The Historians' History of the World 03

“In order to obtain the best possible result for our negotiations,” said the Athenians, “let us start from a principle with which both sides shall be really satisfied, a principle which we know well and would employ with people who are as well acquainted with it as we are: it is that business between men is regulated by the laws of justice when an equal necessity obliges them to submit to it; but that those who have the advantage in strength do all that is in their power and that it is the part of the weak to yield,” and further: “nor do we fear that the divine protection will forsake us. In our principles and in our actions we neither depart from the idea which men have conceived of the Divinity nor from the line of conduct which they preserve amongst themselves. We believe, according to the received opinion, that the gods, and we know very well that men, by a necessity of nature, dominate wherever they have force. This is not a law that we have made; it is not we who have first applied it; we profit by it and shall transmit it to times to come; you yourselves, with the power which we enjoy, would follow the same course.”

The theory of force has rarely been so distinctly expressed. The reputation of the Athenians has suffered by it, without their having derived the slightest profit from this evil deed. But let us observe, even while we think with horror of the sanguinary act performed at Melos, that the practice, if not the theory of this right of the strongest is a very old one; it is the principle on which the whole of antiquity is based; it is nothing but the famous law, salus populi suprema lex, so many times evoked to justify odious enterprises or iniquitous cruelties; and it must be acknowledged with sadness that in all times and in almost all places men have thought with Euripides, “that wisdom and glory are: to hold a victorious hand over the head of one’s enemies.” Force is as old as the world, it is right which emerges slowly: can we believe that its reign will not come?

The Dorian colonists of Melos had counted on the support of Sparta. “She will abandon you,” the Athenians had answered; and the prudent city which, for its part regarded all things from the point of view of utility, had sent neither ship nor soldier. This inertia inflated the hopes of Athens: she believed that the moment had come for annexing to her empire the great island of the West where internal divisions had roused in several cities the desire for foreign protection.b

From a Greek Vase

CHAPTER XXXV. THE SICILIAN EXPEDITION

The largest island in the Mediterranean, Sicily has been a stepping-stone between African, Asiatic, and European nations. Freemane has compared it with Great Britain in its “geographical and historical position.” Its original inhabitants seem to have been the Sicans who were invaded first by the Elymians and then by the Sicels. Relations with Sicily were begun as early as the Mycenæan age, and jars of Ægean ware have been unearthed in the tombs of Syracuse. The Phœnicians established factories and trading places in Sicily, and then came the Greeks overflowing the island and founding many a city and stronghold. As we have seen in a previous chapter, Sicily became one of the earliest and most important of the Greek colonies.

SICILIAN HISTORY

The African city of Carthage, which we think of chiefly along with Roman history, early took up the grievances of the Phœnicians against the Greeks. In the sixth century B.C., various settlements had fallen by the ears with one another. About 580 B.C. the Greek adventurer Pentathlus threatened the Phœnician settlements, but was defeated and slain. Carthage, however, was awakened to the danger from Greek land-hunger, and about 560 B.C. sent an expedition under Malchus, who gave a severe check to Greek encroachment and an encouragement to Carthaginian ambition. Finally, by 480 B.C., the Carthaginians were ready to combine with the Persians against Greek prosperity and independence. While Xerxes assailed the mother-country, Carthage by agreement sent an enormous expedition against the Sicilian Greeks. Their general was Hamilcar, and the magnificence of his host has been as splendidly exaggerated as that of Xerxes. His success was equal to that of the Persian, except that Xerxes escaped alive, while Hamilcar perished.

[481-447 B.C.]