned, or would watch for bad

weather and sail out in the boats that brought in their corn. What

caused still more alarm was the attitude of the Lacedaemonians, who

must, it was thought by the Athenians, feel themselves on strong

ground not to send them any more envoys; and they began to repent

having rejected the treaty. Cleon, perceiving the disfavour with which

he was regarded for having stood in the way of the convention, now

said that their informants did not speak the truth; and upon the

messengers recommending them, if they did not believe them, to send

some commissioners to see, Cleon himself and Theagenes were chosen

by the Athenians as commissioners. Aware that he would now be

obliged either to say what had been already said by the men whom he

was slandering, or be proved a liar if he said the contrary, he told

the Athenians, whom he saw to be not altogether disinclined for a

fresh expedition, that instead of sending and wasting their time and

opportunities, if they believed what was told them, they ought to sail

against the men. And pointing at Nicias, son of Niceratus, then

general, whom he hated, he tauntingly said that it would be easy, if

they had