Book 6

6.1. The Athenians, having mastered the Chalcidians, parcelled out their land into two thousand lots, the region called Hippobotos; they set aside sacred precincts for Athena in the place named Lelantos, and the rest they let out according to the inscribed pillars that stood by the Royal Stoa, which held the records of the leases. The captives they put in chains, and not even thus did they quench their wrath against the Chalcidians. The Lacedaemonians, having mastered the Messenians, took for themselves half of everything produced in Messenia, and compelled the free women to go to their funerals and to mourn the dead who were strangers and no kin to them; of the men, some they left to till the soil, others they sold, and others they killed. The Athenians too committed that outrage: for, taking hold of prosperity, they did not bear their good fortune with moderation. They compelled the daughters of the resident aliens to carry parasols in the processions for their own girls, and the wives to do so for their wives, and the men to carry water-vessels. The Sicyonians, having taken Pellene, set up the wives and daughters of the Pellenians in a brothel. Most savage are these deeds, O gods of the Greeks, and not honourable even among barbarians, so far as my memory reaches. When Philip won the battle at Chaeronea, both he and all the Macedonians were exalted at what they had done. The Greeks were terribly cowed by him, and surrendered themselves to him city by city. This the Thebans did, and the Megarians, and the Corinthians, and the Achaeans, and the Eleans, and the Euboeans, and all those in the Acte. Yet Philip did not keep the agreements he made with them, but enslaved them all, doing what was lawless and against right.

6.2. The son of Harmatides the Thespian, having come as an ally to the Athenians along with other citizens, at first fought well and nobly; but when his weapons were used up and he was contending bare-handed against armed men, he ended his life gloriously. So I have addressed the young man by his father's name, honouring him in Homeric fashion. But his own name, if anyone is concerned to know it, he will learn from another source.

6.3. The Lacedaemonians, when Isadas was still a boy and the law had not yet called him to arms, since he had leapt out of the gymnasium and won distinction, crowned him; but because he had rushed against the enemy before the required age and without his native arms, they fined him.

6.4. Lysander had died, and the man who had betrothed his daughter while he was still alive, when the girl was left fatherless and Lysander after the close of his life proved to be poor, drew back from the betrothal and said he would not take her to wife. For this the ephors fined the man; for he was minded neither as a Laconian nor in any way as a Greek, since he forgot a friend who had died and valued wealth above his agreements.

6.5. The Athenians put to death the envoys sent to Arcadia, because they had taken another road and not the one appointed, even though they had succeeded.

6.6. Are not these too Laconian customs? It is a law among the Spartiates that the man who has provided three sons should be free of garrison duty, and the man with five exempt from all public services. They marry without dowries. A Lacedaemonian man was not permitted to know a mechanical trade. They were obliged to wear a scarlet cloak in battle, both because the colour has something of dignity, and because the flow of blood from wounds upon it would all the more startle their opponents, the sight becoming deeper and more fearful. It was not permitted to a Laconian man even to strip the slain enemy. Those who fought nobly and died were wreathed with olive sprays and other branches, and were brought forth amid praises; and those who showed the highest valour had the scarlet cloak laid upon them and were buried with honour.

6.7. When the Lacedaemonians, breaking their oaths, raised up and put to death the suppliants from Taenarum — and the suppliants were among the helots — by the wrath of Poseidon an earthquake fell upon Sparta and shook the city most violently, so that only five houses out of the whole city were left standing.

6.8. Artaxerxes, also surnamed Ochus, when Bagoas the eunuch, who was an Egyptian, plotted against him, was, they say, killed and cut to pieces and thrown to the cats; another man was buried in his stead and given to the royal tombs. But it did not satisfy Bagoas to have killed Ochus: he even made handles for daggers out of his thighbones, showing his bloodthirstiness by this. He hated him because Ochus too, while tasting Egypt, had killed the Apis, as Cambyses had done before him.

6.9. Since from the poems of Homer a report came to Delphi that the precinct of Apollo was rich with ancient wealth — in those lines, "not all that the stone threshold of the Archer holds within, of Phoebus Apollo in rocky Pytho" — the story goes that the Delphians set about digging up the ground around the hearth and the tripod; but when manly earthquakes came about the oracle, they came to their senses and stopped.

6.10. Pericles, while general of the Athenians, framed a law that whoever did not happen to be born of two citizen parents should have no share in the citizenship. But the retribution of the law overtook him. For his two sons, Paralus and Xanthippus, both died in the public plague, and Pericles was left with his bastard children, who, under their father's own law, had no share in the citizenship.

6.11. Gelon, having defeated the Carthaginians at Himera, brought all Sicily under his power. Then, coming into the assembly stripped naked, he declared that he was giving back the rule to the citizens; but they would not have it, having found him by experience more democratic than the power of monarchs allows. For this reason there stands in the temple of Sicilian Hera a statue of him showing him naked, and the inscription confirmed Gelon's deed.

6.12. Dionysius the Second held his rule very well fortified, in this manner. He possessed ships no fewer than four hundred, of six and five banks of oars; a force of infantry up to a hundred thousand, and nine thousand cavalry. The city of the Syracusans was adorned with very great harbours, and a very high wall was thrown round it; it had gear ready for another five hundred ships, and there was stored up in it grain to the amount of a million bushels. There was an armoury heaped with shields and swords and spears and greaves and breastplates and catapults — and the catapult was an invention of Dionysius himself. He had a great many allies besides. Trusting in these, Dionysius supposed that he held his rule bound fast with adamant. Yet this very man first killed his brothers; he saw his sons too slaughtered by violence, and his daughters dishonoured and then slaughtered naked. None of his line met with customary burial: some were burned alive, others cut to pieces and flung into the sea. This befell him when Dion the son of Hipparinus attacked his rule. He himself, living in utter poverty, ended his life an old man. Theopompus says that through excessive unmixed drinking his eyesight was ruined, so that he saw dimly; and that he sat in the barbershops and played the buffoon. And in the very midst of Greece he continued in his unseemliness, draining out a most painful life. The change of Dionysius from such great heights to such low estate was no ordinary lesson to men in moderation and order of conduct.

6.13. The divine power does well in not letting tyrannies pass to a third generation, but either wiping out the tyrants at once like a pine, or robbing them of children. These tyrannies are remembered by the Greeks as having lasted from of old down to descendants: that of Hieron in Sicily, that of the Leuconidae about the Bosporus, and that of the Cypselidae in Corinth.

6.14. This deed of Darius the son of Hystaspes I am told was most humane. Aribazus the Hyrcanian plotted against him, together with other men of no obscure standing among the Persians; and the plot was to be carried out on a hunt. Learning of this beforehand, Darius did not cower, but bidding them take up their weapons and their horses, ordered

6.15. them to make ready their javelins; and looking at them sharply, he said, "Why, then, do you not do that for which you set out?" But they, seeing the man's unflinching gaze, checked their impulse. Fear so gripped them that they threw down their spear-points, leapt from their horses, made obeisance to Darius, and gave themselves up to him to do with as he pleased. He scattered them to different places, sending some to the borders of India, others to the Scythian lands. And those men remained faithful to him, holding in memory the kindness shown them.