BATTLE OF MANTINEA. 221

which they had gotten from other Arcadian towns. His
arguments prevailed ; the army marched, and Orchomenus
surrendered. It was then debated what should next be done.
The Eleians wished them to march against Lepreon, a place
of which the Lacedaemonians had lately deprived them; and
on their refusal they separated from them and went home.
It was then decided to proceed to Tegea, where they had a
friendly party.

The Spartans had been also incensed with the conduct
of King Agis, and were about to punish him, when he en-
treated and obtained a stay of the sentence till he should
try to retrieve his character. He now set forth with the
whole force of the state, and, summoning the Arcadian allies
to join him at once, sent off to call the Corinthians and the
more distant ones. He then entered and began to ravage
the lands of Mantinea ; the Argive army came and took a
strong position opposite to him. He advanced to attack,
them, and was within a stone's cast of them, when an old
Spartan called out to him that he was going to make bad
worse : he saw his error, and retired. He then set about
tnrning a stream to injure the lands of the Mantineans,
hoping thus to draw the enemy from their strong position.
The Argives were at first surprised at the retreat of the La-
cedaemonians ; but when they saw them gone, they began,
as before, to accuse their generals of letting them escape.
To appease them, the generals led them down into the plain
to follow the enemy. Next day, as the Lacedaemonians were
returning to their former position, they saw the Argive army
in order of battle on the plain. Their consternation exceed-
ed any they had ever felt, but owing to their excellent disci-
pline they formed, though in haste, without confusion. The
Scintes * occupied the left wing ; next to them were Brasi-
das' troops, and the Neodamodes ; then the Lacedaemonians
in the order of their lochi, the Arcadians of Heraea and
Maenalus, and on the right wing the Tegeans and a few

* The people of Sciritis on the borders of Arcadia.

19*



222 HISTORY OF GREECE.

Lacedaemonians ; the horse were at either extremity; and
they moved slowly to the sound of numerous flutes. The
Mantineans, as they were on their own soil, had the right
wing of the Argive army; the other Arcadians and one
thousand select men, who formed the regular army of Argos,
were next ; then came the remaining Argives; the Athenians
were on the left, supported by their horse.

Just as the action was commencing, Agis, seeing that the
Mantineans stretched beyond his left wing, sent orders to
the Scirites and JBrasidians to move so as to front their ex-
tremity, and he directed two companies (lochi) from the
right to occupy the vacant place ; but these companies did
not stir, and the Mantineans and Argives, falling on the
troops thus isolated, routed and pursued them to their bag-
gage. In the centre, where Agis himself commanded, the
Lacedaemonians were completely victorious. The Athenians
on the left were now surrounded, and but for the support of
their own horse and that Agis directed his whole army to
come to the aid of the defeated left wing, they would have
been cut to pieces. The Athenians then retreated, and
the Mantineans and select Argives, when they saw the entire
strength of the enemy coming against them, turned and fled.
The loss was not so great as it would otherwise have been,
for it was the Spartan rule not to pursue a flying foe. The
Argives left on the field seven hundred, the Mantineans two
hundred, and the Athenians also two hundred and their two
generals. About three hundred of the Lacedaemonians fell:
their allies scarcely suffered at all. This battle, the greatest
yet fought among the Greeks, completely restored the fame
of the Lacedaemonians, which the misfortune in Sphacteria
and their usual inertness had somewhat sullied.

A more important result was the complete frustration of
Alcibiades' grand plan of a. confederacy under Athens. The
oligarchic pnrty now got the upper hand at Argos, and when,
at the end of the year, Agis, in concert with it, led his army
to Tegea, and sent thence to Argos proposals for accommo-
d Ltion, though Alcibiades was there, and used all his influ-



REVOLUTION AT ARGOS. 223

ence to the contrary, they were received, and an alliance
offensive and defensive formed between the two states. The
Athenians were obliged to abandon a fort they had raised at
Epidaurus; the Mantineans made peace on the best terms
they could ; a combined Argive and Lacedaemonian force
dissolved the democracy at Sicyon ; and matters were reg-
ulated in Achaia to suit Spartan views. An alliance was
also secretly formed with Perdiccas and the Chalcidians of
Thrace.

Yet this state of things did not continue. Though the
democracy was dissolved at Argos, the democratic party was
strong, and having recovered courage, (Ol. 90, 4,) they took
advantage of a festival at Sparta, and after a smart conflict
defeated and expelled the oligarchs. The Lacedaemonians,
who had put off their feast to go to the aid of their friends,
met the fugitives at Tegea, who urged them to proceed, as
they might be sure of victory ; but they went back to con-
clude their festival. Deputies then came from Argos; the
matter was referred to the allies who were present, and sen-
tence given against the people, and an army directed to
march to Argos to enforce it. The Argives applied to their
old friends at Athens ; artisans were sent, and the building
of walls from the city to the sea the bulwarks of democ-
racy commenced. Men, women, and slaves wrought at
the walls ; but before they were completed, Agis Jed in his
army, demolished them, took and destroyed the village of
Hysiae, and then retired. The Argives, in their turn, en-
tered and ravaged the lands of the Phliasians, who had given
refuge to the exiles.

The next year (Ol. 91, 1) Alcibiadescame to Argos with
twenty ships ; and three hundred persons suspected of fa-
voring the Spartan interest being put into his hands, he
placed them in safe keeping in the isles under Athenian do-
minion.

The Athenian government, probably instigated by Alci-
biades, next sent a fleet and army against the Isle of Melos,
whose people, a Lacedaemonian colony, were guilty of the
crime, in their eyes, of desiring peace and independence.



224 HISTORY OF GREECE.

At the commencement of this war they had joined neither
party ; in the sixth year, provoked by the wanton invasion
of their island by the Athenians, they had exercised hostil-
ities against them; but they had of course been included in
the peace, and they are not charged with having given any
offence.

The Athenians, before they commenced operations, held
a conference with the leading men at Melos, in which, put-
ting forth no right but that of the stronger, they required
them to become their subjects. The Melians, in reliance on
Lacedasmon, refused to submit : their town was then block-
aded by sea and land, and after a defence of some months,
they were obliged to surrender unconditionally. All the
grown males were put to death, the women and children
made slaves, the lands divided among Athenian colonists.

This is certainly one of the most unprovoked and inde-
fensible pieces of barbarity in Grecian history. Its guilt is
enhanced by the recollection that there was no brutal Cleon
now dominant at Athens to urge the people on to blood,
but that the soul of the Athenian councils was the ward of
Pericles, the pupil of Socrates ! We may infer, however,
from Isocrates * that the action was generally condemned,
and that the more upright Athenians at least were ashamed
of it.



CHAPTER VIl.t

AFFAIRS OF SICILY. ATHENIAN EXPEDITION TO SICILY.

PROSECUTION OF ALCIBIADES FOR IMPIETY. DESCRIP-
TION OF SYRACUSE. BATTLE AT SYRACUSE. PREPA-
RATIONS FOR THE WAR. SIEGE OF SYRACUSE.

It would appear that even in the time of Pericles the Athe-
nians had formed some designs on the Island of Sicily, for

* Panatheh. 245.

t Thuc. vi. vii. 125. Diod. xii. 8284; xiii. 19 Plut. Nicias
and Alcibiadcs.



AFFAIRS OF SICILY. 225

one of the inducements held out by the Corcyraeans when
they came to solicit an alliance, was the advantages which
their island offered for a passage to Sicily. As this island
was remarkable for its fertility, it exported a great deal of
corn to. Peloponnesus ; and the wish to deprive their enemies
of this supply, and to divert it to their own port, joined with
the usual lust for extending dominion, first probably led
the Athenians to meditate so distant a conquest.

Sicily, it is probable, was originally peopled from Italy.
Its inhabitants, named Sicanians and Sikelans, occupied
the interior, but Grecian colonies had settled on the coast.
Naxos was founded (Ol. 11, 1) by the Chalcidians from
Eubcea, and Syracuse (Ol. 11, 2) by the Corinthians. The
Naxians afterwards founded Leontini and Catana ; and Acrae,
Casmenae, and Camarina were colonies from Syracuse. Me-
garians founded the Hyblaean Megara and Selinus, and Rho-
dians and Cretans Gela, of which Acragas (Agrigentum)
was a colony. We thus see that there was a Dorian and
an Ionian * party in Sicily also, and that the former was by
much the more powerful.

In the fifth year of the Peloponnesian war, (Ol. 88, 2,)
the people of Leontini, being hard pressed by the Syracu-
sans, sent to Athens imploring aid on the ground of consan-
guinity. A fleet of twenty triremes was sent under Laches
and Charaeades, and Leontini was relieved. Charaeades
having been slain, Laches carried on the war with ability.
The Syracusans then increased their marine, and the Athe-
nians prepared to send out a superior fleet. Pythodorus
came immediately with a few triremes and took the chief
command, and in the spring (Ol. 88, 4) Sophocles and
Eurymedon left Athens with a fleet of triremes ; but while
they were detained off Peloponnesus, Pythodorus gained a
victory in the Strait of Messana. The designs of the Athe-
nians were now seen through, and the good sense and true
patriotism of Hermocrates, a Syracusan, prevailed on all the

* The Euboeans were reckoned of the Ionian race.

c c



226 HISTORY OF GREECE.

contending states to form a general peace. The Athenian
fleet was therefore obliged to return home ; and the sove-
reign people were so incensed at seeing their views of con-
quest thus balked, that they fined Eurymedon and banished
his colleagues. (01. 89, 1.)

Tranquillity did not long prevail in Sicily. Among other
events, a quarrel broke out between the towns of Selinus
and Egesta.* The Selinuntians, having called the Syra-
cusans to their aid, had the advantage ; and the Egestaeans,
despairing of any equal support in Sicily, resolved, though
contrary to the terms of the general peace, to call in the
Athenians. Their embassy arrived (Ol. 91, 1) soon after
the renewal of the alliance with Argos. They represented
the increase of the power of the Syracusans, and showed the
probability of their reducing the whole island, if not checked,
and then, as they were Dorians by origin, throwing their
weight into the scale of the Dorian confederacy against
Athens. For themselves, they said, they had money enough
for the expenses of the war. They were heard with favor,
and deputies were sent to Egesta to see if they had the funds
they spoke of, and to examine into the state of the war.

The following spring (Ol. 91, 2) the deputies and Eges-
tan envoys came back to Athens with sixty talents as a
month's pay for sixty triremes. The deputies vouched for
every thing the Egesteeans said, and asserted that there was
abundance of wealth in the temples and in the treasury of
their town. It was decreed at once to send a fleet of sixty
triremes, commanded by Nicias, Alcibiades, and Lamachus,
to aid the Egestaeans, to restore the Leontines, whom the
Syracusans had expelled from their town, and who had also
sent imploring aid ; and to do whatever else they should deem
to be for the Athenian interest. Another assembly was held
five days afterwards, and then Nicias came forward to en-
deavor to dissuade the people from engaging in this mad
enterprise. He pointed out the unsettled state of their re-

* The Egestaeans claimed descent from the Trojans.



ATHENIAN EXPEDITION TO SICILY. 227

lations in Greece ; showed that even if the Syracusans should
become masters of Sicily, the democratic form of their
government would incline them to Athens rather than to
Sparta ; and hinted that it was the hopes of repairing his
dilapidated fortune that made Alcibiades so eager for this
war.

Alcibiades, who really did look forward to the conquest
of Sicily, and even of Carthage, and to the acquisition of
much private wealth, rose to reply. He boasted of his lavish
expenditure as tending to reflect glory on the city ; ac-
knowledged his love of fame, which he sought to obtain by
promoting the interest of Athens ; and confessed the merits
of his rival, whose prudence would be a useful check on his
own impetuosity. The strength of the Sicilians, he said, was
greatly exaggerated ; the Peloponnesians could only do as
they had often done before invade Attica, and then retire.
Finally, they had every thing to hope, little to fear.

He was heard with applause : the Egestaeans and Leontines
came forward and implored the people to remember their
oaths and to relieve them. Nicias saw that his only chance
was to dismay the people by the magnitude of the armament
he should demand ; but the assembly, nothing daunted by
his representations, called on him to state what forces he
should require. He then said, not less than one hundred
triremes, five thousand hoplites of themselves and their allies
at the very least, and light troops in proportion. It was in-
stantly voted that the generals should have absolute powers
respecting the number of the troops and every thing con-
cerning the expedition. Catalogues of those able to serve
were made out, and orders and invitations sent to the allies.

The Athenians had completely recovered from the effects
of the pestilence and the war ; there was plenty of money,
and an ardent, vigorous population. The older sort believed
that the expedition would succeed, or that at any rate the
loss would not be great ; the younger were eager after nov-
elty, and confident of success ; the inferior people reckoned
that they would, for the present, get pay as soldiers and



228 HISTORY OF GREECE.

sailors, and that the extent of the Athenian dominion would
be in future a source of income to them in the assembly,
courts of justice, and elsewhere. All were elate with hope :
those who augured ill were silent, lest they should be esteemed
bad citizens.

The preparations were nearly complete, when one morn-
ing it was discovered that the heads of all the Hermce *
throughout the city had been mutilated during the prece-
ding night. The superstitious people regarded this as omi-
nous, and also as indicative of a conspiracy to overthrow
the constitution. Large rewards were offered to any one
who would give information respecting this or any other
act of impiety which had been committed. Nothing, how-
ever, transpired touching the Herman, but witnesses averred
that on former occasions some young men, when heated with
wine, had defaced other statues, and even profanely cele-
brated the Mysteries in private houses. Alcibiades was said
to have been one of them, and his enemies, magnifying every
thing, declared that all this only testified his settled design of
dissolving the democracy. He denied the charges strenu-
ously, and called for an immediate trial ; but this did not
suit the purpose of his enemies, who feared that the army
would take his part, and the people also would lean to him,
as he had prevailed on the Argives and Mantineans to share
in the expedition. They therefore insisted that the fleet
should not be delayed, saying that he could return and take
his trial another time.

At midsummer all was ready. Corcyra was named as the
place where the allies were to assemble. On a given day,
the Athenians and such of the allies as were at Athens went
down to the Piraeeus, and with dawn got on board their ships ;
the whole population, citizens and strangers, poured down
to the port to see them depart. Their friends and relatives
shed tears at the thoughts of the distance to which they
were going, and the perils to which they would be exposed ;

* The statues of the god Hermes.



ATHENIAN EXPEDITION TO SICILY. 229

but their spirits rallied when they viewed the gallant show
of the fleet, for this was the finest and most splendidly
equipped armament that had ever left a Grecian port. No
expense had been spared by the state or by individuals ; the
trierarchs (captains) vied with each other in having their ships
well appointed, the hoplites in the possession of the best
armor and weapons ; all were anxious to display to Greece
the power of Athens. Yet still the more thoughtful, such
as Socrates, felt not confident ; and to the apprehension of
the superstitious, the wailing of the women for Adonis, (this
being the time of the Adoneia,) and the funereal rites of that
festival cast a shade of gloom over all the magnificence of
the scene.*

When every thing was on board, the trumpets sounded for
silence, and a general prayer was offered up, the officers
and soldiers pouring libations of wine from gold and silver
cups, and the multitude on shore joining in the petitions to
the gods. The fleet then got under weigh, and passed over
to JEgina, whence it made sail for Corcyra.

The news, when it reached Syracuse, was hardly credited.
At length, when it could no longer be doubted, an assembly
was held. Hermocrates advised to form an alliance with
the Barbarians, or original natives of the interior; to apply
for aid to Lacedaemon, Corinth, and even Carthage; to col-
lect as large a fleet as possible, and lie with it in the Bay
of Taras, (Tarentum,) and attack the Athenian fleet when
fatigued with the rowage across the Ionian Sea. The greater
part of the assembly laughed outright, and a demagogue
named Athenagoras came forward, and, with the ignorance,
disregard of truth, and assumption usual to such persons,
described the whole as a fiction of the oligarchs eager to
get military command in order to assail the democracy. The
Athenians, he said, had enough to do at home, and they
were too wise to venture where they were sure to meet with
destruction. The assembly broke up without having come
to any decision.

* Plutarch, Nicias, 13.

20



230 HISTORY OF GREECE.

Meantime the whole Athenian armament had reached
Corcyra. It consisted of one hundred and thirty-four tri-
remes, of which a hundred were Athenian : on board were
5100 hoplites ; 480 archers, 80 of whom were Cretans ; 700
Rhodian slingers ; 120 light-armed Megarian exiles ; and
thirty horsemen and their horses in one transport. These
were attended by thirty merchant-ships with provisions,
and carrying bakers, carpenters, and other artists, followed
by one hundred vessels which had been pressed, and a num-
ber of others which came voluntarily for the sake of trade.
The whole fleet, for convenience, was divided into three
squadrons ; and three triremes were sent on before to sound
the people of the cities on the coast of Italy and Sicily.

The fleet crossed over to the point of Japygia, and thence
coasted Italy to that of Rhegion. Here the ships were
drawn ashore, and the army encamped without the town.
The generals tried to induce the Rhegians, who were of
Chalcidian origin, to join in aiding the Leontines ; but they
declared that they would act as they should see the other
Italiotes * acting. The Syracusans, now convinced that the
Athenians were really coming, lost no time in preparing to
resist them.

While the fleet was at Rhegion, the three triremes re-
turned from Egesta. It appeared that the Egestseans had
boasted falsely of their wealth, and had deceived the Athe-
nian deputies by taking them to the temple on Mount Eryx,
and showing them the offerings there, and borrowing from
the adjacent towns gold and silver vessels to display at the
entertainments they gave them. The real amount of their
wealth did not exceed thirty talents. This was just as
Nicias had expected it would be ; but his colleagues were
greatly disappointed and chagrined. In the council which
they held, Nicias was of opinion that they should sail to
Selinus, and if then the Egestaeans could give pay to the
whole army, to act accordingly ; if not, to require them to

* The Itali6tes were the Greeks of Italy, the Siciliotes those of Sicily.



ATHENIAN EXPEDITION TO SICILY. 231

supply provisions for the sixty triremes they had asked for,
and by fair means or force to reconcile them and the Seli-
nuntians; to sail thence along the island, and display the
Athenian power to the other towns, and then to return
home. Alcibiades thought it would be disgraceful to have
done nothing with such an armament. He proposed that,
they should send deputies to all the towns but Syracuse and
Selinus, and to the Sikelans, and try to form treaties with
them. Lamachus advised (and his was perhaps the best plan)
to attack the Syracusans at once, while they were in confusion
and unprepared ; but finding so bold a course not agreeable
to the others, he came over to the opinion of Alcibiades.

Alcibiades went himself to Messana, but all his arguments
could only procure a promise of a market without the town.
When he came back to Rhegion, he and one of his col-
leagues sailed with sixty triremes to Naxos, and thence to
Catana. They then went to Syracuse, and sent ten ships
into the Great Harbor to see if a fleet were there, to pro-
claim that they were come to restore the Leontines to their
country, and to call on all of them who were there to join
them. When they had done all they proposed, they re-
turned to Catana, and the people there having agreed to an
alliance, they returned to Rhegion for the remainder of
the fleet. Having been told that the people of Camarina
were friendly disposed toward them, they sailed thither, but
were not able to effect any thing ; and on their return they
found the Salaminian trireme * come to recall Alcibiades
and some others to stand their trial for the affair of the
Hernia).

For after the departure of the fleet, the inquiry had been
prosecuted with eagerness. The people were at the same
time grossly superstitious and absurdly jealous of their lib-
erty. The wildest and most improbable tales, therefore,
were listened to with open-mouthed credulity ; one man, for
instance, asserting that he had seen and recognised the per-

" The Athenians had two triremes for state purposes, the Salaminian
and Paralian.



232 HISTORY OF GREECE.

sons who mutilated the Hermae by moonlight, though every
one knew it had been new-moon that night. A great num-
ber of persons were cast into prison ; some were put to death ;
others fled ; terror seized every one, great and small. The
whole city was under arms ; the senate even slept one night
on the Acropolis ; hardly any one ventured to enter the mar-
ket. The Lacedaemonians happening at this time to march
a small force to the Isthmus on its way to Boeotia, it was
believed at once that its real object was to aid in overthrow-
ing the democracy. Alcibiades' friends at Argos also fell
under suspicion there, and the Athenians delivered up the
hostages in their hands to the Argive demos to be put to
death.

Among the prisoners was Andocides, one of the sacerdo-
tal family of the Ceryces. Suspicion was strong against
him, and one of his fellow-prisoners urged him, if he knew
the guilty persons, to tell, and thus to save the innocent
Andocides, therefore, declared that the information given by
a Metoec, named Teucer, had been the truth, and added four
names to his list. Andocides and his family were then set
at liberty. Such of the accused as could be found were put
to death, and rewards were offered for the heads of those
who had fled ; and as Alcibiades' name was mentioned by
every informer, the popular vengeance was directed partic-
ularly against him.

The whole affair is involved in impenetrable obscurity : *
it is doubtful whether the confession of Andocides was
true or false. It was, however, sufficiently in the charac-
ter of Alcibiades to have had a mock celebration of the
Eleusinian Mysteries at one of his riotous revels. Similar
acts of profaneness have taken place in modern times with-
out any design against the state ; and the mutilation of the
HermoB has some resemblance to the demolition of the