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

their victory to your decision, but in their own name will reap the

honour, and will receive as the prize of their triumph the very men

who enabled them to gain it. On the other hand, if we are the

conquerors, you will have to pay for having been the cause of our

danger. Consider, therefore; and now make your choice between the

security which present servitude offers and the prospect of conquering

with us and so escaping disgraceful submission to an Athenian master

and avoiding the lasting enmity of Syracuse.”

Such were the words of Hermocrates; after whom Euphemus, the

Athenian ambassador, spoke as follows:

“Although we came here only to renew the former alliance, the attack

of the Syracusans compels us to speak of our empire and of the good

right we have to it. The best proof of this the speaker himself

furnished, when he called the Ionians eternal enemies of the

Dorians. It is the fact; and the Peloponnesian Dorians being our

superiors in numbers and next neighbours, we Ionians looked out for

the best means of escaping their domination. After the Median War we

had a fleet, and so got rid of the empire and supremacy of the

Lacedaemonians, who had no right to give orders to us more than we

to them, except that of being the strongest at that moment; and

being appointed leaders of the King’s former subjects, we continue

to be so, thinking that we are least likely to fall under the dominion

of the Peloponnesians, if we have a force to defend ourselves with,

and in strict truth having done nothing unfair in reducing to

subjection the Ionians and islanders, the kinsfolk whom the Syracusans

say we have enslaved. They, our kinsfolk, came against their mother

country, that is to say against us, together with the Mede, and,

instead of having the courage to revolt and sacrifice their property

as we did when we abandoned our city, chose to be slaves themselves,

and to try to make us so.

“We, therefore, deserve to rule because we placed the largest

fleet and an unflinching patriotism at the service of the Hellenes,

and because these, our subjects, did us mischief by their ready

subservience to the Medes; and, desert apart, we seek to strengthen

ourselves against the Peloponnesians. We make no fine profession of

having a right to rule because we overthrew the barbarian

single-handed, or because we risked what we did risk for the freedom

of the subjects in question any more than for that of all, and for our

own: no one can be quarrelled with for providing for his proper

safety. If we are now here in Sicily, it is equally in the interest of

our security, with which we perceive that your interest also

coincides. We prove this from the conduct which the Syracusans cast

against us and which you somewhat too timorously suspect; knowing that

those whom fear has made suspicious may be carried away by the charm

of eloquence for the moment, but when they come to act follow their

interests.

“Now, as we have said, fear makes us hold our empire in Hellas,

and fear makes us now come, with the help of our friends, to order

safely matters in Sicily, and not to enslave any but rather to prevent

any from being enslaved. Meanwhile, let no one imagine that we are

interesting ourselves in you without your having anything to do with

us, seeing that, if you are preserved and able to make head against

the Syracusans, they will be less likely to harm us by sending

troops to the Peloponnesians. In this way you have everything to do

with us, and on this account it is perfectly reasonable for us to

restore the Leontines, and to make them, not subjects like their

kinsmen in Euboea, but as powerful as possible, to help us by annoying

the Syracusans from their frontier. In Hellas we are alone a match for

our enemies; and as for the assertion that it is out of all reason

that we should free the Sicilian, while we enslave the Chalcidian, the

fact is that the latter is useful to us by being without arms and

contributing money only; while the former, the Leontines and our other

friends, cannot be too independent.

“Besides, for tyrants and imperial cities nothing is unreasonable if

expedient, no one a kinsman unless sure; but friendship or enmity is

everywhere an affair of time and circumstance. Here, in Sicily, our

interest is not to weaken our friends, but by means of their

strength to cripple our enemies. Why doubt this? In Hellas we treat

our allies as we find them useful. The Chians and Methymnians govern

themselves and furnish ships; most of the rest have harder terms and

pay tribute in money; while others, although islanders and easy for us

to take, are free altogether, because they occupy convenient positions

round Peloponnese. In our settlement of the states here in Sicily,

we should therefore; naturally be guided by our interest, and by fear,

as we say, of the Syracusans. Their ambition is to rule you, their

object to use the suspicions that we excite to unite you, and then,

when we have gone away without effecting anything, by force or through

your isolation, to become the masters of Sicily. And masters they must

become, if you unite with them; as a force of that magnitude would

be no longer easy for us to deal with united, and they would be more

than a match for you as soon as we were away.

“Any other view of the case is condemned by the facts. When you

first asked us over, the fear which you held out was that of danger to

Athens if we let you come under the dominion of Syracuse; and it is

not right now to mistrust the very same argument by which you

claimed to convince us, or to give way to suspicion because we are

come with a larger force against the power of that city. Those whom

you should really distrust are the Syracusans. We are not able to stay

here without you, and if we proved perfidious enough to bring you into

subjection, we should be unable to keep you in bondage, owing to the

length of the voyage and the difficulty of guarding large, and in a

military sense continental, towns: they, the Syracusans, live close to

you, not in a camp, but in a city greater than the force we have

with us, plot always against you, never let slip an opportunity once

offered, as they have shown in the case of the Leontines and others,

and now have the face, just as if you were fools, to invite you to aid

them against the power that hinders this, and that has thus far

maintained Sicily independent. We, as against them, invite you to a

much more real safety, when we beg you not to betray that common

safety which we each have in the other, and to reflect that they, even

without allies, will, by their numbers, have always the way open to

you, while you will not often have the opportunity of defending

yourselves with such numerous auxiliaries; if, through your

suspicions, you once let these go away unsuccessful or defeated, you

will wish to see if only a handful of them back again, when the day is

past in which their presence could do anything for you.

“But we hope, Camarinaeans, that the calumnies of the Syracusans

will not be allowed to succeed either with you or with the rest: we

have told you the whole truth upon the things we are suspected of, and

will now briefly recapitulate, in the hope of convincing you. We

assert that we are rulers in Hellas in order not to be subjects;

liberators in Sicily that we may not be harmed by the Sicilians;

that we are compelled to interfere in many things, because we have

many things to guard against; and that now, as before, we are come

as allies to those of you who suffer wrong in this island, not without

invitation but upon invitation. Accordingly, instead of making

yourselves judges or censors of our conduct, and trying to turn us,

which it were now difficult to do, so far as there is anything in

our interfering policy or in our character that chimes in with your

interest, this take and make use of; and be sure that, far from

being injurious to all alike, to most of the Hellenes that policy is

even beneficial. Thanks to it, all men in all places, even where we

are not, who either apprehend or meditate aggression, from the near

prospect before them, in the one case, of obtaining our intervention

in their favour, in the other, of our arrival making the venture

dangerous, find themselves constrained, respectively, to be moderate

against their will, and to be preserved without trouble of their

own. Do not you reject this security that is open to all who desire

it, and is now offered to you; but do like others, and instead of

being always on the defensive against the Syracusans, unite with us,

and in your turn at last threaten them.”

Such were the words of Euphemus. What the Camarinaeans felt was

this. Sympathizing with the Athenians, except in so far as they

might be afraid of their subjugating Sicily, they had always been at

enmity with their neighbour Syracuse. From the very fact, however,

that they were their neighbours, they feared the Syracusans most of

the two, and being apprehensive of their conquering even without them,

both sent them in the first instance the few horsemen mentioned, and

for the future determined to support them most in fact, although as

sparingly as possible; but for the moment in order not to seem to

slight the Athenians, especially as they had been successful in the

engagement, to answer both alike. Agreeably to this resolution they

answered that as both the contending parties happened to be allies

of theirs, they thought it most consistent with their oaths at present

to side with neither; with which answer the ambassadors of either

party departed.

In the meantime, while Syracuse pursued her preparations for war,

the Athenians were encamped at Naxos, and tried by negotiation to gain

as many of the Sicels as possible. Those more in the low lands, and

subjects of Syracuse, mostly held aloof; but the peoples of the

interior who had never been otherwise than independent, with few

exceptions, at once joined the Athenians, and brought down corn to the

army, and in some cases even money. The Athenians marched against

those who refused to join, and forced some of them to do so; in the

case of others they were stopped by the Syracusans sending garrisons

and reinforcements. Meanwhile the Athenians moved their winter

quarters from Naxos to Catana, and reconstructed the camp burnt by the

Syracusans, and stayed there the rest of the winter. They also sent

a galley to Carthage, with proffers of friendship, on the chance of

obtaining assistance, and another to Tyrrhenia; some of the cities

there having spontaneously offered to join them in the war. They

also sent round to the Sicels and to Egesta, desiring them to send

them as many horses as possible, and meanwhile prepared bricks,

iron, and all other things necessary for the work of

circumvallation, intending by the spring to begin hostilities.

In the meantime the Syracusan envoys dispatched to Corinth and

Lacedaemon tried as they passed along the coast to persuade the

Italiots to interfere with the proceedings of the Athenians, which

threatened Italy quite as much as Syracuse, and having arrived at

Corinth made a speech calling on the Corinthians to assist them on the

ground of their common origin. The Corinthians voted at once