Stories From Thucydides by H. L. Havell

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STORIES FROM THUCYDIDES

RETOLD BY H. L. HAVELL B. A.

FORMERLY SCHOLAR OF UNIVERSITY COLLEGE OXFORD

_O my poor Kingdom, sick with civil blows!_
SHAKESPEARE, _Henry IV_.

CONTENTS

PROLOGUE
CORINTH AND CORCYRA
THE SURPRISE OF PLATAEA
THE PLAGUE AT ATHENS
INVESTMENT OF PLATAEA
NAVAL VICTORIES OF PHORMIO
THE REVOLT OF LESBOS
ESCAPE OF TWO HUNDRED PLATAEANS. FALL OF PLATAEA
CAPTURE OF A HUNDRED AND TWENTY SPARTANS AT SPHACTERIA
CAMPAIGNS OF BRASIDAS IN THRACE
THE HOLLOW PEACE
THE ATHENIANS IN SICILY
EPILOGUE

PROLOGUE

In a former volume we have traced the course of events which ended in
the complete overthrow of Xerxes and his great army. Our present task
is to describe the chief incidents in the cruel and devastating war,
commonly known as the Peloponnesian War, which lasted for twenty-seven
years, and finally broke up the Athenian Empire. The cause of that war
was the envy and hatred excited in the other states of Greece by the
power and greatness of Athens; and in order to make our story
intelligible we must indicate briefly the steps by which she rose to
that dangerous eminence, and drew upon herself the armed hostility of
half the Greek world.

We take up our narrative at the point of time when the Athenians
returned to their ruined homes after the defeat of the Persians at
Plataea. Of their ancient city nothing remained but a few houses which
had served as lodgings for the Persian grandees, and some scattered
fragments of the surrounding wall. Their first task was to restore the
outer line of defence, and by the advice of Themistocles the new wall
took in a much wider circuit than the old rampart which had been
destroyed by the Persians. The whole population toiled night and day
to raise the bulwark which was to guard their temples and their homes,
using as materials the walls of the houses which had been sacked and
burnt by the Persians, with whatever remained of public buildings,
sacred or profane, and sparing not even the monumental pillars of
graves in the urgency of their need.

But jealous eyes were watching them, and busy tongues were wagging
against that gallant race of Attica which had been foremost in the
common cause against the barbarian invader. "These Athenians are
dangerous neighbours," was the cry. "Let us stop them from building
their wall, or Athens will become a standing menace to ourselves."
Before long these murmurs reached the ears of the Spartans, and they
sent envoys to dissuade the Athenians from fortifying their city.
Their real purpose was disguised under the mask of anxiety for the
general safety of Greece. "It is not expedient," they urged, "that the
Persians, when next they come against us, should find fenced cities
which they may make their strongholds, as they have lately done in
Athens and in Thebes. Cease, therefore, from building this wall, and
help us to destroy all such defences, outside of Peloponnesus. If we
are attacked again, we will unite our forces within the isthmus, and
meet the invader from there."

But Themistocles was not the man to be hoodwinked by the simple
cunning of the Spartans. By his advice the Athenians dismissed the
envoys, promising to send an embassy to discuss the matter at Sparta.
As soon as they were gone, Themistocles caused himself to be appointed
as head of the embassy, and set out at once for Sparta, instructing
the Athenians to keep his colleagues back until the wall had been
raised to a sufficient height for purposes of defence. Arrived at
Sparta, he kept himself close in his lodging, and declined all
conference with the authorities, alleging that he could do nothing
without his colleagues.

Meanwhile the Athenians were making incredible efforts to carry on the
work which was essential to their liberty and prosperity. Men, women,
and children toiled without intermission, and the wall was rapidly
approaching a defensible height. The clamour of their enemies grew
louder and louder, and angry messages reached the Spartans everyday,
reproaching them with their supineness and procrastination. Being
asked the meaning of these reports, Themistocles professed total
ignorance, and bade the Spartans send men to Athens to see for
themselves. The Spartans did so, and when the men arrived at Athens
the Athenians, who had been privately warned by Themistocles, kept
them in custody, as hostages for their own representatives at Sparta.
Themistocles had meanwhile been joined by his partners in the embassy,
and learning from them that the wall was now of sufficient height, he
spoke out plainly, and let the Spartans understand what his true
purpose was. "Athens," he said, "is once more a fortified city, and we
are able to discuss questions of public or private interest on a
footing of equality. When we forsook all, and took to our ships to
fight for the common weal, it was done without prompting of yours; and
that peril being past, we shall take such measures as concern our
safety, without leave asked of you. And in serving ourselves, we are
serving you also; for if Athens is not free, how can she give an
unbiased vote in questions which concern the general welfare of
Greece?"

It was impossible for the Spartans to express open resentment at a
plea so moderate and so reasonable. But they were secretly annoyed to
find that their malice had been detected and exposed; and by this
incident was sown the first seed of ill-will which was afterwards to
bear such bitter fruit for Athens and for Greece. For the present,
however, the affair was ended, and the first step secured for the
Athenians in their career of glory and power.

Themistocles was the first who clearly saw that the future of Athens
lay on the sea. But if Athens was to hold and extend her position as
the first naval power in Greece, it was above all things necessary
that she should have a strong and fortified station for her fleets,
her arsenals, and her dockyards. Nature had provided her with what she
needed, in the peninsula of Peiraeus, which juts out into the Saronic
Gulf, about five miles south-west of the inland town. As soon as the
city-wall was completed, fortifications of immense strength were
carried round the whole of Peiraeus; and within this vast rampart rose
a second city, equal in size to the old one, with streets laid out in
straight lines, and filled with the stir and bustle of a maritime
population. Three land-locked harbours gave ample room for the fleets
of Athens to lie in shelter and safety; and this great sea-port town
was afterwards united to the original city by two long walls, which
met the sea, one at the north-western corner of Peiraeus, and the
other at the south-eastern point of the Bay of Phalerum. Between
these, at a later period, a third wall was built, running parallel to
the northern wall at a distance of about two hundred feet, and known
as the Southern or Middle Wall.

Many years elapsed before these important works were completed; and in
the meantime great events had been happening in other parts of the
Greek world, tending more and more to realise the dream of
Themistocles, and make his beloved city the undisputed mistress of the
sea. After the defeat of the Persian armies and fleets at Salamis,
Plataea, and Mycale, much hard work remained to be done, in reducing
the outlying cities on the coasts of Thrace and in the eastern corners
of the Aegaean, which held out for the Great King. The Spartans were
still nominal leaders of the allied Greek navy; but after a year of
service they resigned this position, which they owed to their
acknowledged supremacy in land warfare, to the Athenians. They were
induced to take this step, partly by their own aversion to foreign
enterprises, and partly by the misconduct of their general Pausanias,
who had disgusted the allies serving under him in the fleet by his
intolerable arrogance and tyranny. The field was thus left open to the
Athenians, who willingly assumed the command offered them by the
maritime cities of Greece, with the object of prosecuting the war
vigorously against Persia. Each city was assessed to furnish a fixed
contribution of ships or money, and the sacred island of Delos was
appointed as the common treasury and meeting-place of the league. Thus
was formed the famous Delian Confederacy, with the avowed purpose of
making reprisals on the Great King's territory for the havoc which he
had wrought in Greece. For a time all went smoothly, and the various
members of the league fought under Athens as her independent allies.
But by degrees the Greeks from the islands and coast-lands of Asia
began to weary of their arduous duties, and murmured against the
Athenians, who proved hard task-masters, and compelled them by force
to perform their part in the bargain. One by one the cities revolted
from the leadership of Athens, were attacked by her navies, and
reduced to the position of subjects and tributaries. Others
voluntarily withdrew from all active co-operation in the war, agreeing
to pay a fixed annual sum as a substitute for service in the fleet.
And before the outbreak of the Peloponnesian War the two powerful
islands of Lesbos and Chios were the only members of the original
league who still retained their independence.

Such were the circumstances which led to the foundation of the
Athenian Empire, which grew up, by the force of necessity, out of the
decay of a confederacy born of a common need, and organised for the
special benefit of the Asiatic Greeks. For the names of the Greek
cities on the coasts of Asia Minor still figured in the Persian
tribute-lists; and the moment that the grasp of Athens relaxed on the
confines of the King's dominions, after the ruinous defeat in Sicily,
Persian tax-gatherers came knocking at the gates of Ephesus and
Miletus, demanding the arrears of tribute. So urgent was the need
supplied by the energy of Athens, and so blind were these Greeks of
Asia Minor to their own interests.

The visible sign of this momentous change, by which the Delian
Confederacy became merged in the Athenian Empire, was the removal of
the treasury from Delos to Athens. The Athenians now undertook the
whole administration of the common fund, using the surplus for the
adornment of Athens by magnificent public buildings. This
appropriation seems reasonable enough, when we consider that the whole
burden of defending the eastern Greeks against Persia, and keeping the
barbarian out of Greek waters, now lay upon Athens. This great public
duty, which had been thrown upon her by the indifference of Sparta,
and the unmanly sloth of her own allies, was faithfully performed; and
she might well ask why she should be called upon to lavish the blood
of her own citizens for nothing. That Athens should be great,
splendid, and powerful, was not only a reward due to her public spirit
and devotion to the common cause, but also a guarantee for the general
dignity and liberty of Greeks. And we, who have still before us the
remnants of her temples and statues, and learn from them what man can
accomplish under the inspiration of great ideals, need not scan too
closely her claim to appropriate the funds which she employed for so
noble a purpose. For this was the great age of Grecian art, the age of
Phidias, Polycletus, Myron, and Polygnotus. The greatest of these was
Phidias; and in the Parthenon, or Temple of the Virgin Goddess,
[Footnote: Athene, the patron goddess of Athens.] built under his
direction on the Acropolis at Athens, he has left the most enduring
monument of his fame. He also designed the Propylaea, a magnificent
columned vestibule, fronting the broad flight of steps which led up to
the western entrance of the Acropolis. But the most renowned of his
works was the gigantic statue of the Olympian Zeus, wrought in gold
and ivory, which was the chief glory of the temple at Olympia. Of this
sublime creation, the highest expression of divinity achieved by the
ancients, only the fame survives. These triumphs of art were not
brought to completion until nearly the close of the period of forty-
eight years which separates the Persian from the Peloponnesian War;
and it is now necessary to glance backward, and touch briefly on the
principal events which occurred after the formation of the Delian
Confederacy. The war was carried on with energy against Persia, and
hostilities continued at intervals for thirty years after the battle
of Plataea. [Footnote: B.C. 479-449.]

The chief leader in these enterprises was the heroic Cimon, leader of
the conservative party at Athens, and the great rival of Pericles; and
his most brilliant exploit was a crushing defeat inflicted on the
Persian army and fleet at the mouth of the river Eurymedon in
Pamphylia. But the victorious career of the Athenians received a
severe check twelve years later in Egypt, where a large force of ships
and men was totally destroyed by the Persian general Megabyzus. The
war dragged on for five years longer, and peace was then concluded on
terms highly advantageous to the Greeks. Shortly before this, Cimon,
who had been the chief promoter of the war, died at Cyprus.

The same years which brought to a successful issue the long struggle
with Persia witnessed a renewal of those internal conflicts by which
the energies of Greece were finally exhausted, leaving her an easy
prey to the arms of Macedon. The guilt of renewing these suicidal
quarrels lies with the Spartans, who had long been nursing their
grudge against Athens, and were waiting for the opportunity to inflict
on her a fatal blow. Fifteen years [Footnote: B.C. 464. ] after the
battle of Plataea they seized the occasion when the Athenians were
engaged with a large part of their forces in carrying on operations
against the revolted island of Thasos to prepare an invasion of
Attica. But at the very moment when they were meditating this act of
perfidy a double disaster fell upon them at home, demanding all their
exertions to save them from ruin. Sparta was levelled to the ground by
a terrible earthquake, in which twenty thousand of her citizens
perished; and in the midst of the panic caused by this awful calamity
the Helots rose in arms against their oppressors, and forming an
alliance with the Messenian subjects of Sparta, entrenched themselves
in a strong position on Mount Ithome. Here they maintained themselves
for two years, defying all the efforts of the Spartans to drive them
from their stronghold. In spite of their recent treachery, the
Spartans were not ashamed to apply to Athens for help: and chiefly
through the influence of Cimon, whose laurels from the Eurymedon were
still fresh, four thousand Athenian hoplites [Footnote: Heavy-armed
foot-soldiers.] were sent under his command to aid in dislodging the
Helots. The Athenians were famous for their skill in attacking
fortified places; but on this occasion they were unsuccessful, and the
Spartans, whose evil conscience made them prone to suspicion, at once
began to doubt the honesty of their intentions, and dismissed them
with scant ceremony. This unfriendly act helped to embitter the
relations between the two leading cities of Greece; and two years
later, when the Messenians were expelled from Ithome, and driven into
exile, the Athenians settled them with their families at Naupactus, an
important strategic position on the north of the Corinthian Gulf,
which has recently fallen into the hands of Athens.

Deeply offended by the affront received at Ithome, the Athenians now
formed an alliance with Argos, the ancient rival and bitter enemy of
Sparta. Thessaly, connected with Athens by old ties of friendship,
joined the league; and Megara, now suffering from the oppressions of
Corinth, made a fourth.

Within sight of the shores of Attica lies the island of Aegina, famous
in legend as the home of Aeacus, grandfather of Achilles, and
distinguished for its school of sculpture, and for its mighty breed of
athletes, whose feats are celebrated in the laureate strains of
Pindar. The Aeginetans had obtained the first prize for valour
displayed in the battle of Salamis, and for many years they had
pressed the Athenians hard in the race for maritime supremacy. They
were now attacked by an overwhelming Athenian force, and after a
stubborn resistance were totally defeated, and compelled to enroll
themselves among the subjects of Athens. A still harder fate was
reserved for the hapless Dorian islanders in the next generation.

In the following nine years [Footnote: B.C. 456-447.] the power of
Athens reached its greatest height, and for a moment it seemed as if
she were destined to extend her empire over the whole mainland of
Greece. By the victory of Oenophyta, gained over the Boeotians just
before the reduction of Aegina, Athens became mistress of all the
central provinces of the Greek peninsula, from the pass of Thermopylae
to the gulf of Corinth. The alliance of Megara, lately united by long
walls to its harbour of Nisaea, secured her from invasion on the side
of Peloponnesus. The great island of Euboea, with its rich pastures
and fruitful corn lands, had, since the Persian War, become an
Athenian estate, and was jealously guarded as one of her most valuable
possessions; and on the sea, from the eastern corner of the Euxine to
the strait of Gibraltar, there was none to dispute her sway.

But this rapid ascent was followed by no less speedy a fall, and one
act of indiscretion stripped the Athenians of all the advantages which
they had acquired on the mainland of Greece. In every city of Greece
there were always two parties, the wealthy and noble, called
oligarchs, and the demos, or commons; and according as Spartan or
Athenian influence was in the ascendant the balance of power in each
city wavered between the nobles and the people, the Athenians
favouring the Many, the Spartans the Few. Accordingly there was always
a party living in exile, and waiting for a turn of affairs which might
enable them to return to their city, and wrest the power from that
faction which had been the last to triumph. In the cities of Boeotia
the leaders of the oligarchs had been driven into banishment after the
battle of Oenophyta, and democracies were established under the
control of Athens. After nine years of banishment these exiles
returned, and the result was an oligarchical reaction in the chief
cities of Boeotia. A hastily equipped and ill-organised force was sent
out from Athens to put down the authors of the revolution, and in the
battle which followed, at Coronea, [Footnote: B.C. 447.] the Athenians
sustained a severe defeat, and a large number of their citizens were
taken prisoners by the Boeotians. To recover these prisoners the
Athenians consented to evacuate Boeotia, and by this surrender they
lost their hold on central Greece, as far as Thermopylae.

This heavy blow was followed two years later by the revolt of Megara
and Euboea; and in the midst of the alarm thus occasioned, the
Athenians heard that a powerful Spartan army was threatening their
borders. It was a terrible moment for Athens; but she was saved by the
prudence and energy of Pericles, whose influence in her councils was
now supreme. By some means or other--as the Spartans asserted, by a
heavy bribe--he induced the Spartan king Pleistoanax to draw off his
forces; and then crossing over into Euboea, he quickly reduced the
whole island to submission, and took severe measures to prevent any
outbreak in the future.

The exertions of the Athenians during the last thirty years had been
prodigious, and their efforts to found an empire in continental Greece
had ended in total failure. Discouraged by their reverses, they
concluded a thirty years' truce with the Spartans and their allies,
resigning the last remnant of their recent conquests, and leaving
Megara in her old position as a member of the Peloponnesian league
under Sparta. The loss of Megara was severely felt, and her conduct in
the late troubles was neither forgotten nor forgiven. The Megarians
had by their own free choice been admitted into the Athenian alliance,
and in an hour of great peril to Athens, without shadow of pretext
they had risen in arms against her. It was not long before they had to
pay a heavy penalty for their treachery and inconstancy.

The last event which we have to record, before entering into the main
current of our narrative, is the secession of Samos, the most
important member of the maritime allies of Athens. This wealthy and
powerful island had hitherto, with Chios and Lesbos, enjoyed the
distinction of serving under Athens as an independent ally. The
Athenians, with a view to their own interests, had recently set up a
democracy in Samos, which had hitherto been governed by an oligarchy.
Incensed by this interference, the Samian nobles, who had been driven
into exile, hired a mercenary force, and making a sudden attack from
the mainland, overthrew the democracy and raised the standard of
revolt. The crisis called for prompt and vigorous action on the part
of Athens; for if Samos had been successful in defying her authority,
the other members of the league would speedily have followed the
example, and the whole fabric of her empire might have been shattered
to pieces. Pericles was again equal to the emergency, and by employing
the whole naval power of Athens he was able, after a siege of nine
months, to reduce the refractory islanders to submission. The Samians
were compelled to surrender their fleet, to pull down their walls, to
pay a heavy war indemnity, and to give hostages as a security for
their good conduct in the future. And henceforward they became
subjects and tributaries of Athens.

We have now completed our review of the chief events which occurred
between the Persian and Peloponnesian wars. It was a period of rapid
development for Athens, of ceaseless activity at home and abroad, of
immense progress in all the arts of war and peace. The imperial city
had now risen to her full stature, and stood forth, supreme in
intellect and in action, the wonder and envy of mankind. Her mighty
walls bade defiance to her enemies at home, and she held in her hand
the islands and coast-districts of the Aegaean, where the last murmur
of resistance had been quelled. Her recent reverses on the mainland of
Greece had left the real sources of her power untouched; and taught
her, if she would but take the lesson to heart, the proper limits of
her empire. And she had risen to this height, not by the prevailing
force of any single mind, but by the united efforts of all her
citizens, working together for a whole generation, shunning no
sacrifice, and shrinking from no exertion, in their devotion to the
common mother of them all. Every Athenian, from the wealthiest noble
to the poorest rower in the fleet, felt that he had a stake in the
country, which to a Greek meant the city, where he was born. He gave
his vote in the Parliament [Footnote: Called the Ecclesia.] of Athens,
and served on the juries chosen by lot from the whole body of the
citizens, before whose judgment-seat, unassailable by bribery or
intimidation, the mightiest offenders trembled. He was a statesman, a
judge, a lawgiver, and a warrior, and he might even hope to climb to
the highest place in the State, and rule, like Pericles, as a prince
of democracy. Around him rose the temples and statues of the gods,
fresh from the chisel of the artist, the visible symbols of Athenian
greatness, and of the grand ideals which he served. The masterpieces
of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides opened to him the boundless
realms of the imagination, taught him grave lessons of moral wisdom,
and connected the strenuous present with the heroic past; and the Old
Comedy, the most complete embodiment of the very genius of democracy,
afforded a feast of wit and fancy for his lighter hours. If he had a
taste for higher speculation, he might hear Anaxagoras discoursing on
the mysteries of the spiritual world, or Zeno applying his sharp tests
for the conviction of human error. And when the assembly was summoned
to discuss matters of high imperial policy, he felt all the greatness
and majesty of the Athenian state, as he hung entranced on the lips of
Pericles.

Such was Athens in her prime, and such were the men who raised her to
the lofty eminence which she held among the cities of Greece. But the
years which had lifted her to that unparalleled height had raised up a
host of enemies against her, and it behoved her to temper ambition
with prudence if she would maintain the proud position which the held.
The scattered units which composed the Athenian empire were held
together by no tie of loyalty or affection to their common mistress,
but solely by the dread of her overwhelming naval power. Even in the
noblest spirits of ancient Greece, the feeling of patriotism, as we
understand it, was feeble and uncertain; when we speak of our
_country_, the Greek spoke of his _city_, and his love, his
hopes, his highest aspirations, were bounded by the narrow circuit of
the walls which contained the tombs of his ancestors and the temples
of his gods. This feeling, the most deeply-rooted instinct of Greek
political life, had been grievously offended by Athens, when she
compelled the islanders of the Aegaean, and the Greek cities of Asia,
to serve in her navies, and pay tribute to her exchequer.

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