Book 6

1 The same winter the Athenians wanted to sail again to Sicily, with a larger force than the one under Laches and Eurymedon,¹ and subdue it if they could. Most of them knew nothing of the size of the island or of the number of its inhabitants, Hellenes and barbarians alike, and did not realize that they were taking on a war not much smaller than their war against the Peloponnesians. For the voyage around Sicily takes a merchant ship not much less than eight days, and yet, large as it is, it is kept from being part of the mainland only by some twenty stades of sea.

2 It was settled in ancient times as follows, and these are all the peoples that held it. The oldest inhabitants are said to have been the Cyclopes and the Laestrygonians, who lived in one part of the country; but I cannot say what race they were, or where they came from, or where they went. Let what the poets have said be enough, and whatever each man happens to know of them. After them the Sicanians appear to have been the first settlers. By their own account they were there even earlier, being sprung from the soil; but the truth, as it is found, is that they were Iberians, driven out by the Ligurians from the river Sicanus in Iberia. From them the island was then called Sicania; before that its name had been Trinacria. They still live today in the western part of Sicily. When Ilium was taken, some of the Trojans escaped the Achaeans and came by ship to Sicily; they settled next to the Sicanians, and all together they were called Elymians, and their cities were Eryx and Egesta. Some Phocians also settled with them, men returning from Troy who were carried by a storm first to Libya and from there to Sicily. The Sicels crossed into Sicily from Italy, where they had been living, fleeing the Opicans; they crossed, as is likely and as is said, on rafts, waiting for the wind to come down the strait, though they may also have sailed over in some other way. There are Sicels in Italy even now, and the country got its name Italy from Italus, a king of the Sicels who bore that name. They came into Sicily as a large army, defeated the Sicanians in battle, and drove them back to the southern and western parts of it; they had the island called Sicily instead of Sicania, and they settled and held the best of the land for nearly three hundred years after their crossing, before Hellenes came to Sicily; even now they hold the center and the north of the island. Phoenicians too lived all around Sicily, having taken headlands on the sea and the small islands lying offshore for the sake of trade with the Sicels. But when the Hellenes began to sail in by sea in large numbers, they abandoned most of these places and gathered together in Motya, Soloeis, and Panormus, near the Elymians, where they lived, trusting in their alliance with the Elymians and in the fact that from there Carthage is the shortest voyage from Sicily. These, then, were the barbarians who lived in Sicily, and this was how they settled it.

3 Of the Hellenes, the first were Chalcidians from Euboea, who sailed with Thucles as founder and settled Naxos, and set up the altar of Apollo the Founder, which now stands outside the city; on it the sacred envoys sacrifice first whenever they sail from Sicily. Syracuse was founded the next year by Archias, one of the Heraclids, from Corinth, after he had first driven the Sicels out of the island on which the inner city now stands, though it is no longer surrounded by water; in time the outer city was also walled in and became populous. Thucles and the Chalcidians set out from Naxos in the fifth year after the founding of Syracuse, drove out the Sicels by war, and founded Leontini, and after it Catana; but the Catanians themselves chose Evarchus as their founder.

4 About the same time Lamis also arrived in Sicily, leading a colony from Megara. He settled a place called Trotilus above the river Pantacyas; from there he later joined the Chalcidians at Leontini as fellow citizens for a short time, was driven out by them, founded Thapsus, and died. The rest left Thapsus and, when Hyblon, a Sicel king, handed over the land and guided them to it, they founded the settlement of the Megarians called Hyblaean. After living there two hundred and forty-five years they were driven out of the city and the country by Gelon, tyrant of the Syracusans. But before they were driven out, a hundred years after their own settlement, they sent Pamillus and founded Selinus; he had come from Megara, their mother city, and joined them in settling it. Gela was founded jointly by Antiphemus from Rhodes and Entimus from Crete, who brought settlers, in the forty-fifth year after the founding of Syracuse. The city took its name from the river Gela, but the place where the city now stands, which was the first to be walled, is called Lindii; and the institutions given them were Dorian. Very nearly a hundred and eight years after their own settlement the Geloans founded Acragas, naming the city after the river Acragas; they made Aristonous and Pystilus its founders and gave it the institutions of Gela. Zancle was first settled by pirates who came from Cumae, the Chalcidian city in Opicia; later a large body came also from Chalcis and the rest of Euboea and shared the land with them. Its founders were Perieres and Crataemenes, the one from Cumae, the other from Chalcis. Its name at first was Zancle, given it by the Sicels because the place is shaped like a sickle (the Sicels call a sickle zanclon). Later these settlers were driven out by Samians and other Ionians, who had put in at Sicily fleeing the Medes; and not long afterward Anaxilas, tyrant of Rhegium, drove out the Samians, settled the city himself with a mixed population, and renamed it Messene, after his own original homeland.

5 Himera was settled from Zancle by Euclides, Simus, and Sacon. Most of those who came to the colony were Chalcidians, but exiles from Syracuse who had been defeated in civil strife, called the Myletidae, settled with them; the dialect became a blend of Chalcidian and Doric, but the Chalcidian institutions prevailed. Acrae and Casmenae were settled by the Syracusans, Acrae seventy years after Syracuse, Casmenae nearly twenty years after Acrae. Camarina was first settled by the Syracusans, very nearly a hundred and thirty-five years after the founding of Syracuse; its founders were Dascon and Menecolus. When the Camarinaeans had been driven out in war by the Syracusans for revolting, Hippocrates, tyrant of Gela, at a later time received the land of the Camarinaeans as ransom for some Syracusan prisoners, became founder himself, and resettled Camarina. Once more it was depopulated, by Gelon, and it was settled for the third time by the Geloans.

6 So many were the peoples, Hellenic and barbarian, that inhabited Sicily, and such was the size of the island against which the Athenians were bent on sending an expedition. By the truest cause, they were aiming to rule the whole of it; at the same time they wished, as it sounded well, to help their own kinsmen and the allies they had gained there. What urged them on most of all were envoys from Egesta, who were in Athens and kept calling on them more and more urgently. The Egestaeans bordered on the Selinuntines and had gone to war with them over certain questions of marriage and over disputed land, and the Selinuntines had brought in the Syracusans as allies and were pressing them hard in the war by land and by sea. So the Egestaeans reminded the Athenians of the alliance made with the Leontines in the time of Laches and the earlier war, and begged them to send ships to their aid. They said many other things, but the heart of it was this: if the Syracusans were left unpunished for having driven out the Leontines, and went on to destroy the allies Athens still had and to get the whole power of Sicily into their own hands, there was a danger that one day they would come with a great force, Dorians helping Dorians by kinship and colonists helping the Peloponnesians who had sent them out, and would join in pulling down the power of Athens as well. It would be prudent, then, to stand against the Syracusans with the allies who were left, especially since the Egestaeans would provide enough money for the war. The Athenians heard these arguments in their assemblies, the Egestaeans and those who spoke on their side repeating them often, and voted first to send envoys to Egesta to see whether the money was there, as they claimed, in the public treasury and in the temples, and at the same time to find out how the war against the Selinuntines stood.

7 So the Athenian envoys were sent off to Sicily. The same winter the Lacedaemonians and their allies, except the Corinthians, marched into the Argive land, ravaged a small part of it, and carried off some grain in carts they had brought. They settled the Argive exiles at Orneae, left them a few men from the rest of the army, made a truce for a certain time on the terms that the Orneates and the Argives should not harm each other’s land, and went home with the army. Not long afterward the Athenians came with thirty ships and six hundred hoplites, and the Argives marched out in full force with them and besieged the men in Orneae for one day; but at nightfall, while the army was bivouacked at some distance, the men in Orneae slipped away. The next day, when the Argives realized it, they razed Orneae and went back, and the Athenians afterward went home with their ships. The Athenians also brought cavalry by sea to Methone, on the border of Macedonia, both their own horsemen and the Macedonian exiles who were with them, and raided the country of Perdiccas. The Lacedaemonians sent to the Chalcidians in Thrace, who were keeping a ten-day truce with the Athenians, and told them to join Perdiccas in the war; but they refused. So the winter ended, and with it the sixteenth year of this war, which Thucydides recorded.

8 The following summer, at the beginning of spring, the Athenian envoys came back from Sicily, and the Egestaeans with them, bringing sixty talents of uncoined silver as a month’s pay for sixty ships, which they meant to ask the Athenians to send. The Athenians held an assembly and heard from the Egestaeans and from their own envoys much that was attractive and untrue, and in particular that the money was ready in great quantity in the temples and in the treasury. They voted to send sixty ships to Sicily, with Alcibiades son of Cleinias, Nicias son of Niceratus, and Lamachus son of Xenophanes as generals with full powers: they were to help the Egestaeans against the Selinuntines, to resettle the Leontines as well if the war went well for them, and to manage everything else in Sicily as they judged best for the Athenians. On the fifth day after this another assembly was held, on how the fleet should be equipped as quickly as possible and on voting the generals anything further they needed for the expedition. Nicias had been chosen to command against his will; he thought the city had not decided rightly but was reaching for the whole of Sicily, a great undertaking, on a slight and fair-sounding pretext. He came forward wanting to turn them back, and advised the Athenians as follows.

9 “This assembly was called to discuss our preparations, how we are to sail to Sicily. But I think we still need to consider this very question, whether it is better to send the ships at all, and not, after so brief a deliberation on matters so great, to let men of another race persuade us to take up a war that is no concern of ours. And yet I myself gain honor from such an enterprise, and I fear for my own person less than others do, though I hold that a man who takes some thought for his person and his property is just as good a citizen; such a man, for his own sake, would most want the city’s affairs to prosper too. Still, neither in the past have I ever spoken against my judgment for the sake of being preferred to others, nor will I now; I will say what I think best. Against your character my argument would be a weak one if I urged you to keep what you have and not to risk what is in hand for things unseen and still to come. That you are in a hurry at the wrong moment, and that what you have set your hearts on is not easy to win, this I will show you.

10 “I say that you are leaving many enemies here behind you and want to sail there and bring more of them here. You may think that the treaty you have made gives you some security. As long as you keep quiet it will remain a treaty in name (for that is how men here and on the other side have managed it); but if we suffer a defeat anywhere with a sizable force, our enemies will be quick to attack us. In the first place, they came to terms under pressure of disaster and from a more shameful position than ours, by necessity; and in the second place, there are many points in the treaty itself that we dispute. Some, and not the weakest, have not yet accepted even this agreement: some are at open war with us, and others, because the Lacedaemonians are still keeping quiet, are themselves held back only by ten-day truces. And very likely, if they found our power divided, which is just what we are now hurrying to do, they would join in attacking us along with the Sicilian Greeks, whose alliance they would earlier have valued above many others. So a man must consider these things, and not think it right to run risks while the city is still unsettled, or to reach for another empire before we have secured the one we have. For the Chalcidians in Thrace, after all these years in revolt from us, are still unsubdued, and others on the mainlands are of doubtful loyalty. Yet we rush to help the Egestaeans, because they are our allies, if you please, and are being wronged, while we still put off punishing those who long ago revolted and are wronging us.

11 “Yet the Chalcidians, if we subdued them, we could hold; the Sicilians, even if we conquered them, we could govern only with difficulty, they are so far off and so many. It is folly to go against men whom you cannot hold if you conquer them, and if you fail, you will not be where you were before you made the attempt. And as things stand now, it seems to me, the Sicilian Greeks would be even less dangerous to us if the Syracusans ruled them, which is the prospect the Egestaeans most try to frighten us with. As things are, they might perhaps come against us, one city or another, to oblige the Lacedaemonians; but if Syracuse ruled them, it is not likely that one empire would march against another. For in whatever way they might take ours away from us with the Peloponnesians, it is likely their own would be pulled down by the same people in the same way. The Hellenes there would be most impressed by us if we did not come at all, and next if we showed our power and left again soon; for we all know that what is admired most is what is farthest off and least gives its reputation a trial. But if we suffered any setback, they would very quickly despise us and join our enemies here in attacking us. This is just what has happened to you, Athenians, with the Lacedaemonians and their allies: because you have come out on top, contrary to your expectations, in what you feared at first, you now despise them and are reaching for Sicily as well. But one should not be elated by the misfortunes of one’s opponents; one should take confidence only after mastering their plans. And you should not think that the Lacedaemonians have anything else in mind, because of their disgrace, than how even now, if they can, they may trip us up and repair their own discredit, the more so since they care most and have cared longest about a reputation for courage. So our contest, if we are wise, is not over the Egestaeans in Sicily, who are barbarians, but over how to guard ourselves keenly against a city that is plotting against us through oligarchy.

12 “We must also remember that we have only lately had a little respite from a great plague and from war, so that we have recovered somewhat in money and in men. It is right to spend these here on ourselves, and not on these exiles who beg for help, men whose interest it is to lie well and to make the risk their neighbor’s, offering nothing themselves but words, and who, if they succeed, show no proper gratitude, and if they fail somewhere, bring their friends down with them. And if anyone, delighted to have been chosen to command, urges you to sail, looking only to his own interest, especially since he is still too young to command, so that he may be admired for his horse breeding and, since that is costly, make some profit from his command, do not give this man the chance to make a private show of himself at the city’s risk. Consider that such men do harm to the public interest while they squander their own, and that the matter is a great one, not the sort for a young man to decide and rush into.

13 “When I see men sitting here now at the side of this same man, summoned by him, I am afraid; and I summon the older men in turn not to be shamed, if any of them is sitting next to one of these, into fearing that they will be thought cowards if they do not vote for war. Let them not, as these young men might, be sick with longing for what is far away, knowing that very little is achieved by desire and most by foresight. For the sake of their country, which is now running the greatest risk it has ever run, let them raise their hands against it and vote that the Sicilian Greeks, keeping the boundaries they now have with us, which no one can find fault with, the Ionian Gulf if one sails along the coast, the Sicilian Sea if one sails across the open water, shall enjoy their own possessions and settle their own disputes among themselves. And to the Egestaeans in particular let us say that since they began their war with the Selinuntines without the Athenians, they should end it by themselves as well. And in the future let us not make allies, as we usually do, whom we must help when they are in trouble but from whom we shall get no help when we ourselves need it.

14 “And you, president,² if you think it your duty to care for the city and wish to be a good citizen, put the question to the vote and lay the matter before the Athenians again. If you are afraid to put it to the vote a second time, consider that with so many witnesses you would not be blamed for breaking the law, but would become the physician of a city that has decided badly; and that this is what it means to govern well: to do your country as much good as you can, or at least, of your own will, to do it no harm.”

15 Such was Nicias’ speech. Of the Athenians who came forward, most urged them to make the expedition and not to undo what had been voted, though some spoke against it. The man who pressed for the expedition most eagerly was Alcibiades son of Cleinias. He wanted to oppose Nicias, with whom he was at odds on other political questions as well and who had referred to him slanderously; above all, he was eager to be general, and he hoped to take Sicily and Carthage through his own efforts and, if he succeeded, to benefit his private fortunes in money and reputation at the same time. For he stood high in the esteem of the citizens, and his desires were larger than his actual property could support, both in horse breeding and in his other expenses. This in fact did as much as anything to destroy the city of the Athenians later. For the many were alarmed at the scale of his lawlessness in his own person and way of life, and of the ambition he showed in every single thing he took part in, and they became his enemies as a man who wanted to be tyrant; and though in public he managed the conduct of the war excellently, in private each of them was offended by his habits, and they entrusted affairs to others and before long brought the city down. At this time, then, he came forward and advised the Athenians as follows.

16 “It belongs to me more than to others, Athenians, to command (I must begin with this, since Nicias has attacked me), and I think, too, that I am worthy of it. The things for which I am cried down bring glory to my ancestors and to me, and benefit to my country as well. The Hellenes, who had hoped that our city was worn out by the war, came to think it even greater than its power because of the magnificence of my embassy to Olympia: I entered seven chariots, more than any private man had ever entered before, and I won, and came in second and fourth, and provided everything else in a manner worthy of the victory. By custom such things bring honor, and from what is done, power too is inferred. Again, whatever splendor I display in the city in paying for choruses or in other ways naturally arouses the envy of the citizens, but to foreigners this too looks like strength. And it is no useless folly when a man at his own expense benefits not only himself but the city. Nor is it unjust for one who thinks highly of himself not to be on an equal footing with others, since the man who fares badly does not share his misfortune equally with anyone. Just as, when we are unfortunate, no one even greets us, so let a man likewise put up with being looked down on by the fortunate, or else let him deal out equal measure and claim equal measure in return. I know that such men, and all who have stood out in brilliance of any kind, are resented in their own lifetimes, most of all by their equals, and then by others too who have dealings with them; but they leave to later generations a claim of kinship with them, even where there is none, and to whatever country they belong, a boast that they were not foreigners or men who failed, but its own sons and men who did great things. This is what I aim at, and this is why my private life is cried down; but look at my handling of public affairs and see whether it is worse than anyone’s. I brought together the strongest powers of the Peloponnese, without great danger or expense to you, and forced the Lacedaemonians to stake everything on a single day at Mantinea; and though they came out of the battle victorious, even now they have not recovered their confidence.

17 “That is what my youth and my folly, supposedly so unnatural, achieved: they dealt with the power of the Peloponnesians in fitting words, made my passion inspire trust, and won them over. Do not be afraid of it now. While I am still in its flower and Nicias is thought fortunate, make full use of what each of us has to offer. Do not change your minds about the voyage to Sicily on the ground that it will be against a great power. Their cities are populous, but with mixed rabbles, and they easily change and take in new citizens. Because of this no one there is equipped, as for a homeland of his own, either with arms for his person or with proper establishments on the land; each man provides himself with whatever he thinks he can take from the common stock, by persuasive speaking or by faction, and with which, if he fails, he can go and live in another country. It is not likely that a crowd like this will listen to a proposal with one mind or turn to action together; they would quickly come over one by one if something pleasing were said to them, especially if they are in civil strife, as we hear they are. Nor, in fact, do they have as many hoplites as they boast, any more than the other Hellenes proved to be as many as each counted themselves; Hellas was badly deceived on this point and in this war has barely been adequately armed. Such, then, from what I hear, is the state of things there, and it will be even easier for us (for we will have many barbarians who, out of hatred of the Syracusans, will join us in attacking them); and things here will not hinder us, if you take the right decision. Our fathers had these same enemies whom, they tell us, we would leave behind us if we sailed, and the Mede as their enemy besides, and they won the empire, strong in nothing else than the superiority of their navy. And now the Peloponnesians have never had less hope against us; and even if they are at the height of their strength, they are able to invade our land even if we do not sail, but with their navy they could do us no harm, for we will leave behind a navy that is a match for theirs.

18 “So what reasonable argument could we give for holding back ourselves, or what excuse could we make to our allies there for not helping them? We are bound to defend them, since we have sworn oaths to them, and not to object that they have not helped us either. We did not take them into alliance so that they might come here to help us in turn, but so that they might harass our enemies there and keep them from coming here against us. This is how we won our empire, and how all others who have held empire have won theirs: by readily coming to the aid of whoever called on them, barbarians or Hellenes. If everyone kept quiet, or picked and chose by race whom they ought to help, we would add little to the empire and would rather risk losing the empire itself. One does not only defend oneself against a superior power when it attacks; one strikes first to keep it from attacking. And we cannot set a measure, like a careful steward, on how much we want to rule. Since we are placed where we are, we must of necessity plot against some and not let go of others, because there is a danger of being ruled ourselves by others if we do not rule others. You cannot look at a quiet life from the same point of view as others do, unless you are also going to change your ways to match theirs. Let us reckon, then, that we will increase our power here if we go there, and let us make the voyage, so that we may lay low the pride of the Peloponnesians, when they see that we disdain the present quiet and sail even against Sicily. At the same time we will either, as is likely, become rulers of all Hellas when the Greeks there are added to us, or at least we will do damage to the Syracusans, which will benefit both ourselves and our allies. Our ships will provide the security, whether to stay, if things go well, or to leave; for we will be masters of the sea against all the Sicilian Greeks together. Do not let Nicias’ policy of doing nothing, and his setting the young against the old, turn you from your course. Follow our accustomed order: just as our fathers, young and old deliberating together, raised our affairs to this height, so now try in the same way to carry the city forward. Consider that youth and age can do nothing without each other, but that the common, the middling, and the most refined, blended together, are strongest; and that the city, if it keeps quiet, will wear itself out upon itself like anything else, and its skill in all things will grow old; but in constant struggle it will always be adding to its experience and will grow more used to defending itself not in word but in deed. In short, my judgment is that a city that is not inactive would very quickly be ruined, I think, by a change to inactivity, and that those men live most securely who govern according to their present character and laws, even if these are worse, with the least deviation.”

19 So spoke Alcibiades. When the Athenians had heard him, and the Egestaeans and the Leontine exiles, who came forward and begged them, reminding them of their oaths and entreating them to help, they were far more eager than before to make the expedition. Nicias saw that he could no longer turn them back with the same arguments, but thought he might perhaps change their minds by the size of the force, if he demanded a large one; so he came forward again and spoke to them as follows.

20 “Since I see that you are bent on the expedition at all costs, Athenians, may it turn out as we wish; but I will tell you what I think as things now stand. From what I hear, we are about to go against cities that are large, that are not subject to one another, and that have no need of a change such as a man would gladly make from forced slavery to an easier condition; they would not be likely to accept our rule in exchange for their freedom; and for one island there are a great many Greek cities. Apart from Naxos and Catana, which I expect to join us because of their kinship with the Leontines, there are seven others, equipped in every respect very much like our own power, and above all those we are chiefly sailing against, Selinus and Syracuse. They have many hoplites, archers, and javelin throwers, many triremes and the crowds to man them. They have money, some in private hands, some in the temples at Selinus, and the Syracusans also receive first fruits from certain barbarians; but where they most surpass us is that they own many horses and use grain grown at home, not imported.

21 “Against such a power we need more than a fleet and a paltry army; a large force of infantry must sail with it, if we want to do anything worthy of our design and not be shut out of the land by a large cavalry, especially if the cities band together in fear and no friends but the Egestaeans appear to furnish us with cavalry to defend ourselves against them. (It would be shameful to be forced to leave, or to send for more later, after deciding thoughtlessly at the start.) We must set out from here with a force equal to the task, knowing that we are going to sail far from our own land and to campaign on very different terms from when you came as allies among your subjects here against some enemy, where it was easy to bring in from friendly territory whatever else you needed; we will be cutting ourselves off in a land wholly foreign, from which in the four winter months it is not easy even for a messenger to come.

22 “So I think we must take many hoplites, both of our own and of our allies, from our subjects and from any in the Peloponnese whom we can persuade or win over with pay; many archers and slingers, to hold out against their cavalry; and a large superiority in ships, so that we may more easily bring in supplies. We must also take grain from here in merchant ships, wheat and parched barley, and bakers from the mills, pressed into service in proportion and paid, so that if we are held up anywhere by weather the army may have its provisions (for so large an army it will not be every city that can receive it). Everything else we must prepare as far as possible, and not depend on others; above all, we must take as much money from here as we can. As for the money from the Egestaeans, which is said to be ready there, consider that it is most likely ready only in words.

23 “For even if we go from here with a force not merely equal to theirs (except, of course, their fighting force, the hoplites) but superior in every respect, even so we will hardly be able to conquer them and to keep ourselves safe. We must think of ourselves as men going out to found a city among foreigners and enemies, who must master the country on the very first day they land, or else know that if they fail, everything will be hostile to them. This is what I fear. I know that we need to plan well in many things and to be fortunate in still more, which is hard for men; so I want to entrust myself as little as possible to fortune when I sail, and to sail with a force that, as far as one can reasonably foresee, is safe. This I believe is surest for the whole city and the means of safety for us who are going on the expedition. If anyone thinks otherwise, I resign the command to him.”

24 This was what Nicias said, thinking that by the scale of the undertaking he would either turn the Athenians back or, if he were forced to go, would in this way sail with the greatest safety. But the trouble of the preparations did not take away their desire for the voyage; they were far more eager than before, and the opposite of what he intended came about. They thought he had given good advice, and that now there would be safety in plenty. A passion to sail fell on them all alike. The older men thought they would either subdue the places they were sailing against or that so great a force could come to no harm; the men of military age longed for the sight and spectacle of a far-off land and were confident they would come back safe; the great mass of the people and the soldiers expected to get money for the present and to win an addition to the empire that would provide pay without end. So because of the excessive desire of the majority, even if anyone was not pleased, he kept quiet, afraid of seeming disloyal to the city if he voted against it.

25 At last one of the Athenians came forward, called on Nicias, and said that he should stop making excuses and delaying, and should say now, before them all, what force the Athenians were to vote him. He said, reluctantly, that he would rather consider it at leisure with his colleagues; but so far as he could tell already, they ought to sail with no fewer than a hundred triremes (of the Athenians’ own ships as many as seemed right would be troop carriers, and others must be sent for from the allies), and with no fewer than five thousand hoplites in all, Athenians and allies, and more if possible; the rest of the force would be in proportion: archers from Athens and from Crete, slingers, and anything else that seemed fitting, which they would get ready and take with them.

26 When they heard this, the Athenians at once voted that the generals should have full powers both over the size of the army and over the whole expedition, to act as they judged best. After this the preparations began. They sent to the allies and drew up muster rolls at home. The city had just recovered from the plague and from the continuous war, both in the number of young men who had grown up and in the accumulation of money because of the truce, so that everything was provided the more easily. So they were busy with their preparations.

27 Meanwhile, of the stone Herms in the city of the Athenians (these are, by local custom, the square-cut figures, many of them standing both in the doorways of private houses and in sanctuaries),³ most had their faces mutilated in a single night. No one knew who had done it, but large rewards were offered publicly to find the culprits, and they also voted that anyone who knew of any other act of impiety that had been committed, citizen, foreigner, or slave, should inform without fear. They took the affair very seriously. It seemed to be an omen for the expedition, and at the same time to have been done as part of a conspiracy for revolution and the overthrow of the democracy.

28 Information was given, then, by some resident aliens and attendants, not about the Herms, but that some other statues had been mutilated earlier by young men in drunken sport, and that the Mysteries were being performed in private houses in mockery;⁴ and among others they accused Alcibiades. These charges were taken up by the men who most resented Alcibiades because he stood in the way of their own secure leadership of the people, and who thought that if they drove him out they would be first. They magnified them and cried out that both the affair of the Mysteries and the mutilation of the Herms had been aimed at overthrowing the democracy, and that none of it had been done without him, adding as proof the general lawlessness of his habits, which was anything but democratic.

29 For the moment he defended himself against the informers’ charges, and he was ready to stand trial before sailing, if he had done any of these things (for by now the preparations had been completed), and to pay the penalty if he had done any of them, and if acquitted, to command. He protested that they should not accept slanders about him in his absence, but put him to death at once if he was guilty, and that it would be wiser not to send him out at the head of so great an army with such a charge hanging over him, before they had decided it. But his enemies feared that he would have the army’s goodwill if he were tried now, and that the people would go soft and favor him because the Argives and some of the Mantineans were joining the expedition on his account. So they tried to turn the proposal aside and put it off, bringing forward other speakers who said that for now he should sail and not hold up the departure, and that when he came back he should be tried within a fixed number of days. Their purpose was to have him recalled and brought home for trial on a graver charge, which they would more easily get up while he was away. And it was decided that Alcibiades should sail.

30 After this, when it was already midsummer, the departure for Sicily took place. Most of the allies, the grain transports, the smaller vessels, and all the rest of the force that went with them had been ordered earlier to gather at Corcyra, so that from there they might all cross the Ionian Sea together to the Iapygian headland. The Athenians themselves, and any of the allies who were present, went down to Piraeus on the appointed day at dawn and manned the ships to put out to sea. With them went down practically the whole of the rest of the population of the city, citizens and foreigners. The citizens each went to see off their own, some their friends, some their kinsmen, some their sons; and they went with hope and with lamentation at once, hope that they would make conquests, lamentation at the thought of whether they would ever see them again, when they considered how long a voyage they were being sent on from their own land.

31 At this moment, when they were now about to leave one another amid dangers, the terrors came home to them more than when they were voting to sail; and yet, with the strength they saw before them, because of the abundance of everything they looked on, the sight gave them heart again. The foreigners and the rest of the crowd came for the spectacle, as to something worth seeing and beyond belief. For this armament, the first to sail out from a single city with a Hellenic force, was the most costly and the most splendid of any up to that time. In the number of ships and hoplites, the expedition against Epidaurus under Pericles, and the same one against Potidaea under Hagnon, had been no smaller: four thousand hoplites of the Athenians themselves, three hundred cavalry, and a hundred triremes, with fifty from the Lesbians and the Chians, and many allies besides sailed with them. But they set out on a short voyage and with a poor outfit; whereas this expedition was equipped as one that would be long, and for both kinds of service, wherever it might be needed, with ships and infantry together. The fleet had been fitted out at great expense by the trierarchs and by the city. The treasury gave each sailor a drachma a day and supplied the hulls, sixty fast ships and forty troop carriers, with the best crews of petty officers for them; the trierarchs gave bonuses on top of the state pay to the topmost rowers⁵ and to the petty officers, and spent lavishly on figureheads and fittings, every one of them striving to the utmost that his own ship should stand out above all in appearance and in speed. The infantry had been picked from the best muster rolls, and the men vied with one another eagerly over their arms and their personal equipment. So it came about that there was rivalry among themselves, each in the post to which he was assigned, and that to the other Hellenes it looked more like a display of power and resources than a force against an enemy. For if anyone had reckoned up the public spending of the city and the private spending of those on the expedition: on the city’s side what it had already laid out and what it was sending with the generals; on the private side what each man had spent on his own equipment and each trierarch on his ship, and what they were still going to spend; and besides this what everyone was likely to have provided for himself as traveling money for a long campaign, apart from the state pay, and whatever any soldier or merchant took aboard for trade, it would have been found that many talents in all were being carried out of the city. The expedition became famous no less for the astonishing daring of it and the brilliance of the sight than for its overwhelming superiority to those against whom it was going, and because it was the longest voyage from home ever attempted and undertaken with the greatest hopes for the future compared with what they already had.

32 When the ships were manned and everything they meant to take with them had been put aboard, silence was signaled by the trumpet, and they offered the customary prayers before putting out, not ship by ship but all together, led by a herald. They mixed bowls of wine along the whole fleet, and the marines and the officers poured libations from cups of gold and silver. The rest of the crowd on shore, the citizens and anyone else present who wished them well, joined in the prayers. When they had sung the paean and finished the libations, they put out, sailing at first in column, and then raced one another as far as Aegina. So they hurried on to reach Corcyra, where the rest of the allied army was gathering. At Syracuse news of the expedition came in from many quarters, but for a long time none of it was believed. An assembly was held, however, and speeches of the following kind were made by various speakers, some believing the reports about the Athenian expedition, others saying the opposite; and Hermocrates son of Hermon came forward, believing that he knew the truth about it clearly, and spoke and advised them as follows.

33 “Perhaps I, like some others, will seem to you to be saying incredible things about the truth of this expedition, and I know that those who say or report what seems unbelievable not only fail to persuade but are even thought foolish. Still, I will not be frightened into holding my tongue when the city is in danger, since I am convinced that I speak with clearer knowledge than anyone else. The Athenians, though you find it hard to believe, have set out against you with a large force, both naval and infantry. Their pretext is their alliance with the Egestaeans and the resettlement of the Leontines; the truth is that they desire Sicily, and above all our city, thinking that if they held it they would easily have the rest as well. Expecting, then, that they will soon be here, consider how, with the means at hand, you can best defend yourselves against them, and do not let contempt cause you to be caught unprepared, or disbelief cause you to neglect the whole matter. And if anyone does believe it, let him not be dismayed by their daring and their power. They will not be able to do us more harm than they suffer, nor is the size of the force in which they come without advantage to us. On the contrary, it is much better for us with regard to the other Sicilian Greeks, who in their alarm will be more willing to become our allies; and if in the end we either destroy them or drive them off with nothing achieved of what they aim at (for I certainly do not fear that they will get what they expect), it will be a very fine achievement for us, and not one beyond my hopes. Few great expeditions, either of Hellenes or of barbarians, sent out far from home, have succeeded. They do not come in greater numbers than the inhabitants and their neighbors, for fear unites everyone; and if they fail in a foreign land for lack of supplies, they leave a name to those they plotted against, even if most of their failures were their own doing. That is how these very Athenians grew great, when the Mede failed unexpectedly in many things, on the strength of the name that it was Athens he had come against; and it is not beyond hope that something of the kind will happen to us.

34 “Let us take heart, then, and make our preparations here, and send to the Sicels to confirm some in their loyalty and try to make friendship and alliance with others. Let us send envoys to the rest of Sicily to show that the danger is common to all, and to Italy, so that they may either become our allies or refuse to receive the Athenians. I think it would be better to send to Carthage as well. They do not find it an unthinkable prospect; they are always afraid that the Athenians may one day come against their city. So perhaps, thinking that if they let this place go they too will be in trouble, they would be willing to help us, secretly or openly or in one way or another. They are the most capable of anyone now living, if they choose, for they have the most gold and silver, and it is from this that war and everything else prospers. Let us send also to Lacedaemon and to Corinth, asking them to come here quickly to our help and to stir up the war over there. There is one thing which I think the most timely of all, but which you, from your habitual quietness, would be least ready to agree to at once; still, I will say it. If all of us Sicilian Greeks, or if not all, then as many as possible with us, would launch our whole existing navy with two months’ provisions and meet the Athenians at Tarentum and the Iapygian headland, and show them that before they fight for Sicily they will first have to fight for their crossing of the Ionian Sea, we would strike them with the greatest alarm and make them reckon that we are setting out as guards from friendly territory (for Tarentum receives us), while they have a wide stretch of open sea to cross with all their armament. It is hard, on so long a voyage, to keep formation, and the fleet would be easy for us to attack, coming on slowly and in small groups. If, on the other hand, they lightened their fast ships and attacked us in a more compact body, then, if they used their oars, we would fall on them when they were exhausted, and if we thought it unwise, we could withdraw to Tarentum. They, having crossed with few provisions, as if for a sea battle, would be at a loss in deserted country; if they stayed, they would be blockaded, and if they tried to sail along the coast, they would leave the rest of their force behind and would lose heart, not knowing for certain whether the cities would receive them. My own view is that, faced with this reckoning, they would not even set out from Corcyra; either they would deliberate and send out scouts to find how many we are and where, and be pushed by the season into winter, or else, dismayed by the unexpected, they would give up the voyage, especially since their most experienced general, as I hear, is in command against his will and would gladly take the pretext if any sign of resolve worth the name were seen on our side. Our strength would be reported, I am sure, as greater than it is; and men’s judgments are shaped by what they hear, and those who attack first, or at least make it plain to the attackers that they will defend themselves, are the more feared, since they are thought equal to the danger. This is just what would happen to the Athenians now. They are coming against us as men who will not defend themselves, and they have reason to judge so, since we did not join the Lacedaemonians in destroying them; but if they saw us daring beyond their expectation, they would be more dismayed by the surprise than by our real power. Be persuaded, then: above all, dare to do this; if not, make all other preparations for the war as quickly as possible, and let every man keep in mind that contempt for an attacker is best shown by valor in action, and that for the present it would be most useful to treat preparations made in fear as the safest, and to act as men in danger. The men are coming, I am sure they are already under way, and they are all but here.”

35 That was what Hermocrates said. The people of Syracuse were in great dispute among themselves. Some said that the Athenians would never come and that what he said was not true; others, that even if they did come, what harm could they do that they would not suffer worse in return? Others treated the matter with utter contempt and turned it into a joke. Only a few believed Hermocrates and feared what was to come. Then Athenagoras came forward, who was the leader of the people and at that time the most persuasive speaker with the many, and spoke as follows.

36 “As for the Athenians, anyone who does not wish them to be so ill-advised as to come here and fall into our hands is either a coward or no friend to the city. As for those who spread such reports and make you so afraid, I do not wonder at their audacity, but at their stupidity, if they think they are not seen through. Men who are afraid on their own account want to throw the city into alarm, so as to cover their own fear under the public one. And this is what these reports now amount to: they have not arisen of themselves, but have been put together by the men who are always stirring up these things. If you are well advised, you will not judge what is likely by looking at what these men report, but at what men who are able and of wide experience, as I consider the Athenians to be, would do. It is not likely that they would leave the Peloponnesians behind them, without having yet securely ended the war there, and willingly go to another war no smaller; indeed I think they are glad that we are not coming against them, cities so many and so great as ours.

37 “And if they really were to come, as they are said to be coming, I think Sicily is better able to fight the war out than the Peloponnese, inasmuch as it is better equipped in every way, and that our city by itself is far stronger than the army that is now said to be coming, even if twice as large a one came. I know that they will bring no horses with them, nor get any here except a few from the Egestaeans, nor hoplites equal in number to ours, coming as they do on ships (it is a great thing even to bring the ships themselves, lightly laden, so long a voyage here), nor the rest of the equipment needed against a city as great as this, which is not small. So great is the difference, as I judge it, that I think even if they came with another city as large as Syracuse and settled it on our border and made war from there, they would hardly escape total destruction; how much more, then, in a Sicily wholly hostile (for it will unite against them), in a camp pitched from their ships, with nothing but tents and the barest equipment, unable to go far from it because of our cavalry. In short, I do not think they would even become masters of the land; so much stronger do I consider our forces.

38 “But the Athenians, as I say, know this, and are, I am sure, taking good care of their own possessions, while men here make up stories of things that neither are nor ever could be. I know these men, not now for the first time but always, who want, by stories like these or even more mischievous ones, or by deeds, to frighten your multitude and get the rule of the city for themselves. And I am afraid that by trying often they may one day succeed. We are poor at taking precautions before we are suffering, and at pursuing the guilty once we perceive them. For this reason our city is seldom at rest, and takes on many factions and struggles, more against itself than against its enemies, and sometimes tyrannies and unjust cliques of the powerful. I will try, if you are willing to follow me, never to let any of this happen in our time: by persuading you, the many, and by punishing those who contrive such things, not only when they are caught in the act (for that is hard to manage), but also for what they wish to do though they cannot (for one must defend oneself in advance against an enemy not only for what he does but for what he intends, since if one does not take precautions first, one will suffer first); and as for the few, by exposing some, watching others, and also instructing others; for in this way, I think, I would best turn them from their mischief. And indeed, as I have often asked myself, what is it you want, young men? To hold office already? But that is not lawful; and the law was made because you are not competent, not to disqualify you when you are. Or is it that you do not want equal rights with the many? And how is it just that the same people should not be thought worthy of the same rights?

39 “Someone will say that democracy is neither wise nor equitable, and that those who have the money are also best at ruling. I say, first, that “the people” is the name of the whole, “oligarchy” of only a part; and next, that the rich are the best guardians of money, the intelligent would give the best counsel, and the many, after hearing, would judge best; and that in a democracy all these share equally, both in their parts and as a whole. Oligarchy gives the many a share in the dangers, but of the benefits it not only takes more than its share but takes and keeps the whole. This is what the powerful and the young among you are eager for, and in a great city it is impossible to get and hold. But even now, you most foolish of men, if you do not see that what you are hurrying toward is evil, you are either the most ignorant of all the Hellenes I know, or the most unjust, if you know it and still dare.

40 “No, learn better, or change your minds, and promote the common good of the city, which is common to all. Consider that in this the good among you would have an equal or a greater share, but if you want something else, you run the risk of being deprived of everything. Have done with reports like these, knowing that you are speaking to men who see through them and will not allow it. For this city, even if the Athenians are coming, will defend itself against them in a manner worthy of itself, and we have generals who will look to it. And if none of it is true, as I think it is not, the city will not be dismayed by your reports and choose you as its rulers and so impose on itself a slavery of its own choosing; it will look into the matter by itself and judge your words as if they were deeds, and it will not let itself be robbed of the freedom it has by listening to you, but will try to preserve it by guarding itself in deed and not giving you the opportunity.”

41 This was what Athenagoras said. One of the generals rose and allowed no one else to come forward, and himself spoke as follows on the matter in hand. “It is not wise for speakers to make slanders against one another, or for those who listen to accept them; we should rather look to the reports that are coming in, to see how each of us and the city as a whole may be well prepared to defend ourselves against the invaders. And even if it turns out there is no need, there is no harm in the state’s being furnished with horses and arms and all the other things that are the pride of war (we will see to their care and inspection), or in sending missions to the cities, both to gather information and for anything else that seems useful. Some of this we have already seen to, and whatever we learn we will report to you.” And when the general had said this, the Syracusans broke up their meeting.

42 The Athenians and all their allies were now at Corcyra. First the generals held a final review of the army and arranged the order in which they were to anchor and to camp. They divided it into three divisions and allotted one to each general by lot, so that they would not run short of water, harbors, and supplies at their landing places by sailing all together, and so that they would in other respects be better ordered and easier to command, each division being assigned to a general. Then they sent three ships ahead to Italy and Sicily to find out which of the cities would receive them. These had orders to come back and meet them, so that they might know before putting in.

43 After this, with a force now of this size, the Athenians put out from Corcyra and crossed to Sicily. They had 134 triremes in all and two Rhodian penteconters. Of these, a hundred were Athenian, sixty of them fast ships and the rest troop carriers; the rest of the fleet came from the Chians and the other allies. They had 5,100 hoplites in all. Of these, the Athenians themselves provided 1,500 from the muster roll and seven hundred thetes serving as marines on the ships; the rest were allies serving with them, some from the subjects, and of the others five hundred were Argives, and 250 Mantineans and mercenaries. There were 480 archers in all, eighty of them Cretans; seven hundred Rhodian slingers; 120 light-armed Megarian exiles; and one horse transport carrying thirty horsemen.

44 That was the size of the first armament that crossed over for the war. With it went thirty merchant ships carrying grain and supplies, with the bakers, stonemasons, and carpenters, and all the tools for building walls, and a hundred boats requisitioned to sail with the merchant ships; and many other boats and merchant ships followed the army of their own accord for the sake of trade. All of these now crossed the Ionian Gulf together from Corcyra. The whole armament put in at the Iapygian headland and at Tarentum and wherever each of them could, and coasted along Italy. The cities did not receive them with a market or within their walls, but only gave them water and anchorage, and Tarentum and Locri not even these, until they came to Rhegium, the promontory of Italy. There they now gathered, and since the Rhegians would not let them inside, they set up camp outside the city in the sanctuary of Artemis, where the Rhegians provided them with a market; they hauled their ships ashore and rested. They held talks with the Rhegians, asking them as Chalcidians to help the Leontines, who were Chalcidians too; but the Rhegians said they would side with neither party but would do whatever the other Italian Greeks agreed on. The Athenians considered how they could best handle the affairs of Sicily; and at the same time they waited for the advance ships to come back from Egesta, wanting to know whether the money was really there, as the messengers had said in Athens.

45 Meanwhile clear reports were reaching the Syracusans from many quarters, and from their scouts, that the ships were at Rhegium, and in view of this they set about their preparations with all their resolve and no longer disbelieved. They sent round to the Sicels, garrisons to some and envoys to others; they brought troops into the guard posts in the countryside; in the city they held a review of arms and horses to see whether they were complete; and they settled everything else as for a war that was coming fast and was all but upon them.

46 The three advance ships came back from Egesta to the Athenians at Rhegium, with the news that the rest of the money they had promised did not exist, and that only thirty talents were to be seen. The generals were at once disheartened, because this first thing had gone against them, and because the Rhegians had refused to join the expedition, though they were the first they had tried to persuade and the most likely to agree, being kinsmen of the Leontines and always friendly to the Athenians. Nicias had expected the news from the Egestaeans; to the other two it was quite unaccountable. The Egestaeans had contrived the following trick when the first envoys of the Athenians came to them to inspect the money. They took them to the sanctuary of Aphrodite at Eryx and showed them the offerings, bowls, wine jugs, censers, and a good deal of other equipment, which, being silver, made a show far greater than the small money value it represented. And in giving private hospitality to the crews of the triremes they collected the drinking cups, gold and silver, from Egesta itself and borrowed those from the neighboring cities, Phoenician and Greek, and each brought them to the banquets as their own. Since all of them used much the same vessels, and a great deal was to be seen everywhere, it amazed the Athenians from the triremes, and when they got back to Athens they spread the word that they had seen great wealth. These men, who had been deceived themselves and had then persuaded the others, were now much blamed by the soldiers when the word went round that the money was not in Egesta; and the generals took counsel on the situation.

47 Nicias’ view was that they should sail with the whole army to Selinus, which was the chief object they had been sent for. If the Egestaeans provided money for the whole force, they would decide accordingly; if not, they should demand that they provide maintenance for the sixty ships they had asked for, and should stay until they had reconciled the Selinuntines with them, either by force or by agreement. Then they should sail along past the other cities, display the power of the city of Athens, make plain their zeal for their friends and allies, and sail home, unless they could quickly and unexpectedly either do something for the Leontines or win over some of the other cities; and they should not endanger the city by spending its own resources.

48 Alcibiades said that after sailing out with so great a force they must not go away in disgrace and with nothing done. They should send heralds to all the cities except Selinus and Syracuse, and try to detach some of the Sicels from the Syracusans and make friends of others, so as to have grain and troops; and first of all they should win over the Messenians (for they lay right on the passage and the approach to Sicily, and their city would be the best harbor and base for the army). When they had brought the cities over and knew who would fight on their side, then they should attack Syracuse and Selinus, unless the latter came to terms with the Egestaeans and the former allowed them to resettle the Leontines.

49 Lamachus said that they should sail straight to Syracuse and fight a battle at the city as soon as possible, while the Syracusans were still unprepared and most alarmed. Every army, he said, is most terrifying at first; if it delays before showing itself, men regain their courage and, when they do see it, despise it all the more. But if they attacked suddenly, while the enemy were still awaiting them in dread, they would have the best chance of winning and would terrify them in every way: by the sight of them (for now they would appear at their most numerous), by the anticipation of what they would suffer, and most of all by the immediate danger of battle. It was likely, too, that many people would be cut off outside in the fields, since they did not believe the Athenians would come; and while they were bringing their goods in, the army would not lack for property if it established itself victorious before the city. And in this way the other Sicilian Greeks would be the more inclined not to ally themselves with the Syracusans and to come over to the Athenians, and would not hang back watching to see which side would win. For a naval station, he said, to which they could withdraw and from which to blockade, they should use Megara, which was deserted, not far from Syracuse either by sea or by land.

50 Lamachus said this, but nevertheless gave his own support to the view of Alcibiades. After this Alcibiades crossed in his own ship to Messene and talked with the Messenians about an alliance; when he could not persuade them, and they answered that they would not receive him in the city but would provide a market outside, he sailed back to Rhegium. The generals at once manned sixty ships out of the whole fleet, took provisions, and coasted along to Naxos, leaving the rest of the army at Rhegium with one of themselves. The Naxians received them into the city, and they sailed on along the coast to Catana. When the Catanians would not receive them (for there were men there who favored the Syracusans), they went on to the river Terias and bivouacked; the next day they sailed for Syracuse with the rest of the ships in column, sending ten of them ahead into the Great Harbor to sail in and see whether any fleet had been launched, and to sail close in and proclaim from the ships that the Athenians had come to restore the Leontines to their own land, by reason of their alliance and kinship; any Leontines in Syracuse, therefore, should come over without fear to the Athenians as to their friends and benefactors. When the proclamation had been made and they had looked over the city, the harbors, and the lie of the land from which they would have to make war, they sailed back to Catana.

51 An assembly was held, and the Catanians would not receive the army, but told the generals to come in and say whatever they wished. While Alcibiades was speaking and the people in the city had their attention turned to the assembly, the soldiers broke down unnoticed a small gate that had been badly walled up, came in, and went about the market. Those of the Catanians who sided with the Syracusans, when they saw the army inside, at once took fright and slipped away, not very many of them; the rest voted an alliance with the Athenians and told them to bring the rest of their army from Rhegium. After this the Athenians sailed across to Rhegium, set out now with the whole army for Catana, and when they arrived, set about building their camp.

52 News came to them from Camarina that if they came the Camarinaeans would join them, and also that the Syracusans were manning a fleet. So they sailed with the whole army first to Syracuse; and finding no fleet being manned, they coasted on again to Camarina, put in at the beach, and sent a herald. But the Camarinaeans would not receive them, saying that their oaths bound them to receive the Athenians only if they sailed in with a single ship, unless they themselves sent for more. Having accomplished nothing, the Athenians sailed away; they landed at a point in Syracusan territory and carried off plunder, and when the Syracusan cavalry came out against them and killed some of the light-armed troops who were scattered, they went back to Catana.

53 There they found the Salaminia⁶ come from Athens for Alcibiades, with orders for him to sail home to answer the charges the city was bringing against him, and for certain others of the soldiers with him who had been denounced for impiety in the matter of the Mysteries, and some in the matter of the Herms. For after the army sailed, the Athenians had gone on no less actively investigating what had been done concerning the Mysteries and the Herms. They did not test the informers but accepted everything in a suspicious mood, and on the word of worthless men they arrested and imprisoned citizens of the highest character, thinking it more useful to get to the bottom of the affair and find the truth than to let anyone, however good his character seemed, escape without examination because of an informer’s worthlessness. For the people knew by hearsay that the tyranny of Peisistratus and his sons had become harsh toward its end, and also that it had been put down not by themselves and Harmodius⁷ but by the Lacedaemonians; so they were always afraid and took everything with suspicion.

54 The daring deed of Aristogeiton and Harmodius was undertaken because of a love affair, and by relating it at some length I will show that neither others nor the Athenians themselves give any accurate account of their own tyrants or of what happened. When Peisistratus died an old man, holding the tyranny, it was not Hipparchus, as most people think, but Hippias, the eldest son, who held power. Harmodius was then in the brilliant flower of youth, and Aristogeiton, a citizen of the middle rank, was his lover and had him. Harmodius was approached by Hipparchus son of Peisistratus, refused him, and told Aristogeiton. Aristogeiton was stung to the quick as a lover, and afraid that Hipparchus would use his power to take the boy by force, he at once began to plot, as far as his standing allowed, the overthrow of the tyranny. Meanwhile Hipparchus made another attempt and had no better success with Harmodius. He did not want to do anything violent, but he got ready to insult him in some covert way, so that it would not appear to be for this reason. For in general his rule was not oppressive to the many; he conducted it without giving offense. These tyrants, in fact, practiced excellence and good sense to a very high degree; they took from the Athenians only a twentieth of their produce, adorned their city well, carried on their wars, and provided sacrifices for the temples. In other respects the city itself went on under the laws already in force, except that they always took care that one of their own family should be in office. Among others of them who held the annual archonship at Athens was Peisistratus, the son of Hippias the tyrant, named after his grandfather, who as archon dedicated the altar of the Twelve Gods in the agora and that of Apollo in the Pythian precinct. The Athenian people later built on to the altar in the agora, lengthening it, and so effaced the inscription; but the inscription on the one in the Pythian precinct can still be seen, in faint letters, saying this: “Peisistratus son of Hippias set this up to mark his archonship / in the sacred precinct of Pythian Apollo.”

55 That Hippias was the eldest and held power I affirm, since I know it from a more accurate tradition than others; but one could also learn it from this: of the legitimate brothers he alone appears to have had children, as the altar shows, and also the pillar about the injustice of the tyrants set up on the Athenian Acropolis, on which no child of Thessalus or of Hipparchus is recorded, but five of Hippias, born to him by Myrrhine, daughter of Callias son of Hyperechides; and it was likely that the eldest would be the first to marry. On the same pillar, too, he is listed first after his father, and this also is natural, since he was the eldest after him and had been tyrant. Nor, I think, would Hippias ever have taken over the tyranny so easily on the spot if Hipparchus had been in power when he was killed and he himself had had to establish himself the same day. As it was, because of his long familiarity he was feared by the citizens and kept strict control over the mercenaries, and he prevailed with a great margin of safety, not at a loss like a younger brother who had not been used to exercising power. But it fell to Hipparchus, having become famous through the misfortune of his fate, to acquire in later times the reputation of having been tyrant as well.

56 Harmodius, then, who had rejected his advances, Hipparchus insulted, as he had intended. They summoned his sister, a young girl, to come and carry a basket in a certain procession, and then turned her away, saying that they had never summoned her at all because she was not worthy. Harmodius took this hard, and for his sake Aristogeiton was far more provoked. They had arranged everything else with those who were to join them in the deed, and they were waiting for the Great Panathenaea, the only day on which it aroused no suspicion for the citizens who formed the procession to gather in a body under arms. The two of them were to strike first, and the others were to join them at once in dealing with the bodyguards. The conspirators were not many, for safety’s sake; they hoped that even those not in the secret, if any number of men at all dared to act, would be willing on the spot, since they had arms in their hands, to join in winning their own freedom.

57 When the festival came, Hippias was outside the city, in the place called the Ceramicus, with his bodyguards, arranging how each part of the procession was to go forward. Harmodius and Aristogeiton, already holding their daggers, were advancing to do the deed. Then they saw one of their fellow conspirators talking familiarly with Hippias (Hippias was easy of access to everyone), and they took fright, thinking they had been informed on and were on the point of being arrested. So they wanted first, if they could, to take revenge on the man who had wronged them and for whose sake they were risking everything; and just as they were they rushed inside the gates and came upon Hipparchus by the place called the Leocorium. At once, without a thought, they fell on him, in the utmost fury, the one with a lover’s anger, the other with the anger of one insulted, and struck him and killed him. Aristogeiton escaped the bodyguards for the moment, as the crowd came running together, but was taken later and not gently dealt with; Harmodius was killed on the spot.

58 When the news was brought to Hippias in the Ceramicus, he went at once, not to the scene, but to the armed men in the procession, before they, being some distance away, had learned of it. Composing his face so as to betray nothing of the disaster, he pointed to a certain spot and ordered them to go there without their arms. They withdrew, thinking he had something to tell them; and he told his mercenaries to take away the arms, and at once picked out the men he held guilty, and anyone found carrying a dagger; for it was the custom to march in the processions with shield and spear only.

59 In this way, from a lover’s grievance, came both the beginning of the plot and the reckless daring of Harmodius and Aristogeiton, born of sudden panic. After this the tyranny became harsher for the Athenians. Hippias, now more afraid, put many of the citizens to death, and at the same time began to look abroad, to see whether he could find some security anywhere in case of a revolution. At any rate he afterward gave his daughter Archedice, he an Athenian, to a Lampsacene, Aeantides, the son of Hippocles, tyrant of Lampsacus, because he saw that they had great influence with King Darius. Her tomb is at Lampsacus, with this inscription: “This dust covers Archedice, daughter of Hippias, / the foremost man in Hellas in his day. / Her father, husband, brothers, and sons were tyrants, / yet her mind was never lifted up to arrogance.” Hippias was tyrant of the Athenians for three more years, and in the fourth was deposed by the Lacedaemonians and the exiled Alcmaeonids. He left under a truce for Sigeum and for Lampsacus, to Aeantides, and from there went to King Darius; and setting out from his court, twenty years later, an old man by then, he marched with the Medes to Marathon.

60 The Athenian people kept these things in mind, and remembered all they knew of them by hearsay, and so were harsh and suspicious at that time toward those accused in the affair of the Mysteries, and thought that everything had been done as part of an oligarchic and tyrannical conspiracy. While they were in this angry mood, many men of note were already in prison, and there was no sign of an end to it; day by day they went further toward savagery and arrested still more. Then one of the prisoners, who was thought to be most deeply implicated, was persuaded by one of his fellow prisoners to give information, whether true or not; for there are guesses both ways, and no one, either then or later, has been able to say anything certain about those who did the deed. The other man argued and convinced him that even if he had not done it, he should secure immunity and save himself and rid the city of its present suspicion; his safety would be surer if he confessed with immunity than if he denied it and stood trial. So he gave information, against himself and against others, about the Herms. The Athenian people were glad to get what they thought was the certain truth, having been in a dreadful state before at the thought of not finding out who were plotting against their democracy. They at once released the informer and all those with him whom he had not accused; those he had accused they brought to trial, and executed all who had been arrested, and condemned to death those who had escaped and offered a reward in silver to anyone who killed them. In all this it was unclear whether those who suffered had been punished unjustly; but the rest of the city, for the present, was plainly relieved.

61 In the matter of Alcibiades, the Athenians took it hard, urged on by his enemies, the same men who had attacked him before he sailed. Since they thought they had the truth about the Herms, it seemed all the more certain that the affair of the Mysteries, of which he was accused, had been committed by him with the same purpose, as part of the conspiracy against the democracy. It also happened that at this very time, when they were in turmoil over these things, a small Lacedaemonian army had advanced as far as the Isthmus, on some business with the Boeotians. It was thought to have come by arrangement, at his instigation, and not on account of the Boeotians, and that if they had not forestalled it by arresting the men on the information, the city would have been betrayed. For one night they even slept under arms in the Theseum within the city. At the same time Alcibiades’ friends at Argos were suspected of plotting against the democracy there, and the Athenians for this reason handed over to the Argive people the Argive hostages who were kept in the islands, to be put to death. On every side suspicion surrounded Alcibiades. So, wanting to bring him to trial and put him to death, they sent the Salaminia to Sicily for him and for the others who had been informed against. The orders were to tell him to come home and defend himself, but not to arrest him; they were careful to avoid causing a disturbance among their soldiers in Sicily or among the enemy, and above all they wanted the Mantineans and Argives to stay, believing that it was through him they had been persuaded to join the expedition. He sailed off from Sicily in his own ship with those who had been accused with him, in company with the Salaminia, as if bound for Athens; but when they reached Thurii they followed no farther, but left the ship and disappeared, afraid to sail home and stand trial under such prejudice. The men from the Salaminia searched for Alcibiades and his companions for a time, but since they were nowhere to be found, they sailed away. Alcibiades, now an exile, crossed not long afterward in a boat from the territory of Thurii to the Peloponnese; and the Athenians condemned him and those with him to death in their absence.

62 After this the remaining Athenian generals in Sicily divided the army into two parts, each taking one by lot, and sailed with the whole force for Selinus and Egesta. They wanted to find out whether the Egestaeans would give the money, and to look into the affairs of the Selinuntines and learn the state of their quarrel with the Egestaeans. Sailing along with Sicily on their left, on the side facing the Tyrrhenian Gulf, they put in at Himera, which is the only Hellenic city in that part of Sicily; and when it would not receive them, they went on along the coast. On the way they took Hyccara, a Sicanian town, but hostile to the Egestaeans; it was on the coast. They enslaved the inhabitants and handed the town over to the Egestaeans, whose cavalry had joined them; then the army went back on foot through the territory of the Sicels until it reached Catana, while the ships sailed around carrying the captives. Nicias sailed straight from Hyccara along the coast to Egesta, transacted his other business, received thirty talents, and rejoined the army. They sold the captives, and they brought in 120 talents. They also sailed round to their Sicel allies, telling them to send troops; and with half of their own army they went against Hybla, in the territory of Gela, which was hostile, and failed to take it. And the summer ended.

63 The following winter the Athenians at once began preparing their attack on Syracuse, and the Syracusans for their part prepared to go against them. For when the Athenians did not attack them at once, as they had expected in their first fright, they took heart more with each day that passed; and when they saw them sailing off to the far side of Sicily, a long way from them, and going to Hybla and failing to take it by assault, they despised them still more and demanded of their generals, as a crowd likes to do when it has grown bold, that they lead them to Catana, since the Athenians would not come against them. And Syracusan cavalry, constantly riding up to the Athenian army to scout, jeered at them, asking among other things whether they had come to settle with the Syracusans themselves on foreign soil rather than to resettle the Leontines on their own.

64 The Athenian generals were aware of this. They wanted to draw the Syracusans out of their city in full force as far as possible, while they themselves sailed along the coast by night in the meantime and seized a position suitable for a camp, at their leisure. They knew they would not be able to do this so well if they had to land from the ships in the face of an enemy ready for them, or if they were seen coming by land; for the Syracusan cavalry, which was numerous while they themselves had none, would do great harm to their light-armed troops and their crowd of followers. In this way, they thought, they would seize a place where the cavalry could do them no harm worth mentioning. Syracusan exiles who were with them told them of the ground near the Olympieum, which in fact they did occupy. So the generals contrived the following stratagem to get what they wanted. They sent a man who was loyal to them, and whom the Syracusan generals would think no less well disposed to them. He was a Catanian, and said he came from men in Catana whose names the generals knew and who they knew were still left in the city among their sympathizers. He said that the Athenians were spending the nights in the city, away from their arms, and that if the Syracusans would come in full force at dawn on an appointed day against the army, their friends would shut in the Athenians who were in the city with them and set fire to the ships, while the Syracusans would easily take the army by attacking the stockade. He said that many Catanians were in this with them and were already prepared, and that he had come from them.

65 The Syracusan generals, who were confident in general and had already intended to march on Catana even without this, trusted the man far too readily. They at once agreed on a day when they would be there and sent him back; and they themselves (for by now the Selinuntines and some others of their allies had arrived) gave notice to all the Syracusans to march out in full force. When their preparations were complete and the days on which they had agreed to come were near, they set out for Catana and bivouacked by the river Symaethus in the territory of Leontini. When the Athenians learned that they were coming, they took their whole army, and any Sicels or others who had joined them, put them aboard the ships and boats, and sailed by night for Syracuse. At dawn the Athenians were landing at the place opposite the Olympieum, to seize the ground for their camp; and the Syracusan cavalry, riding ahead first to Catana and finding that the whole army had put to sea, turned back and told the infantry, and then all of them turned about and hurried to defend the city.

66 Meanwhile, since the Syracusans had a long way to go, the Athenians set their army down at their leisure in a suitable position, where they could begin a battle whenever they chose and where the Syracusan cavalry would be least able to harass them, either in the action or before it. On one side walls, houses, trees, and a marsh shut them in, and along the other side there were cliffs. They also cut down the trees nearby, carried them down to the sea, and drove in a stockade beside the ships; at Dascon, where the enemy could most easily approach, they quickly raised a fort of rough stones and timber; and they broke down the bridge over the Anapus. While they were making these preparations, no one came out of the city to stop them. The Syracusan cavalry were the first to come up, and afterward the whole of the infantry gathered. At first they came close to the Athenian army; then, when the Athenians did not advance against them, they withdrew, crossed the Helorine road, and bivouacked.

67 The next day the Athenians and their allies prepared for battle and drew up as follows. The Argives and Mantineans held the right wing, the Athenians the center, and the other allies the rest. Half of their army was drawn up in front, eight deep; the other half, also eight deep, was in a hollow square by the tents, with orders to watch where any part of the army was most hard pressed and go to its support. They placed the baggage carriers inside this reserve. The Syracusans drew up all their hoplites sixteen deep. These were the whole levy of the Syracusans and such allies as were present: the Selinuntines had come to help them in the greatest number, and then the cavalry of the Geloans, about two hundred in all, and of the Camarinaeans some twenty horsemen and about fifty archers. They posted the cavalry, no fewer than 1,200, on the right, and next to them the javelin throwers. As the Athenians were about to take the offensive, Nicias went along the line to each people in turn and encouraged them all as follows.

68 “What need is there of a long exhortation, men, when we are all here for the same struggle? The force itself seems to me better able to give you confidence than fine speeches with a weak army. When we are Argives, Mantineans, Athenians, and the first of the islanders, how can every man among such allies, and so many, not have high hopes of victory, especially against men who are defending themselves in a mass levy and are not picked troops as we are, and Sicilian Greeks besides, who look down on us but will not stand up to us, because their skill is less than their daring? Let each man also keep this in mind: we are far from our own land and close to no friendly country except what you win yourselves by fighting. I remind you of the opposite of what, I am sure, the enemy are urging on one another. They are saying that the struggle will be for their country; I say that it will not be in our country, but in one where we must conquer or else find it hard to get away, for their numerous cavalry will be on us. Remember, then, your own worth, and go against the enemy eagerly, believing that the necessity and the straits we are in are more to be feared than the enemy.”

69 After this exhortation Nicias at once led the army forward. The Syracusans were not expecting to have to fight at that moment, and some of them, since the city was close by, had even gone off; these came running back in haste to help, and though they were late, they took their places wherever each could join the main body. For the Syracusans were not lacking in eagerness or in daring, either in this battle or in the others; in courage they were not inferior so far as their skill held out, but where that failed them, they gave up their resolve against their will. Still, though they had not thought that the Athenians would attack first and were forced to defend themselves in haste, they took up their arms and at once advanced to meet them. First the stone throwers, slingers, and archers on each side skirmished in front and routed one another by turns, as light troops will; then seers brought forward the customary sacrifices, and trumpeters urged the hoplites to the charge, and they went forward: the Syracusans to fight for their country and, each of them, for his own safety now and his freedom in the future; on the other side the Athenians to win a foreign land for their own and not to harm their own land by defeat; the Argives and the independent allies to help the Athenians gain what they had come for and, victorious, to see again the country that was their own; while the subject allies were most eager for their immediate safety, of which they had no hope unless they won, and then, as a secondary aim, hoped that if they helped subdue another people, their own subjection might be lighter.

70 When they came to close quarters, both sides held out against each other for a long time. It happened that there was thunder at the same time, and lightning and heavy rain, so that those fighting for the first time and with the least experience of war felt that this too added to their fear, while to the more experienced the weather seemed something that happens at that season of the year, and the fact that the enemy were not giving way was far more alarming. The Argives first pushed back the left wing of the Syracusans, and after them the Athenians the part opposite them, and then the rest of the Syracusan army also broke and turned to flight. The Athenians did not pursue far, for the Syracusan cavalry, numerous and undefeated, kept them off, charging their hoplites and driving them back wherever they saw any pursuing ahead of the rest; but they followed in a body as far as was safe, then withdrew and set up a trophy. The Syracusans rallied on the Helorine road and, after re-forming as well as they could in the circumstances, still sent a guard of their own to the Olympieum, afraid that the Athenians would lay hands on the treasures there; the rest went back to the city.

71 The Athenians did not go to the temple, but gathered their own dead, laid them on a pyre, and bivouacked there for the night. The next day they gave back the Syracusan dead under a truce (about 260 of the Syracusans and their allies had fallen) and collected the bones of their own (about fifty of themselves and their allies had fallen), and taking the spoils of the enemy, they sailed back to Catana. It was winter, and it did not yet seem possible to carry on the war from there until they had sent for cavalry from Athens and gathered more from their allies in Sicily, so as not to be wholly at the mercy of the enemy’s horse; they also needed to collect money there and to have it come from Athens, to win over some of the cities, which they hoped would be more ready to listen to them after the battle, and to provide grain and everything else they needed, so as to attack Syracuse in the spring.

72 With this purpose they sailed off to Naxos and Catana to spend the winter. The Syracusans buried their own dead and held an assembly. Hermocrates son of Hermon came forward, a man second to none in intelligence in general, who had also proved capable in war through experience and distinguished for his courage. He encouraged them and would not let them give way because of what had happened. Their spirit, he said, had not been defeated; it was their lack of discipline that had harmed them. Even so, they had not fallen as far short as might have been expected, especially as they had been pitted, amateurs, so to speak, against craftsmen, against the most experienced of the Hellenes. Great harm had also been done by the number of their generals and the divided command (they had fifteen generals) and by the disorderly indiscipline of the mass. But if they had a few experienced generals, and in the course of this winter prepared their hoplite force, providing arms for those who had none, so as to have as many as possible, and compelling them to train in other ways too, he said that in all likelihood they would defeat their enemies, since they had courage already and would add discipline in action. Both would grow: discipline by practice amid dangers, and courage would become bolder of itself with the assurance that skill brings. They ought to elect generals who were few and had full powers, and swear an oath to them that they would let them command as they thought best; in this way what needed to be kept secret would be better concealed, and everything else would be prepared in good order and without excuses.

73 The Syracusans heard him and voted everything as he urged. They elected as generals Hermocrates himself, Heraclides son of Lysimachus, and Sicanus son of Execestus, these three; and they sent envoys to Corinth and to Lacedaemon, so that an alliance might come to their aid and to persuade the Lacedaemonians to carry on their war against the Athenians more decidedly and openly on behalf of the Syracusans, so that they would either draw the Athenians away from Sicily or make them less able to send further reinforcements to their army in Sicily.

74 The Athenian army at Catana sailed at once to Messene, expecting it to be betrayed to them. But what had been arranged did not come about. When Alcibiades left his command, already recalled, knowing that he was going into exile, he gave information to the friends of the Syracusans in Messene, since he was in the secret of what was planned. They first put the men to death, and then, rising up and taking arms, those who wanted this carried their point that the Athenians should not be received. The Athenians stayed about thirteen days; then, since they were suffering from the weather and had no supplies and nothing was succeeding, they went off to Naxos, made boundaries and stockades around their camp, and spent the winter there. They also sent a trireme to Athens for money and cavalry, so that these might arrive at the beginning of spring.

75 During the winter the Syracusans too were building walls. At the city they took in the Temenites and built a wall along the whole side facing Epipolae, so that if they were defeated they could not easily be walled off by a shorter line; they fortified Megara with a garrison, and built another fort at the Olympieum; and they drove stakes into the sea along the shore wherever there were landing places. Knowing that the Athenians were wintering at Naxos, they marched in full force against Catana, ravaged part of its land, burned the Athenians’ tents and camp, and went home. And learning that the Athenians were sending envoys to Camarina on the strength of the alliance made under Laches, to see whether they could win them over, they sent envoys in their turn. They suspected that the Camarinaeans had not sent with any good will what they did send for the first battle, and that for the future they might no longer wish to help them, seeing that the Athenians had done well in the battle, and might go over to them, persuaded on the ground of their former friendship. So Hermocrates and others came from Syracuse to Camarina, and from the Athenians Euphemus with others; an assembly of the Camarinaeans was held, and Hermocrates, wanting to prejudice them against the Athenians in advance, spoke as follows.

76 “We have not come on this embassy, Camarinaeans, from fear that you would be dismayed by the force the Athenians have here, but rather from fear of the speeches they are about to make, lest they win you over before you hear anything from us. They have come to Sicily on the pretext you hear of, but with the purpose we all suspect. They do not want, I think, to resettle the Leontines, but rather to unsettle us. For it is not reasonable that they should depopulate the cities there and resettle the cities here, or that they should care for the Leontines, who are Chalcidians, out of kinship, while they hold enslaved the Chalcidians in Euboea, of whom these are colonists. It was by the same method that they took possession of those places and are now attempting these. They became leaders of the Ionians and of all the allies descended from them, who were willing, on the ground of taking vengeance on the Mede; then, charging some with failure to serve, others with making war on one another, and the rest with whatever plausible grievance they could find against each, they subdued them. So it was not for freedom, after all, that either these men stood against the Mede for the Hellenes, or the Hellenes for their own freedom; the Athenians fought to enslave the Hellenes to themselves instead of to him, and the others for a change of master, not to one less intelligent, but to one more intelligent for evil.

77 “But we have not come now to show to people who know it already how many wrongs the city of the Athenians commits, easy as it is to accuse; we have come far more to accuse ourselves. We have the examples of the Hellenes over there, how they were enslaved because they did not help one another; and now, when the same sophistries are being used against us, resettlements of Leontine kinsmen and aid to Egestaean allies, we do not band together and show them more resolutely that here there are no Ionians, or Hellespontines and islanders, who keep changing masters, the Mede or someone else, but are always slaves; but Dorians, free men from the independent Peloponnese, living in Sicily. Or are we waiting until we are taken city by city, knowing that this is the only way in which we can be conquered, and seeing that they are turning to just this method, dividing some of us by words, setting others at war with one another by the hope of alliance, and doing harm to others as they can by saying something pleasing to each? And do we think that when a fellow islander far off is destroyed first, the danger will not come to each of us as well, but that the one who suffers before us suffers misfortune by himself alone?

78 “And if it has occurred to anyone that it is the Syracusan, not himself, who is the Athenian’s enemy, and he thinks it hard to run risks for my country, let him consider that he will be fighting in my country not more for mine than equally for his own, and the more safely for it, since he will be fighting not after I have been destroyed beforehand, but with me as his ally, and not alone. Let him consider too that the Athenian does not want to punish the Syracusan’s enmity, but, with me as the pretext, to make sure no less of that man’s own friendship. And if anyone envies us, or even fears us (for greater powers are exposed to both), and for this reason wants Syracuse to be damaged, so that we may learn moderation, but to survive, for the sake of his own safety, he is hoping for something beyond human power. It is not possible for the same man to be the steward of his desires and of fortune alike. And if his judgment proved wrong, he might lament his own misfortunes and perhaps one day wish he could envy my good fortune again. But that will be impossible once he has abandoned me and refused to take upon himself the same dangers, which concern not names but realities. In word a man would be preserving our power, but in deed his own safety. You above all, Camarinaeans, being our neighbors and the next to be in danger, should have foreseen this and not be such halfhearted allies as you are now. You should have come to us yourselves, and urged on us now, in the same way, what you would be begging and calling on us for if the Athenians had come first to the territory of Camarina, so that we should be seen to give way in nothing. But so far neither you nor the others have set about this.

79 “Perhaps from cowardice you will pay court to justice toward us and toward the invaders alike, saying that you have an alliance with the Athenians. But you made it not against your friends but in case any of your enemies came against you, and to help the Athenians when they were wronged by others, not when, as now, they themselves are wronging their neighbors. Why, not even the Rhegians, though they are Chalcidians, are willing to help resettle the Leontines, who are Chalcidians. And it is a strange thing if they, suspecting what lies behind this fine plea of right, show a prudence that defies the claims of kinship, while you, on a plausible pretext, want to help your natural enemies and, together with the bitterest of foes, destroy those who are your still closer kinsmen by nature. No, that is not just. You should help us and not fear their armament. It is not formidable if we all stand together, but only if we stand apart, which is just what they are hurrying to bring about; for even when they came against us alone and won the battle, they did not achieve what they wanted, but left again quickly.

80 “So if we are united, there is no reason to lose heart; we should enter into alliance the more readily, especially as help is coming from the Peloponnese, from men who are altogether better soldiers than these. And let no one think that the caution of helping neither side, as being allies of both, is fair to us and safe for you. It is not as fair in deed as it is in its claim of right. For if, because you did not join, the victim falls and the victor prevails, what else will you have done by this same absence but fail to help the one to survive and fail to stop the other from doing evil? Yet it would be finer to join those who are wronged, and who are your kinsmen besides, and to guard the common interest of Sicily, and not let the Athenians, your friends as they are, go wrong. To sum up, we Syracusans say that there is no point in explaining clearly, either to you or to the others, things that you understand yourselves no worse than we do. But we beg you, and at the same time we call you to witness, if we do not persuade you, that we are being plotted against by Ionians, our perpetual enemies, and betrayed by you, Dorians by Dorians. And if the Athenians subdue us, they will owe their victory to your decisions, but the honor will go to their own name, and they will take as the prize of victory none other than the people who gave them the victory. And if we for our part come out on top, you will pay the penalty as well for being the cause of our dangers. Consider, then, and choose now: either slavery at once without risk, or, if you prevail with us, not to take these men as your masters in disgrace, and to escape our enmity, which would not be short-lived.”

81 This was what Hermocrates said. After him Euphemus, the Athenian envoy, spoke as follows.

82 “We came to renew the former alliance; but since the Syracusan has attacked us, we must speak about our empire too, and show that we hold it with good reason. He himself has given the strongest evidence, in saying that the Ionians have always been enemies of the Dorians. And it is so. We are Ionians, and the Peloponnesians are Dorians, more numerous than we and living next to us, and we considered how we might least be subject to them. After the Persian Wars we acquired a navy and freed ourselves from the rule and leadership of the Lacedaemonians, since they had no more right to give orders to us than we to them, except in so far as they were stronger at the time. We ourselves became leaders of those who had formerly been subjects of the King, and we live in that position, thinking that in this way we would be least under the Peloponnesians, having power with which to defend ourselves. And to speak precisely, it was not unjust of us to subdue the Ionians and the islanders, our kinsmen, whom the Syracusans say we have enslaved. For they came with the Mede against us, their mother city, and did not dare to revolt and sacrifice their homes, as we did when we abandoned our city; they chose slavery for themselves and wanted to bring the same on us.

83 “For these reasons we rule: because we deserve to, since we provided the largest navy and unhesitating zeal for the Hellenes, and because they, by readily serving the Mede in this way, were harming us; and at the same time because we were reaching for strength against the Peloponnesians. We do not use fine phrases and say that we rule with good reason because we alone overthrew the barbarian, or that we took our risks for the freedom of these people rather than for that of everyone, ourselves included. No one can be blamed for providing for his own proper safety. And now it is for the sake of our own security that we are here, and we see that the same things are in your interest too. We will show this from the very charges these men make and from your own suspicions, which lean toward the more frightening view; for we know that those who suspect something in great alarm enjoy the pleasure of a speech for the moment, but later, when it comes to action, do what is in their interest. We have said that we hold our empire there out of fear, and it is for the same reason that we have come here, to settle affairs safely with our friends, not to enslave them, but rather to prevent them from suffering slavery.

84 “Let no one suppose that we care for you though it is no concern of ours. We know that if you are preserved, and are not too weak to hold out against the Syracusans, we are less likely to be harmed by their sending some force to the Peloponnesians. In this respect you are already of the greatest concern to us. That is also why it is reasonable for us to resettle the Leontines, not as subjects like their kinsmen in Euboea, but as strong as possible, so that from their own country, as neighbors of these Syracusans, they may be a thorn in their side on our behalf. Over there we are a match for our enemies by ourselves; and the Chalcidian, whom he says it is unreasonable for us to have enslaved while we free the men here, is useful to us as he is, without armament and paying money only. Here, on the other hand, the Leontines and our other friends are most useful to us when they are as independent as possible.

85 “To a tyrant or to a city that holds an empire nothing is unreasonable that is advantageous, and nothing is akin that cannot be trusted. In each case one must become enemy or friend as the moment requires. And here our advantage lies not in harming our friends, but in keeping our enemies powerless through the strength of our friends. You should not doubt this. Over there, too, we lead our allies according to the use each of them is to us: the Chians and Methymnaeans are independent and provide ships; most of them pay money, under more compulsion; others are allies on quite free terms, though they are islanders and easy to take, because they lie in convenient positions around the Peloponnese. So it is likely that here too we will arrange things to our advantage and, as we say, in view of our fear of the Syracusans. For they aim at ruling you, and want to unite you on the strength of your suspicion of us, and then, either by force or when you are left isolated after we have gone away with nothing done, to rule Sicily themselves. And that must happen if you unite with them. For neither will we any longer be able to deal easily with so great a power once it is united, nor will these men be weak against you when we are not here.

86 “Whoever does not think so is refuted by the facts themselves. When you brought us in before, it was by holding up no other fear than this: that if we allowed you to fall under the Syracusans, we ourselves would be in danger. It is not just now to distrust the very argument by which you thought fit to persuade us, or to be suspicious because we have come with a force larger than the strength of these men. It is these men you should far rather distrust. We cannot stay here without you, and even if we turned traitors and subdued you, we could not hold you, because of the length of the voyage and the difficulty of guarding cities that are large and equipped like mainland powers. These men are not an army in a camp; they live next to you in a city greater than our force here, always plotting against you, never letting go of an opportunity against any of you (they have shown it in other ways already, and in the affair of the Leontines); and now they dare to call on you, as if you had no sense, against those who are stopping this and who have so far kept Sicily from falling under them. We call on you in turn, and to a far truer safety, and beg you not to betray the security that each of us has from the other, but to consider that these men, because of their numbers, will always have a ready way against you even without allies, while you will not often have the chance to defend yourselves with so great a help. If, out of suspicion, you let it go away with nothing done, or even defeated, you will yet wish to see even the smallest fraction of it, when its coming would no longer do you any good.

87 “Do not be won over by the slanders of these men, Camarinaeans, either you or the others. We have told you the whole truth about the things we are suspected of, and we will remind you of the main points once more and expect to persuade you. We say that we rule over there so as not to be subject to another, and that we free the cities here so as not to be harmed by them; that we are compelled to do many things because we have many things to guard against; and that we have come, now and before, as allies to those of you here who are wronged, not uninvited, but called in. And do not set yourselves up as judges of what we do, or as censors, which is hard by now, and try to turn us from it; but in so far as anything in our meddlesomeness and our character serves your interest too, take that and make use of it. Consider that these things do not harm everyone alike, but in fact benefit far the greater part of the Hellenes. Everywhere, in every place, even where we are not present, the man who thinks he will be wronged and the man who is plotting wrong are both forced, the plotter to keep within bounds against his will, the threatened man to be saved without trouble to himself, because there lies beneath it a ready hope: for the threatened man, of getting help from us in return, and for the plotter, that if we come, his venture will not be without fear. Do not reject, then, this security, which is common to all who need it and is now offered to you. Do as others do, join us, and instead of always being on guard against the Syracusans, take your turn at last at plotting against them on equal terms.”

88 This was what Euphemus said. The Camarinaeans were in this state of mind. They were well disposed to the Athenians, except in so far as they thought they would enslave Sicily, and they were always at odds with the Syracusans, as neighbors are. But they were no less afraid that the Syracusans, being so near, might prevail even without them; and that was why they had sent them the few horsemen at first, and why they decided for the future to give the Syracusans more help in deed, but as sparingly as they could, and for the present, so as not to seem to give the Athenians less either, since they had come out on top in the battle, to give both sides an equal answer in words. After deliberating in this way, they answered that since both, who happened to be their allies, were at war with each other, they thought that for the present the way to keep their oaths was to help neither. And the envoys of both sides went away. The Syracusans got their own forces ready for the war, and the Athenians, encamped at Naxos, negotiated with the Sicels to bring over as many of them as possible. Most of the Sicels toward the plains, who were subjects of the Syracusans, had revolted; and the settlements of those who held the interior, which had always been independent, at once, with few exceptions, sided with the Athenians and brought grain down to the army, and some of them money too. The Athenians marched against those who did not come over and forced some of them to do so; others they were prevented from forcing because the Syracusans sent garrisons and help. For the winter they moved their base from Naxos to Catana, rebuilt the camp that had been burned by the Syracusans, and spent the winter there. They sent a trireme to Carthage to propose friendship, in case they could get some help from there, and they also sent to Tyrrhenia, since some of the cities there were themselves offering to join in the war. They sent round to the Sicels, and sent to Egesta, telling them to send as many horses as possible; and they got ready bricks, iron, and everything else they needed for the work of walling the city in, intending to take up the war with the coming of spring. The Syracusan envoys sent to Corinth and Lacedaemon tried, as they coasted along, to persuade the Italian Greeks not to stand by and watch what the Athenians were doing, since it was aimed at them as well; and when they reached Corinth, they made speeches asking the Corinthians to help them on the ground of kinship. The Corinthians at once voted, first of all, to help them with all their zeal, and sent envoys of their own to Lacedaemon along with them, to join in persuading the Lacedaemonians as well to make the war at home against the Athenians more open and to send some help to Sicily. The envoys from Corinth arrived at Lacedaemon, and so did Alcibiades with his fellow exiles. He had crossed at once in a cargo boat from the territory of Thurii, first to Cyllene in Elis, and then later to Lacedaemon, coming under safe-conduct at the invitation of the Lacedaemonians themselves; for he was afraid of them because of his part in the Mantinean affair. And so it happened that in the Lacedaemonian assembly the Corinthians, the Syracusans, and Alcibiades were all making the same request and trying to persuade the Lacedaemonians. The ephors and the authorities intended to send envoys to Syracuse to keep them from coming to terms with the Athenians, but were not eager to send help; then Alcibiades came forward, roused the Lacedaemonians, and spurred them on, speaking as follows.

89 “I must speak to you first about the prejudice against me, so that you may not, out of suspicion of me, listen the worse to what concerns us all. My ancestors renounced their position as your proxenus, the citizen who looked after your interests in Athens, over a certain grievance; I myself took it up again and paid court to you in various ways, and especially after your misfortune at Pylos. And though I continued to be zealous, you made peace with the Athenians and gave power to my enemies by negotiating through them, and dishonor to me. For this reason you were justly harmed by me when I turned to the Mantineans and Argives and in all the other ways I opposed you. And now, if anyone was angry with me without reason at the time when he was suffering, let him look at it in the light of the truth and change his mind. Or if anyone thought worse of me because I inclined rather to the people, let him not suppose that in this way either he has good reason to be offended. We have always been at odds with tyrants (and everything that opposes absolute power is called the people), and from that our leadership of the masses has stayed with us. Besides, since the city was a democracy, it was necessary in most things to conform to the established order. But we tried to be more moderate in politics than the prevailing license. There were others, both in the past and now, who led the mob toward worse things, and it was they who drove me out. We, on the other hand, were leaders of the whole people, and thought it right to help preserve the form of government under which the city happened to be greatest and most free, the form in which we had received it. For as to democracy, those of us with any sense knew what it was, and I as well as anyone, inasmuch as I could also revile it best. But about acknowledged folly nothing new could be said; and to change it did not seem safe to us while you were camped at our gates as enemies.

90 “So much for the prejudice against me. Now learn about the matters on which you must deliberate and on which I, if I know anything more, must advise you. We sailed to Sicily first to subdue the Sicilian Greeks, if we could, and after them the Italian Greeks in turn, and then to make an attempt on the empire of the Carthaginians and on Carthage itself. If all or most of this succeeded, we were then going to attack the Peloponnese, bringing with us the whole added power of the Hellenes there and hiring many barbarians, Iberians and others of the peoples there who are now acknowledged to be the most warlike of the barbarians. We would build many triremes in addition to our own, since Italy has timber in abundance; with these we would blockade the Peloponnese all around, and at the same time with our infantry attack it by land, taking some of the cities by storm and walling in others, and so we hoped to wear it down easily and after that to rule the whole Hellenic world. Money and grain, to make the work easier, the places added to us there would themselves provide in sufficient quantity, without the revenue from here.

91 “You have heard what the expedition now gone out was meant to do from the man who knows our intentions most exactly; and the generals who remain will carry them out in the same way if they can. Now learn that unless you help, things there will not hold out. The Sicilian Greeks are inexperienced, but even now, if they were united in a body, they could still prevail. But the Syracusans alone, already defeated in battle with their whole levy and blockaded by sea at the same time, will be unable to withstand the force the Athenians now have there. And if this city is taken, the whole of Sicily is taken as well, and Italy soon after; and the danger from there which I just described would not be long in falling on you. So let no one think he is deliberating only about Sicily; it is about the Peloponnese too, unless you do the following quickly. Send an army there on ships, men who will row themselves across and serve as hoplites as soon as they land; and, what I think even more useful than the army, a Spartiate as commander, to organize the men who are there and compel those who are unwilling. In this way your existing friends will take more heart, and the waverers will come over with less fear. At the same time you must make war here more openly, so that the Syracusans, thinking you care about them, may hold out the better, and the Athenians may be less able to send further reinforcements to their men. You must fortify Decelea in Attica, which is what the Athenians have always feared most and which they think is the only hardship of the war they have not yet tried. The surest way to hurt an enemy is to find out for certain what he most fears and bring that on him; for each side is likely to know its own weak points most exactly and to fear them. Of the benefits you will gain from the fort, and of those you will deny your enemies, I will pass over many and sum up the chief ones. Most of the property with which their country is stocked will come over to you, some of it captured, some of its own accord. They will at once be deprived of the revenue from the silver mines at Laurium and of what they now get from the land and the law courts; and above all of the revenue from their allies, which will come in less regularly, since the allies, believing that you are now waging the war in earnest, will take less account of them.

92 “Whether any of this is done quickly and zealously depends on you, Lacedaemonians; for that it is possible I am fully confident, and I do not think I am mistaken in my judgment. And I expect no one among you to think worse of me if I, who was once thought a lover of my city, now go vigorously against it with its bitterest enemies, or to suspect my words as springing from an exile’s zeal. I am an exile from the villainy of those who drove me out, not, if you listen to me, from the chance of serving you; and the worst enemies are not you, who did your enemies some harm, but those who forced their friends to become enemies. Love of my city I do not feel where I am wronged, but where I enjoyed my rights in safety as a citizen. Nor do I think that I am now going against a country that is still mine; I am rather trying to win back a country that is mine no longer. The true lover of his city is not the man who, having lost it unjustly, refuses to attack it, but the man who longs for it so much that he will try by every means to recover it. So I ask you, Lacedaemonians, to make use of me without hesitation for any danger and any hardship, recognizing the argument that everyone puts forward: that if as an enemy I did you great harm, as a friend I could do you good enough, inasmuch as I know the affairs of the Athenians, while I could only guess at yours. And I ask you to consider that you are now deliberating on matters of the greatest moment, and not to shrink from the expedition to Sicily and to Attica, so that by sending a small part of your forces you may save great things there and pull down the present and future power of the Athenians, and afterward live in safety yourselves and lead the whole of Hellas, which will follow you willingly, not by force, but out of goodwill.”

93 This was what Alcibiades said. The Lacedaemonians had already been intending on their own to march against Athens, but were still delaying and looking about them; now they were much more strongly encouraged, since he had explained each of these points and they thought they had heard it from the man who knew best. So they now turned their attention to fortifying Decelea and to sending some help at once to those in Sicily. They appointed Gylippus son of Cleandridas commander for the Syracusans and told him to consult with them and with the Corinthians and to arrange how help could reach those in Sicily most effectively and quickly under the circumstances. He told the Corinthians to send him two ships at once to Asine, and to get ready as many others as they meant to send and have them prepared to sail when the time came. Having agreed on this, the envoys left Lacedaemon. The Athenian trireme that the generals had sent from Sicily for money and cavalry also arrived, and the Athenians, when they heard the request, voted to send the army its supplies and the cavalry. So the winter ended, and with it the seventeenth year of this war, which Thucydides recorded.

94 The following summer, right at the beginning of spring, the Athenians in Sicily set out from Catana and sailed along the coast to Megara in Sicily, whose people the Syracusans had driven out in the time of the tyrant Gelon, as I said earlier, and whose land they now held themselves. They landed and ravaged the fields, went against a Syracusan fort and failed to take it, and then moved on again by land and sea to the river Terias, went up into the plain, ravaged it, and set fire to the grain. They came upon a few Syracusans, killed some of them, set up a trophy, and went back to the ships. They sailed back to Catana, took on provisions there, and marched with the whole army against Centoripa, a town of the Sicels; they won it over by agreement and went away, burning the grain of the Inessaeans and the Hyblaeans as they went. When they reached Catana they found that the cavalry had come from Athens, 250 horsemen with their equipment but without horses, which were to be procured on the spot, along with thirty mounted archers and three hundred talents of silver.

95 The same spring the Lacedaemonians marched against Argos and got as far as Cleonae, but an earthquake occurred and they withdrew. After this the Argives invaded the Thyreatis, on their border, and took a great deal of plunder from the Lacedaemonians, which sold for no less than twenty-five talents. Not long afterward, in the same summer, the people of Thespiae attacked those in office but did not prevail; the Thebans came to help, and some of them were arrested, while others fled to Athens.

96 The same summer, when the Syracusans learned that the cavalry had reached the Athenians and that they were about to march against them, they thought that unless the Athenians got control of Epipolae, a steep height lying directly above the city, they could not easily be walled off even if they were beaten in battle. So they decided to guard the approaches to it, so that the enemy should not go up that way unseen; for they could not get up anywhere else. For the rest of the ground is steep, and slopes down all the way to the city, and everything on it can be seen from inside; and because it lies above the rest, the Syracusans called it Epipolae.⁸ At dawn they came out in full force to the meadow beside the river Anapus (Hermocrates and his fellow generals had just taken up their command), held a review of arms, and first picked out six hundred chosen hoplites under the command of Diomilus, an exile from Andros, to guard Epipolae and to be ready to come quickly in a body wherever else they might be needed.

97 On the night before the day of this review the Athenians, with their whole army, put in from Catana without being noticed at the place called Leon, which is six or seven stades from Epipolae; they landed the infantry and anchored the ships at Thapsus. This is a peninsula joined by a narrow isthmus, jutting out into the sea, and not far from the city of Syracuse either by sea or by land. The Athenian naval force at Thapsus closed off the isthmus with a stockade and stayed quiet there, while the infantry went at once at a run to Epipolae and got up by Euryelus before the Syracusans noticed and came up from the meadow and the review. They came to the rescue, the others as fast as each could, and Diomilus’ six hundred; but they had no less than twenty-five stades to cover from the meadow before they could engage. So the Syracusans fell on them in this way in some disorder, were beaten in battle on Epipolae, and withdrew into the city; Diomilus was killed, and about three hundred of the others. After this the Athenians set up a trophy and gave back the dead to the Syracusans under a truce. The next day they went down to the city itself; and when the Syracusans did not come out against them, they withdrew and built a fort at Labdalum, on the edge of the cliffs of Epipolae, looking toward Megara, to serve as a storehouse for their equipment and money whenever they advanced either to fight or to build walls.

98 Not long afterward three hundred cavalry came to them from Egesta, and about a hundred from the Sicels, the Naxians, and some others. The Athenians already had their 250, for whom they got horses partly from the Egestaeans and Catanians and partly by purchase; and in all 650 cavalry were assembled. They posted a garrison at Labdalum and advanced to Syca, where they took up a position and quickly built the circle.⁹ The speed of the building alarmed the Syracusans, and they came out intending to give battle and not stand by. The two armies were already drawn up facing each other, when the Syracusan generals, seeing that their army was scattered and not easily formed into line, led it back again into the city, except for part of the cavalry. These stayed and tried to stop the Athenians from carrying stones and from straggling too far. Then one tribal regiment of the Athenian hoplites, with all the cavalry, charged and routed the Syracusan cavalry, killed some of them, and set up a trophy for the cavalry battle.

99 The next day some of the Athenians began building the wall north of the circle, while others gathered stones and timber and laid them down in a line toward the place called Trogilus, along the route by which their wall of blockade would be shortest from the Great Harbor to the other sea. The Syracusans, at the urging above all of Hermocrates among their generals, no longer wanted to risk battles in full force against the Athenians, but thought it better to build a counterwall across the line on which the Athenians were going to carry their wall. If they were first, the Athenians would be cut off; and if the Athenians came against them while they were at it, they would send part of their army against them, and they themselves would occupy the approaches first with a stockade, and the Athenians would have to stop work and all turn against them. So they came out and began building, starting from their own city, carrying a cross wall below the Athenian circle, cutting down the olive trees of the sacred precinct and putting up wooden towers. The Athenian ships had not yet sailed round from Thapsus into the Great Harbor; the Syracusans still controlled the coast, and the Athenians brought in their supplies by land from Thapsus.

100 When the Syracusans thought that enough of the counterwall had been staked and built, and the Athenians did not come to stop them, being afraid that if they divided their forces they would be easier to fight, and being at the same time intent on their own wall of circumvallation, the Syracusans left one tribal regiment to guard the work and went back into the city. The Athenians destroyed their pipes, which had been laid underground to bring drinking water into the city. Then, watching for a time when the rest of the Syracusans were in their tents at midday, and some had even gone off into the city, and those at the stockade were keeping careless guard, they told off three hundred picked men of their own and some chosen light troops, armed as hoplites, to run suddenly at full speed against the counterwall, while the rest of the army went in two divisions, one with one general toward the city, in case the Syracusans came out to help, and the other with the other general toward the stockade by the postern gate. The three hundred attacked and took the stockade, and its guards abandoned it and fled into the outwork around the Temenites. The pursuers burst in with them, but once inside they were thrown out again by force by the Syracusans, and some of the Argives and a few of the Athenians were killed there. Then the whole army came back, pulled down the counterwall, tore up the stockade, carried the stakes off to their own lines, and set up a trophy.

101 The next day the Athenians began walling from the circle toward the cliff above the marsh, which on this side of Epipolae looks toward the Great Harbor; this was the line along which their wall of circumvallation would be shortest, going down across the level ground and the marsh to the harbor. Meanwhile the Syracusans came out and began another stockade, starting again from the city and running through the middle of the marsh, and at the same time they dug a ditch alongside it, so that the Athenians could not wall them off all the way to the sea. When the Athenians had finished the part toward the cliff, they attacked the Syracusan stockade and ditch in turn. They ordered the ships to sail round from Thapsus into the Great Harbor of the Syracusans, and they themselves came down from Epipolae about first light to the level ground, laid doors and planks across the marsh where, though muddy, it was firmest, walked across on them, and at dawn took the stockade, except for a small part, and the ditch; and later they took the part that was left as well. A battle followed, and in it the Athenians were victorious. Of the Syracusans, those on the right wing fled toward the city, and those on the left along the river. The three hundred picked men of the Athenians, wanting to cut them off from the crossing, hurried at a run toward the bridge. The Syracusans took alarm (for most of their cavalry were there too) and closed with these three hundred, routed them, and charged the right wing of the Athenians; and at their onset the first tribal regiment of that wing also panicked. Lamachus saw this and came to help from his own left with a few archers, taking the Argives with him; he crossed a ditch, was cut off with the few who had crossed with him, and was killed, he and five or six of his men. The Syracusans at once quickly snatched up their bodies and carried them across the river to safety, and then, as the rest of the Athenian army was now coming up, they withdrew.

102 Meanwhile those who had first fled toward the city, seeing what was happening, took heart again, came out from the city, and formed up against the Athenians facing them; and they sent part of their force against the circle on Epipolae, thinking they would find it unguarded and take it. They took and destroyed the outwork, which was ten plethra long, but Nicias kept them from the circle itself; he happened to have been left there because of illness. He ordered the servants to set fire to the engines and the timber that had been thrown down in front of the wall, since he saw that for lack of men they could not survive in any other way. And so it turned out: the Syracusans came no farther because of the fire, but withdrew again. For help was now coming up to the circle from the Athenians below, who had driven off the enemy there, and at the same time their ships from Thapsus were sailing into the Great Harbor, as they had been ordered. Seeing this, the men on the heights quickly withdrew, and so did the whole Syracusan army, into the city, thinking that with the forces they now had they would no longer be able to prevent the building of the wall to the sea.

103 After this the Athenians set up a trophy, gave back the dead to the Syracusans under a truce, and recovered the bodies of Lamachus and those who had fallen with him. Now that their whole force, both the fleet and the army, was with them, they began walling off the Syracusans with a double wall from Epipolae and the cliffs down to the sea. Supplies were brought in for the army from all over Italy. Many of the Sicels, who had been waiting to see which way things went, came over to the Athenians as allies, and three penteconters came from Tyrrhenia. Everything else was going forward as they had hoped. For the Syracusans no longer thought they could win the war, since no help at all had come to them from the Peloponnese either; and they were talking of terms among themselves and with Nicias, who now held the command alone, since Lamachus was dead. Nothing was settled, but, as is natural with men at a loss and more closely besieged than before, much was said to him, and still more within the city. Their present troubles even made them suspicious of one another, and they deposed the generals under whom these things had happened to them, as though they had suffered through their bad luck or their treachery, and chose others in their place, Heraclides, Eucles, and Tellias.

104 Meanwhile Gylippus the Lacedaemonian and the ships from Corinth were already off Leucas, wanting to bring help quickly to Sicily. Since the reports reaching them were alarming and all falsely agreed that Syracuse was already completely walled off, Gylippus no longer had any hope for Sicily, but wanting to save Italy, he and Pythen the Corinthian crossed the Ionian Sea to Tarentum as quickly as possible with two Laconian ships and two Corinthian, while the Corinthians were to man two Leucadian and three Ambraciot ships besides their own ten and sail later. Gylippus first went on an embassy from Tarentum to Thurii and renewed his father’s citizenship there;¹⁰ but failing to win them over, he put out and sailed along the coast of Italy. Off the Terinaean Gulf he was caught by the wind, which blows strong from the north there when it is set in that quarter, and was carried out to sea; after being battered by a very severe storm he made Tarentum again, hauled up the ships that had suffered most from the storm, and repaired them. Nicias heard that he was sailing toward them, but he made light of the small number of his ships, as the Thurians had also done, thought that they were sailing equipped more for piracy, and set no watch as yet.

105 About the same time in this summer the Lacedaemonians and their allies invaded Argos and ravaged most of the country, and the Athenians came to the help of the Argives with thirty ships. These broke their treaty with the Lacedaemonians in the most open way. Before this they had joined the Argives and Mantineans in the war by raiding from Pylos and by landing elsewhere around the Peloponnese rather than in Laconia; and though the Argives had often urged them merely to land with arms in Laconia, join them in ravaging the least bit of it, and leave, they had refused. But now, under the command of Pythodorus, Laespodias, and Demaratus, they landed at Epidaurus Limera, Prasiae, and other places, and ravaged the land, and so gave the Lacedaemonians a far more plausible ground for defending themselves against the Athenians. After the Athenians had left Argos with their ships, and the Lacedaemonians too, the Argives invaded the territory of Phlius, ravaged part of its land, killed some of the inhabitants, and went home.

Notes

1. 1. The first Athenian expedition to Sicily, 427–424 BC, told in Books 3 and 4.

2. 2. The epistates, the member of the council’s presiding committee who chaired the assembly for the day and put motions to the vote. Reopening a question already decided was illegal.

3. 3. Herms: square stone pillars topped with a head of the god Hermes, set up at house doors, crossroads, and sanctuaries as guardians. The mutilation took place in 415 BC, shortly before the fleet sailed.

4. 4. The Eleusinian Mysteries of Demeter and Persephone, secret rites revealed only to initiates; to perform or parody them in private was a capital offense.

5. 5. The thranitae, the top bank of rowers in a trireme, whose oars were the longest and whose work was the hardest.

6. 6. One of the two Athenian state triremes, used for official missions such as carrying envoys or summoning officials home.

7. 7. Harmodius and Aristogeiton killed Hipparchus, brother of the tyrant Hippias, in 514 BC, and were honored at Athens as the tyrant-slayers; Hippias was expelled in 510 BC.

8. 8. The name means “the parts above,” the heights over the city.

9. 9. A round fort at the center of the Athenian siege works, from which the walls of circumvallation were to run north and south.

10. 10. Cleandridas, the father of Gylippus, had fled Sparta about 446 BC after being accused of taking bribes, and became a citizen of Thurii.