B.C. 414.

Movements of Nikias in the early spring.

The Athenian troops at Katana, probably tired of inaction, were put in motion in the early spring, even before the arrival of the reinforcements from Athens, and sailed to the deserted walls of Megara, not far from Syracuse, which the Syracusans had recently garrisoned. Having in vain attacked the Syracusan garrison, and laid waste the neighbouring fields, they re-embarked, landed again for similar purposes at the mouth of the river Terias, and then, after an insignificant skirmish, returned to Katana. An expedition into the interior of the island procured for them the alliance of the Sikel town of Kentoripa; and the cavalry being now arrived from Athens, they prepared for operations against Syracuse. Nikias had received from Athens 250 horsemen fully equipped, for whom horses were to be procured in Sicily—30 horse-bowmen and 300 talents in money. He was not long in furnishing them with horses from Egesta and Katana, from which cities he also received some farther cavalry—so that he was presently able to muster 650 cavalry in all.

Even before this cavalry could be mounted, Nikias made his first approach to Syracuse. For the Syracusan generals on their side, apprised of the arrival of the reinforcement from Athens, and aware that besieging operations were on the point of being commenced, now thought it necessary to take the precaution of occupying and guarding the roads of access to the high ground of Epipolæ which over-hung their outer city.

Consequences of the ruin of the Athenian armament in Sicily.

Occupation of Dekeleia by the Lacedæmonians—its ruinous effects upon Athens.

In the preceding chapter, we followed to its melancholy close the united armament of Nikias and Demosthenês, first in the harbour and lastly in the neighbourhood of Syracuse, towards the end of September 413 B.C.

The first impression which we derive from the perusal of that narrative is, sympathy for the parties directly concerned—chiefly for the number of gallant Athenians who thus miserably perished, partly also for the Syracusan victors, themselves a few months before on the verge of apparent ruin. But the distant and collateral effects of the catastrophe throughout Greece, were yet more momentous than those within the island in which it occurred.

I have already mentioned that even at the moment when Demosthenês with his powerful armament left Peiræus to go to Sicily, the hostilities of the Peloponnesian confederacy against Athens herself had been already recommenced. Not only was the Spartan king Agis ravaging Attica, but the far more important step of fortifying Dekeleia, for the abode of a permanent garrison, was in course of completion. That fortress, having been begun about the middle of March, was probably by the month of June in a situation to shelter its garrison, which consisted of contingents periodically furnished, and relieving each other alternately, from all the different states of the confederacy, under the permanent command of king Agis himself.

Active warlike preparations thoughout Greece during the winter of 414–413 B.C.

The Syracusan war now no longer stands apart, as an event by itself, but becomes absorbed in the general war rekindling throughout Greece. Never was any winter so actively and extensively employed in military preparations, as the winter of 414–413 B.C., the months immediately preceding that which Thucydidês terms the nineteenth spring of the Peloponnesian war, but which other historians call the beginning of the Dekeleian war. While Eurymedon went with his ten triremes to Syracuse even in midwinter, Demosthenês exerted himself all the winter to get together the second armament for early spring. Twenty other Athenian triremes were farther sent round Peloponnesus to the station of Naupaktus—to prevent any Corinthian reinforcements from sailing out of the Corinthian Gulf. Against these latter, the Corinthians on their side prepared twenty-five fresh triremes, to serve as a convoy to the transports carrying their hoplites. In Corinth, Sikyon, and Bœotia, as well as at Lacedæmon, levies of hoplites were going on for the armament to Syracuse—at the same time that everything was getting ready for the occupation of Dekeleia. Lastly, Gylippus was engaged with not less activity in stirring up all Sicily to take a more decisive part in the coming year's struggle.

From Cape Tænarus in Laconia, at the earliest moment of spring, embarked a force of 600 Lacedæmonian hoplites (Helots and Neodamodes) under the Spartan Ekkritus—and 300 Bœotian hoplites under the Thebans Xenon and Nikon, with the Thespian Hegesandrus.

Miserable condition of Athens during the two preceding years.

The period intervening between the defeat of Ægospotami (October 405 b.c.), and the re-establishment of the democracy as sanctioned by the convention concluded with Pausanias (some time in the summer of 403 b.c.), presents two years of cruel and multifarious suffering to Athens. For seven years before, indeed, ever since the catastrophe at Syracuse, she had been struggling with hardships—contending against augmented hostile force while her own means were cut down in every way—crippled at home by the garrison of Dekeleia—stripped to a great degree both of her tribute and her foreign trade—and beset by the snares of her own oligarchs. In spite of circumstances so adverse, she had maintained the fight with a resolution not less surprising than admirable; yet not without sinking more and more towards impoverishment and exhaustion. The defeat towards impoverishment and exhaustion. The defeat of Ægospotami closed the war at once, and transferred her from her period of struggle to one of concluding agony. Nor is the last word by any means too strong for the reality. Of these two years, the first portion was marked by severe physical privation, passing by degrees into absolute famine, and accompanied by the intolerable sentiment of despair and helplessness against her enemies, after two generations of imperial grandeur—not without a strong chance of being finally consigned to ruin and individual slavery; while the last portion comprised all the tyranny, murders, robberies, and expulsions perpetrated by the Thirty, overthrown only by heroic efforts of patriotism on the part of the exiles—which a fortunate change of sentiment, on the part of Pausanias, and the leading members of the Peloponnesian confederacy, ultimately crowned with success.

IN EXPLANATION OF THE PLAN OF SYRACUSE AND THE OPERATIONS DURING THE ATHENIAN SIEGE

In the description given of this memorable event by Thucydidês, there is a good deal which is only briefly and imperfectly explained. He certainly has left us various difficulties, in the solution of which we cannot advance beyond conjecture more or less plausible: though there are some which appear to me to admit of a more satisfactory solution than has yet been offered.

Dr. Arnold, in an Appendix annexed to the third volume of his Thucydidês (p. 265 seq.), together with two Plans, has bestowed much pains on the elucidation of these difficulties: also Colonel Leake, in his valuable Remarks on the Topography of Syracuse (the perusal of which, prior to their appearance in the Transactions of the Royal Society of Literature, I owe to his politeness); Serra di Falco, in the fourth volume of his Antichità di Sicilia; and Saverio Cavallari (the architect employed in 1839, in the examination and excavation of the ground which furnished materials for the work of Serra di Falco) in a separate pamphlet—Zur Topographie von Syrakus—printed in the Göttinger Studien for 1845, and afterwards reprinted at Göttingen. With all the aid derived from these comments, I arrive at conclusions on some points different from all of them, which I shall now proceed shortly to state—keeping closely and exclusively to Thucydidês and the Athenian siege, and not professing to meddle with Syracuse as it stood afterwards.