The Historians' History of the World 03

Before, however, the fleet dispersed which had retired to Corinth and the Crissæan Bay, Cnemus, Brasidas, and the rest of the Peloponnesian commanders wished, at the suggestion of the Megarians, to make an attempt upon Piræus, the port of Athens; which, as was natural from their decided superiority at sea, was left unguarded and open. It was determined, therefore, that each man should take his oar, and cushion, and tropoter, and go by land from Corinth to the sea on the side of Athens; and that after proceeding as quickly as possible to Megara, they should launch from its port, Nisæa, forty vessels that happened to be there, and sail straightway to Piræus. For there was neither any fleet keeping guard before it, nor any thought of the enemy ever sailing against it in so sudden a manner; and as for their venturing to do it openly and deliberately, they supposed that either they would not think of it, or themselves would not fail to be aware beforehand, if they should. Having adopted this resolution, they proceeded immediately to execute it; and when they had arrived by night, and launched the vessels from Nisæa, they sailed, not against Athens as they had intended, for they were afraid of the risk (some wind or other was also said to have prevented them), but to the headland of Salamis looking towards Megara; where there was a fort, and a guard of three ships to prevent anything from being taken in or out of Megara. So they assaulted the fort, and towed off the triremes empty; and making a sudden attack on the rest of Salamis, they laid it waste.

Now fire signals of an enemy’s approach were raised towards Athens, and a consternation was caused by them not exceeded by any during the whole war. For those in the city imagined that the enemy had already sailed into Piræus; while those in Piræus thought that Salamis had been taken, and that they were all but sailing into their harbours: which indeed, if they would but have not been afraid of it, might easily have been done; and it was not a wind that would have prevented it. But at daybreak the Athenians went all in a body to Piræus to resist the enemy; and launched their ships, and going on board with haste and much uproar, sailed with the fleet to Salamis, while with their land-forces they mounted guard at Piræus. When the Peloponnesians saw them coming to the rescue, after overrunning the greater part of Salamis, and taking both men and booty, and the three ships from the port of Budorum, they sailed for Nisæa as quickly as they could; for their vessels too caused them some alarm, as they had been launched after lying idle a long time, and were not at all water-tight. On their arrival at Megara they returned again to Corinth by land. When the Athenians found them no longer on the coast of Salamis, they also sailed back; and after this alarm they paid more attention in future to the safety of Piræus, both by closing the harbours, and by all other precautions.

[429-428 B.C.]

During this winter, after the fleet of the Peloponnesians had dispersed, the Athenians at Naupactus under the command of Phormion, after coasting along to Astacus, and there disembarking, marched into the interior of Acarnania, with four hundred heavy-armed of the Athenians from the ships and four hundred of the Messenians. From Stratus, Coronta, and some other places, they expelled certain individuals who were thought to be untrue to them; and having restored Cynes, son of Theolytus, to Coronta, returned again to their vessels and sailed home to Athens at the return of spring, taking with them such of the prisoners from the naval battles as were freemen (who were exchanged man for man), and the ships they had captured. And so ended this winter, and the third year of the war.c

Bury, following Grote, says, that after this, Phormion “silently drops out of history, and as we find his son Asopius sent out in the following summer at the request of the Acarnanians, we must conclude that his career had been cut short by death”: Duruy says he died in 428 B.C., and that “the city gave him an honourable funeral and placed his tomb beside that of Pericles.” Asopius after failing in an assault on Œniadæ, was killed before Leucas.a

FOOTNOTES

[53] [In the words of Thucydides,c “Never to desert the Athenians, to bear any devastation of their lands, nay, if such be the case, to behold it with patience, and to suffer any extremities to which their enemies might reduce them; that, further, no person should stir out of the city, but an answer be given from the walls; that it was impossible for them to accept the terms proposed by the Lacedæmonians.”]

CHAPTER XXXIII. THE FOURTH TO THE TENTH YEARS—AND PEACE

The fourth year of the war, 428 B.C., opened with the third invasion of Attica by Archidamus, but the Periclean policy of remaining within the walls was continued. Athens herself remaining impregnable, revolt broke out among her allies.a