The Historians' History of the World 03

The enterprise against Siphæ and Chæronea failed also and Hippocrates, delayed a few days in his advance, found arrayed against him in one body all the Bœotian forces that he and his colleagues had plotted to divide. He succeeded in occupying Delium and fortified the temple of Apollo found there. To the Bœotians it was profanation to turn a temple into a fortress, and this scruple was shared by many of the Athenians who entered but half-heartedly into the combat. A thousand hoplites with their chief perished in the action; contrary to sacred usage Thebes let the bodies of the dead lie without sepulture seventeen days, until the taking of Delium; holding them to be sacrilegious evil-doers whose wandering souls were to receive punishment in the infernal world.

Socrates had taken part in this battle. In company with his friend Laches and some others equally brave, he had held his ground to the last, retreating step by step before the Theban cavalry. Simultaneously with this display of heroism Aristophanes was writing his comedy, the Clouds.

Sparta possessed but one man of ability, Brasidas, who had saved Megara, menaced Piræus, and almost defeated Demosthenes at Pylos. Clear-sighted and brave to the point of audacity, he possessed an additional weapon, one that was capable of inflicting cruel wounds, and that the Spartans had hitherto known little how to use, eloquence. The sea being closed to him, he decided that it would be possible to injure Athens seriously both in fortune and renown without leaving the land. The very policy she had used against Sparta, Pylos, Cythera, and Methone, could now be turned against her in Chalcidice and Thrace. At the commencement of the war she had forced Perdiccas, king of Macedonia, to enter her alliance and had gained the friendship of Sitalces the powerful king of the Odrysians, whose territory extended from the Ægean Sea to the Danube, and from Byzantium to the source of the Strymon, a distance not to be covered under thirty days’ travel.

At Athens’ instigation Sitalces had in 429 invaded Macedonia, but since then his zeal had cooled. Perdiccas, on his side, had never lost an opportunity of secretly injuring the Athenians. Even at this moment he was urging Sparta to send an expedition to Chalcidice and the coast of Thrace. To deprive Athens of these regions whence she obtained her timber was to attack her in her navy, and to carry at the same time the centre of hostilities towards the north, was to draw her away from the Peloponnesus which had lately suffered so many ills. Brasidas was charged with the enterprise, but Sparta refused to engage in it deeply. He raised a force of seven hundred helots who were armed as hoplites, to which were added a thousand Peloponnesians attracted by Perdiccas’ promises. This was little; but Brasidas held in reserve the treacherous but magical word, Liberty, that was to open for him many gates.

He took possession in this way of Acanthus, Stagira, and Amphipolis itself fell into his power, he having entered one of its suburbs by stealth, and won over all the inhabitants by the generosity of his conditions. Amphipolitans and Athenians alike he permitted to remain with retention of all their rights and property; he also accorded to those who wished to leave, five days in which to carry away all their belongings. Not for an age had war been carried on with such humanity, and it was a Spartan who was setting the example! We must also note the lack of eagerness shown by Athens’ allies to cast off her yoke which, viewed in the light of facts, takes on an aspect much less odious than that in which it is represented by rhetoricians.

THE BANISHMENT OF THUCYDIDES

The approach of so active an enemy as Brasidas, and the blows he had dealt, should have led the Athenian generals in that region to concentrate their forces on the continent not far from Amphipolis, which was Athens’ principal stronghold on that side. One of these commanders had gone with seven galleys to Thasos, where there was no need of his presence, the island being secure from menace. Though too late to save Amphipolis he arrived in time to save the port, Eion. At the suggestion of Cleon the people punished this act of negligence by a twenty years’ sentence of exile. It is to this sentence that posterity owes a masterwork in which vigorous thoughts are expressed in a style of great conciseness, the exiled one being Thucydides, who employed his leisure in writing the history of the Peloponnesian War. The real culprit was Eucles, the commander of Amphipolis, who had allowed himself to be taken by surprise.