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• To the Right Honourable Sir William Cavendish, Knight of the Bath, Baron of Hardwick, and Earl of Devonshire.
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• Of the Life and History of Thucydides.
• The First Book of the History of Thucydides.
• The Second Book of the History of Thucydides.
• The Third Book of the History of Thucydides.
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THE SECOND BOOK of the HISTORY OF THUCYDIDES.

THE PRINCIPAL CONTENTS.

The entry of the Theban soldiers into Platæa by the treason of some within.—Their repulse and slaughter.—The irruption of the Peloponnesians into Attica.—The wasting of the coast of Peloponnesus by the Athenian fleet.—The public funeral of the first slain.—The second invasion of Attica.—The pestilence in the city of Athens.—The Ambraciotes war against the Amphilochi.—Platæa assaulted: besieged.—The Peloponnesian fleet beaten by Phormio before the strait of the Gulf of Crissa.—The same fleet repaired and reinforced; and beaten again by Phormio before Naupactus.—The attempt of the Peloponnesians on Salamis.—The fruitless expedition of the Thracians against the Macedonians. This in the first three years of the war.

year 1. A. C. 431. Ol. 87. 1.

1. The war between the Athenians and the Peloponnesians beginneth now from the time1 they had no longer commerce one with another without a herald, and that having once begun it they warred without intermission. And it is written in order by summers and winters, according as from time to time the several matters came to pass.

year 1. A. C. 431. Ol. 87. 1. Platæa surprised by the Thebans by treason.year 1. A. C. 431. Ol. 87. 1.The Thebans execute not the design of the traitors:but offer composition.

2. The peace, which after the winning of Eubœa, was concluded for thirty years, lasted fourteen years. But in the fifteenth year, being the forty–eighth of the priesthood of Chrysis1 in Argos: Ænesias being then ephor at Sparta, and Pythadorus, archon of Athens, having then two months of his government to come: in the sixth month after the battle at Potidæa and in the beginning of the spring, three hundred and odd2 Thebans, led by Pythangelus the son of Phyleides, and Diemporus the son of Onetoridas, Bœotian rulers3 , about the first watch of the night entered with their arms into Platæa, a city of Bœotia and confederate of the Athenians. They were brought in, and the gates opened unto them, by Naucleides and his complices, men of Platæa, that for their own private ambition intended both the destruction of such citizens as were their enemies, and the putting of the whole city under the subjection of the Thebans. This they negotiated with one Eurymachus the son of Leontiadas, one of the most potent men of Thebes. For the Thebans foreseeing the war, desired to preoccupate Platæa, which was always at variance with them, whilst there was yet peace and the war not openly on foot. By which means they more easily entered undiscovered, there being no order taken before for a watch. And making a stand in their arms1 in the market–place, they did not, as they that gave them entrance would have had them, fall presently to the business, and enter the houses of their adversaries; but resolved rather to make favourable proclamation, and to induce the city to composition and friendship. And the herald proclaimed, “that if any man, according to the ancient custom of all the Bœotians, would enter into the same league of war with them, he should come and bring his arms to theirs”: supposing the city by this means would easily be drawn to their side.

The Platæans accept it.year 1. A. C. 431. Ol. 87. 1.The Platæans take heart:and unite themselves by digging through the common walls of their houses.They assault the Thebans.year 1. A. C. 431. Ol. 87. 1. The Thebans fly, but cannot get out.year 1. A. C. 431. Ol. 87. 1. The Thebans penned up in a house, which they entered into by mistaking the door for the city gate.They yield to discretion.

3. The Platæans, when they perceived that the Thebans were already entered and had surprised the city, through fear, and opinion that more were entered than indeed were, (for they could not see them in the night), came to composition, and accepting the condition rested quiet; and the rather, for that they had yet done no man harm1 . But whilst that these things were treating, they observed that the Thebans were not many; and thought that if they should set upon them, they might easily have the victory. For the Platæan commons were not willing to have revolted from the Athenians. Wherefore it was thought fit to undertake the matter; and they united themselves by digging through the common walls between house and house, that they might not be discovered as they passed the streets. They also placed carts in the streets without the cattle that drew them, to serve them instead of a wall; and every other thing they put in readiness, as they severally seemed necessary for the present enterprise. When all things according to their means were ready, they marched from their houses towards the enemies; taking their time whilst it was yet night, and a little before break of day; because they would not have to charge them when they should be emboldened by the light and on equal terms, but when they should by night be terrified, and inferior to them in knowledge of the places of the city. So they forthwith set upon them, and came quickly up to hand strokes. 4. And the Thebans seeing this, and finding they were deceived, cast themselves into a round figure, and beat2 them back in that part where the assault was made: and twice or thrice they repulsed them. But at last, when both the Platæans themselves charged them with a great clamour, and their wives also and families shouted and screeched from the houses, and withal threw stones and tiles amongst them; the night having been also very wet; they were afraid, and turned their backs and fled here and there about the city; ignorant for the most part, in the dark and dirt, of the ways out by which they should have been saved; (for this accident fell out upon the change of the moon); and pursued by such as were well acquainted with the ways to keep them in: insomuch as the greatest1 part of them perished. The gate by which they entered, and which only was left open, a certain Platæan shut up again with the head2 of a javelin, which he thrust into the staple instead of a bolt: so that this way also their passage was stopped. As they were chased up and down the city, some climbed the walls and cast themselves out, and for the most part died. Some came to a desert gate of the city, and with a hatchet given them by a woman cut the staple3 , and got forth unseen: but these were not many; for the thing was soon discovered. Others again were slain dispersed in several parts of the city. But the greatest part, and those especially who had cast themselves before into a ring, happened into a great edifice adjoining to the wall1 ; the doors whereof, being open, they thought had been the gates of the city, and that there had been a direct way through to the other side. The Platæans seeing them now pent up, consulted whether they should burn them as they were, by firing the house, or else resolve of some other punishment. At length both these, and all the rest of the Thebans that were straggling in the city, agreed to yield themselves and their arms to the Platæans at discretion. And this success had2 they that entered into Platæa.

The whole power of Thebes come to rescue their fellows.year 1. A. C. 431. Ol. 87. 1. The Thebans seek to intercept the Platæans in the villages.The Platæans send to the Thebans to be gone, and promise to release their prisoners.The Thebans go off, and the Platæans fetch in their men and goods, and kill their prisoners.year 1. A. C. 431. Ol. 87. 1.

5. But the rest of the Thebans, that should with their whole power have been there before day, for fear the surprise should not succeed with those that were in, came so late with their aid that they heard the news of what was done by the way3 . Now Platæa is from Thebes seventy furlongs, and they marched the slower for the rain which had fallen the same night. For the river Asopus was swollen so high, that it was not easily passable. So that what by the foulness of the way, and what by the difficulty of passing the river, they arrived not till their men were already some slain and some taken prisoners. When the Thebans understood how things had gone, they lay in wait for such of the Platæans as were without: (for there were abroad in the villages both men and household stuff, as was not unlikely, the evil happening unexpectedly and in time of peace): desiring, if they could take any prisoners, to keep them for exchange for those of theirs within, which (if any were so) were saved alive. This was the Thebans’ purpose. But the Platæans, whilst they were yet in council, suspecting that some such thing would be done, and fearing their case without, sent a herald unto the Thebans: whom they commanded to say, that what they had already done, attempting to surprise their city in time of peace, was done wickedly; and to forbid them to do any injury to those without, and that otherwise they would kill all those men of theirs that they had alive; which, if they would withdraw their forces out of their territory, they would again restore unto them. Thus the Thebans say; and that the Platæans did swear it. But the Platæans confess not that they promised to deliver them presently, but upon treaty if they should agree; and deny that they swore it. Upon this the Thebans went out of their territory1 ; and the Platæans, when they had speedily taken in whatsoever they had in the country, immediately slew their prisoners. They that were taken were one hundred and eighty; and Eurymachus2 , with whom the traitors had practised, was one. 6. When they had done they sent a messenger to Athens, and gave truce to the Thebans to fetch away the bodies of their dead; and ordered the city as was thought convenient for the present occasion.

The Athenians lay hands on such Bœotians as were in Attica.They victual Platæa, and put a garrison into it, and take their unnecessary people.

The news of what was done coming straightway to Athens, they instantly laid hands on all the Bœotians then in Attica; and sent an officer to Platæa, to forbid their farther proceeding with their Theban prisoners, till such time as they also should have advised of the matter: for they were not yet advertised of their putting to death. For the first messenger was sent away when the Thebans first entered the town; and the second, when1 they were overcome and taken prisoners: but of what followed after they knew nothing. So that the Athenians when they sent, knew not what was done; and the officer arriving found that the men were already slain. After this, the Athenians sending an army to Platæa, victualled it and left a garrison in it; and took thence both the women and children, and also such men as were unserviceable for the war.

Preparation of both sides for the war.year 1. A. C 431. Ol. 87 1.Prophecies and oracles preceding the war.year 1. A. C. 431. Ol. 87. 1.

7. This action falling out at Platæa, and the peace now clearly dissolved, the Athenians prepared themselves for war; so also did the Lacedæmonians and their confederates; intending on either part to send ambassadors to the king, and to other barbarians, wheresoever they had hope of succours; and contracting leagues with such cities as were not under their own command. The Lacedæmonians2 besides those galleys which they had in Italy and Sicily, of the cities that took part with them there, were ordered to furnish, proportionably to the greatness of their several cities, so many more as the whole number might amount to five hundred sail, and to provide a sum of money assessed; and in other things not to stir farther, but to receive the Athenians coming but with one galley at once, till such time as the same should be ready. The Athenians, on the other side, surveyed their present confederates, and sent ambassadors to those places1 that lay about Peloponnesus, as Corcyra, Cephalonia, Acarnania, and Zacynthus; knowing that as long as these were their friends, they might with the more security2 make war round about upon the coast of Peloponnesus. 8. Neither side conceived small matters, but put their whole strength to the war: and not without reason3 . For all men in the beginnings of enterprises are the most eager. Besides, there were then in Peloponnesus many young men, and many in Athens, who for want of experience not unwillingly undertook the war. And not only the rest of Greece stood at gaze to behold the two principal states in combat; but many prophecies were told, and many sung by the priests of the oracles, both in the cities about to war and in others. There was also a little before this an earthquake in Delos, which in the memory of the Grecians never shook before1 ; and was interpreted for, and seemed to be a sign of what was to come afterwards to pass. And whatsoever thing then chanced of the same nature, it was all sure to be inquired after.

The affections of the Grecians towards the combatant states.

But men’s affections for the most part went with the Lacedæmonians; and the rather, for that they gave out they would recover the Grecians’ liberty. And every man, both private and public person2 , endeavoured as much as in them lay both in word and deed to assist them; and thought the business so much hindered, as himself was not present at it. In such passion were most men against the Athenians; some for desire to be delivered from under their government, and others for fear of falling into it. And these were the preparations and affections brought unto the war.

year 1. A. C. 431. Ol. 87. 1. The confederates of the Lacedæmonians.The confederates of the Athenians.

9. But the confederates of either party, which they had when they began it, were these. The Lacedæmonians had all Peloponnesus within the isthmus, except the Argives and Achæans: (for these were in amity with both, save that the Pellenians at first, only of all Achaia, took their part; but afterwards all the rest did so likewise): and without Peloponnesus, the Megareans, Locrians, Bœotians, Phoceans, Ambraciotes, Leucadians, and Anactorians. Of which the Corinthians, Megareans, Sicyonians, Pellenians, Eleians, Ambraciotes, and Leucadians found shipping: the Bœotians, Phoceans, and Locrians, horsemen: and the rest of the cities footmen. And these were the confederates of the Lacedæmonians. The Athenian confederates were these. The Chians, Lesbians, Platæans, the Messenians in Naupactus, most of the Acarnanians, Corcyræans, Zacynthians, and other cities their tributaries amongst those nations1 ; also that part of Caria which is on the sea–coast, and the Dorians adjoining to them; Ionia, Hellespont, the cities bordering on Thrace2 ; all the islands from Peloponnesus to Crete on the east, and all the rest of the Cyclades, except Melos and Thera3 . Of these the Chians, Lesbians, and Corcyræans found galleys; the rest footmen and money. These were their confederates and the preparation for the war on both sides.

year 1. A. C. 431. Ol. 87. 1. The Lacedæmonian league meet in the isthmus.

10. The Lacedæmonians, after the business of Platæa, sent messengers presently up and down Peloponnesus, and to their confederates without, to have in readiness their forces, and such things as should be necessary for a foreign expedition, as intending the invasion of Attica. And when they were all ready, they came to the rendezvous in the isthmus at a day appointed, two–thirds of the forces of every city1 . When the whole army was gotten together, Archidamus, king of the Lacedæmonians, general of the expedition, called together the commanders of the several cities, and such as were in authority and most worthy to be present; and spake unto them as followeth:

the oration of archidamus.year 1. A. C. 431. Ol. 87. 1. Oration of Archidamus.year 1. A. C. 431. Ol. 87. 1. Oration of Archidamus.

11. “Men of Peloponnesus and confederates, not only our fathers have had many wars, both within and without Peloponnesus, but we ourselves also, such as are anything in years, have been sufficiently acquainted therewith; yet did we never before set forth with so great a preparation as at this present. And now, not only we are a numerous and puissant army, that invade; but the state also is puissant2 that is invaded by us. We have reason therefore to show ourselves neither worse than our fathers, nor short of the opinion conceived of ourselves. For all Greece is up at this commotion, observing us: and through their hatred to the Athenians, do wish that we may accomplish whatsoever we intend. And therefore, though we seem to invade them with a great army, and to have much assurance that they will not come out against us to battle, yet we ought not for this to march the less carefully prepared; but of every city as well the captain as the soldier, to expect always some danger or other in that part wherein he himself is placed. For the accidents of war are uncertain; and for the most part the onset begins from the lesser number1 and upon passion. And oftentimes the lesser number, being afraid, hath beaten back the greater with the more ease; for that through contempt they have gone unprepared. And in the land of an enemy, though the soldiers ought always to have bold hearts, yet for action, they ought to make their preparations as if they were afraid. For that will give them both more courage to go upon the enemy, and more safety in fighting with him2 . But we invade not now a city that cannot defend itself, but a city every way well appointed. So that we must by all means expect to be fought withal, though not now, because we be not yet there, yet hereafter, when they shall see us in their country wasting and destroying their possessions. For all men, when in their own sight and on a sudden they receive any extraordinary hurt, fall presently into choler; and the less they consider, with the more stomach they assault. And this is likely to hold in the Athenians somewhat more than in the others; for they think themselves worthy to have the command of others, and to invade and waste the territories of their neighbours, rather than to see their neighbours waste theirs. Wherefore, as being to war against a great city, and to procure both to your ancestors and yourselves a great fame, either good or bad as shall be the event; follow your leaders in such sort, as above all things you esteem of order and watchfulness1 . For there is nothing in the world more comely nor more safe, than when many men are seen to observe one and the same order.”

Archidamus sends before him an ambassador to the Athenians; and tries all other means to right his country, before war.The ambassador from Archidamus convoyed back without conference.year 1. A. C. 431. Ol. 87. 1. Archidamus marcheth forward.

12. Archidamus, having thus spoken and dismissed the council, first sent Melesippus the son of Diacritus, a man of Sparta, to Athens, to try if the Athenians, seeing them now on their journey, would yet in some degree remit of their obstinacy. But the Athenians neither received him into their city, nor presented him to the state: for the opinion of Pericles had already taken place, not to receive from the Lacedæmonians neither herald nor ambassador, as long as their army was abroad. Therefore they sent him back without audience, with commandment to be out of their borders the self–same day; and that hereafter if they would any thing with them, they should return every one to his home, and send their ambassadors from thence. They sent with him also certain persons to convoy him out of the country, to the end that no man should confer with him; who, when he came to the limits and was to be dismissed, uttered these words: “This day is the beginning of much evil unto the Grecians”; and so departed. When he returned to the camp, Archidamus perceiving that they would not relent, dislodged1 and marched on with his army into their territory. The Bœotians with their appointed part and with horsemen aided the Peloponnesians; but with the rest of their forces went and wasted the territory of Platæa.

Pericles imagining Archidamus might spare his grounds, promiseth, if he did, to give them to the state.The speech of Pericles to the assembly at Athens, touching the means of the war, &c.year 1. A. C. 431. Ol. 87. 1. The treasure of the people of Athens.year 1. A. C. 431. Ol. 87. 1.The length of the walls to which the watchmen were appointed.year 1. A. C. 431. Ol. 87. 1.Their galleys.

13. Whilst the Peloponnesians were coming together in the isthmus, and when they were on their march, before they brake into Attica, Pericles the son of Xantippus, who with nine others was general of the Athenians, when he saw they were about to break in, suspecting that Archidamus, either of private courtesy or by command of the Lacedæmonians to bring him into jealousy, (as they had before for his sake commanded the excommunication), might oftentimes2 leave his lands untouched, told the Athenians beforehand in an assembly, “that though Archidamus had been his guest, it was for no ill to the state; and howsoever, if the enemy did not waste his lands and houses as well as the rest, that then he gave them to the commonwealth”; and therefore desired “that for this he might not be suspected”. Also he advised them concerning the business in hand the same things he had done before; “that they should make preparations for the war, and receive their goods into the city; that they should not go out to battle, but come into the city and guard it; that they should also furnish out their navy, wherein consisted their power, and hold a careful hand over their confederates”: telling them, “how that in the money that came from these lay their strength, and that the victory in war consisted wholly1 in counsel and store of money”. Farther he bade them be confident, “in that there was yearly coming into the state from the confederates for tribute, besides other revenue2 , six hundred talents; and remaining yet then in the citadel six thousand talents of silver coin:” (for the greatest sum there had been, was ten thousand talents wanting three hundred: out of which was taken that which had been expended upon the gate–houses3 of the citadel, and upon other buildings, and for the charges of Potidæa): “besides the uncoined gold and silver of private and public offerings; and all the dedicated vessels belonging to the shows and games, and the spoils of the Persian, and other things of that nature, which amounted to no less than five hundred talents”. He added farther, that “much money might be had out of other temples1 without the city, which they might use; and if they were barred the use of all these2 , they might yet use the ornaments of gold about the goddess herself;” and said that “the image had about it the weight of forty talents of most pure gold, and which might all be taken off; but having made use of it for their safety”, he said, “they were to make restitution of the like quantity again”. Thus he encouraged them touching matter of money. “Men of arms”, he said, “they had thirteen thousand; besides the sixteen thousand that were employed for the guard of the city and upon the walls.” For so many at the first kept watch at the coming in of the enemy3 , young and old together, and strangers that dwelt amongst them as many as could bear arms. For the length of the Phalerian wall, to that part of the circumference of the wall of the city where it joined, was thirty–five furlongs; and that part of the circumference which was guarded, (for some of it was not kept with a watch, namely, the part between the long wall and the Phalerian), was forty–three furlongs. And the length of the long walls down to Piræus, (of which there was a watch only on the outmost4 ), was forty furlongs. And the whole compass of Piræus together with Munychia, was sixty furlongs; whereof that part that was watched, was but half. He said farther, “they had of horsemen, accounting archers on horseback, twelve hundred; and sixteen hundred archers; and of galleys fit for the sea, three hundred.” All this and no less had the Athenians, when the invasion of the Peloponnesians was first in hand, and when the war began. These and other words spake Pericles, as he used to do, for demonstration that they were likely to outlast this war.

The Athenians fetch in their wives and children and substance into the city.

14. When the Athenians had heard him, they approved of his words; and fetched into the city their wives and children, and the furniture of their houses, pulling down the very timber of the houses themselves. Their sheep and oxen they sent over into Eubœa, and into the islands over against them. Nevertheless this removal, in respect they had most of them been accustomed to the country life, grieved1 them very much.

The Athenians accustomed ever to live in the country.year 1. A. C. 431. Ol. 87. 1.Theseus first brought the inhabitants of Attica to make Athens their capital city.year 1. A. C. 431. Ol. 87. 1.

15. This custom was from great antiquity more familiar with the Athenians, than any other of the rest of Greece. For in the time of Cecrops and the first kings, down to Theseus, the inhabitants of Attica had their several boroughs, and therein their common halls2 and their governors; and, unless they were in fear of some danger, went not to the king1 for advice, but every city administered their own affairs and deliberated by themselves. And some of them had also their particular wars; as the Eleusinians, who joined with Eumolpus against Erectheus. But after Theseus came to the kingdom, one who besides his wisdom was also a man of very great power, he not only set good order in the country in other respects, but also dissolved the councils and magistracies of the rest of the towns; and assigning them all one hall and one council–house, brought them all to cohabit2 in the city that now is; and constrained them, enjoying their own as before, to use this one for their city, which (now when they all paid their duties to it) grew great, and was by Theseus so delivered to posterity. And from that time to this day, the Athenians keep a holiday at the public charge to the goddess, and call it Synœcia. That which is now the citadel, and the part which is to the south of the citadel, was before this time the city. An argument whereof is this; that the temples of the gods are all set either in the citadel itself; or if without, yet in that quarter: as that of Jupiter Olympius, and of Apollo Pythius1 , and of Tellus, and of Bacchus2 in Limnæ; (in honour of whom the old Bacchanals were3 celebrated on the twelfth day of the month Athesterion, according as the Ionians who are derived from Athens, do still observe them); besides other ancient temples situate in the same part. Moreover, they served themselves with water for the best uses of the fountain, which, now the Nine–pipes, built so by the tyrants4 , was formerly, when the springs were open, called Callirhoe, and was near. And from the old custom, before marriages and other holy rites they ordain the use of the same water to this day. And the citadel, from the ancient habitation of it, is also by the Athenians still called the city.

The Athenians remove out of the borough towns into the city unwillingly.year 1. A. C. 431. Ol. 87. 1.Athens thronged with the coming in of the country.An old prophecy against dwelling in the Pelasgicum.year 1. A. C. 431. Ol. 87. 1.

16. The Athenians therefore had lived a long time governed by laws of their own country towns; and after they were brought into one, were nevertheless (both for the custom which most had, as well of the ancient time as since till the Persian5 war, to live in the country with their whole families; and also especially for that since the Persian war they had already1 repaired their houses and furniture) unwilling to remove. It pressed them likewise, and was heavily taken, besides their houses to leave the things that pertained to their religion, (which, since their old form of government, were become patrial), and to change their manner of life, and to be no better than banished every man his city. 17. After they came into Athens, there was habitation for a few, and place of retire, with some friends or kindred. But the greatest part seated themselves in the empty places of the city, and in temples and in all the chapels of the heroes; saving in such as were in the citadel, and the Eleusinium, and other places strongly shut up. The Pelasgicum2 also under the citadel, though it were a thing accursed to dwell in it, and forbidden by the end of a verse in a Pythian oracle, in these words: Best is the Pelasgicum empty3 : was nevertheless for the present necessity inhabited. And in my opinion, this prophecy now fell out contrary to what was looked for. For the unlawful dwelling there caused not the calamities that befell the city, but the war caused the necessity of dwelling there: which war the oracle not naming, foretold only that it should one day be inhabited unfortunately.

The Athenians make ready a hundred galleys to send about Peloponnesus.

Many also furnished the turrets of the walls, and whatsoever other place they could any of them get. For when they were come in, the city had not place for them all: but afterwards they had1 the long walls divided amongst them, and inhabited there, and in most parts of Piræus. Withal they applied themselves to the business of the war, levying their confederates, and making ready a hundred galleys to send about Peloponnesus. Thus were the Athenians preparing.

The Peloponnesian army assault Œnoe, a frontier town of Attica, in vain.

18. The army of the Peloponnesians marching forward, came first to Œnoe, a town of Attica, the place where they intended to break in; and encamping before it, prepared with engines and by other means to assault the wall. For Œnoe lying on the confines between Attica and Bœotia, was walled about; and the Athenians kept a garrison in it, for defence of the country when at any time there should be war. For which cause they made preparation for the assault of it; and also spent much time about it otherwise.

Archidamus taxed of backwardness and favour to the Athenians.year 1. A. C. 431. Ol. 87. 1.Archidamus with his army entereth into Attica:and comes to Acharnas, and stays there long, cutting down their corn and trees.

And Archidamus for this was not a little taxed, as thought to have been both slow in gathering together the forces for the war, and also to have favoured the Athenians in that he encouraged not the army to a forwardness in it. And afterwards likewise2 his stay in the isthmus and his slowness in the whole journey was laid to his charge, but especially his delay at Œnoe. For in this time the Athenians retired into the city: whereas it was thought, that the Peloponnesians marching speedily, might but for this delay have taken them all without. So passionate was the army of Archidamus for his stay before Œnoe. But expecting that the Athenians, whilst their territory was yet unhurt, would relent and not endure to see it wasted, for that cause (as it is reported) he held his hand. 19. But after, when they had assaulted Œnoe, and tried all means, but could not take it; and seeing the Athenians sent no herald to them; then at length arising from thence, about eighty days after that which happened to the Thebans that entered Platæa, the summer and corn being now at the highest1 , they fell into Attica, led by Archidamus the son of Zeuxidamus, king of the Lacedæmonians. And when they had pitched their camp, they fell to wasting of the country, first about Eleusis, and then in the plain of Thriasia; and put to flight a few Athenian horsemen at the brooks called Rheiti2 . After this, leaving the Ægaleon on the right hand, they passed through Cecropia3 , till they came unto Acharnas, which is the greatest town in all Attica of those that are called Demoi1 ; and pitching there, both fortified their camp, and staid a great while wasting the country thereabout.

year 1. A. C. 431. Ol. 87. 1. The design of Archidamus in staying so long at Acharnas.year i. A. C. 431. Ol. 87. 2.

20. Archidamus was said to have staid so long at Acharnas with his army in battle array, and not to have come down all the time of his invasion into the champaign, with this intention. He hoped that the Athenians, flourishing in number of young men, and better furnished for war than ever they were before, would perhaps have come forth against him, and not endured to see their fields cut down and wasted; and therefore seeing they met him not in Thriasia2 , he thought good to try if they would come out against him lying now at Acharnas. Besides3 , the place seemed unto him commodious for the army to lie in; and it was thought also that the Acharnans being a great piece of the city, (for they were three thousand men of arms), would not have suffered the spoiling of their lands, but rather have urged the rest to go out and fight. And if they came not out against him at this invasion, they might hereafter more boldly both waste the champaign country, and come down even to the walls of the city. For the Acharnans, after they should have lost their own, would not be so forward to hazard themselves for the goods of other men: but there would be the thoughts of sedition in one towards another in the city. These were the cogitations of Archidamus, whilst he lay at Acharnas.

The Athenians hardly contain themselves from going out to fight.year i. A. C. 431. Ol. 87. 2.A skirmish between the Athenian and Bœotian horse.year i. A. C. 431. Ol. 87. 2.

21. The Athenians, as long as the army of the enemy lay about Eleusis and the fields of Thrius, and as long as they had any hope1 it would come on no farther, remembering that also Pleistoanax the son of Pausanias, king of Lacedæmon, when fourteen years before this war he entered Attica with an army of the Peloponnesians as far as Eleusis and Thriasia, retired again and came no farther; (for which he was also banished Sparta, as thought to have gone back for money); they stirred not. But when they saw the army now at Acharnas but sixty furlongs from the city, then they thought it no longer to be endured; and when their fields were wasted (as it was likely2 ) in their sight: which the younger sort had never seen before, nor the elder but in the Persian war; it was taken for a horrible matter, and thought fit by all, especially by the youth, to go out and not endure it any longer. And holding councils apart one from another, they were at much contention, some to make a sally, and some to hinder it. And the priests of the oracles giving out prophecies of all kinds, every one made the interpretation according to the sway of his own affection. But the Acharnians, conceiving themselves to be no small part of the Athenians1 , were they that, whilst their own lands were wasting, most of all urged their going out. Insomuch as the city was every way in tumult, and in choler against Pericles, remembering nothing of what he had formerly admonished them; but reviled him, for that being their general he refused to lead them into the field, and imputing unto him the cause of all their evil. 22. But Pericles, seeing them in passion for their present loss and ill advised, and being confident he was in the right touching not sallying, assembled them not nor called any council, for fear lest being together they might upon passion rather than judgment commit some error: but looked to the guarding of the city, and as much as he could to keep it in quiet. Nevertheless he continually sent out horsemen, to keep the scouts of the army from entering upon and doing hurt to the fields near the city. And there happened at Phrygii a small skirmish between one troop2 of horse of the Athenians, with whom were also the Thessalians, and the horsemen of the Bœotians. Wherein the Athenians and Thessalians had not the worse, till such time as the Bœotians were aided by the coming in of their men of arms; and then they were put to flight, and a few of the Athenians and Thessalians slain; whose bodies, notwithstanding, they fetched off the same day without leave of the enemy. And the Peloponnesians the next3 day erected a trophy. This aid of the Thessalians was upon an1 ancient league with the Athenians, and consisted of Larissæans, Pharsalians, Parasians, Cranonians, Pyrasians, Gyrtonians, Pheræans. The leaders of the Larissæans were Polymedes and Aristonus, men of contrary factions in their city: of the Pharsalians, Meno: and of the rest, out of the several cities several commanders.

Archidamus removes from Acharnas.The Athenians send a hundred galleys to infest the sea coast of Peloponnesus.The Peloponnesians go home.year i. A. C. 431. Ol. 87. 2.

23. The Peloponnesians seeing the Athenians would not come out to fight, dislodging from Acharnas, wasted certain other villages2 between the hills Parnethus and Brelissus. Whilst these were in Attica, the Athenians sent the hundred galleys which they had provided, and in them one thousand men of arms and four hundred archers, about Peloponnesus; the commanders whereof were Charcinus the son of Xenotimus, Proteus the son of Epicles, and Socrates the son of Antigenes; who thus furnished, weighed anchor and went their way. The Peloponnesians, when they had stayed in Attica as long as their provision lasted, went home through Bœotia, not the way they came in; but passing by Oropus, wasted the country called Peiraice3 , which is of the tillage of the Oropians, subjects to the people of Athens. And when they were come back into Peloponnesus, they disbanded and went every man to his own city.

The Athenians set by 1000 talents and 100 galleys, for defence against an invasion by sea.

24. When they were gone, the Athenians ordained watches both by sea and land, such as were to continue to the end of the war: and made a decree, to take out a thousand talents of the money in the citadel and set it by, so as it might not be spent, but the charges of the war be borne out of other moneys; and made it capital for any man to move or give his vote1 for the stirring of this money for any other use, but only if the enemy should come with an army by sea to invade the city, for necessity of that defence. Together with this money they likewise set apart one hundred galleys, and those to be every year the best, and captains to be appointed over them; which were to be employed for no other use than the money was, and for the same danger, if need should require.

year i. A. C. 431. Ol. 87. 2. The Athenians assault Methone.Brasidas defendeth it.year i. A. C. 431. Ol. 87. 2. They take Pheia, a town of Elis.

25. The Athenians that were with the hundred galleys about Peloponnesus, and with them the Corcyræans with the aid of fifty sail more, and certain others of the confederates thereabout, amongst other places which they infested in their course landed at Methone, a town of Laconia1 ; and assaulted it, as being but weak and few2 men within. But it chanced that Brasidas the son of Tellis, a Spartan, had a garrison in those parts; and hearing of it, succoured those of the town with one hundred men of arms. Wherewith running through the Athenian army, dispersed in the fields, directly towards the town3 , he put himself into Methone; and with the loss of few of his men in the passage he saved the place, and for this adventure was the first that was praised at Sparta in this war. The Athenians putting off from thence sailed along the coast, and put in at Pheia of Elis, where they spent two days in wasting the country, and in a skirmish overthrew three hundred choice men of the Lower Elis4 , together with other Eleians thereabouts, that came forth to defend it. But the wind arising, and their galleys being tossed by the weather in a harbourless place, the most of them embarked, and sailed about the promontory called Icthys into the haven of Pheia. But1 the Messenians, and certain others that could not get aboard, went by land to the town of Pheia and rifled it2 . And when they had done, the galleys, that now were come about, took them in, and leaving Pheia put forth to sea again. By which time a great army of Eleians was come to succour it; but the Athenians were now gone away, and wasting some other territory.

26. About the same time the Athenians sent likewise thirty galleys about Locris; which were to serve also for a watch about Eubœa. Of these, Cleopompus the son of Clinias had the conduct; and landing his soldiers in divers parts, both wasted some places of the sea coast, and won the town of Thronium, of which he took hostages: and overcame in fight at Alope the Locrians that came out to aid it.

The inhabitants of Ægina removed by the Athenians:and received by the Peloponnesians.year i. A. C. 431. Ol. 87. 2.

27. The same summer, the Athenians put the Æginetæ, man, woman and child, out of Ægina; laying to their charge that they were the principal cause of the present war. And it was also thought the safer course to hold Ægina, being adjacent to Peloponnesus, with a colony of their own people; and not long after they sent inhabitants into the same. When the Æginetæ were thus banished, the Lacedæmonians gave them Thyrea to dwell in3 , and the occupation of the lands belonging unto it to live on: both upon hatred to the Athenians, and for the benefits received at the hands of the Æginetæ in the time of the earthquake and insurrection of the Helotes. This territory of Thyrea is in the border between Argolica and Laconica, and reacheth to the sea–side. So some of them were placed there: and the rest dispersed into other parts of Greece1 .

Eclipse of the sun: and stars discerned.

28. Also the same summer, on the first day of the month according to the moon, (at which time it seems only possible), in the afternoon happened an eclipse of the sun. The which, after it had appeared in the form of a crescent, and withal some stars had been discerned, came afterwards again to the former brightness.

The Athenians seek the favour of Sitalces, king of Thrace, and Perdiccas, king of Macedonia.year i. A. C. 431. Ol. 87. 2.Sadocus the son of Sitalces, king of Thrace, made free of Athens.

29. The same summer also the Athenians made Nymphodorus the son of Pythos, of the city of Abdera, (whose sister was married to Sitalces, and that was of great power with him), their host2 , though before they took him for an enemy; and sent for him to Athens, hoping by his means to bring Sitalces the son of Teres, king of Thrace, into their league. This Teres, the father of Sitalces, was the first that advanced the kingdom of the Odrysians above the power of the rest of Thrace3 . For much of Thrace consisteth of free states. And Tereus that took to wife out of Athens Procne the daughter of Pandion, was no kin to this Teres, nor of the same part1 of Thrace. But that Tereus was of the city of Daulia in the country now called Phocis, then inhabited by the Thracians. And the fact of the women concerning Itys, was done there; and by the poets, where they mention the nightingale, that bird is also called Daulias. And it is more likely that Pandion matched his daughter to this man, for vicinity and mutual succour, than with the other, that was so many days’ journey off as Odrysæ. And Teres (which is also another name) was the first that seized on the kingdom of Odrysæ2 . Now Sitalces, this man’s son, the Athenians got into their league, that they might have the towns lying on Thrace and Perdiccas to be of their party3 . Nymphodorus, when he came to Athens, made this league between them and Sitalces, and caused Sadocus the son of Sitalces, to be made free of Athens; and also undertook to end the war in Thrace. For he would persuade Sitalces to send unto the Athenians a Thracian army of horsemen and targettiers. He likewise reconciled Perdiccas to the Athenians, and procured of4 him the restitution of Therme. And Perdiccas presently aided the Athenians and Phormio in the war against the Chalcideans. Thus were Sitalces the son of Teres, king of Thrace, and Perdiccas the son of Alexander, king of Macedonia, made confederates with the Athenians.

year i. A. C. 431. Ol. 87. 2. The Athenians take Solium and A stacus, and the island of Cephalonia.

30. The Athenians being yet with their hundred galleys about Peloponnesus, took Solium, a town that belonged to the Corinthians, and put the Palærenses only, of all the Acarnanians, into the possession both of the town and territory. Having also by force taken Astacus from the tyrant Euarchus, they drave him thence, and joined the place to their league. From thence they sailed to Cephalonia, and subdued it without battle: (this Cephalonia is an island lying over against Acarnania and Leucas; and hath in it these four cities, the Pallenses, Cranii, Samæi, and Pronæi1 :) and not long after returned with their fleet to Athens.

The Athenians invade Megaris.year i. A. C. 431. Ol. 87. 2.The Athenians’ greatest army.The Athenians duly once a year invade Megaris.

31. About the end of the autumn of this summer, the Athenians, both themselves and the strangers that dwelt amongst them2 , with the whole power of the city, under the conduct of Pericles the son Xantippus, invaded the territory of Megara. And those Athenians likewise that had been with the hundred galleys about Peloponnesus, in their return, being now at Ægina, hearing that the whole power of the city was gone into Megaris, went and joined them. And this was the greatest army that ever the Athenians had together in one place before1 ; the city being now in her strength, and the plague not yet amongst them. For the Athenians themselves were no less than ten thousand men of arms, besides the three thousand at Potidæa: and the strangers that dwelt amongst them, and accompanied them in this invasion, were no fewer that three thousand men of arms more; besides other great numbers of light–armed soldiers. And when they had wasted the greatest part of the country, they went back to Athens. And afterwards, year after year during this war, the Athenians often2 invaded Megaris, sometimes with their horsemen and sometimes with their whole army, until such time as they had won Nisæa.

The end of the first summer.

32. Also in the end of this summer they fortified Atalante, an island lying upon the Locrians of Opus, desolate till then; for a garrison against thieves, which passing over from Opus and other parts of Locris might annoy Eubœa. These were the things done this summer after the retreat of the Peloponnesians out of Attica.

year i. A. C. 431. Ol. 87. 2. Euarchus the tyrant recovereth Astacus.

33. The winter following, Euarchus of Acarnania, desirous to return to Astacus, prevaileth with the Corinthians to go thither with forty galleys and fifteen hundred men of arms, to re–establish him; to which he hired also certain other mercenaries for the same purpose. The commanders of this army were Euphamidas the son of Aristonymus, Timoxenes the son of Timocrates, and Eumachus the son of Chrysis. When they had re–established him, they endeavoured to draw to their party some other places on the sea–coast of Acarnania; but missing their purpose, they set sail homeward. As they passed by the coast of Cephalonia, they disbarked in the territory of the Cranii; where, under colour of composition, they were deceived, and lost some part of their forces1 . For the assault made upon them by the Cranii being unexpected, they got off with much ado, and went home.

The manner of the Athenians in burying the bones of the first slain in the wars.year i. A. C. 431. Ol. 87. 2.year i. A. C. 431. Ol. 87. 2.

34. The same winter the Athenians, according to their ancient custom, solemnized a public funeral of the first slain in this war, in this manner. Having set up a tent, they put into it2 the bones of the dead three days before the funeral: and every one bringeth whatsoever he thinks good to his own. When the day comes of carrying them to their burial, certain cypress1 coffins are carried along in carts, for every tribe one, in which are the bones of the men of every tribe by themselves. There is likewise borne an empty hearse covered over, for such as appear not, nor were found amongst the rest when they were taken up. The funeral is accompanied by any that will2 , whether citizen or stranger; and the women of their kindred are also by at the burial, lamenting and mourning. Then they put them into a3 public monument, which standeth in the fairest suburbs of the city; in which place they have ever interred all that died in the wars, except those that were slain in the field of Marathon; who, because their virtue was thought extraordinary, were therefore buried thereright. And when the earth is thrown over them, some one thought to exceed the rest in wisdom and dignity, chosen by the city, maketh an oration, wherein he giveth them such praises as are fit: which done, the company depart. And this is the form of that burial: and for the whole time of the war, whensoever there was occasion, they observed the same4 . For these first, the man chosen to make the oration was Pericles the son of Xantippus: who when the time served, going out of the place of burial into a high pulpit, to be heard the farther off by the multitude about him, spake unto them in this manner:

the funeral oration made by pericles.year i. A. C. 431. Ol. 87. 2. The funeral oration made by Pericles.

35. “Though most that have spoken formerly in this place, have commended the man that added this oration to the law, as honourable for those that die in the wars; yet to me it seemeth sufficient, that they who have showed their valour by action, should also by an action have their honour1 , as now you see they have, in this their sepulture performed by the state; and not to have the virtue of many hazarded on one, to be believed as that one shall make a good or bad oration. For to speak of men in a just measure, is a hard matter: and though one do so, yet he shall hardly get the truth firmly believed2 . The favourable hearer, and he that knows what was done, will perhaps think what is spoken short of what he would have it, and what it was3 : and he that is ignorant, will find somewhat on the other side which he will think too much extolled; especially if he hear aught above the pitch of his own nature. For to hear another man praised finds patience so long only, as each man shall think he could himself have done somewhat of that he hears. And if one exceed in their praises, the hearer presently through envy thinks it false. But since our ancestors have so thought good, I also, following the same ordinance, must endeavour to be answerable to the desires and opinions of every one of you, as far forth as I can.

year i. A. C. 431. Ol. 87. 2. The funeral oration made by Pericles.He glanceth at the Lacedæmonians, because they ever looked sourly on soft and loose behaviour.year i. A. C. 431. Ol. 87. 2. The funeral oration made by Pericles.year i. A. C. 431. Ol. 87. 2. The funeral oration made by Pericles.year i. A. C. 431. Ol. 87. 2. The funeral oration made by Pericles.year i. A. C. 431. Ol. 87. 2. The funeral oration made by Pericles.

36. “I will begin at our ancestors: being a thing both just and honest1 , that to them first be given the honour of remembrance in this kind. For they, having been always the inhabitants of this region2 , by their valour have delivered the same to succession of posterity, hitherto in the state of liberty. For which they deserve commendation, but our fathers deserve yet more: for that besides what descended on them, not without great labour of their own they have purchased this our present dominion, and delivered the same over to us that now are. Which in a great part also we ourselves, that are yet in the strength of our age here present, have enlarged; and so furnished the city with every thing, both for peace and war, as it is now all–sufficient in itself. The actions of war whereby all this was attained, and the deeds of arms both of ourselves and our fathers in valiant opposition to the barbarians or Grecians in their wars against us, amongst you that are well acquainted with the sum, to avoid prolixity I will pass over. But by what3 institutions we arrived at this, by what form of government and by what means we have advanced the state to this greatness, when I shall have laid open this, I shall then descend to these men’s praises. For I think they are things both fit for the purpose in hand, and profitable to the whole company, both of citizens and strangers, to hear related. 37. We have a form of government, not fetched by imitation from the laws of our neighbouring states; (nay, we are rather a pattern to others, than they to us); which, because in the administration it hath respect not to a few, but to the multitude, is called a democracy. Wherein, though there be an equality amongst all men in point of law for their private controversies; yet1 in conferring of dignities one man is preferred before another to public charge, and that according to the reputation, not of his house, but of his virtue; and is not put back through poverty for the obscurity of his person, as long as he can do good service to the commonwealth. And we live not only free in the administration of the state, but also one with another void of jealousy touching each other’s daily course of life2 ; not offended at any man for following his own humour, nor casting on any man censorious looks, which though they be no punishment, yet they grieve. So that conversing one with another for the private without offence, we stand chiefly in fear to transgress against the public; and are obedient always to those that govern and to the laws, and principally to such laws as are written for protection against injury, and such unwritten, as bring undeniable shame to the transgressors. 38. We have also found out many ways to give our minds recreation from labour, by public institution of games and sacrifices for all the days of the year, with a decent pomp and furniture of the same by private men; by the daily delight whereof we expel sadness. We have this farther by the greatness of our city, that all things from all parts of the earth are imported hither; whereby we no less familiarly enjoy the commodities of all other nations, than our own. 39. Then in the studies of war, we excel1 our enemies in this. We leave our city open to all men; nor was it ever seen, that by banishing of strangers2 we denied them the learning or sight of any of those things, which, if not hidden, an enemy might reap advantage by; not relying on secret preparation and deceit, but upon our own courage in the action. They, in their discipline, hunt after valour presently from their youth with laborious exercise3 ; and yet we that live remissly, undertake as great dangers as they. For example; the Lacedæmonians invade not our dominion by themselves alone, but with the aid of all the rest. But when we invade our neighbours, though we fight in hostile ground, against such as in their own ground fight in defence of their own substance, yet for the most part we get the victory1 . Never enemy yet fell into the hands of our whole forces at once; both because we apply ourselves much to navigation, and by land also send many of our men into divers countries abroad2 . But when fighting with a part of it, they chance to get the better, they boast they have beaten the whole; and when they get the worse, they say they are beaten by the whole. And yet when from ease rather than studious labour, and upon natural rather than doctrinal valour, we come to undertake any danger, we have this odds by it, that we shall3 not faint beforehand with the meditation of future trouble, and in the action we shall appear no less confident than they that are ever toiling; 40. procuring admiration to our city as well in this as in divers other things. For we also give ourselves to bravery1 , and yet with thrift; and to philosophy, and yet without mollification of the mind. And we use riches rather for opportunities of action, than for verbal ostentation: and hold it not a shame to confess poverty, but not to have avoided it. Moreover there is in the same men, a care both of their own and the public affairs; and a sufficient knowledge of state matters2 , even in those that labour with their hands. For we only think one that is utterly ignorant therein, to be a man, not that meddles with nothing, but that is good for nothing. We3 likewise weigh what we undertake, and apprehend it perfectly in our minds; not accounting words for a hindrance of action, but that it is rather a hindrance to action to come to it without instruction of words before. For also in this we excel4 others; daring to undertake as much as any, and yet examining what we undertake; whereas with other men, ignorance makes them dare, and consideration dastards. And they are most rightly reputed valiant, who though they perfectly apprehend both what is dangerous and what is easy, are never the more thereby diverted from adventuring. Again, we are contrary to most men in matter of bounty. For we purchase our friends, not by receiving, but by bestowing benefits. And he that bestoweth a good turn, is ever the most constant friend; because1 he will not lose the thanks due unto him from him whom he bestowed it on. Whereas the friendship of him that oweth a benefit, is dull and flat, as knowing his benefit not to be taken for a favour, but for a debt. So that we only do good to others, not upon computation of profit, but freeness of trust2 .

year i. A. C. 431. Ol. 87. 2. The funeral oration made by Pericles.

41. “In sum it may be said, both that the city is in general a school of the Grecians, and that the men here have, every one in particular, his person disposed to most diversity of actions, and yet all with grace and decency3 . And that this is not now rather a bravery of words upon the occasion, than real truth, this power of the city, which by these institutions4 we have obtained, maketh evident. For it is the only power now, found greater in proof than fame; and the only power, that neither grieveth the invader, when he miscarries, with the quality of those he was hurt by, nor giveth cause to the subjected states to murmur, as being in subjection to men unworthy. For both with present and future ages we shall be in admiration, for a power not without testimony, but made evident by great arguments; and which needeth not either a Homer to praise it, or any other such, whose poems may indeed for the present bring delight, but the truth will afterwards confute the opinion conceived of the actions. For we have opened unto us by our courage all seas and lands, and set up eternal monuments on all sides, both of the evil we have done to our enemies, and the good we have done to our friends.

year i. A. C. 431. Ol. 87. 2. The funeral oration made by Pericles.

“Such is the city for which these men, thinking it no reason to lose it, valiantly fighting have died. And it is fit that every man of you that be left, should be like minded to undergo any travail for the same. 42. And I have therefore spoken so much concerning the city in general, as well to show you that the stakes between us and them, whose city is not such, are not equal; as also to make known by effects, the worth of these men I am to speak of; the greatest part of their praises being therein already delivered. For what I have spoken of the city, hath by these, and such as these, been achieved. Neither would praises and actions appear so levelly concurrent in many other of the Grecians, as they do in these: the present revolution1 of these men’s lives seeming unto me an argument of their virtues, noted in the first act thereof, and in the last confirmed. For even such of them as were worse than the rest, do nevertheless deserve, that for their valour shown in the wars for defence of their country they should be preferred before the rest2 . For having by their good actions abolished the memory of their evil, they have profited the state thereby more than they have hurt it by their private behaviour. Yet there was none of these, that preferring the further fruition of his wealth, was thereby grown cowardly; or that for hope to overcome his poverty at length and to attain to riches, did for that cause withdraw himself from the danger. For1 their principal desire was not wealth, but revenge on their enemies; which esteeming the most honourable cause of danger, they made account through it both to accomplish their revenge and to purchase wealth withal; putting the uncertainty of success to the account of their hope; but for that which was before their eyes, relying upon themselves in the action; and therein choosing rather to fight and die, than to shrink and be saved, they fled from shame, but with their bodies they stood out the battle; and so in a moment, whilst fortune inclineth neither way, left their lives not in fear, but in opinion of victory.

year i. A. C. 431. Ol. 87. 2. The funeral oration made by Pericles.year i. A. C. 431. Ol. 87 2. The funeral oration made by Pericles.

43. “Such were these men, worthy of their country. And for you that remain, you may pray for a safer fortune, but you ought not to be less venturously minded against the enemy; not weighing the profit by an oration only, which any man amplifying, may recount, to you that know as well as he, the many commodities that arise by fighting valiantly against your enemies; but contemplating the power of the city in the actions of the same from day to day performed1 , and thereby becoming enamoured of it. And when this power of the city shall seem great to you, consider then, that the same was purchased by valiant men, and by men that knew their duty, and by men that were sensible of dishonour when they were in fight; and by such men, as though they failed of their attempt, yet would not be wanting to the city with their virtue, but made unto it a most honourable contribution. For2 having every one given his body to the commonwealth, they receive in place thereof an undecaying commendation and a most remarkable sepulchre; not wherein they are buried so much, as wherein their glory is laid up, upon all occasions both of speech and action to be remembered for ever. For to famous men all the earth is a sepulchre: and their virtues shall be testified, not only by the inscription in stone at home, but3 by an unwritten record of the mind, which more than of any monument will remain with every one for ever. In imitation therefore of these men, and placing happiness in liberty, and liberty in valour, be forward to encounter the dangers of war. For the miserable and desperate men, are not they that have the most reason to be prodigal of their lives; but rather such men, as if they live, may expect a change of fortune, and whose losses are greatest if they miscarry in aught. For to a man of any spirit, death, which is without sense, arriving whilst he is in vigour and common hope, is nothing so bitter as after a tender life to be brought into misery1 .

year i. A. C. 431. Ol. 87. 2. The funeral oration made by Pericles.

44. “Wherefore I will not so much bewail, as comfort you, the parents, that are present, of these men. For you know that whilst they lived, they were obnoxious to manifold calamities. Whereas whilst you are in grief, they only are happy that die honourably, as these have done2 : and to whom it hath been granted, not only to live in prosperity, but to die in it. Though it be a hard matter to dissuade you from sorrow for the loss of that, which the happiness of others, wherein you also when time was rejoiced yourselves, shall so often bring into your remembrance; (for sorrow is not for the want of a good never tasted, but for the privation of a good we have been used to); yet such of you as are of the age to have children, may bear the loss of these in the hope of more. For the later children will both draw on with some the oblivion of those that are slain, and also doubly conduce to the good of the city, by population and strength. For it is not likely that they should equally give good counsel to the state, that have not children to be equally exposed to danger in it. As for you that are past having of children3 , you are to put the former and greater part of your life1 to the account of your gain; and supposing the remainder of it will be but short, you shall have the glory of these for a consolation of the same. For the love of honour never groweth old: nor doth that unprofitable part of our life take delight (as some have said) in gathering of wealth, so much as it doth in being honoured. 45. As for you that are the children or brethren of these men, I see you shall have a difficult task of emulation. For every man useth to praise the dead; so that with odds of virtue you will hardly get an equal reputation, but still be thought a little short. For men envy their competitors in glory, while they live; but to stand out of their way, is a thing honoured with an affection free from opposition2 . And since I must say somewhat also of feminine virtue, for you that are now widows, I shall express it in this short admonition. It will be much for your honour not to recede from your sex3 : and to give as little occasion of rumour amongst the men, whether of good or evil, as you can.

year i. A. C 431. Ol. 87. 2.

46. “Thus4 also have I, according to the prescript of the law, delivered in word what was expedient; and those that are here interred, have in fact been already honoured; and further, their children5 shall be maintained till they be at man’s estate at the charge of the city; which hath therein propounded both to these, and them that live, a profitable garland in their matches of valour1 . For where the rewards of virtue are greatest, there live the worthiest men. So now having lamented every one his own, you may be gone.”

47. Such was the funeral made this winter; which ending, ended the first year of this war.

year ii. A. C. 430. Ol. 87. 2. The second invasion of Attica by the Lacedæmonians.The plague at Athens.year ii. A. C. 430. Ol. 87. 2.It began in Æthiopia.The Peloponnesians supposed to have poisoned their wells.year ii. A. C. 430. Ol. 87. 2. The author sick of this disease.

In the very beginning of summer, the Peloponnesians and their confederates, with two thirds of their forces as before, invaded Attica under the conduct of Archidamus the son of Zeuxidamas, king of Lacedæmon: and after they had encamped themselves, wasted the country about them. They had not been many days in Attica, when the plague first began amongst the Athenians, said also to have seized2 formerly on divers other parts, as about Lemnos and elsewhere; but so great a plague and mortality of men was never remembered to have happened in any place before. For at first neither were the physicians able to cure it, through ignorance of what it was1 , but died fastest themselves, as being the men that most approached the sick; nor any other art of man availed whatsoever. All supplications to the gods, and enquiries of oracles, and whatsoever other means they used of that kind, proved all unprofitable; insomuch as subdued with the greatness of the evil, they gave them all over. 48. It began, by report, first in that part of Æthiopia that lieth upon Egypt; and thence fell down into Egypt and Africa, and into the greatest part of the territories of the king. It invaded Athens on a sudden; and touched first upon those that dwelt in Peiræus; insomuch as they reported that the Peloponnesians had cast poison into their wells2 ; (for springs there were not any in that place). But afterwards it came up into the high city, and then they died a great deal faster. Now let every man, physician or other, concerning the ground of this sickness, whence it sprung, and what causes he thinks able to produce so great an alteration, speak according to his own knowledge. For my own part, I will deliver but the manner of it, and lay open only such things, as one may take his mark by to discover the same, if it come again; having been both sick of it myself, and seen others sick of the same.

The description of the disease:ache of the head: redness of the eyes: sore throat: unsavoury breath:vomitings:hickyexe:year ii. A. C. 430. Ol. 87. 2. livid pustules: extreme heat of their bodies:insatiate thirst:want of sleep:after seven or ten days, death:disease in the belly:looseness:year ii. A. C. 430. Ol. 87. 2. loss of the parts where the disease brake out:oblivion of all things done before their sickness:birds and beasts perished that fed on carcases.

49. This year, by confession of all men, was of all other, for other diseases, most free and healthful. If any man were sick before, his disease turned to this1 ; if not, yet suddenly, without any apparent cause preceding and being in perfect health, they were taken first with an extreme ache2 in their heads, redness and inflammation of the eyes; and then inwardly, their throats and tongues grew presently bloody, and their breath noisome and unsavoury. Upon this followed a sneezing and hoarseness, and not long after the pain, together with a mighty cough, came down into the breast. And when once it was settled in the stomach, it caused vomit3 , and with great torment came up all manner of bilious purgation that physicians ever named. Most of them had also the hickyexe4 , which brought with it a strong convulsion, and in some ceased quickly, but in others was long before it gave over. Their bodies outwardly to the touch were neither very hot nor pale; but reddish, livid, and beflowered with little pimples and whelks1 ; but so burned inwardly, as not to endure any the lightest clothes or linen garment to be upon them, nor anything but mere nakedness; but rather most willingly to have cast themselves into the cold water. And2 many of them that were not looked to, possessed with insatiate thirst, ran unto the wells; and to drink much or little was indifferent, being still from ease and power to sleep as far as ever. As long as the disease was at its height, their bodies wasted not, but resisted the torment beyond all expectation; insomuch as the most of them either died of their inward burning3 in nine or seven days, whilst they had yet strength; or if they escaped that, then the disease falling down into their bellies, and causing there great exulcerations and immoderate4 looseness, they died many of them afterwards through weakness. For the disease, which took first the head, began above, and came down and passed through the whole body; and he that overcame the worst of it, was yet marked with the loss of his extreme parts1 ; for breaking out both at their privy members, and at their fingers and toes, many with the loss of these escaped: there were also some that lost their eyes. And many, that presently upon their recovery were taken with such an oblivion of all things whatsoever, as they neither knew themselves nor their acquaintance. 50. For this was a kind of sickness which far surmounted all expression of words, and both exceeded human nature in the cruelty wherewith it handled each one; and appeared also otherwise to be none of those diseases that are bred amongst us, and that especially by this. For all, both birds and beasts, that use to feed on human flesh, though many men lay abroad unburied, either came not at them, or tasting perished2 . An argument whereof as touching the birds, is the manifest defect of such fowl; which were not then seen, neither about the carcases or any where else. But by the dogs, because they are familiar with men, this effect was seen much clearer.

year ii. A C. 430. Ol. 87. 2. Want of attendance.Dejection of mind.year ii. A. C. 430. Ol. 87. 2. No man sick of it mortally the second time.

51. So that this disease, (to pass over many strange particulars of the accidents that some had differently from others), was in general such as I have shown3 ; and for other usual sicknesses, at that time no man was troubled with any1 . Now they died, some for want of attendance, and some again with all the care and physic that could be used. Nor was there any, to say certain medicine, that applied must have helped them2 ; for if it did good to one, it did harm to another. Nor any difference of body, for strength or weakness, that was able to resist it; but it carried all away, what physic soever was administered. But the greatest misery of all, was the dejection of mind in such as found themselves beginning to be sick: (for they grew presently desperate, and gave themselves over without making any resistance): as also their dying thus like sheep, infected by mutual visitation; for the greatest mortality proceeded that way. For if men forebore to visit them for fear, then they died forlorn; whereby many families became empty, for want of such as should take care of them. If they forbore not, then they died themselves, and principally the honestest3 men. For out of shame they would not spare themselves, but went in unto their friends; especially after it was come to this pass, that even their domestics, wearied with the lamentations of them that died, and overcome with the greatness of the calamity, were no longer moved therewith. But those that were recovered, had much4 compassion both on them that died, and on them that lay sick; as having both known the misery themselves, and now no more subject to the danger. For this disease never took any man the second time, so as to be mortal. And these men were both by others counted happy; and they also themselves, through excess of present joy, conceived a kind of light hope never to die of any other sickness hereafter.

Men died in the streets.Disorder in their funerals.year ii. A. C. 430. Ol. 87. 2.Licentiousness of life justified.Neglect of religion and law.year ii. A. C. 430. Ol. 87. 2.

52. Besides the present affliction, the reception of the country people and of their substance into the city, oppressed both them, and much more the people themselves that so came in. For having no houses, but dwelling at that time1 of the year in stifling booths, the mortality was now without all form; and dying2 men lay tumbling one upon another in the streets, and men half–dead about every conduit through desire of water. The temples also where they dwelt in tents, were all full of the dead that died within them. For oppressed with the violence of the calamity, and not knowing what to do, men grew careless both of holy and profane things alike. And the laws which they formerly used touching funerals, were all now broken; every one burying where he could find room3 . And many for want of things necessary, after so many deaths before, were forced to become impudent in the funerals of their friends. For when one had made a funeral pile, another getting before him would throw on his dead, and give it fire. And when one was in burning, another would come, and having cast thereon him whom he carried, go his way again. 53. And the great licentiousness, which also in other kinds was1 used in the city, began at first from this disease. For that which a man before would dissemble, and not acknowledge to be done for voluptuousness, he durst now do freely; seeing before his eyes such quick revolution, of the rich2 dying, and men worth nothing inheriting their estates. Insomuch as they justified a speedy fruition of their goods, even3 for their pleasure; as men that thought they held their lives but by the day. As for pains, no man was forward in any action of honour to take any; because they thought it uncertain whether they should die or not before they achieved it. But what any man knew to be delightful, and to be profitable to pleasure4 , that was made both profitable and honourable. Neither the fear of the gods, nor laws of men, awed any man: not the former, because they concluded it was alike to worship or not worship, from seeing that alike they all perished: nor the latter, because no man expected that lives would last till he received punishment of his crimes by judgment. But they thought, there was now over their heads some far greater judgment decreed against them; before which fell, they thought to enjoy some little part of their lives.

Predictions called to mind.

54. Such was the misery, into which the Athenians being fallen were much oppressed; having not only their men killed by the disease within, but the enemy also laying waste their fields and villages without. In this sickness also, (as it was not unlikely they would), they called to mind this verse, said also of the elder sort to have been uttered of old:

• A Doric war shall fall,
• And a great plague1withal.

An ambiguous prophecy expounded by the event.year ii. A. C. 430. Ol. 87. 2.

Now were men at variance about the word, some saying it was not λοιμός that was by the ancients mentioned in that verse, but λιμός. But upon the present occasion the word λοιμός deservedly obtained. For as men suffered, so they made the verse to say. And I think, if after this there shall ever come another Doric war, and with it a famine, they are like to recite the verse accordingly. There was also reported by such as knew, a certain2 answer given by the oracle to the Lacedæmonians, when they inquired whether they should make this war or not: that if they warred with all their power, they should have the victory; and that the God3himself would take their parts. And thereupon they thought the present misery to be a fulfilling of that prophecy. The Peloponnesians were no sooner entered Attica, but the sickness presently began; and never came into Peloponnesus, to speak of, but reigned principally in Athens, and in such other places afterwards as were most populous. And thus much of this disease.

Pericles with 100 sail of Athenians about Peloponnesus.year ii. A. C. 430. Ol. 87. 2.

55. After the Peloponnesians had wasted the champagne country, they fell upon the territory called Paralos1 , as far as to the mountain Laurius, where the Athenians had silver mines; and first wasted that part of it which looketh towards Peloponnesus, and then that also which lieth toward Andros and Eubœa. And Pericles, who was also then general, was still of the same mind he was of in the former invasion, that the Athenians ought not to go out against them to battle. 56. Whilst2 they were yet in the plain, and before they entered into the maritime country, he furnished a hundred galleys to go about Peloponnesus, and as soon as they were ready, put to sea. In these galleys he had four thousand men of arms; and in vessels then purposely first made to carry horses3 , three hundred horsemen. The Chians and Lesbians joined likewise with him with fifty galleys. This fleet of the Athenians, when it set forth, left the Peloponnesians still in Paralia; and coming before Epidaurus, a city of Peloponnesus1 , they wasted much of the country thereabout, and assaulting the city had a hope to take it, though it succeeded not. Leaving Epidaurus, they wasted the territories about of Trœzene, Halias, and Hermione, places all on the sea–coast of Peloponnesus. Putting off from hence, they came to Prasiæ, a small maritime city of Laconia; and both wasted the territory about it, and took and razed2 the town itself. And having done this, came home, and found the Peloponnesians not now in Attica, but gone back.

The Peloponnesians depart out of Attica.

57. All the while the Peloponnesians were in the territory of the Athenians, and the Athenians abroad with their fleet, the sickness, both in the army and city, destroyed many; insomuch as it was said that the Peloponnesians fearing the sickness, (which they knew to be in the city, both by fugitives and by seeing the Athenians burying3 their dead), went the sooner away out of the country. And yet they stayed there longer in this invasion than they had done any time before4 ; and wasted even the whole territory: for they continued in Attica almost forty days.

year ii. A. C. 430. Ol. 87. 2. 3. The Athenian fleet returned from Peloponnesus, go to Potidæa with ill success by reason of the sickness.

58. The same summer Agnon the son of Nicias, and Cleopompus the son of Clinias, who were joint commanders with Pericles, with that army which he had employed before, went presently and made war upon the Chalcideans of Thrace, and against Potidæa, which was yet besieged. Arriving, they presently applied engines, and tried all means possible to take it; but neither the taking of the city, nor any thing else, succeeded worthy so great preparation. For the sickness coming amongst them, afflicted them mightily indeed, and even devoured the army. And the Athenian soldiers which were there before and in health, catched the sickness from those that came with Agnon. As for Phormio and his sixteen hundred, they were not now amongst the Chalcideans. And Agnon therefore came back with his fleet, having of four thousand men in less than forty days lost one thousand and fifty of the plague. But the soldiers that were there before, stayed upon the place and continued the siege of Potidæa.

The Athenian people vexed at once both with the war and pestilence, grow impatient toward Pericles.year ii. A. C. 430. Ol. 87. 2. 3.

59. After the second invasion of the Peloponnesians, the Athenians having their fields now the second time wasted, and both the sickness and war falling upon them at once, changed their minds, and accused Pericles1 as if by his means they had been brought into these calamities, and desired earnestly to compound with the Lacedæmonians; to whom also they sent certain ambassadors, but they returned without effect. And being then at their wits’ end, they kept a stir at Pericles. And he seeing them vexed with their present calamity and doing all those things which he had before expected, called an assembly (for he was yet general1 ) with intention to put them again into heart, and assuaging their passion, to reduce their minds to a more calm and less dismayed temper. And standing forth, he spake unto them in this manner:

Oration of Pericles.year ii. A. C. 430. Ol. 87. 2. 3. Oration of Pericles.year ii. A. C. 430. Ol. 87. 2. 3. Oration of Pericles.

60. “Your anger towards me cometh not unlooked for; for the cause of it I know. And I have called this assembly therefore, to remember you, and reprehend you for those things wherein you have either been angry with me, or given way to your adversity, without reason. For I am of this opinion, that the public prosperity of the city is better for private men, than if the private men themselves were in prosperity and the public wealth in decay. For a private man, though in good estate, if his country come to ruin, must of necessity be ruined with it; whereas he that miscarrieth in a flourishing commonwealth, shall much more easily be preserved. Since then the commonwealth is able to bear the calamities of private men, and every one2 cannot support the calamities of the commonwealth, why should not every one strive to defend it: and not, as you now, astonished with domestic misfortune, forsake the common safety, and fall a censuring both me that counselled the war, and yourselves that decreed the same as well as I? And it is I you are angry withal: one, as I think myself, inferior to none, either in knowing what is requisite, or in expressing what I know, and a lover of my country and superior to money. For he that hath good thoughts and cannot clearly express them, were as good to have thought nothing at all. He that can do both, and is ill affected to his country, will likewise1 not give it faithful counsel. And he that will do that too, yet if he be superable by money, will for that alone set all the rest to sale. Now if you followed my advice in making this war, as esteeming these virtues to be in me somewhat above the rest, there is sure no reason that I should now be accused of doing you wrong. 61. For though to such as have it in their own election, (being otherwise in good estate), it were madness to make choice of war; yet when we must of necessity either give way, and so without more ado be subject to our neighbours, or else save ourselves from it by danger; he is more to be condemned that declineth the danger, than he that standeth to it. For mine own part, I am the man I was, and of the mind I was; but you are changed, won to the war when you were entire, but repenting it upon the damage, and condemning my counsel in the weakness of your own judgment. The reason of this is, because you feel already every one in particular that which afflicts you; but the evidence of the profit to accrue to the city in general, you see not yet. And your minds dejected with the great and sudden alteration, cannot constantly2 maintain what you have before resolved. For that which is sudden and unexpected, and contrary to what one hath deliberated, enslaveth the spirit; which by this disease principally, in the neck of the other incommodities, is now come to pass in you. But you that are born in a great city, and with education suitable, how great soever the affliction be, ought not to shrink at it and eclipse your reputation; (for men do no less condemn those that through cowardice lose the glory they have, than hate those that through impudence arrogate the glory they have not); but to set aside the grief of your private losses, and lay your hands to the common safety.

year ii. A. C. 430. Ol. 87. 2. 3. Oration of Pericles.year ii. A. C. 430. Ol. 87. 2. 3. Oration of Pericles.year ii. A. C. 430. Ol. 87. 2. 3. Oration of Pericles.year ii. A. C. 430. Ol 87. 2. 3. Oration of Pericles.

62. “As for the toil of the war, that it may perhaps be long and we in the end never the nearer to victory, though that may suffice which I have demonstrated1 at other times touching your causeless suspicion that way; yet this I will tell you moreover, touching the greatness of your means for dominion, which neither you yourselves seem ever to have thought on, nor I touched in my former orations; nor would I also have spoken it now2 , but that I see your minds dejected more than there is cause for. That though you take your dominion to extend only to your confederates, I affirm that of the two parts of the world of manifest use, the land and the sea, you are of one of them entire masters; both of as much of it as you make use of, and also of as much more as you shall think fit yourselves. Neither is there any king or nation whatsoever of those that now are, that can impeach your navigation with the fleet and strength you now go1 . So that you must not put the use of houses and lands, wherein now you think yourselves deprived of a mighty matter, into the balance with such a power as this, nor take the loss of these things heavily in respect of it; but rather set little by them, as but a light ornament and embellishment of wealth; and think that our liberty as long as we hold fast that, will easily recover unto us these things again; whereas subjected once to others, even that which we possess besides will be diminished. Show not yourselves both ways inferior to your ancestors; who not only held this, (gotten by their own labours, not left them), but have also preserved and delivered the same unto us: (for2 it is more dishonour to lose what one possesseth, than to miscarry in the acquisition of it): and encounter the enemy not only with magnanimity, but also with disdain. For a coward may have a high mind upon a prosperous ignorance; but he that is confident upon judgment to be superior to his enemy, doth also disdain him; which is now our case. And3 courage, in equal fortune, is the safer for our disdain of the enemy, where a man knows what he doth: for he trusteth less to hope, which is of force only in uncertainties, and more to judgment upon certainties, wherein there is a more sure foresight. 63. You have reason besides to maintain the dignity the city hath gotten for1 her dominion, in which you all triumph: and either not decline the pains, or not also pursue the honour. And you must not think the question is now of your liberty and servitude only. Besides the loss of your rule over others, you must stand the danger you have contracted by offence given in the administration of it. Nor can you now give it over: (if any fearing at this present that that may come to pass, encourage himself with the intention of not to meddle hereafter2 ): for already your government is in the nature of a tyranny, which is both unjust for you to take up and unsafe to lay down. And such men as these, if they could persuade others to it, or lived in a free city by themselves, would quickly overthrow it. For the quiet life can never be preserved, if it be not ranged with the active life: nor is it a life conducible to a city that reigneth, but to a subject city, that it may safely serve. 64. Be not therefore seduced by this sort of men, nor angry with me, together with whom yourselves did decree this war, because the enemy invading you hath done what was likely he would, if you obeyed him not. And as for the sickness, the only thing that exceeded the imagination of all men, it was unlooked for: and I know you hate me somewhat the more for that; but unjustly, unless when anything falleth out above your expectation fortunate, you will also dedicate unto me that. Evils that come from heaven, you must bear necessarily; and such as proceed from your enemies, valiantly; for so it hath been the custom of this city to do heretofore, which custom let it not be your part to reverse. Knowing that this city hath a great name amongst all people for not yielding to adversity, and for the mighty power it yet hath after the expense of so many lives and so much labour in the war1 : the memory whereof, though we should now at length miscarry, (for all things are made with this law, to decay again), will remain with posterity for ever. How that being Grecians, most of the Grecians were our subjects; that we have abidden the greatest wars against them, both universally and singly, and have inhabited the greatest and wealthiest city. Now this, he with the quiet life will condemn; the active man will emulate; and they that have not attained to the like, will envy. But to be hated and to displease, is a thing that happeneth for the time to whosoever he be that hath the command of others; and he does well, that undergoeth hatred for matters of great consequence. For the hatred lasteth not; and is recompensed both with a present splendour and an immortal glory hereafter. Seeing then you foresee2 both what is honourable for the future, and not dishonourable for the present, procure both the one and the other by your courage now. Send no more heralds to the Lacedæmonians, nor let them know the evil present does any way afflict you; for they whose minds least feel, and whose actions most oppose a calamity, both among states and private persons are the best.”

Pericles fined in a sum of money.Athens at the greatest in the time of Pericles.year ii. A. C. 430. Ol. 87. 2. 3.The death of Pericles. Sept A. C. 429. Ol. 87. 4.The commendation of Pericles.year ii. A. C. 430. Ol. 87. 2. 3.year ii. A. C. 430. Ol. 87. 2. 3.

65. In this speech did Pericles endeavour to appease the anger of the Athenians towards himself, and withal to withdraw their thoughts from the present affliction. But they, though for the state in general they were won, and sent to the Lacedæmonians no more, but rather1 inclined to the war; yet they were every one in particular grieved for their several losses: the poor, because entering the war with little, they lost that little; and the rich, because they had lost fair possessions, together with goodly houses and costly furniture in them, in the country; but the greatest matter of all was, that they had war instead of peace. And altogether, they deposed not their anger till they had first fined him in a sum of money. Nevertheless, not long after (as is the fashion of the multitude) they made him general again, and committed the whole state to his administration2 . For the sense of their domestic losses was now dulled; and for the need of the commonwealth, they prized him more than any other whatsoever. For as long as he was in authority in the city in time of peace3 , he governed the same with moderation, and was a faithful watchman of it; and in his time it was at the greatest. And after the war was on foot, it is manifest that he therein also foresaw what it could do. He lived after the war began two years and six months. And his foresight in the war was best known after his death1 . For he told them, that if they would be quiet, and look to their navy, and during this war seek no further dominion, nor hazard the city itself, they should then have the upper hand. But they did contrary in all: and in such other things besides as seemed not to concern the war2 , managed the state, according to their private ambition and covetousness, perniciously both for themselves and their confederates. What succeeded well, the honour and profit of it came most to private men; and what miscarried, was to the city’s detriment in the war. The reason whereof was this: that being a man of great power both for his dignity and wisdom, and for bribes manifestly the most incorrupt, he freely controled the multitude; and was not so much led by them, as he led them. Because, having gotten his power by no evil arts, he would not humour them in his speeches, but out of his authority durst anger them with contradiction. Therefore, whensoever he saw them out of season insolently bold, he would with his orations put them into a fear; and again, when they were afraid without reason, he would likewise erect their spirits and embolden them. It was in name, a state democratical; but in fact, a government of the principal man. But they that came after, being more equal amongst themselves, and affecting every one to be the chief, applied themselves to the people and let go the care of the commonwealth1 . From whence amongst many other errors, as was likely in a great and dominant city, proceeded also the voyage into Sicily; which2 was not so much upon mistaking those whom they went against, as for want of knowledge in the senders of what was necessary for those that went the voyage. For through private quarrels about who should bear the greatest sway with the people, they both abated the vigour of the army, and then also first troubled the state at home with division. Being overthrown in Sicily, and having lost, besides other ammunition, the greatest part of their navy, and the city being then in sedition; yet they held out three years3 , both against their first enemies and the Sicilians with them, and against most of their revolted confederates besides, and also afterwards against Cyrus the king’s son, who took part with, and sent money to the Peloponnesians to maintain their fleet; and never shrunk till they had overthrown themselves with private dissensions. So much was in Pericles above other men at that time, that he could foresee by what means the city might easily have outlasted the Peloponnesians in this war1 .

The Lacedæmonians war against Zacynthus.

66. The Lacedæmonians and their confederates made war the same summer with one hundred galleys against Zacynthus, an island laying over against Elis. The inhabitants whereof were a colony of Achæans of Peloponnesus, but confederates of the people of Athens. There went in this fleet a thousand men of arms, and Cnemus a Spartan for admiral; who landing, wasted the greatest part of the territory. But they of the island not yielding, they put off again and went home.

A. C. 430. Ol. 87. 3. The Lacedæmonian ambassadors taken by the Athenian ambassadors in Thrace, and sent to Athens.year ii. A. C. 430. Ol. 87. 3.year ii. A. C. 430. Ol. 87. 3. The Athenians put them to death

67. In the end of the same summer, Aristeus of Corinth, and Aneristus, Nicolaus, Stratodemus, and Timagorus of Tegea, ambassadors of the Lacedæmonians, and Pollis of Argos, a private man2 , as they were travelling into Asia to the king, to get money of him and to draw him into their league, took Thrace in their way, and came unto Sitalces the son of Teres, with a desire to get him also, if they could, to forsake the league with Athens, and to send his forces to Potidæa, which the Athenian army now besieged, and not to aid the Athenians any longer1 : and withal to get leave to pass through his country to the other side of the Hellespont, to go, as they intended, to Pharnabazus the son of Pharnaces, who would convoy them to the king. But the ambassadors of Athens, Learchus the son of Callimachus, and Ameiniades the son of Philemon, then resident with Sitalces, persuaded Sadocus the son of Sitalces, who was now a citizen of Athens, to put them into their hands, that they might not go to the king, and do hurt to the city whereof he himself was now a member2 . Whereunto condescending, as they journeyed through Thrace to take ship to cross the Hellespont, he apprehended them3 before they got to the ship by such others as he sent along with Learchus and Ameiniades, with command to deliver them into their hands. And they, when they had them, sent them away to Athens. When they came thither, the Athenians, fearing Aristeus, lest escaping he should do them further mischief, (for he was manifestly the author4 of all the business of Potidæa and about Thrace), the same day put them all to death, unjudged and desirous to have spoken, and threw them into the pits; thinking it but just to take revenge of the Lacedæmonians that began it, and had slain and thrown into pits the merchants of the Athenians and their confederates, whom they took sailing in merchant–ships1 about the coast of Peloponnesus. For in the beginning of the war, the Lacedæmonians slew as enemies whomsoever they took at sea, whether confederates of the Athenians or neutral, all alike.

The Ambraciotes war on Acarnania.year ii. A. C. 430. Ol. 87. 3.The end of the second summer.

68. About the same time, in the end of summer, the Ambraciotes2 , both they themselves and divers barbarian nations by them raised, made war against Argos of Amphilochia, and against the rest of that territory. The quarrel between them and the Argives, arose first from hence. This Argos and the rest of Amphilochia was planted by Amphilochus the son of Amphiaraus, after the Trojan war; who at his return, misliking the then state of Argos, built this city in the Gulf of Ambracia, and called it Argos, after the name of his own country. And it was the greatest city, and had the most wealthy inhabitants of all Amphilochia. But many generations after, being fallen into misery, they communicated their city with the Ambraciotes, bordering upon Amphilochia: and then they first learned the Greek language now used from the Ambraciotes that lived among them. For the rest of the Amphilochians were barbarians1 . Now the Ambraciotes in process of time drave out the Argives, and held the city by themselves. Whereupon the Amphilochians submitted themselves to the Acarnanians, and both together called in the Athenians; who sent thirty galleys to their aid, and Phormio for general. Phormio being arrived, took Argos by assault, and making slaves of the Ambraciotes, put the town into the joint possessions of the Amphilochians and Acarnanians2 . And this was the beginning of the league between the Athenians and Acarnanians. The Ambraciotes therefore, deriving their hatred to the Argives from this their captivity, came in with an army, partly of their own, and partly raised amongst the Chaonians and other neighbouring barbarians, now in this war. And coming to Argos, were masters of the field; but when they could not take the city by assault, they returned, and disbanding went every nation to his own. These were the acts of the summer.

year ii. A. C. 430. Ol. 87. 3.

69. In the beginning of the winter, the Athenians sent twenty galleys about Peloponnesus under the command of Phormio; who coming to lie at Naupactus1 , guarded the passage, that none might go in or out from Corinth and the Crisæan gulf. And other six galleys under the conduct of Melesander, they sent into Caria and Lycia; as well to gather tribute in those parts, as also to hinder the Peloponnesian pirates, lying on those coasts2 , from molesting the navigation of such merchant–ships as they expected to come to them from Phaselis, Phœnicia, and that part of the continent. But Melesander, landing in Lycia with such forces of the Athenians and their confederates as he had aboard, was overcome in battle and slain, with the loss of a part of his army.

A. C. 429. Ol. 87. 3. Potidæa rendered to the Athenians.year ii. A. C. 429. Ol. 87. 3.

70. The same winter, the Potidæans unable any longer to endure the siege, seeing the invasion of Attica by the Peloponnesians could not make them rise, and seeing their victual failed, and that they were forced, amongst divers other things done by them for necessity of food, to eat one another, propounded at length to Xenophon the son of Euripides, Hestiodorus the son of Aristocleidas, and Phanomachus the son of Callimachus, the Athenian commanders that lay before the city, to give the same into their hands. And they, seeing both that the army was already afflicted by laying in that cold place, and that the state had already spent two thousand talents upon the siege, accepted of it. The conditions agreed on were these: “to depart, they and their wives and children, and their auxiliar soldiers, every man with one suit of clothes1 , and every woman with two; and to take with them every one a certain sum of money for his charges by the way.” Hereupon a truce was granted them to depart; and they went, some to the Chalcideans, and others to other places, as they could get to. But the people of Athens called the commanders in question for compounding without them; conceiving that they might have gotten the city to discretion: and sent afterwards a colony to Potidæa of their own citizens. These were the things done in this winter. And so ended the second year of this war, written by Thucydides.

year iii. The siege of Platæa.The Platæans’ Speech to Archidamus.year iii. A. C. 429. Ol. 87. 3. The Platæans’ speech to Archidamus.year iii. A. C. 429. Ol. 87. 3. The Answer of Archidamus to the Platæans.The Reply of the Platæans.The Answer of Archidamus to their Reply.year iii. A. C. 429. Ol. 87. 3.The Platæans reply again, and desire to know the pleasure of the people of Athens.The Athenians’ message to the Platæans.year iii. A. C. 429. Ol. 87. 3. The Platæans’ last Answer to Archidamus from the wall.Archidamus’ Protestation.

71. The next summer, the Peloponnesians and their confederates came not into Attica, but turned their arms against Platæa, led by Archidamus the son of Zeuxidamus, king of the Lacedæmonians; who having pitched his camp, was about to waste the territory thereof. But the Platæans sent ambassadors presently unto him, with words to this effect: “Archidamus, and you Lacedæmonians, you do neither justly, nor worthy yourselves and ancestors, in making war upon Platæa. For Pausanias of Lacedæmon, the son of Cleombrotus, having, together with such Grecians as were content to undergo the danger of the battle that was fought in this our territory, delivered all Greece from the slavery of the Persians, when he offered sacrifice in the market–place of Platæa to Jupiter the deliverer, called together all the confederates, and granted to the Platæans this privilege: that their city and territory should be free1 : that none should make any unjust war against them, nor go about to subject them: and if any did, the confederates then present should to their utmost ability revenge their quarrel. These privileges your fathers granted us for our valour and zeal in those dangers. But now do you the clean contrary; for you join with our greatest enemies, the Thebans, to bring us into subjection. Therefore calling to witness the gods then sworn by, and the gods both of your and our country2 , we require you, that you do no damage to the territory of Platæa, nor violate those oaths; but that you suffer us to enjoy our liberty in such sort as was allowed us by Pausanias.” 72. The Platæans having thus said, Archidamus replied and said thus: “Men of Platæa, if you would do as ye say, you say what is just. For as Pausanias hath granted to you, so also be you free; and help to set free the rest, who having been partakers of the same dangers then, and being comprised in the same oath with yourselves, are now brought into subjection by the Athenians. And this so great preparation and war, is only for the deliverance of them and others; of which if you will especially participate, keep your oaths; at least (as we have also advised you formerly) be quiet, and enjoy your own in neutrality; receiving both sides in the way of friendship, neither side in the way of faction1 .” Thus said Archidamus. And the ambassadors of Platæa, when they had heard him, returned to the city: and having communicated his answer to the people, brought word again to Archidamus: “that what he had advised, was impossible for them to perform without leave of the Athenians, in whose keeping were their wives and children; and that they feared also for the whole city, lest when the Lacedæmonians were gone, the Athenians should come and take the custody of it out of their hands2 ; or that the Thebans, comprehended in the oath of receiving both sides, should again attempt to surprise it.” But Archidamus to encourage them, made this answer: “Deliver you unto us Lacedæmonians your city and your houses, show us the bounds of your territory, give us your trees by tale, and whatsoever else can be numbered: and depart yourselves whither you shall think good, as long as the war lasteth: and when it shall be ended, we will deliver it all unto you again. In the mean time we will keep them as deposited, and will cultivate your ground, and pay you rent for it, as much as shall suffice for your maintenance.” 73. Hereupon the ambassadors went again into the city, and having consulted with the people, made answer “that they would first acquaint the Athenians with it, and if they would consent, they would then accept the conditions: till then, they desired a suspension of arms, and not to have their territory wasted.” Upon this he granted them so many days truce, as was requisite for their return: and for so long forebore to waste their territory. When the Platæan ambassadors were arrived at Athens, and had advised on the matter with the Athenians, they returned to the city with this answer: “The Athenians say thus: that neither in former times, since we were their confederates, did they ever abandon us to the injuries of any; nor will they now neglect us, but give us their utmost assistance. And they conjure us by the oath of our fathers, not to make any alienation1 touching the league.” 74. When the ambassadors had made this report, the Platæans resolved in their councils not to betray the Athenians; but rather to endure, if it must be, the wasting of their territory before their eyes, and to suffer whatsoever misery could befall them; and no more to go forth, but from the walls to make this answer: “that it was impossible for them to do as the Lacedæmonians had required.” When they had answered so, Archidamus, the king, first made a protestation to the gods and heros of the country, saying thus: “All ye Gods and Heros, protectors of Platæis1 , be witnesses, that we neither invade this territory (wherein our fathers after their vows unto you overcame the Medes, and which you made propitious for the Grecians to fight in) unjustly now in the beginning; because they have first broken the league they had sworn: nor what we shall further do, will be any injury; because, though we have offered many and reasonable conditions, they have yet been all refused: assent ye also to the punishment of the beginners of injury, and to the revenge of those that bear lawful arms.” 75. Having made this protestation to the gods, he made ready his army for the war.

A mount raised against Platæa.year iii. A. C. 429. Ol. 87. 3.The Platæans raise their wall higher against the mount by a frame of timber, in which they laid their bricks.The Platæans’ device to draw the earth from the mount, thro’ the wall.year iii. A. C. 429. Ol. 87. 3. The Peloponnesians remedy that evil.The Platæans fetch the earth away from under the mount by a mine.The Platæans make another wall within that which was to the mount.The Peloponnesians assault the wall with enginesyear iii. A. C. 429. Ol. 87. 3. The Platæans’ defence against the engines.The Peloponnesians throw faggots and fire into the town from the mount.A great fire.year iii. A. C. 429. Ol. 87. 3.

And first having felled trees, he therewith made a palisado about the town, that none might go out. That done, he raised a mount against the wall2 , hoping with so great an army all at work at once, to have quickly taken it. And having cut down wood in the hill Cithæron, they built a frame of timber, and wattled it about on either side, to serve instead of walls, to keep the earth from falling too much away3 ; and cast into it stones, and earth, and whatsoever else would serve to fill it up. Seventy days and nights continually they poured on, dividing the work between them for rest in such manner, as some might be carrying, whilst others took their sleep and food. And they were urged to labour by the Lacedæmonians that commanded the mercenaries of the several cities1 , and had the charge of the work. The Platæans seeing the mount to rise, made the frame of a wall with wood, which having placed on the wall of the city in the place where the mount touched2 , they built it within full of bricks, taken from the adjoining houses, for that purpose demolished; the timber serving to bind them together, that the building might not be weakened by the height. The same was also covered with hides and quilts3 , both to keep the timber from shot of wildfire, and those that wrought from danger. So that the height of the wall was great on one side, and the mount went up as fast on the other. The Platæans used also this device; they brake a hole in their own wall where the mount joined4 , and drew the earth from it into the city. 76. But the Peloponnesians, when they found it out, took clay, and therewith daubing hurdles of reeds, cast the same into the chink; which mouldering not, as did the earth, they could not draw it away1 . The Platæans excluded here, gave over that plot; and digging a secret mine, which they carried under the mount from within the city by conjecture, fetched away the earth again; and were a long time undiscovered; so that still casting on, the mount grew still less, the earth being drawn away below and settling over the part where it was voided. The Platæans nevertheless, fearing that they should not be able even thus to hold out, being few against many, devised this further. They gave over working at the high wall against the mount, and beginning at both ends of it where the wall was low2 , built another wall in form of a crescent, inward to the city; that if the great wall were taken, this might resist, and put the enemy to make another mount; and by coming further in, to be at double pains, and withal more encompassable with shot. The Peloponnesians, together with the rising of their mount, brought to the city their engines of battery. One of which, by the help of the mount, they applied to the high wall; wherewith they much3 shook it, and put the Platæans into great fear. And others to other parts of the wall; which the Platæans partly turned aside by casting ropes about them; and partly with great beams, which, being hung in long iron chains by either end upon two other great beams, jetting over and inclining from above the wall like two horns, they drew up to them athwart, and where the engine was about to light, slacking the chains and letting their hands go, they let fall with violence, to break the beak of it. 77. After this the Peloponnesians, seeing their engines availed not, and thinking it hard to take the city by any present violence, prepared themselves to besiege it1 . But first they thought fit to attempt it by fire, being no great city, and when the wind should rise, if they could, to burn it: for there was no way they did not think on, to have gained it without expense and long siege. Having therefore brought faggots, they cast them from the mount into the space between it and their new wall, which by so many hands was quickly filled; and then into as much of the rest of the city, as at that distance they could reach2 : and throwing amongst them fire, together with brimstone and pitch, kindled the wood, and raised such a flame, as the like was never seen before made by the hand of man. For as for the woods in the mountains, the trees have indeed taken fire, but it hath been by mutual attrition, and have flamed out of their own accord. But this fire was a great one; and the Platæans that had escaped other mischiefs, wanted little of being consumed by this. For1 near the wall they could not get by a great way: and if the wind had been with it, (as the enemy hoped it might), they could never have escaped. It is also reported, that there fell much rain then with great thunder, and that the flame was extinguished, and the danger ceased by that.

In the beginning of September the siege laid to Platæa.

78. The Peloponnesians, when they failed likewise of this, retaining a part of their army, and dismissing the rest2 , enclosed the city about with a wall; dividing the circumference thereof to the charge of the several cities. There was a ditch both within and without it, out of which they made their bricks; and after it was finished, which was about the rising of Arcturus, they left a guard for one half of the wall; (for the other was guarded by the Bœotians); and departed with the rest of their army, and were dissolved according to their cities. The Platæans had before this sent their wives and children, and all their unserviceable men, to Athens. The rest were besieged, being in number, of the Platæans themselves four hundred, of Athenians eighty, and a hundred and ten women to dress their meat3 . These were all, when the siege was first laid; and not one more, neither free nor bond, in the city. In this manner was the city besieged.

year iii. A. C. 429. Ol. 87. 4. The Athenians send an army against the Chalcideans.The Athenians foughten with by the Chacideans at Spartolus:year iii. A. C. 429. Ol. 87. 4.and overthrown, with the loss of three commanders.

79. The same summer, at the same time that this journey was made against Platæa, the Athenians with two thousand men of arms of their own city, and two hundred horsemen, made war upon the Chalcideans of Thrace and the Bottiæans, when the corn was at the highest, under the conduct of Xenophon the son of Euripides, and two others. These coming before Spartolus in Bottiæa, destroyed the corn; and expected that the town should have been rendered by the practice of some within. But such as would not have it so having sent for aid to Olynthus before1 , there came into the city for safeguard thereof a supply both of men of arms and other soldiers from thence. And these issuing forth of Spartolus, the Athenians put themselves into order of battle2 under the town itself. The men of arms of the Chalcideans, and certain auxiliaries with them, were overcome by the Athenians, and retired within Spartolus. And the horsemen of the Chalcideans and their light–armed soldiers, overcame the horsemen and light–armed of the Athenians; but they had some few targettiers besides of the territory called Crusis3 . When the battle was now begun4 , came a supply of other targettiers from Olynthus. Which the light–armed soldiers of Spartolus perceiving, emboldened both by this addition of strength, and also as having had the better1 before, with the Chalcidean horse and this new supply charged the Athenians afresh. The Athenians hereupon retired to two companies they had left with the carriages2 . And as oft as the Athenians charged, the Chalcideans retired; and when the Athenians retired, the Chalcideans charged them with their shot. Especially the Chalcidean horsemen rode up, and charging them where they thought fit, forced the Athenians in extreme affright to turn their backs; and chased them a great way. The Athenians fled to Potidæa; and having afterwards fetched away the bodies of their dead upon truce, returned with the remainder of their army to Athens. Four hundred and thirty men they lost, and their chief commanders all three. And the Chalcideans and Bottiæans, when they had set up a trophy and taken up their dead bodies, disbanded and went every one to his city.

The Ambraciotes invade Acarnania, together with the Lacedæmonians.year iii. A. C. 429. Ol. 87. 4.The army of the Ambraciotes and their confederates.year iii. A. C. 429. Ol. 87. 4.They go toward Stratus: the greatest city of Acarnania.

80. Not long after this the same summer, the Ambraciotes and Chaonians, desiring to subdue all Acarnania and to make it revolt from the Athenians, persuaded the Lacedæmonians to make ready a fleet out of the confederate cities, and to send a thousand men of arms into Acarnania; saying, that if they aided them both with a fleet and a land army at once, the Acarnanians of the sea–coast being thereby disabled to assist the rest, having easily gained Acarnania they might be masters afterward both of Zacynthus and Cephalonia, and the Athenians hereafter less able to make their voyages about Peloponnesus; and that there was a hope beside to take Naupactus. The Peloponnesians assenting, sent thither Cnemus, who was yet1 admiral, with his men of arms in a few galleys immediately; and withal sent word to the cities about, as soon as their galleys were ready, to sail with all speed to Leucas. Now the Corinthians were very zealous in the behalf of the Ambraciotes, as being their own colony. And the galleys which were to go from Corinth, Sicyonia, and that part of the coast, were now making ready; and those of the Leucadians, Anactorians, and Ambraciotes, were arrived before, and stayed at Leucas for their coming. Cnemus and his thousand men of arms, when they had crossed the sea undescried of Phormio, who commanded the twenty Athenian galleys that kept watch at Naupactus, presently prepared for the war by land. He had in his army, of Grecians, the Ambraciotes, Leucadians, Anactorians, and the thousand Peloponnesians he brought with him; and of barbarians, a thousand Chaonians, who have no king, but were led by Photius and Nicanor, which two being of the families eligible had now the annual government2 . With the Chaonians came also the Thesprotians, they also without a king. The Molossians and Atintanians were led by Sabylinthus, protector of Tharups their king, who was yet in minority. The Parauæans were led by their king Orœdus; and under Orœdus served likewise, by permission of Antiochus their king, a thousand Orestians. Also Perdiccas sent thither, unknown to the Athenians, a thousand Macedonians; but these last were not yet1 arrived. With this army began Cnemus to march, without staying for the fleet from Corinth. And passing through Argeia, they destroyed2 Limnæa, a town unwalled. From thence they marched towards Stratus, the greatest city of Acarnania; conceiving that if they could take this first, the rest would come easily in.

year iii. A. C. 429. Ol. 87. 4. Wariness of the Grecians.Rashness of the Chaonians.Stratagem of the Stratians.year iii. A. C. 429. Ol. 87. 4.The Peloponnesians and Ambraciotes retire without effect.

81. The Acarnanians seeing a great army by land was entered their country already, and expecting the enemy also by sea, joined not to succour Stratus, but guarded every one his own, and sent for aid to Phormio. But he answered them, that since there was a fleet to be set forth from Corinth, he could not leave Naupactus without a guard. The Peloponnesians and their confederates, with their army divided into three, marched on towards the city of the Stratians, to the end that being encamped near it, if they yielded not on parley, they might presently assault the walls. So they went on, the Chaonians and other barbarians in the middle; the Leucadians and Anactorians, and such others as were with these, on the right hand; and Cnemus with the Peloponnesians and Ambraciotes on the left; each army at great distance, and sometimes out of sight of one another. The Grecians in their march kept their order; and went warily on, till they had gotten a convenient place to encamp in. But the Chaonians confident of themselves, and by the inhabitants of that continent accounted most warlike, had not the patience to take in any ground for a camp; but carried furiously on together with the rest of the barbarians, thought to have taken the town by their clamour1 , and to have the action ascribed only to themselves. But they of Stratus, aware of this whilst they were yet in their way2 , and imagining, if they could overcome these thus divided from the other two armies, that the Grecians also would be the less forward to come on, placed divers ambushes not far from the city; and when the enemies approached, fell upon them both from the city and from the ambushes at once; and putting them into affright, slew many of the Chaonians upon the place: and the rest of the barbarians seeing these to shrink, stayed no longer, but fled outright. Neither of the Grecian armies had knowledge of this skirmish, because they were gone so far before to choose (as they then thought) a commodious place to pitch in. But when the barbarians came back upon them running, they received them, and joining both camps together stirred no more for that day. And the Stratians assaulted them not, for want of the aid of the rest of the Acarnanians; but used their slings against them1 , and troubled them much that way: (for without their men of arms2 there was no stirring for them): and in this kind the Acarnanians are held excellent. 82. When night came, Cnemus withdrew his army3 to the river Anapus, from Stratus eighty furlongs, and fetched off the dead bodies upon truce the next day. And whereas the city Œniadæ was come in of itself, he made his retreat thither before the Acarnanians should assemble with their succours; and from thence went every one home. And the Stratians set up a trophy of the skirmish against the barbarians.

Phormio with twenty galleys of Athens, overcometh forty–seven of the Peloponnesian galleys.year iii. A. C. 429. Ol. 87. 4.The order of the Peloponnesian galleys.The order of the Athenian galleys and the stratagem of Phormio.year iii. A. C. 429. Ol. 87. 4.The Peloponnesans fly.year iii. A. C. 429. Ol. 87. 4.

83. In the meantime the fleet of Corinth and the other confederates, that was to set out from the Crisæan gulf and to join with Cnemus, to hinder the lower Acarnanians from aiding the upper, came not at all; but were compelled to fight with Phormio and those twenty Athenian galleys that kept watch at Naupactus, about the same time that the skirmish was at Stratus. For as they sailed along the shore, Phormio waited on them till they were out of the strait, intending to set upon them in the open sea. And the Corinthians and their confederates went not as to fight by sea, but furnished rather for the land–service in Acarnania; and never thought that the Athenians with their twenty galleys durst fight with theirs, that were seven–and–forty. Nevertheless, when they saw that the Athenians, as themselves sailed by one shore, kept over against them on the other; and that now when they went off from Patræ in Achaia to go over to Acarnania in the opposite continent, the Athenians came towards them from Chalcis and the river Evenus, and also knew that they had come to anchor there the night before1 : they found they were then to fight of necessity directly against the mouth of the strait. The commanders of the fleet, were such as the cities that set it forth had severally appointed; but of the Corinthians, these; Machon, Isocrates, and Agatharchidas. The Peloponnesians ordered their fleet in such manner as they made thereof a circle, as great as, without leaving the spaces so wide as for the Athenians to pass through, they were possibly able, with the stems of their galleys outward, and sterns inward; and into the midst thereof received such small vessels as came with them, and also five of their swiftest galleys; the which were at narrow passages2 to come forth in whatsoever part the enemy should charge. 84. But the Athenians with their galleys ordered one after one in file, went round them and shrunk them up together, by wiping them ever as they past and putting them in expectation of present fight. But Phormio had before forbidden them to fight, till he himself had given them the signal. For he hoped3 that this order of theirs would not last long, as in an army on land; but that the galleys would fall foul of one another, and be troubled also with the smaller vessels in the middest. And if the wind should also blow out of the gulf, in expectation whereof he so went round them, and which usually blew there every morning, he made account they would then instantly be disordered. As for giving the onset, because his galleys were more agile than the galleys of the enemy, he thought it was in his own election, and would be most opportune on that occasion. When this wind was up, and the galleys of the Peloponnesians, being already contracted into a narrow compass, were both ways troubled, by the wind, and withal by their own lesser vessels that encumbered them; and when one galley fell foul of another, and the mariners laboured to set them clear with their poles, and through the noise they made, keeping off and reviling each other, heard nothing neither of their charge nor of the galleys’ direction1 ; and through want of skill unable to keep up their oars in a troubled sea, rendered the galley untractable to him that sat at the helm: then and with this opportunity he gave the signal. And the Athenians charging, drowned first one of the admiral–galleys, and2 divers others after it in the several parts they assaulted; and brought them to that pass at length, that not one applying himself to the fight they fled all towards Patræ and Dyme, cities3 of Achaia. The Athenians, after they had chased them, and taken twelve galleys, and slain1 most of the men that were in them, fell off and went to Molycreium; and when they had there set up a trophy, and consecrated one galley to Neptune, they returned with the rest to Naupactus. The Peloponnesians with the remainder of their fleet, went presently along the coast2 of Cyllene, the arsenal of the Eleians; and thither, after the battle at Stratus, came also Cnemus from Leucas, and with him those galleys that were there3 , and with which this other fleet should have been joined.

Preparation for another fight.year iii. A. C. 429. Ol. 87. 4.Twenty sail of Athenians, sent to aid Phormio, stay in Crete.year iii. A. C. 429. Ol. 87. 4.

85. After this the Lacedæmonians sent unto Cnemus to the fleet, Timocrates, Brasidas, and Lycophron to be of his council4 , with command to prepare for another better fight, and not to suffer a few galleys to deprive them of the use of the sea. For they thought this accident (especially being their first proof by sea) very much against reason5 ; and that it was not so much a defect of the fleet, as of their courage: never comparing the long practice of the Athenians with their own short study in these businesses. And therefore they sent these men thither in passion. Who being arrived with Cnemus6 , intimated to the cities about to provide their galleys, and caused those they had before to be repaired. Phormio likewise sent to Athens, to make known both the enemy’s preparation and his own former victory; and withal to will them to send speedily unto him as many galleys as they could make ready; because they were every day in expectation of a new fight. Hereupon they sent him twenty galleys; but commanded him that had the charge of them, to go first into Crete. For Nicias, a Cretan of Gortyna, the public host of the Athenians, had persuaded them to a voyage against Cydonia; telling them they might take it in, being now their enemy1 : which he did to gratify the Polichnitæ, that bordered upon the Cydonians. Therefore with these galleys he sailed into Crete, and together with the Polichnitæ wasted the territory of the Cydonians; where also, by reason of the winds and weather unfit to take sea in, he wasted not a little of his time.

The Peloponnesians sail by the coast of Panormus.year iii. A. C. 429. Ol. 87. 4.

86. In the meantime, whilst these Athenians were wind–bound in Crete, the Peloponnesians that were in Cyllene, in order of battle1 sailed along the coast of Panormus of Achaia, to which also were their land–forces come to aid them. Phormio likewise sailed by the shore to Rhium Molycricum, and anchored without it with twenty galleys, the same he had used in the former battle. Now this Rhium was of the Athenians’ side, and the other Rhium in Peloponnesus lies on the opposite shore, distant from it at the most but seven furlongs of sea; and these two make the mouth of the Crisæan gulf. The Peloponnesians therefore came to an anchor at Rhium of Achaia with seventy–seven galleys, not far from Panormus where they left their land forces. After they saw the Athenians, and had lain six or seven days one against the other, meditating and providing for the battle2 , the Peloponnesians not intending to put off without Rhium into the wide sea, for fear of what they had suffered by it before; nor the other to enter the strait, because to fight within3 they thought to be the enemy’s advantage. At last Cnemus, Brasidas, and the other commanders of the Peloponnesians, desiring to fight speedily before a new supply should arrive from Athens, called the soldiers together; and seeing the most of them to be fearful through their former defeat, and not forward to fight again, encouraged them first with words to this effect:

The Oration of Cnemus.year iii. A. C. 429. Ol. 87. 4. Oration of Cnemus.

87. “Men of Peloponnesus, if any of you be afraid of the battle at hand for the success of the battle past, his fear is without ground. For you know, we were inferior to them then in preparation; and set not forth as to a fight at sea, but rather to an expedition by land. Fortune likewise crossed us in many things; and somewhat we miscarried by unskilfulness1 . So as the loss can no way be ascribed to cowardice: nor is it just, so long as we were not overcome by mere force, but have somewhat to allege in our excuse, that the mind should be dejected for the calamity of the event: but we must think, that though fortune may fail men, yet the courage of a valiant man can never fail, and not that we may justify cowardice in any thing by pretending want of skill, and yet be truly valiant2 . And yet you are not so much short of their skill, as you exceed them in valour. And though this knowledge of theirs, which you so much fear, joined with courage, will not be without a memory also, to put what they know in execution; yet without courage no art in the world is of any force in the time of danger. For fear confoundeth the memory, and skill without courage availeth nothing. To their odds therefore of skill, oppose your odds of valour; and to the fear caused by your overthrow, oppose your being then unprovided. You have further now a greater fleet, and to fight on your own shore with your aids at hand of men of arms: and for the most part, the greatest number and best provided get the victory. So that we can neither see any one cause in particular, why we should miscarry; and whatsoever were our wants1 in the former battle, supplied in this, will now turn to our instruction. With courage therefore, both masters and mariners, follow every man in his order2 , not forsaking the place assigned him. And for us, we shall order the battle as well as3 the former commanders; and leave no excuse to any man of his cowardice. And if any will needs be a coward, he shall receive condign punishment; and the valiant shall be rewarded according to their merit.”

Phormio doubteth of the courage of his soldiers:year iii. A. C. 429. Ol. 87. 4.and encourageth them.

88. Thus did the commanders encourage the Peloponnesians. And Phormio, he likewise doubting that his soldiers were but faint–hearted, and observing they had consultations apart and were afraid of the multitude of the enemy’s galleys, thought good, having called them together, to encourage and admonish them upon the present occasion. For though he had always before told them, and predisposed their minds to an opinion, that there was no number of galleys so great, which setting upon them they ought not to undertake; and [also] most of the soldiers had of long time assumed a conceit of themselves, that being1 Athenians they ought not to decline any number of galleys whatsoever of the Peloponnesians: yet when he saw that the sight of the enemy present had dejected them, he thought fit to revive2 their courage, and having assembled the Athenians, said thus:

the oration of phormio.year iii. A. C. 429. Ol. 87. 4. Oration of Phormio.year iii. A. C. 429. Ol. 87. 4. Oration of Phormio.

89. “Soldiers, having observed your fear of he enemy’s number, I have called you together, not enduring to see you terrified with things that are not terrible. For first, they have prepared this great number and odds of galleys, for that they were overcome before, and because they are even in their own opinions too weak for us. And next, their present boldness proceeds only from their knowledge in land service, in confidence whereof (as if to be valiant were peculiar unto them) they are now come up: wherein having for the most part prospered, they think to do the same in service by sea3 . But in reason the odds must be ours in this, as well as it is theirs in the other kind. For in courage they exceed us not: and as touching the advantage of either side, we may better be4 bold now than they. And the Lacedæmonians, who are the leaders of the confederates, bring them to fight for the greatest part (in respect of the opinion they have of us1 ) against their wills. For else they would never have undertaken a new battle, after they were once so clearly overthrown. Fear not therefore any great boldness on their part. But the fear which they have of you, is far both greater and more certain, not only for that you have overcome them before, but also for this, that they would never believe you would go about to resist, unless you had some notable thing to put in practice upon them2 . For when the enemy is the greater number, as these are now, they invade chiefly upon confidence of their strength: but they that are much the fewer, must have some great and sure design when they dare fight unconstrained3 . Wherewith these men now amazed4 , fear us more for our unlikely preparation, than they would if it were more proportionable. Besides, many great armies have been overcome by the lesser through unskilfulness, and some also by timorousness; both which we ourselves5 are free from. As for the battle, I will not willingly fight it in the gulf, nor go in thither: seeing that to a few galleys with nimbleness and art against many without art, straitness of room is disadvantage. For neither can one charge with the beak of the galley as is fit, unless he have sight of the enemy afar off; or if he be himself over–pressed, again get clear. Nor is there any getting through them or turning to and fro at one’s pleasure1 , which are all the works of such galleys as have their advantage in agility; but the sea–fight would of necessity be the same with a battle by land, wherein the greater number must have the better. But of this, I shall myself take the best care I am able. In the meantime, keep you your order well in the galleys, and every man receive his charge readily; and the rather because the enemy is at anchor so near us2 . In the fight, have in great estimation order and silence, as things of great force in most military actions, especially in a fight by sea; and charge these your enemies according to the worth of your former acts. You are to fight for a great wager, either to destroy the hope of the Peloponnesian navies, or to bring the fear of3 the sea nearer home to the Athenians. Again, let me tell you, you have beaten them once already; and men once overcome, will not come again to the danger so well resolved as before.”

year iii. A. C. 429. Ol. 87. 4. The stratagem of the Peloponnesians.The Peloponnesians give the onset.year iii. A. C. 429. Ol. 87. 4.

90. Thus did Phormio also encourage his soldiers. The Peloponnesians, when they saw the Athenians would not enter the gulf and strait, desiring to draw them in against their wills, weighed anchor, and betime in the morning having arranged their galleys by four and four in a rank, sailed along1 their own coast within the gulf; leading the way in the same order as they had lain at anchor, with their right wing. In this wing they had placed twenty of their swiftest galleys, to the end that if Phormio, thinking them going to Naupactus, should for safeguard of the town sail along his own coast2 likewise within the strait, the Athenians might not be able to get beyond that wing of theirs and avoid the impression, but be inclosed by their galleys on both sides. Phormio fearing (as they expected) what might become of the town now without guard, as soon as he saw them from anchor, against his will and in extreme haste went aboard and sailed along the shore, with the land forces of the Messenians marching by to aid him. The Peloponnesians, when they saw them sail in one long file, galley after galley, and that they were now in the gulf and by the shore (which they most desired), upon one sign given turned suddenly3 every one as fast as he could, upon the Athenians, hoping to have intercepted them every galley. But of those the eleven foremost, avoiding that wing and the turn made by the Peloponnesians, got out into the open sea4 . The rest they intercepted, and driving them to the shore, sunk5 them. The men, as many as swam not out, they slew; and the galleys, some they tied to their own, and towed them away empty, and one with the men and all in her they had already1 taken. But the Messenian2 succours on land, entering the sea with their arms, got aboard of some of them; and fighting from the decks recovered them again, after they were already towing away.

year iii. A. C. 429. Ol. 87. 4.The Athenians have the victory.Timocrates, a Lacedæmonian commander, slayeth himself.year iii. A. C. 429. Ol. 87. 4.The end of the third summer.

91. And in this part the Peloponnesians had the victory, and overcame the galleys of the Athenians. Now the twenty galleys that were their right wing, gave chase to those eleven Athenian galleys, which had avoided them when they turned, and were gotten into the open sea3 . These flying toward Naupactus, arrived there before the enemies, all save one; and when they came under the temple of Apollo, turned their beak–heads and put themselves in readiness for defence, in case the enemy should follow them to the land. But the Peloponnesians, as they came after, were pæanising as if they had already had the victory; and one galley which was of Leucas, being far before the rest, gave chase to one4 Athenian galley that was behind the rest of the Athenians. Now it chanced that there lay out into the sea a certain ship at anchor, to which the Athenian galley first coming fetched a compass about her, and came back full butt against5 the Leucadian galley that gave her chase, and sunk her. Upon this unexpected and unlikely accident they began to fear; and having also followed the chase, as being victors, disorderly, some of them let down their oars into the water and hindered the way of their galleys, (a matter of very ill consequence, seeing the enemy1 was so near), and staid for more company: and some of them, through ignorance of the coast, ran upon the shelves. 92. The Athenians seeing this took heart again, and together with one clamour2 set upon them; who resisted not long, because of their present errors committed and their disarray; but turned, and fled to Panormus from whence at first they set forth. The Athenians followed, and took from them six galleys that were hindmost, and recovered their own which the Peloponnesians had sunk by the shore and tied astern of theirs. Of the men, some they slew, and some also they took alive. In the Leucadian galley that was sunk near the ship, was Timocrates, a3 Lacedæmonian, who, when the galley was lost, ran himself through with his sword; and his body drave into the haven of Naupactus. The Athenians falling off, erected a trophy in the place from whence they set forth to this victory; and took up their dead and the wreck, as much as was on their own shore, and gave truce to the enemy to do the like. The Peloponnesians also set up a trophy, as if they also had had the victory, in respect of the flight of those galleys which they sunk by the shore; and the galley which they had taken they consecrated to Neptune in Rhium4 of Achaia, hard by their trophy. After this, fearing the supply which was expected from Athens, they sailed by night into the Crisæan gulf and to Corinth, all but the Leucadians. And those Athenians with twenty galleys out of Crete, that should have been with Phormio before the battle, not long after the going away of the galleys of Peloponnesus arrived at Naupactus. And the summer ended.

The Peloponnesians resolve to attempt the surprise of Peiræus.year iii. A. C. 429. Ol. 87. 4.The Peloponnesians dare not execute their design, but turn to Salamis.year iii. A. C. 429. Ol. 87. 4.

93. But before the fleet, gone into the Crisæan gulf and to Corinth, was dispersed, Cnemus and Brasidas and the rest of the commanders of the Peloponnesians in the beginning of winter, instructed by the Megareans, thought good to make1 an attempt upon Peiræus, the haven of the Athenians. Now it was without guard or bar; and that upon very good cause, considering how much they exceeded others in the power of their navy. And it was resolved that every mariner with his oar2 , his cushion, and one thong for his oar to turn in, should take his way by land from Corinth to the other sea that lieth to Athens; and going with all speed to Megara, launch forty galleys out of Nisæa, the arsenal of the Megareans, which then were there, and sail presently into Peiræus. For at that time there neither stood any galleys for a watch before it, nor was there any imagination that the enemies would on such a sudden come upon them: for they durst not have attempted it openly, though with leisure; nor if they had had any such intention, could it but have been discovered1 . As soon as it was resolved on, they set presently forward; and arriving by night, launched the said galleys of Nisæa, and set sail; not now towards Peiræus, as they intended, fearing the danger, (and a wind was also said to have risen that hindered them), but toward a2 promontory of Salamis, lying out towards Megara. Now there was in it a little fort, and underneath in the sea lay three galleys, that kept watch to hinder the importation and exportation of any thing to or from the Megareans. This fort they assaulted, and the galleys they towed empty away after them: and being come upon the Salaminians unawares, wasted also other parts of the island. 94. By this time the fires signifying the coming of enemies3 , were lifted up towards Athens; and affrighted them more than any thing that had happened in all this war. For they in the city, thought the enemies had been already in Peiræus: and they in Peiræus, thought the city of the Salaminians had been already taken, and that the enemy would instantly come into Peiræus; which, had they not been afraid1 , nor been hindered by the wind, they might also easily have done. But the Athenians, as soon as it was day, came with the whole strength of the city into Peiræus, and launched their galleys, and embarking in haste and tumult set sail toward Salamis, leaving for the guard of Peiræus an army of foot. The Peloponnesians upon notice of these succours, having now overrun most of Salamis, and taken many prisoners and much other booty, besides the three galleys from the fort of Budorus, went back in all haste to Nisæa. And somewhat they feared the more, for that their galleys had lain long in the water2 , and were subject to leaking. And when they came to Megara, they went thence to Corinth again by land. The Athenians likewise, when they found not the enemy at Salamis, went home; and from that time forward looked better to Peiræus, both for the shutting of the ports and for their diligence otherwise.

The king of Thrace maketh war on the king of Macedon.year iii. A. C. 429. Ol. 87. 4.

95. About the same time in the beginning of the same winter, Sitalces an3 Odrysian, the son of Teres, king of Thrace, made war upon Perdiccas the son of Alexander, king of Macedonia, and upon the Chalcideans bordering on Thrace; upon two promises; one of which he required to be performed to him, and the other he was to perform himself. For Perdiccas had promised somewhat unto him, for reconciling him to the Athenians, who had formerly oppressed him with war; and for not restoring his brother Philip to the kingdom, that was his enemy: which he never paid him1 . And Sitalces himself had covenanted with the Athenians, when he made league with them, that he would end the war which they had against the Chalcideans of Thrace. For these causes therefore he made this expedition; and took with him both Amyntas the son of Philip, (with purpose to make him king of Macedonia), and also the Athenian ambassadors then with him for that business, and Agnon the Athenian commander. For the Athenians ought also to have joined with him against the Chalcideans, both with a fleet, and with as great land forces as they could provide.

The description of Thrace.year iii. A. C. 429. Ol. 87. 4.

96. Beginning therefore with the Odrysians, he levied first those Thracians that inhabit on this side2 the mountains Hæmus and Rhodope, as many as were of his own dominion, down to the shore of the Euxine Sea and the Hellespont. Then beyond Hæmus he levied the Getes, and all the nations between Ister and the Euxine Sea3 . The Getes and the people of those parts, are borderers upon the Scythians, and furnished as the Scythians are; all archers on horseback. He also drew forth many of those Scythians4 that inhabit the mountains and are free states, all sword–men, and are called Dii; the greatest part of which are on the mountain Rhodope; whereof some he hired, and some went as voluntaries. He levied also the Agrianes and Lææans, and all other the nations of Pæonia in his own dominion. These are the utmost bounds of his dominion, extending to the Graæans and Lææans, nations of Pæonia, and to the river Strymon; which rising out of the mountain Scomius passeth through the territories of the Graæans and Lææans, who make the bounds of his kingdom toward Pæonia, and are subject only to their own laws1 . But on the part that lieth to the Triballians, who are also a free people, the Treres make the bound of his dominion, and the Tilatæans. These dwell on the north side of the mountain Scomius, and reach westward as far as to the river Oscius; which cometh out of the same hill Nestus and Hebrus doth; a great and desert hill, adjoining to Rhodope.

year iii. A. C. 429. Ol. 87. 4.year iii. A. C. 429. Ol. 87. 4.The great power of the Scythians.

97. The dimensions of the dominion of the Odrysians by the sea–side, is from the city of the Abderites to the mouth of Ister in the Euxine Sea; and is, the nearest way, four days’ and as many nights’ sail for a round ship1 , with a continual fore wind2 . By land likewise the nearest way, it is from the city Abdera to the mouth of Ister eleven days’ journey for an expedite footman. Thus it lay in respect of the sea. Now for the continent; from Byzantium to the Lææans and to the river Strymon, (for it reacheth this way farthest into the main land), it is for the like footman thirteen days’ journey. The tribute they received from all the barbarian nations and from the cities of Greece, in the reign of Seuthes, (who reigned after Sitalces, and made the most of it), was in gold and silver, by estimation, four hundred talents by year3 . And presents of gold and silver came to as much more: besides vestures, both wrought and plain, and other furniture, presented not only to him, but also to all the men of authority4 and Odrysian nobility about him. For they had a custom, which also was general to all Thrace, contrary to that of the kingdom of Persia, to receive rather than to give: and it was there a greater shame to be asked and deny, than to ask and go without. Nevertheless they held this custom long, by reason of their power1 : for without gifts, there was nothing to be gotten done amongst them. So that this kingdom arrived thereby to great power. For of all the nations of Europe that lie between the Ionian Gulf and the Euxine Sea, it was, for revenue of money and other wealth, the mightiest; though indeed for strength of an army and multitudes of soldiers, the same be far short of the Scythians. For there is no nation, not to say of Europe, but neither of Asia, that are comparable to this, or that as long as they agree, are able, one nation to one, to stand against the Scythians. And yet in matter of counsel and wisdom in the present occasions of life, they are not like2 to other men.

year iii. A. C. 429. Ol. 87. 4.

98. Sitalces therefore, king of this great country, prepared his army, and when all was ready, set forward and marched towards Macedonia: first, through his own dominion; then over Cercine, a desert mountain dividing the Sintians from the Pæonians, over which he marched the same way himself had formerly made with timber3 , when he made war against the Pæonians. Passing this mountain out of the country of the Odrysians, they had on their right hand the Pæonians, and on the left the Sintians and Medes; and beyond it they came to the city of Doberus in Pæonia. His army, as he marched, diminished not any way, except by sickness; but increased by the accession of many free nations of Thrace, that came in uncalled in hope of booty. Insomuch as the whole number is said to have amounted to no less than a hundred and fifty thousand men: whereof the most were foot; the horse being a third part, or thereabouts. And of the horse, the greatest part were the Odrysians themselves; and the next most, the Getes. And of the foot, those sword–men, a1 free nation that came down to him out of the mountain Rhodope, were the most warlike. The rest of the promiscuous multitude were formidable only for their number.

The beginning of the kingdom of Macedonia.The Macedonian kings descended of the Temenidæ, a family in Argos of the Peloponnesians.year iii. A. C. 429. Ol. 87. 4.

99. Being all together at Doberus, they made ready to fall in from the hill’s side into the lower Macedonia, the dominion of Perdiccas. For2 there are in Macedonia, the Lyncestians and the Elimeiotæ, and other highland nations, who though they be confederates and in subjection to the other, yet have their several kingdoms by themselves. But of that part of the now Macedonia which lieth toward the sea, Alexander, the father of this Perdiccas, and his ancestors the Temenidæ, who came out of Argos, were the first possessors and reigned in the same; having first driven out of Pieria the Pierians, which afterwards seated themselves in Phagres, and other towns beyond Strymon, at the foot of Pangæum; (from which cause that country is called the Gulf1 of Pieria to this day, which lieth at the foot of Pangæum and bendeth toward the sea); and out of that which is called Bottia, the Bottiæans, that now border upon the Chalcideans. They possessed besides a certain narrow portion of Pæonia near unto the river Axius, reaching from above down to Pella and to the sea. Beyond Axius, they possess the country called Mygdonia as far as to Strymon, from whence they have driven out the Edonians. Furthermore, they drave the Eordians out of the territory now called Eordia; (of whom the greatest part perished, but there dwell a few of them yet about Physca); and the Almopians out of Almopia. The same Macedonians subdued also other nations, and hold them yet; as Anthemus, Crestonia, and Bisaltia, and a great part of the Macedonians themselves. But the whole is called Macedonia; and was the kingdom of Perdiccas the son of Alexander, when Sitalces came to invade it.

The Macedonians retire into their walled towns.Archelaus the son of Perdiccas, the ninth king of Macedon, of the family of the Temenidæ.year iii. A C. 429. Ol. 87. 4.

100. The2 Macedonians unable to stand in the field against so huge an army, retired all within their strongholds and walled towns, as many as the country afforded: which were not many then; but3 were built afterwards by Archelaus the son of Perdiccas, when he came to the kingdom, who then also laid out the highways straight, and took order both for matter of war, as horses and arms and for other provision, better than all the other eight kings that were before him. The Thracian army arising from Doberus, invaded that territory first which had been the principality of Philip, and took Eidomene by force; but Gortynia, Atalanta, and some other towns he had yielded to him for the love of Amyntas the son of Philip, who was then in the army. They also assaulted1 Europus, but could not take it. Then they went on further into Macedonia, on the part that lies on the right hand of Pella2 and Cyrrhus; but within these, into Bottiæa and Pieria they entered not, but wasted Mygdonia, Crestonia, and Anthemus. Now the Macedonians had never any intention to make head against them with their foot, but sending out their horsemen, which they had procured from their allies of the higher Macedonia, they assaulted the Thracian army in such places where, few against many, they thought they might do it with most convenience. And where they charged, none was able to resist them, being both good horsemen and well armed with breastplates; but enclosed by the multitude of the enemies, they fought against manifest odds of number: so that in the end they gave it over, esteeming themselves too weak to hazard battle against so many.

year iii. A. C. 429. Ol. 87. Sitalces and Perdiccas come to a conference about the motives of the war.The Grecians, at the coming of this army, stand upon their guard, fearing they were called in by the Athenians to subdue them.year iii. A. C. 429. Ol. 87. 4.Seuthes corrupted by Perdiccas, persuadeth Sitalces to return.

101. After this, Sitalces gave way to a conference with Perdiccas, touching the motives of this war. And forasmuch as the Athenians were not arrived with their fleet, (for they thought not that Sitalces would have made the journey, but had sent ambassadors to him with presents), he sent a part of his army against the Chalcideans and Bottiæans, wherewith having compelled them within their walled towns, he wasted and destroyed their territory. Whilst he stayed in these parts, the Thessalians southward, and the Magnetians, and the rest of the nations subject to the Thessalians1 , and all the Grecians as far as to Thermopylæ, were afraid he would have turned his forces upon them; and stood upon their guard. And northward, those Thracians that inhabit the champaign country beyond Strymon, namely the Panæans, Odomantians, Droans, and Dersæans, all of them free states, were afraid of the same. He gave occasion also to a rumour, that he meant to lead his army against all those Grecians that were enemies to the Athenians, as called in by them to that purpose by virtue of their league. But whilst he stayed, he wasted the Chalcidean, Bottiæan, and Macedonian territories; and when he could not effect what he came for, and his army both wanted victual, and was afflicted with the coldness of the season, Seuthes the son of Spardocus, his cousin–german, and of greatest authority next himself, persuaded him to make haste away. Now Perdiccas had dealt secretly with Seuthes, and promised him his sister in marriage, and money with her: and Sitalces at the persuasion of him, after the stay of full thirty days, whereof he spent eight in Chalcidea, retired with his army with all speed into his own kingdom. And Perdiccas shortly after gave to Seuthes his sister Stratonica in marriage, as he had promised. This was the issue of this expedition of Sitalces.

A. C. 428. Ol. 87. 4. Phormio putteth suspected persons out of Stratus and Coronta.year iii. A. C 428. Ol. 87. 4.The course of the river Achelons.The fable of Alcmæon.year iii. A. C. 428. Ol. 87. 4.Acarnania whence so called.

102. The same winter, after the fleet of the Peloponnesians was dissolved, the Athenians that were at Naupactus, under the conduct of Phormio, sailed along the coast to Astacus, and disbarking marched into the inner parts of Acarnania. He had in his army four hundred men of arms that he brought with him in his galleys, and four hundred more Messenians. With these he put out of Stratus, Coronta, and other places, all those whose fidelity he thought doubtful. And when he had restored Cynes the son of Theolytus to Coronta, they returned again to their galleys. For they thought they should not be able to make war against the Œniades (who only of all Acarnania are1 the Athenians’ enemies) in respect of the winter. For the river Achelöus, springing out of the mountain Pindus, and running through Dolopia, and through the territories of the Agræans and the Amphilochians, and through most part of the champaign of Acarnania, passing above by the city of Stratus, and falling into the sea by the city of the Œniades, which also it moateth about with fens, by the abundance of water maketh it hard lying there for an army in time of winter. Also most of the islands Echinades lie just over against Œnia2 , hard by the mouth of Achelöus. And the river, being a great one, continually heapeth together the gravel, insomuch that some of those islands are become continent already, and the like in short time is expected by the rest3 . For not only the stream of the river is swift, broad, and turbidous, but also the islands themselves stand thick, and because4 the gravel cannot pass, are joined one to another; lying in and out, not in a direct line, nor so much as to give the water his course directly forward into the sea. These islands are all desert, and but small ones. It is reported that Apollo by his oracle did assign this place for an habitation to Alcmæon the son of Amphiareus, at such time as he wandered up and down for the killing of his mother; telling him, “that he should never be free from the terrors that haunted him, till he had found out and seated himself in such a land, as when he slew his mother, the sun had never seen nor was then land, because all other lands were polluted by him.” Hereupon being at a nonplus, as they say, with much ado he observed this ground congested by the river Achelöus, and thought there was enough cast up to serve1 his turn, already, since the time of the slaughter of his mother, after which it was now a long time that he had been a wanderer. Therefore seating himself in the places about the Œniades, he reigned there, and named the country after the name of his son Acarnas. Thus goes the report, as we have heard it concerning Alcmæon.

The end of the third year of the war.

103. But Phormio and the Athenians leaving Acarnania, and returning to Naupactus, in the very beginning of the spring came back to Athens; and brought with them such galleys as they had taken, and the freemen they had taken prisoners in their fights at sea, who were again set at liberty by exchange of man for man. So ended that2 winter, and the third year of the war written by Thucydides.

[1 ][“From this time begins the war of the Athenians and the Peloponnesians and the allies of both sides; during which they had no longer commerce, &c.; and having once begun it they warred, &c.”]

[1 ]Priestess of Juno: by whose priesthood they reckoned their years. The Athenians began their years about the summer solstice. [This is the first year of the introduction of Meton’s cycle. The religious ceremonies of the Greeks, as of other nations, being regulated by the course of the moon, whose revolutions are not commensurable with that of the earth round the sun, it was essential to ascertain a number of solar years exactly equal to a number of lunar revolutions. Throughout the number of years so ascertained, called a cycle, might be noted the future phases of the moon, which done for one cycle is done for all; all future cycles (whence the name) being only the same series repeated. Assuming 8 solar years to be equal to 99 lunar revolutions, the Greeks from about the year 560, regulated the Olympic year by that cycle. The 12 months were made to consist of 30 and 29 days alternately, called respectively πληρὴς and κοιλὸς: and for equalizing the lunar year, so consisting of 354 days, with the solar year, a full month, called ἐμβολιμᾶιος, was intercalated in the 3rd, 5th, and 8th years. To remedy the defects of this system, Meton adopted a cycle of 19 years: retaining the old number and form of the months, he intercalated a month in 7 out of the 19 years. His cycle, imperfect as it is, has, owing perhaps to some superstitious reverence for the number 19, retained its place in the regulation of the lunar calendar to the present day. From this time the Olympic year, commencing hitherto in the moon sometimes next before, sometimes next after the summer solstice, commenced regularly on the 11th day of the latter moon. The prizes were distributed at the full moon.]

[2 ][Herodotus, briefly alluding to this attempt upon Platæa by the Thebans, (vii. 233), says four hundred. He mentions the death of Eurymachus (chap. 5 infra): whom he calls the son of Leontiades a Theban, and the leader on this occasion of four hundred Thebans.]

[3 ][βοιωταρχοῦντες: see v. 38. note.]

[1 ][θέμενοι τὰ ὅπλα: “piling their arms”: as our own soldiers pile their muskets together, when not in the ranks and yet not off duty. Hobbes’ phrase for it, generally is, sitting down or standing in their arms. The summons of the herald was meant to disarm the Platæans.]

[1 ][“For that they threatened to make no change with any man”.]

[2 ][“And strove to beat them back wheresoever the assault was made”.]

[1 ][The common reading was οἱ πολλοί, “the greater part”. But as out of about 300 that entered the city, no less than 180 were taken prisoners (see chap. 5), it could not be correct to say that the greatest part perished in the first instance. The article οἱ has therefore been discarded by Bekker and the rest.]

[2 ][στυράκιον is not the head, but the spike at the other end of the javelin, by which it was fixed in the ground. And μοχλός is not the staple, but the bar which went across the gates, and into a hole in which and in the gate, went the βάλανος or bolt. The bolt was thrust in, so that no part of it remained out of the hole; and could then of course be drawn out only by something that could lay hold of its head, and therefore exactly fit it.]

[3 ][Cut through the bar.]

[1 ][Built against, or forming part of the wall.]

[2 ][“Thus had feared the Thebans in Platæa”: that is, before the arrival of the other Thebans next described.]

[3 ][“But the other Thebans, who &c., receiving by the way news about what had passed, went to try to aid”. What they heard, could only be of the attack, and not of the capture of their men: because on their arrival they first learn that they were all taken or slain. It should be, “the rain which fell in the night”. “So that what by marching in the rain, and what by the difficulty of passing the river”, &c.]

[1 ][“Having done no injury”.]

[2 ][See chap. 2. note.]

[1 ][“Just after they were overcome, &c.: and of what followed after, they knew nothing”.]

[2 ]The Lacedæmonian league, or Lacedæmonian party, not particularly that state. [“The confederate cities were ordered by the Lacedæmonians to make ready, each according to its size, other ships besides those already on the spot in Italy and Sicily, which had been got ready by those who in those parts sided with the Lacedæmonians, to the number of five hundred”. Göll. Arn. The Dorian states in Italy and Sicily would naturally be the allies of the Lacedæmonians.]

[1 ][“Especially.”]

[2 ]“Knowing that if these were securely their friends, they would be able to infest Peloponnesus round about”. Arnold. Goeller. The latter observes that the Corcyræans, Acarnanians, and Zacynthians were already the friends of the Athenians; and all that remained, was to confirm that friendship.]

[3 ][“As might be expected”.]

[1 ][“And besides there were many young men, &c.; and the rest of Greece stood at gaze, &c. Many prophecies also were told, &c.: and moreover a little before this Delos was shaken, &c.” Herodotus, speaking of the impending invasion of Darius, says: “And Delos, as say the Delians, was shaken; for the first and last time even until my time: a portent from the god to men of the coming evils. For what with the Persians, and with the chief states striving for the mastery, there befell Greece in the time of Darius, Xerxes, and Artaxerxes, three generations, more evils than during twenty generations before Darius”. vi. 98. These passages of Herodotus and Thucydides are remarkable. If with Pliny, Mueller, and others, we adopt the opinion of two earthquakes, it follows that neither historian had heard of the earthquake related by the other. But for such authority, the remarkable fact, that the earthquake related by each was considered portentous of this war, would incline us either to accept the explanation of Arnold: that Thucydides here uses ὀλίγον πρὸ τούτων to express an interval of sixty years, as in chap. 16, infra, he applies ἄρτι to one of fifty: or else to hold both earthquakes for fabulous.]

[2 ][“And every private man and every city”. Bekker and the rest, πόλις: some MSS. πολίτης.

[1 ][Amongst so many nations.]

[2 ][“Thraceward”. See i. 57.]

[3 ][Melos and Thera were Spartan colonies.]

[1 ][“And all of them being ready at the time appointed, they assembled at the isthmus, the two–thirds from every state”. That is, two–thirds, not of those within the military age, but only of the contingent of each state. Mueller, Goeller. The following is Mueller’s account of the contingent. “When an expedition was contemplated, the Spartans sent round (περιήγγελλον) to the confederate states, to desire them to have ready men and stores. The highest contribution of each state having been already fixed once for all, on each particular occasion it was only to be determined what part thereof should be required. In like manner the supplies of money were determined: so that the army with all its equipments, could be collected by a simple summons.” Dor. i. 9. 2. Arnold observes that the time for which the allies were required to serve on a foreign expedition, and to maintain themselves at their own expense, appears to have been at this time forty days.]

[2 ][Most puissant]

[1 ][Begins suddenly. Goeller.]

[2 ][“Against being attacked”.]

[1 ][“And receive commands with readiness”.]

[1 ][“Then at length (οὕτω δὴ) he dislodged”, &c.]

[2 ][“Suspecting, as Archidamus happened to be his guest, that he might, as often happens, either of private courtesy”, &c. Goeller.]

[1 ][Consisted much.]

[2 ][That is, besides the rent of the public lands, mines, customs, judicial fines, and taxes paid by the metœci. Goeller. For the value of the talent, see i. 96, note.]

[3 ][τὰ προπύλαια. In the Acropolis were the Parthenon, the Propylæa, the temple of Minerva Polias adjoining the fane of Erectheus, and Phidias’ statue of Minerva. The ascent of the hill, which was formerly fortified, was adorned by Pericles with a splendid flight of steps and with the Propylæa: a work begun A. C. 437: and finished in five years, at a cost of 2012 talents. On one side of the Propylæa was the temple of Victory, called ἄπτερος, wingless; on the other, the picture gallery. The Parthenon fronted the east. From the eastern portico there was a way into the Opisthodomus, where was the public treasury and wherein were preserved the most precious and sacred things. The Parthenon was built by Callicrates, Ictinus, and Carpion, in the ten years from A.C. 448 to 438. In this last year Phidias erected in it his gigantic statue of Minerva; from which was to be seen the statue of Pallas Promachos, also of vast size, which he is said to have cast from the Persian spoils, and which stood between the Propylæa and the temple of Minerva Polias. Od. Mueller.]

[1 ][ἐκ τῶν ἄλλων ἱερῶν. From the other temples: besides that particular temple of Minerva in the Acropolis, the Parthenon, which was the treasury. Arnold. The Persian spoils: that is, amongst others, the silver–footed chair, in which Xerxes beheld the battle of Salamis, and the golden sabre of Mardonius. Boeckh. Without the city, is Hobbes’ addition.]

[2 ][Of all “tribute and revenue”. Goeller.]

[3 ][“For at the first so many kept watch against the invasion of the enemy, young and old, and of the metœci as many as were heavy–armed soldiers.” For the metœci, see ch. 31.]

[4 ][The reasons stated by Arnold in his note on this passage, establish pretty clearly the existence of three walls from the city to Piræus; the outer or northern wall, the Phalerian, and τὸ διὰ μέσου τξιχος, the wall between the ther two. The same conclusion is adopted by Goeller.]

[1 ][“Was attended with great difficulty”: Goeller: that is, owing to the great number that had to remove.]

[2 ]πρυτανεῖα. Guild halls, places where those that administered the state did meet: where also some, for honour’s cause and service, were allowed diet, and wherein Vesta was worshipped, and a light continually burned; so that some thence derive the name, making πρυτανεῖον quasi πυρος ταμεῖον. [The Prytaneium (the mark of an independent society) has been termed by Pollux (ix. 40) ἑστία τῆς πόλεως, the hearth of the community; by Livy (xli. 20) “penetrale urbis”. “Herein,” says Pollux, “were entertained those who came on any public embassy, those who were honoured for service done to the state, and those who by virtue of their office were ἀείσιτοι.” Of these last the principal were the hierophantes or teachers of the sacred rites, the κήρυξ or cryer of the sacrifices, the cryer of the council, certain of the secretaries, &c. This at Athens took place at what was called the θόλος: which is not to be confounded with the ancient Prytaneium at the foot of the Acropolis. According to Strabo, the inhabitants of Attica were assembled by Cecrops into twelve cities, the names of which he gives.]

[1 ][“They did not meet to consult under the king.”]

[2 ][“He made them all to belong to the city that now is: and obliged them, administering the affairs each of their own city as before, to use this as their metropolis: which, now that they all reckoned as members of it, grew great”. Goll. Arn. This may perhaps be called the birth of the Athenian democracy.]

[1 ][Between these two temples, the Pythaistæ took their station to watch nine nights, during three months in the spring, for the favourable flashing of the lightning over mount Parnes, announcing that the sacred embassy might venture to proceed in its destined route to Pytho. Müll.]

[2 ][Quod ἐν Λίμναις dicitur, suburbium erat ubi solium paulatim inclinatur Ilissum versus. Ibi duo templa Bacchi erant. Göll. There were four Dionysia or feasts of Bacchus: the Anthesterian, the Lenæan, the rural, and the great or city Dionysia. Hermann, Gr. Antiq. § 161.]

[3 ][Are celebrated.]

[4 ][The Pisistridæ. Except this, there was no good spring–water in the city: that of all the other springs being too salt to drink.]

[5 ][Till the present war.]

[1 ][ἄρτι: they had only just arranged, &c.]

[2 ]Pelasgicum, a place by the citadel, where the Pelasgians once fortified themselves against the Athenians, and for that cause there was laid a curse upon the habitation of it. Paus. in Atticis. [Sixty years after the fall of Troy, and about the time of the Dorian conquest of Peloponnesus, the Bœotians, a race from Arne in Thessaly, drove the Pelasgians out of Bœotia into Attica. See Hermann, Gr. Antiq. § 15. 21, § 102. 5, 6. There they built the wall about the Acropolis of Athens mentioned by Herodotus, vi. 137. This wall, and the ground under the Acropolis to the north–west, went by the name of the Pelasgicum. The empty places of the city lay to the north.]

[3 ][ἀργὸν: waste. ἐξῳκἡθη: was “filled out” with inhabitants. Göll.]

[1 ][“They divided the long walls amongst themselves”.]

[2 ][And “after that the army was assembled”, his stay &c.]

[1 ][Indicatur mensis Julii: Göll. But Arnold seems to show clearly, that this period cannot be much later than the beginning of June.]

[2 ][Two springs of salt water, forming two lakes near the southeastern coast, at the extremity of the Thriasian plain. Muell. They were anciently supposed to derive their water from the Euripus, by an underground communication: but salt springs occur elsewhere in Attica; and there was one in the Acropolis, said to have been produced by Neptune when contending with Minerva for the honour of naming the city. Arnold.]

[3 ][Vulgo, κεκροπίας. Bekker and the rest, κρωπειᾶς. As little seems to be known of one as of the other. If Cecropia, the former name of Athens, became, as Mueller supposes, the name of the plain between Hymettus and Corydalus; still Archidamus did not march through that district.]

[1 ]Burroughs. [δῆμος has different meanings. Homer uses it in the sense of pagus, land or district. Thus Il. iii. 201, ἐν δήμῳ Ἰθάκης: Od. iii. 215, σέ γε λαοὶ ἐχθαίρουσ’ ἀνὰ δῆμον. Cicero renders it by oppidum: “quod si δήμους oppida esse volumus, tam est oppidum Sunium quam Piræeus”: ad Att. vii. 3. Thucydides uses it sometimes in the sense of plebs, as opposed to the δυνατοὶ or ὀλίγοι: as in chap. 65 and 74. Here it seems to be used in the sense of pagus: “Acharnæ, the most extensive district (ager) of Attica, of those called pagi”.]

[2 ][“At Eleusis and the Thriasian plain”.]

[3 ][He thought good to try, if &c. “For whilst the place seemed &c., he thought also &c”.]

[1 ][So long as the enemy lay &c. the Athenians “also had some hope” &c. Arnold, Goeller. They stirred not, is an addition.]

[2 ][And when their fields were wasted in their sight: which &c.: it was, as it was likely, taken for a horrible matter.]

[1 ][Conceiving “the greater part of the Athenians to be with them”, were they &c.]

[2 ][τέλος: a body of cavalry, the number of which is unknown.]

[3 ][The next, not the same day.]

[1 ][“Upon the old league”: see i. 102, 107. Of the Parasians nothing is known; and the name is supposed by Goeller and Arnold to be merely a various reading of the following name, Πυράσιοι.]

[2 ][δήμων: districts. Between the hills Parnes and Brelissus lay Deceleia, which, according to Herodotus (ix. 73), in return for certain good offices to the Tyndaridæ at the time of the rape of Helen, ever after enjoyed at Sparta the privileges of precedence and immunity from taxes; and during this entire war, whilst wasting the rest of Attica, the Lacedæmonians always spared Deceleia. The worship of Hercules at Marathon in the Tetrapolis, and other places to the north of Athens, indicates in the opinion of Mueller, a settlement of the Dorians in the northern parts of Attica. Dor. i. 3.]

[3 ][Πειραϊκὴν: Bekker, Arnold. Γραϊκήν: Poppo, Goeller. Arnold conceives that Πειραϊκὴ is probably of the same origin as the Πειραιεύς of Athens, which is connected with ἡ πέραν γἦ, the over–land, an epithet actually given to the district of Oropus in iii. 91: that in this case the expression has relation to the coast of Eubœa, as to that of Salamis or Peloponnesus in the other: and that the later form of the expression was πέρᾶια, the name of Asia Minor with respect to Rhodes, and of the opposite side of Jordan with respect to Judæa. Poppo objects that πέρα does not admit of the dipthong, and that moreover the adjective derived from πέρα would be, not περαϊκος, but περαῖος. Od. Mueller thinks there was a city called Γραῖα, lying between Oropus and Tanagra. Oropus itself originally belonged to Bœotia.]

[1 ][“To move or put the question.” This decree was repealed upon the revolt of Chios, after the disaster in Sicily. See viii. 15.]

[1 ][In distinction to Methone in Macedonia.]

[2 ][“There being no men in it”; that is, no military: nullo præsidio ibi collocato ex illis militibus, qui domo remanebant ad tuendam patriam, bis tertiis militantibus foras in Attica. Goeller.]

[3 ][Dispersed in the fields and intent upon the wall.]

[4 ][ἐκ τῆς κοίλης Ἤλιδος: “from the hollow Elis and periœcis of the Eleians, that came &c.” The lowest slope of Peloponnesus is on the western side: and here we find the most extensive plain in the peninsula, which, from being surrounded by the chains from mounts Scollis and Pholoë, was called the hollow Elis. The periœcis was the name of all the territory which the Eleians had conquered in addition to their original land, the κοίλη Ἤλις. Muell. Dor. The Ætolians, who in the end became masters of Elis, appear to have been relations of the Eleians, and received by them at the time of the Dorian invasion as such. They contrived to divide the land without a war. Ibid.]

[1 ][“But meanwhile.”]

[2 ][ἁιροῦσι: “march by land and take Pheia. And after that, the galleys &c.” This march and taking of Pheia, shew that the Athenians did not put in first at the town of Pheia. For it takes place whilst the Athenians are sailing round the headland to the harbour: after doubling which, they take the others aboard at the town. Goeller takes Pheia to be the name both of the headland, of which Ichthys was the ἄκρα or highest point, and also of the town.]

[3 ][See their fate, iv. 57.]

[1 ][These exiles were collected and restored by Lysander after the battle of Ægospotamos. Arnold.]

[2 ]That is, the man at whose house and by whom any public person was to be entertained, that came from Athens to Abdera. [See iii. 70, note.]

[3 ][“First made the Odrysæ a great state, extending it over a larger part of the rest of Thrace. For much of Thrace is still independent.” Goeller.]

[1 ][“Nor of the same Thrace”. The Thracians from Pieria, the worshippers of Bacchus and the Muses, who settled in Phocis: a different race from those of the north.]

[2 ][“Was the first king of the Odrysæ of any power”.]

[3 ][Poppo, Goeller, Arnold, ξυνεξελεῖν: “that they might make themselves masters of the country Thrace–ward and of Perdiccas at the same time.” Vulgo et Bekker, ξυνελεῖν.]

[4 ][For him. See i. 61.]

[1 ][These plural names illustrate the proposition, that the earlier πόλεις, were in their origin societies of men living in the same district, from the several parts of which they afterwards came together, and lived within the same walls. Arnold.]

[2 ][μέτοικοι. The metœcus appears to have been a citizen of one state dwelling, and having acquired a domicile, in another state. They lay under many of the disabilities of foreigners: they could acquire no property in land: they were represented in all public and private affairs by their patron, that is, by a citizen of their own choice who stood as a surety between them and the state. By the yearly payment of 12 drachmæ for his whole family, the metœcus might exercise all trades and professions, like a citizen. For non–payment of this tax, or the undue assumption of rights of citizenship, they forfeited the protection of the law, and were liable to be sold as slaves; but instead of that, were usually made to serve certain degrading offices, such as water–carriers and the like, by way of reminding them of their subordinate rank to real citizens. They were liable to all extraordinary taxes and duties, and to the regular military service of citizens. Their number in Athens appears to have exceeded that in any other state: in 309 A.C., the number of their full–grown men reached 10,000. In consideration of services to the state, they were sometimes released from all the restraints affecting the person of the ordinary metœcus, and in all private relations placed on a footing with the citizen; but without acquiring any political rights. These were called ἰσοτελεῖς. Hermann. Griec. Antiq. § 115, 116. These latter, and the richest amongst the ordinary metœci, served as heavy–armed soldiers: the rest for the most part as mariners. Boeckh.]

[1 ][The word before, which is not in the Greek, makes the statement true. Later in the war, as at Delium (iv. 93–4), and before Syracuse the Athenians had larger armies.]

[2 ][“And afterwards during the war there were every year other invasions also.” The invasions seem to have been regularly two in each year. See iv. 66. By a public decree, the generals took an oath, twice every year to invade Megaris.]

[1 ][“And lost some of their men by an unexpected assault of the Cranii: and they were forcibly driven out to sea, and went home.”]

[2 ][προτίθενται: “they expose to view the ashes of the dead three days (πρότριτα) before the burial.” Göll. According to the Greek mode of computation, if the burial took place on the third day of the month, πρότριτα would be on the first. Ordinarily, the burial took place, by law, before sunrise of the day after the death. Arnold. The ashes were put into an earthen vessel, κεράμιον: whence κεράμεικος, the name of the place where they were deposited.]

[1 ][A tree sacred to death.]

[2 ][In private funerals this was not allowed; nor that any even of the relations should be present, beyond first cousins. Goeller.]

[3 ][Into the public burial–ground. Ceramicus extra urbem. The προαϛεῖον, here translated suburbs, was as Arnold says, rather an open space like the parks in London. It was used for reviews and public games. The Campus Martius at Rome was exactly what the Greeks called προαϛεῖον.]

[4 ][This ceremony appears to have been performed over those slain at the taking of Sphacteria, at Delium, at Amphipolis with Cleon, in Sicily, at Arginusæ, and in the civil war in the year 403. It is believed that about the year 400 it became annual. Did Thucydides forget Platæa, in calling Marathon the only exception? See Herod. ix. 85.]

[1 ][Their honour manifested.]

[2 ][“It is difficult to preserve the just medium in speaking, in a case in which the auditors can scarcely be impressed with any opinion, which shall not in some degree depart from the truth.” Goeller.]

[3 ][And what “he knows it to be”.]

[1 ][Just and “becoming too.”]

[2 ][This no orator, addressing the Athenian people, ever forgot.]

[3 ][“But by what pursuits we arrived at that dominion, and by what policy and what means &c.”]

[1 ][“Yet every man, according as he is esteemed and as he excels in aught, is preferred to public charge, not so much from his belonging to a class, as from his virtue.”]

[2 ][Aristotle speaks of this toleration as being general at Athens: ἀναρχία δούλων καὶ γυναικῶν καὶ παίδων· καὶ τὸ ζῇν ὅπως τις βούλεται παρορᾷν. Pol. vi. 4.

[1 ][We “differ from.”]

[2 ][See i. 144, note. Mueller observes, that the xenelasia was practised only against tribes of different usages and manner of life from themselves: chiefly, for instance, against the Athenians. At their Gymnopædeia, and other festivals, Sparta was full of foreigners. Poets and philosophers were freely admitted: other classes excluded. The prohibition to their own citizens to live abroad, originated in the same feeling common to the Doric race: the desire to maintain pure and unchanged the Doric customs. Dor. iii. 1.]

[3 ][The peculiar severity of the Spartan education began at the age of twelve years. Thenceforward the boy supported the intense degrees of heat and cold peculiar to the valley of Sparta in the same clothing, one thick woollen garment, throughout the year. At times he was sent abroad to support himself by what he could steal, and severely beaten when detected. At eighteen, he went through the κρυπτεία, the hardships of which are said by Plato to be scarcely credible: traversing the country barefoot, day and night in summer and winter: the purpose, until it was perverted to other objects (iv. 80, n.), being to inspect the fortresses, roads, &c. At twenty, he served in the ranks, and performed duties similar to those of the Athenian περίπολος (iv. 67, n.) The scourging of boys at the altar of Diana Orthia, presided over by the priestess, seems to have been a substitution for the human sacrifices, expiatory of blood once accidentally shed at her altar. This education (ἀγωγὴ), as it was an essential, so was it also the exclusive privilege of the Spartans, and the Mothaces (slaves brought up in the family) selected to share in it. The Spartan that did not go through it, ceased to be ὅμοιος. Writing was never generally taught: and it is not certain that they even learnt to read. Contracts were evidenced by cutting in pieces a staff, and preserving the pieces. It may be questioned whether this system can justly claim the merit of their martial courage. We have Aristotle’s testimony (Pol. viii. 4), that it made them θηριώδεις, brutal: and that their military superiority over other states, was merely that of disciplined over raw soldiers: and that their superiority in the field, did not survive the loss of that in the gymnasium.]

[1 ][When we by ourselves alone invade &c.; yet we easily get the victory.]

[2 ][“Because at the same time that our hands are full of naval matters, we are sending our own citizens abroad upon divers land–services”.]

[3 ][We have this odds by it: “not to faint &c., and to appear &c., and to procure” &c.]

[1 ][ϕιλοκαλοῦμεν: “we study elegance”: of which bravery is rather the opposite.]

[2 ]In Athens no man so poor but was a statesman. So St. Luke, Acts xvii. 21: “all the Athenians spend their time in nothing but hearing and telling of news”: the true character of politicians without employment.

[3 ][“And if we do not contrive, we at any rate judge for ourselves correctly of measures”. αὐτοὶ, ourselves, as distinguished from the magistrates. Goeller, Arnold.]

[4 ][“We differ from” others.]

[1 ][“So as, by kindness to the person on whom he conferred it, to preserve the favour owed”. Goeller.]

[2 ][“And we alone do good to others without fear (of its turning out to our damage), not upon computation of profit, so much as through the confidence inspired by liberty”. Poppo, Arnold.]

[3 ][“And with the utmost grace and dexterity”. Goeller.]

[4 ][τρόπων: these “manners”.]

[1 ][καταστροϕή: “And the end of these men here, manifests in my opinion a man’s virtue, both when it is the first to indicate, and when the last to confirm (his worth)”: that is, both when he is as yet unknown whether good or bad, and when it confirms the good opinion previously held of him. Goeller.]

[2 ][“For it is just towards those in other respects not good, to think more of their valour, &c., (than of their want of goodness on other occasions)”. Goeller.]

[1 ][“But considering revenge upon their enemies more to be coveted than those objects (hope or longer enjoyment of wealth); and esteeming this (the battle) the most honourable of dangers; they sought through it to take vengeance on the one and attain the other: committing to hope the uncertainty of the event, but for action concerning what was already before their eyes, deeming fit to rely on themselves.”]

[1 ][“But rather daily contemplating in its reality the power of the city.”]

[2 ][“For having in common given their bodies to their country, they receive individually in return praise that dieth not, and a most distinguished tomb: not that in which they now lie, but that rather in which” &c. The word ἰδίᾳ, individually, refers to the inscribing upon the monument the name and tribe of each individual buried on these occasions. Arn. “Their (i. e. famous men’s) virtues are testified” &c.]

[3 ][But “also in foreign lands”.]

[1 ][“As the misery that accompanies cowardice”. Göll. Arn.]

[2 ][“But happy are they that obtain, as these men have, the most honourable death; and as you, the most becoming subject of grief.” Goeller, Arnold.]

[3 ][That are advanced in years.]

[1 ][To put “the greater part of your life, which has been prosperous”, to the account &c.]

[2 ][“But that which is no longer in their way (the dead), men honour with a good will void of jealousy”.]

[3 ][“Not to be inferior to the ordinary nature of woman”. That is, they do enough if they act up to the standard of their sex, without striving to surpass it. Arnold.]

[4 ]The children of such as were the first slain in any war, were kept at the charge of the city till they came to man’s estate. [That is, till the age of sixteen, μέχρι ἥβης. At this age, that of puberty, the Athenian youth entered the Gymnasium, where they passed two years in learning the use of their arms: continuing at the same time their other studies of grammar, music, &c. This was called ἐπὶ διετὲς ἡβῆσαι. On completing their eighteenth year, on proof of their title, called δοκιμασθῆναι, they were received amongst the Ephebi; and in the grove Agraulus took the citizen’s oath, “not to pollute the sacred instruments, not to desert their ranks, to fight for their country in all things, both sacred and profane, and to deliver it unimpaired to their posterity”. Thereupon they received their arms, and were inscribed in the book, πίναξ ληξιαρχικὸς, of their δῆμος. They thereby became sui juris, might marry, sue and be sued, &c. The two following years they served as περίπολοι, (see iv. 67): at the end of which time they were admitted to the public assemblies, and to the full exercise of all political rights: and became liable to foreign military service. Hermann, Gr. Antiq. § 123.]

[5 ][“Thus in word have I &c.: and in deed have these men been honoured, partly in this ceremony, and partly in that their children” &c.]

[1 ][To these and their posterity, a garland in matches such as these.]

[2 ][ἐγκατασκῆψαι, proprie de fulmine usurpatur; transfertur autem ad mala quævis graviora cum impetu irrumpentia. Gottleber.]

[1 ][“For the physicians brought no aid, when at first through ignorance they attempted to cure it.” Goeller. At no time were they found to be of any use: see ch. 51. Krauss, in his disquisition on this disease, has pronounced it to bear an affinity to the contagious putrid typhus: shown mainly by the dejection and loss of the mental powers, the catarrhous–plegmonous symptoms, the bilious vomit, the termination of the disease on the days of crisis, the external and internal gangrene. He mentions three other diseases like this, also originating in Æthiopia or Egypt; the first of which (A.D. 165–168) described by Galen, and the second (252–267) by Eusebius and Cyprian, were much the same in species as this disease.]

[2 ][ϕρέατα. Reservoirs or tanks for catching the rain–water. Arnold.]

[1 ][ἐς τοῦτο πάντα ἀπεκρίθη: “his disease, whatever it might be, at its crisis turned to this.” Goeller.]

[2 ][Heat in the head.]

[3 ][ἀποκαθάρσεις: properly, evacuations downwards. Here meaning evacuations generally, but principally by vomit. Poppo, Krauss.]

[4 ][κενὴ: “empty hiccough”: that is, not the full. It was an opinion of the ancient physicians, (Hippocrates amongst the rest), that spasms and hiccough, (λύγξ), were the effect of either repletion or emptiness. The words, therefore, here signify the attempt of the stomach to throw more off it, when all has been already thrown off. Krauss.]

[1 ][ἕλκεσιν: ulcers.]

[2 ][But rather most willingly to have cast themselves into the cold water: “and many of them that were not looked to, did so into the tanks, possessed with an insatiate thirst. And to drink much or little was the same thing. And restlessness and sleeplessness pervaded the entire disease.” The outward coldness and inward heat and thirst here described, are symptoms set down by Hippocrates as θανάσιμον, mortal. Goeller.]

[3 ][That is, of mortification consequent thereon. Krauss.]

[4 ][ἀκράτου is supposed by Goeller and Arnold, to be used in its technical sense; in which, as explained by Hippocrates and Galen, it seems to signify the final purgings, consisting of either yellow or black bile, unmixed with any watery mixture. “Or if they escaped that, then the inflammation taking hold of the mucous membrane of the intestines, and violent ulceration arising there, and at the same time a pure bilious diarrhœa accompanying it, they afterwards died many of them of it (the diarrhœa) through weakness.” Krauss.]

[1 ][“Yet the disease (that is, the consequent gangrene) seizing the extremities, left there its mark. For it struck” &c. ἐπισήμαινε, a word applied to the mark or signature of the auditors of the public accounts at Athens, signifying that the account was duly passed. Arnold.]

[2 ][In the plague at Rome, A. C. 174, Livy says: “Cadavera, intacta a canibus ac vulturibus, tabes absumebat: satisque constabat, nec illo nec priore anno in tanta strage boum hominumque vulturium usquam visum. xli. 21.]

[3 ][“This disease then, to pass over many varieties of morbid affection, (each case having in it something different from another), was in its outward form such as I have shown.” Thucydides proposed to say nothing of the internal nature of the disease. Krauss.]

[1 ][“But whatever it might be, it ended in this.”]

[2 ][“Nor was there any one remedy, which it was of use to apply.”]

[3 ][“Those assuming something of virtue.”]

[4 ][Still more compassion: more, that is, than those venturing their lives as just mentioned.]

[1 ][ὥρᾳ ἔτους: at the time, that is, the best time of the year: the summer. ἐν καλύβαις, in cellars. The ordinary population of Athens and the Piræus did not exceed 180,000: and the number of houses was somewhat above 10,000. And here was at this time crowded the entire population of Attica, computed by Boeckh at 500,000.]

[2 ][“And they died one upon another, and so lay: and they lay halfdead rolling in the streets and about every conduit, &c. And the sacred grounds, where &c.”]

[3 ][“And every one buried as he best might. And many, for want &c. after so many deaths amongst their own friends, betook themselves to shameless burials.” That is, they buried or burned them in the sepulchres or funeral piles of other gentes than their own. Poppo, Goeller.]

[1 ][“Has become prevalent”.]

[2 ][Suddenly dying.]

[3 ][“And doing all for their pleasure.”]

[4 ][“And whatsoever was pleasant for the present moment, and every way conducive to that, that was” &c. Vulgo ᾔδει. Bekker, ἤδη.]

[1 ]λοιμός, plague. λιμός, famine.

[2 ][The answer.]

[3 ]Apollo, to whom the heathen attributed the immission of all epidemic or ordinary diseases. [Apollo was the god of the Doric race, and of the Athenians he was Ἀπόλλων πατρῷος (see chap. 71). By them he was looked upon as the averter of evil, ἀλεξίκακος, and the avenger of guilt: sickness, pestilence, and sudden death, unexpected and the cause unknown, were his ordinary instruments of punishment, as in Il. i. and Soph. Œd. Tyr , or for averting evil as in Od. iii. 280. His aim was unerring, and the blow unforeseen: hence his name, “the fardarting”. But he was not otherwise considered to be the author of disease: and to many heathen nations he was wholly unknown.]

[1 ]By the sea–coast. [This was the hilly country extending from the city to the west, about the promontory of Sunium: barren, and suited only to the purposes of commerce. Muell.]

[2 ][ἔτι δε. “But whilst” &c. He would not let the Athenians go out to fight by land; but nevertheless made incursions by sea.]

[3 ][The Persians had before this transported horses by sea, though the Greeks had not. See Herod. vi. 48.]

[1 ][There was also Epidaurus in Dalmatia.]

[2 ][“Took and sacked” &c. The town appears to have existed yet in viii. 18.]

[3 ][θάπτοντας: “burning” their dead. Hoc verbum et sepulturam omnino, et combustionem significat. Vide Herodotum, v. 8. Hæc igitur verba recte intelligere videntur, qui dicunt Atheniensium sepulturas ex igne et fumo rogorum a Peloponnesiis cognitas esse. Goeller.]

[4 ][“And this invasion was the longest stay they ever made”. “About forty days.”]

[1 ][“As having instigated them to the war”, and by his means &c.]

[1 ][Besides the ordinary assemblies, which were four during each prytaneia, extraordinary assemblies might be called by the Prytaneis, or by the Strategi. The mode of summons was by the cryer, κῆρυξ: the place of assembly, which at first was the Pnyx, on the side of a hill opposite to the Areiopagus, was in latter times the Theatre. Every citizen that attended the assembly, whether ordinary or extraordinary, received an obolus: which was afterwards, as some say by Cleon, increased to three.]

[2 ][But each singly cannot &c.]

[1 ][Will not in like manner (as if he were well affected) give &c.]

[2 ][ταπεινὴ: are too abject to maintain. See i. 50, note.]

[1 ][“Often enough assuredly.”]

[2 ][Now, “as having somewhat too much the appearance of boasting”, but that &c.]

[1 ][“And there is none, neither the king nor any nation besides &c. can impeach your navigation with your present navy.”]

[2 ][Show not yourselves inferior &c., “but that you hold it” more dishonour &c.]

[3 ][“And courage, though fortune be only equal, if seconded by contempt of the enemy, is fortified by prudence: which trusts not to hope, of use only where other help is wanting, but to counsel founded upon the means actually at hand, the foresight of which is more to be relied on.” Goeller.]

[1 ][From her dominion.]

[2 ][If any in present fear “would virtuously forsooth persuade us to this too, without trouble to give up our dominion”. Goeller.]

[1 ][“And know that this city has gotten a very great name amongst all men by not yielding to adversity; and that by having expended very many lives and vast labours in war, it has possessed the greatest power hitherto”: the memory whereof &c.]

[2 ][“Having regard then in your decision” both to what is honourable &c.]

[1 ][But “applied themselves more” to the war.]

[2 ][That is, they made him supreme over the other nine στρατηγοὶ. Arnold. Cleon is said to have been the author of the fine.]

[3 ][“During the peace”: viz., the thirty years’ treaty. Göll. Arn.]

[1 ]He died of the plague. Plut. [The justice of the character here given of him cannot be disputed. Whether in feeding the rapacity of the people with taxes extorted from the allies, he was not preparing the certain downfall of the state, by corrupting the one and alienating the other, is another question.]

[2 ][Thucydides alludes to such measures, as sending the squadron to Crete to make an attempt on Cydonia (ii. 85.), which should have sailed without loss of time to reinforce Phormion: wasting their force in petty expeditions in Sicily before the great invasion, whereby no object was gained, and the Dorian states were wholly alienated from Athens: the outrage upon Melos (v. 84), which excited the indignation of all Greece. Arnold. To these might be added the affair of the Mercuries (vi. 27, 53); to their folly wherein, by making Alcibiades their enemy, may perhaps in a measure be attributed the failure of the Sicilian expedition.]

[1 ][“Betook themselves to giving up to the people according to their humours even the public affairs.”]

[2 ][Which was not so much &c., “as that they who sent out the expedition, by not afterwards in due time voting reinforcements for those who went, but caballing amongst themselves for power with the people,” abated the vigour of the army; and then &c.]

[3 ][These “three years” occasion some disputing. Those that assume, that by τρία ἔτη is meant the time next after the defeat in Sicily, observe that from that time to the surrender of Athens to Lysander, was ten years. As however from Cyrus assuming the government of Asia minor (A.C. 407), to the surrender of Athens (404), was just three years; Arnold’s conclusion seems the more natural, that the period here meant is that during which Athens had to contend with the whole power of Greece, supported more effectually than before by the money of Persia.]

[1 ][“Such superabundant means had Pericles at that time, whereby he could, as he foresaw, with the utmost ease have gotten the better of the Peloponnesians alone in this war.” Goeller, Arnold. τὴν πόλιν, is omitted by the recent editors.]

[2 ][“In his private capacity”.]

[1 ][“Where was the Athenian army, besieging it”. The remaining words have been omitted by Bekker and the rest.]

[2 ][The city, “in a measure his own”. Goeller.]

[3 ]A vile act of Sadocus, to gratify the Athenians because they had made him free of their city.

[4 ][“Even before this present matter.” This event of the death of Nicolaus and Aneristus, is related by Herodotus, vii. 137. The fact mentioned by him, of Aneristus running down at sea the fishermen of Tiryns, may perhaps be one of the acts of the Lacedæmonians alluded to below.]

[1 ]ὅλκαδες, ships of the round form of building: for the use of merchants, not for the use of war, as were galleys and other vessels of the long form of building. [ὅλκας, from ἕλκω to draw, and thence to weigh, means a ship of burthen. It has nothing to do with the form. See ch. 97, note.]

[2 ][Ambracia is one of the many colonies founded by Corinth along the coast of the Ionian sea: comprising, besides this town, Molycreium, Chalcis in Ætolia, Solium in Acarnania, Anactorium, Leucas, Apollonia, and Corcyra. Her earliest colony of all, was Syracuse in Sicily. Mueller observes, that of the two harbours of Corinth, Lechæum in the Crisæan, and Cenchreæ in the Saronic gulf, all its colonies went out from its western port: and it was not till after the loss of her maritime dominion in these seas, which had taken place before the Persian war, and originated perhaps in the early separation of Corcyra, that she founded Potidæa on the opposite side of Greece. The constitution of Ambracia was at this time democratical: the people having seized on the sovereign power in an insurrection against Periander, occasioned by an insulting question addressed by him to his minion. See Aristot. Pol. v. 10. They were the most warlike people of that country: see iii. 68.]

[1 ][“But the rest are still” &c.]

[2 ][“And both together calling in the Athenians, who sent them Phormio as their general, and thirty galleys, on his arrival they take Argos by assault and make slaves of the Ambraciotes: and the Amphilochians and Acarnanians settled Argos in common.” All this was their doing, not Phormio’s.]

[1 ][Who “departing from Naupactus” guarded, &c. At this town, the name of which implies shipbuilding, the Heracleidæ are said to have built the rafts, on which they sailed to Antirrhium, and thence passed over the straits to Rhium. Muell. Dor. i. 3.]

[2 ][To binder the Peloponnesian pirates, “departing thence” (from Caria and Lycia), from molesting &c.]

[1 ][“With one himation”: a garment sometimes called χλαῖνα, and proper to the men: but also worn by the Doric women. See i. 6, note.]

[1 ][“Independent”: that is, of Thebes in particular, which always claimed supremacy over Platæa. See iii. 61.]

[2 ][The Platæans here attest, the gods called to witness the oath when made: their own local gods, the inhabitants and protectors of Platæis: and the θεοὶ πατρῷοι of the Lacedæmonians. In general, θεοὶ πατρῷοι are gods progenitors of some race or family. Thus the Athenians called themselves γενῆται Απολλῶνος πατρῴου, “the gens of their ancestor Apollo”: because Ion, the fabulous ancestor of the Ionians, was the son of Apollo. Venus, addressed by Lucretius and Ovid as “Æneadum genitrix”, was a Dea patria of the Romans, and “Romanæ dominationis auctor”. And Lucian (Scytha, 4.) makes Anacharsis the Scythian, swear “by Acinaces and Zamolxis, our ancestral gods”: which is as much as to say, that the Scythians were the progeny of their scimitar, and a slave made by them into a god. But Apollo, though the national and peculiar god of the Dorians, was no θεὸς πατρῷος to them: because Ægimius, the founder of their race, was not descended from Apollo. But Hercules, and therefore Jupiter, would be ancestral gods of the Heracleidæ.]

[1 ][“Neither side in the way of war. And this will satisfy us”.]

[2 ][Lest the Athenians coming “should not permit them (to remain neutral): or that the Thebans, as comprehended” &c. Göll.]

[1 ][No “alteration”. The Platæans, pressed by the Thebans, offered themselves (A.C.520) to Cleomenes, king of Sparta: who told them, the Lacedæmonians were too far off to aid them in case of invasion, and bade them go to the Athenians; intending to embroil the latter with the Thebans. The Platæans thereupon sat down as suppliants at the altar of the twelve gods, whereat the Athenians were sacrificing, and gave themselves to the Athenians. Herod. vi. 108. This is the league here appealed to.]

[1 ][“Whosoever possess the land Platæis.” Plura loca scriptorum veterum, in quibus urbes vel regiones ἔχειν dicuntur Dii, in quorum tutela eæ sunt, lege apud Spanheim. hymn. ad Pallad. Duk.]

[2 ][“Against the city.”]

[3 ][“They built up the mound on both sides, by placing against them a wooden frame–work to serve for walls, and keep the earth from falling much away”. ϕορμηδὸν, a frame like mat–work, the timbers crossing each other at right angles. See iv. 48. The palisade was made with δένδρ̧εσιν, fruit–trees; which grow in in the plain. The frame was made with timber trees, ξύλα; which there grow only on the tops of the hills. Arnold.]

[1 ][This is the Scholiast’s sense of ξεναγοὶ. But all seem agreed that it means here, “Lacedæmonian commanders of the contingents of the several allied states.” See Muell. Dor. iii. 12, Hermann, Antiq. § 34. In fact, what mercenaries had the Lacedæmonians, or any of their allies, at this time? ξυνεϕεστῶτες means “joined in that command with the officers of each state”: Goeller.]

[2 ][“The mound was raised”.]

[3 ][Hides, both raw and dressed.]

[4 ][That the mound was not built close to the wall, appears from ch. 77; where the interval between the two is said to be filled with faggots. But its sides must have been somewhat inclined, in order to resist the pressure outwards. So that the foot of the mound extended to the wall.]

[1 ][When they found it out, “ramming clay into cases of wattled reeds, they cast them into the hole, that it might not moulder and be carried away like the earth.”]

[2 ][“From the low (or, city) wall.]

[3 ][“And shook down a considerable part of it.” Goeller]

[1 ][“Seeing their engines availed not, and that a wall was raised against their mound, and thinking it impossible to take the city under present difficulties, began preparing to enclose it with a wall.” Valla.]

[2 ][“They cast them from the mound first into the space between it and the wall; which by so many hands being quickly filled, they heaped them up in the rest of the city also, as far as ever they could reach from the height of the mound.”]

[1 ][“For within, they could not get near a grat part of the city”: or, “there was a large part of the city, within which they could not approach. And had the wind &c. But, as it is reported, there fell at this time much rain” &c.]

[2 ][These words, τὸ δὲ λοιπὸν ἀϕέντες, “and dismissing the rest,” are considered doubtful, and included in brackets, by Bekker and the rest. They would hardly expose a part of their forces with the unfinished wall to an attack of the Athenians. Poppo.]

[3 ][σιτοποιοὶ: “to make their bread.” This office appears to have been assigned to the women amongst the ancient Romans as well as the Greeks. Duker. See Od. xx. 110.]

[1 ][One reading is προπεμψάντων. Bekker and the rest, προσπεμψάντων.]

[2 ][“Come to an engagement”.]

[3 ][Crusis, part of Mygdonia, according to Stephanus Byzantinus: and described by Herodotus, vii. 123, under the name of Crossæa, as part of the coast between the peninsular of Pallene and the head of the gulf of Therma. Arnold.]

[4 ][The men of arms of the Chalcideans were overcome by the Athenians: but the horsemen of the Chalcideans overcame the horsemen of the Athenians. “Now the Chalcideans had some few targettiers from Crusis; and just as the battle was over came to their help others from Olynthus”.]

[1 ][“And that the Chalcideans had not the worst before”.]

[2 ][σκευοϕόροις: the baggage: usually rendered by Hobbes, “the carriages”.]

[1 ][The regular term of this command at Sparta, at least a few years later, was one year. See viii. 20, 25. It was an office of great power and dignity, and is spoken of by Aristotle as a sort of second royalty. Pol. ii. 7. Arnold.]

[2 ][“But were led by Photyus and Nicanor, of the race which exclusively had the government, with the command for a year”. The ἀρχικὸν γένος is exemplified in the Heracleidæ at Sparta, the Alcmæonidæ at Athens in the time of the aristocracy, the Bacchidæ at Corinth, &c. Arnold.]

[1 ][“Arrived too late”.]

[2 ][“They rifled Limnæa &c”.]

[1 ][αὐτοβοεὶ: at the first onset always rendered by Hobbes, “by their clamour”.]

[2 ][Aware “of their approach”.]

[1 ][“From a distance”.]

[2 ][“Without their armour”.]

[3 ][“In haste”.]

[1 ][“And their secretly bringing to (at Patræ) in the night, did not escape the notice of the Athenians”. This was a stratagem of the Corinthians, that they might slip across the gulf when the Athenians had shot too far a–head.]

[2 ][διὰ βραχέος: “might quickly be out and at hand &c.” Swift vessels would be of no use for getting through a narrow passage.]

[3 ][“Expected”.]

[1 ][“Listened neither to orders nor to the keleustes”. It was the duty of the κελευστὴς to sing to the rowers that they might keep time, and to cheer and encourage them in their work (see vii. 70). The Scholiast on Aristoph. Acharn. says, they had also to see that the men baked their bread, and contributed fairly to the mess, and that none of the rations were improperly disposed of. Arnold. ἀναϕέρειν, “to bear up their oars”, probably means “to avoid catching crabs”, as the nautical phrase is.]

[2 ][“And afterwards disabled all, wheresoever they went”]

[3 ][“And Dyme in Achaia”. In Achaia is added, to distinguish Dyme from the town in Thrace.]

[1 ][“And taken up most &c.”]

[2 ][“From Dyme and Patræ to Cyllene”.]

[3 ][See ch. 80.]

[4 ][“Sent to Cnemus, to be of his council in the direction of the fleet, Timocrates &c”. See v. 63.]

[5 ][“For this affair appeared to the Lacedæmonians (the more so, that this was their first essay in fighting at sea) to be much against reason”. Their first trial, that is, with the Athenians: for they had a fleet before this.]

[6 ][Who being arrived, “joined with Cnemus in intimating” &c.]

[1 ][Now is an addition: the enmity was of long standing between Athens and the Cydonians, not only as Dorians, but as Æginetans. Long before the great Doric migration, Dorians had found their way from their early settlements at the foot of Olympus to Crete. Ulysses (Od. xix. 174.) describes the ninety cities of Crete as inhabited by natives, Achæans, Cydones, three–tribed Dorians, and Pelasgians. Cydonia itself was built, according to Herodotus, by Samians, that is, by Ionians: who in six years (A.C. 519) were expelled by Æginetans. He relates the origin of the enmity between Ægina and Athens: better explained, perhaps, by the jealousy of two adjacent naval and commercial powers. The difficulty of doubling the promontory of Malea, made Ægina the channel of the trade with Peloponnesus: which on her subjugation betook itself to Cythera (iv. 53). The extent of her trade may be judged of by the fact, that money was first stamped in Ægina (A.C. 749, Müll. Dor. ii. App. ix.): and that until A.C. 369, when superseded by the Athenian, her coin was the standard in Greece, Crete, and Italy. Not long before the invasion of Darius, the Athenians were no match at sea for the Æginetans, and for the purpose of an attack Corinth gave them twenty ships: and they still were beaten. It was not till they could command the navies of their allies (i. 96), that they were able to remove the λήμην τοῦ Πειραιῶς, the eye–sore of the Peiræus. The Æginetans were accused by them before the Spartans, of following the example of all the islanders, in offering earth and water, there being no allied fleet to defend them, to Darius: but were adjudged afterwards, nevertheless, to have surpassed all the Grecians in valour at the battle of Salamis. On the morning of that battle, the allies sent to Ægina, the birth–place of the Æacidæ, to invoke the aid of the heros of that family. Herod. iii. 59; v. 82; vi. 49, 89; viii. 64. The dread therefore of a formidable rival in renown as well as in power, was the real cause of the implacable hatred displayed by the Athenians here and in chap. 27.]

[1 ][“Having prepared themselves for action, sailed to Panormus”.]

[2 ]“The Peloponnesians therefore, when they saw the Athenians also (go to Rhium), they too stationed themselves with seventy–seven ships at Rhium in Achaia, which is at no great distance from Panormus, where were their land forces. And for six or seven days they lay opposite each other, exercising and preparing for action, &c”.]

[3 ][To fight “in a narrow space”.]

[1 ][By unskilfulness, “it being our first trial at a sea–fight”.]

[2 ][“Nor is it just, that that part of our mind (our fortitude) which was not overcome by force, but has within itself some ground of justification, should be dejected &c.: but we ought to think that it is common for men to fail through fortune, but that in mind men of courage are by rights ever the same, and that whilst offering inexperience as an excuse, if their courage remain, they are not likely to have been cowards in aught”. Goeller. Commentators differ much about this passage.]

[1 ][“And whatever were our errors on the former occasion, these very same in addition, will now &c.]

[2 ][“Each do your duty in your several stations”. Arnold.]

[3 ][“Not worse”: meaning, better.]

[1 ][This conceit (or confidence) of themselves, “as Athenians to decline no number” &c.]

[2 ][“To make them call to mind their audacity”.]

[3 ][“And next, as to that they especially trust to in attacking us, that courage is natural to them, they are bold only through their skill in land–fighting: for being there mostly successful, they think too that it (their courage) will do the like for them in naval fighting too.” Goell.]

[4 ][This sense would be good, if ἔσμεν, “we are &c.” would admit of it. “And from being each of us in one particular more skilled than the other, we are (on this occasion) the more confident of the two.”]

[1 ][“For the sake of their own (the Lacedæmonians’) glory”.]

[2 ][τι ἄξιον τοῦ παρὰ πολὺ: “something worthy of the former signal victory”. Goeller.]

[3 ][“For most men when fairly matched, go into battle, as these do, relying more upon their strength than upon their courage. But they that out of (with) much inferior numbers go to battle, and at the same time not upon compulsion, do not adventure without having in their designs some great security to rely on”. Goell. Arn.]

[4 ][“Which they considering.”]

[5 ][“We are free”: insinuating the contrary of the Lacedæmonians.”]

[1 ][διέκπλοι οὐδὲ ἀναϛροϕαὶ. See i. 49. Arnold considers the ἀναϛροϕή to embrace both the ἀνάκρουσις, the rowing astern to get clear of the enemy, for want of space; and also the περίπλους, gaining the requisite distance for a second onset by a circuit, where space admitted it.]

[2 ][“Especially as we are watching one another’s movements within so short a distance”: Göll. Arn.]

[3 ][“For the sea”: that is, “for their dominion over the sea”. Portus.]

[1 ][“Towards” their own land.]

[2 ][Should sail “towards it”.]

[3 ][“And with closed front sailed down” &c. μετωπηδὸν means, they sailed down in line, and not as they were before sailing, in column.]

[4 ][“Into the wide part of the gulf”. They were sailing from the sea.]

[5 ][διέϕθειραν, which Hobbes mostly renders sunk, and a little below overcame, means rendered useless or disabled.]

[1 ][ἤδη, the common reading, is omitted by Bekker and Arnold: “and one they took with the men” &c.]

[2 ][The Messenians settled in Naupactus by the Athenians in i. 103: frequently mentioned hereafter. See iv. 41.]

[3 ][See ch. 90, note 4.]

[4 ][τὴν: “the one”. See above.]

[5 ][“Strikes in midships” &c.]

[1 ][“The charge of the enemy”.]

[2 ][“At one signal with a shout”]

[3 ][“The Lacedæmonian”. One of the commanders: see chap. 85.]

[4 ][Ibi erat Neptuni templum, ut docet Strabo. lib. 8. Hudson.]

[1 ][“To hazard an attempt”. The words “the haven” are added, to distinguish it from the city of the same name. Goeller.]

[2 ]It may be hence gathered, that in the galleys of old there was but one man to one oar. [τροπωτήρ: a thong, not for the oar to turn in: but a thong of some sort, wound round the upper end of the oar, for the purpose, first, of increasing its weight, that it might balance that of the other longer end; and next, of acting as a nut, to prevent the oar from slipping through the hole in the vessel’s side, in which it acted. See appendix to Arnold’s Thucydides, vol. i.]

[1 ][Nor was there any imagination that the enemy &c.; “since (they thought not) that they could dare to do it openly and deliberately, nor, if they did conceive such a thing, that they would not have had notice of it beforehand”.]

[2 ][“The promontory”: viz. Budorum. There was a fort of the same name: see ch. 94. There had been of old a long and severe struggle between Megara and Athens for the possession of Salamis: which, after being awarded by five Spartan arbitrators, in obedience to ancient traditions, to Athens, was, with Nisæaaga, lost in the troubles following the banishment of Megalces: but was soon regained, and ever after remained with Athens. Müll. Dor. i. 8.]

[3 ]Fires lifted up, if they were still, signified friends coming; if waved, enemies. [“By this time”, is an addition. Fires were most likely raised on the fort being taken.]

[1 ][Which, “had they been minded not to waste their time”, nor &c.]

[2 ][διὰ χρόνου: were “now first after a long time put into the sea”: that is, it was a long time since they had been in the water. Göll.]

[3 ][The Odrysian. See chap. 29.]

[1 ][“He had not performed”.]

[2 ][ἐντὸς: “within the mountains Hæmus and Rhodope”. These hills form a circle.]

[3 ][“Within the Danube, and rather towards the Euxine.” The numerous colonies founded by the Ionians along the shore of this sea, occasioned the change of its ancient name, ἄξενος, the inhospitable, to its present name, the hospitable. Herm. § 78. Perhaps, like ἐυμενἰδες, the Furies, a mere euphemism.]

[4 ][Many of the Thracians &c.]

[1 ][Towards “the Pæonians, who from this point are independent”. Arnold has amended this passage, by inserting γὰρ̧ after μέχρι, and striking out οὗ before ὡρίζετο; and renders the passage thus: “and these (the Agrianes and Lææans) were the last to whom his dominion extended; for at the Graæans and Lææans &c., the empire of Sitalkes terminated towards Pæonia, the Pæonians from this point being independent”. The following are his observations upon the origin of the name Graii and Græci amongst the Romans”: “The Pæonians, according to Herodotus, were of the same race as the Teucrians of Troy; both belonging to that stock which overspread western Asia, Greece, and Italy in the earliest times, commonly called the Pelasgians. Now it is curious to find amongst the Pæonians the name of the Graæans, evidently the same word as the Latin Graii, the name by which the Romans designated the Hellenians. They applied it to the Hellenians, because they had been used to apply it to the Pelasgian inhabitants of Greece before the Hellenians rose to eminence, and because, according to Aristotle, the Hellenians, when living in Epirus, were called Græci. Niebühr supposes that the same name may also have been borne by the Pelasgi of Italy.”]

[1 ]στρογγύλη, a ship that useth only sails, of the round form of building, and serving for burthen, in distinction to galleys, and all other vessels of the long form of building, serving for the wars. [Non credo scriptores Latinos eas naves, quas Græci στρογγύλας vocant, rotundas dicere. Est autem in ea re sequendus usus veterum, qui has onerarias appellare maluerunt. Duker.]

[2 ][With a continual wind aft.]

[3 ][“The tribute in gold and silver from all the barbarous nations and the Grecian cities, which they paid under Seuthes, (who reigned after Sitalkes, and made the most of it), was of the value of about four hundred talents of silver.”]

[4 ][παραδυναϛεύουσι: small lords, or quasi reguli, next to the king: as Seuthes to Sitalkes, ch. 101. Göll.]

[1 ][“Nevertheless according to their power, so they used it the more”.]

[2 ][That is, they are inferior in all that concerns the enjoyment of life. Goeller.]

[3 ][He had made “by cutting down the woods” when &c.]

[1 ][“The free nation”. See ch. 96.]

[2 ][“For to the Macedonians belong the Lyncestæ &c.: who though confederates of and subject to these Macedonians, have still” &c. The original Macedonians, a nation referred by Mueller to the Illyrian race, are supposed to have been confined, in their earliest settlements, to Maketa, a district of Orestis. That which is generally called Macedonia proper, is divided into upper and lower Macedonia. The former comprises the mountainous districts of Elimcia, Lyncestis, and Orestis: which last took its name from the mountains (ὄρη) wherein they dwelt, and not, as supposed, from the son of Agamemnon. Lower Macedonia, which appears to have been a later acquisition of the Maketai, and to have been originally called Emathia, comprised the districts of Edessa and Berœa. This part, inhabited originally by Pelasgians, fell into the power of the Temenidæ, an Argive family; whose conquests are here related by Thucydides: and it is of this part he speaks, when he says the upper Macedonians were “subject to these Macedonians”, though still independent in their government. See Müll., Maked. Herm. Antiq. § 15.]

[1 ][“The hollow of Pieria”.]

[2 ][“These Macedonians”.]

[3 ][“But those now in the country” were built &c.]

[1 ][Besieged Europus.]

[2 ][Pella, supposed to have superseded Edessa as the seat of the Macedonian government, was at this time the residence and treasury of the Macedonian kings. It lay about 120 stadia from the sea, close to the lake of the river Lydias, on a small eminence in the midst of the swamps, at all times quite impassable, formed by the waters of that river and of the Axius. On an artificial mole, connected with the city only by a bridge, stood the treasury: serving the purpose also either of a prison, or of a retrcat: see Livy, xliv. 46.]

[1 ][In Thessaly, as in Macedonia, is seen at work the cause which in time effected an entire change in the condition of Greece: namely, the constant pressure of the nations of the north towards the south: the Dorian invasion of Peloponnesus being only the last of these migrations. Emathia, Thessaly, and a great part of Epirus, inhabited once by the Pelasgi, a Grecian race spread over those countries, and Greece itself wherever early civilization existed, were again reduced to barbarism by the irruption of the Illyrian population. Shortly after the Trojan war the Thessalians, a race from Thesprotia, of Illyrian origin, seized on the plains between the Perrhæbians and the Phthiotan Achæans, comprehending the valley of the Peneus (the ancient Ἄργος Πελασγικὸν) and the district called Αἰολίς (Herod. vii. 176). The ancient Pelasgo–Æolian inhabitants became, under the name Penestæ (from πένης, poor), a race of bondsmen similar to the Laconian Helots, and to their masters equally troublesome. The invaders also made tributaries of the Perrhæbians, Magnesians, and Achæans: but these nations retained a certain degree of independence, and even remained members of the Amphictyonic council. The Thessalians can scarcely be said to have had any general government: the cities, constantly at war amongst themselves, were each under the control of some great family, as Larissa of the Aleuadæ, Cranon of the Scopadæ, &c. Thucydides (iv. 78) tells us, the people were ever friendly to the Athenians: but had so little influence on the government, that they could not prevent Brasidas from marching through Thessaly. They were brave, and had greater advantages than perhaps any other state in Greece: and yet their history is a blank in that of Greece. See Müll. Dor. iii. 14. Herm. Gr. Antiq. § 15. 178.]

[1 ][“Are ever at all times” &c.]

[2 ][Æniadæ.]

[3 ][Many of them are in fact united to the mainland. Arnold.]

[4 ][The islands stand thick, “and are one with another the means of holding together the alluvial soil, so that it spreads not”; lying, &c.]

[1 ][“To support life”.]

[2 ][This winter.]