Book 3

arg.0. The contents of the thirteenth of the books of Diodorus. The expedition of the Athenians against the Syracusans with great land and naval forces. The voyage of the Athenians to Sicily. The recall of Alcibiades the general and his flight to Lacedaemon. How the Athenians, sailing across into the great harbor of the Syracusans, seized the places about the Olympieium. How the Athenians, having seized Epipolae and conquered in battle, besieged Syracuse from both sides. How, when the Lacedaemonians and Corinthians sent aid, the Syracusans took courage. A battle of the Syracusans and Athenians, and a great victory of the Athenians. A battle of the same, and a victory of the Syracusans. How the Syracusans, having gained control of Epipolae, compelled the Athenians to come into a single camp, the one by the Olympieium. How the Syracusans, having prepared a naval force, resolved to fight at sea. How the Athenians, Lamachus the general having died and Alcibiades having been recalled, sent in their place as generals Eurymedon and Demosthenes with a force and money. The breaking of the treaties by the Lacedaemonians and the war against the Athenians called the Peloponnesian. A sea-battle of the Syracusans and Athenians and a victory of the Athenians, and the capture of forts by the Syracusans and a victory on land. A sea-battle with all the ships in the great harbor and a victory of the Syracusans. The voyage from Athens of Demosthenes and Eurymedon with a notable force. A great battle about Epipolae and a victory of the Syracusans. The flight of the Athenians and the capture of the whole force. How the Syracusans, having come together in assembly, set forth a deliberation how they ought to deal with the captives. The speeches delivered on each side of the question. The things voted by the Syracusans concerning the captives. How, the Athenians having stumbled about Sicily, many of the allies revolted. How the people of the Athenians, having become despondent, gave up the democracy and entrusted the constitution to four hundred men. How the Lacedaemonians conquered the Athenians in the sea-battles. How the Syracusans honored with notable gifts those who had behaved bravely in the war. How Diocles, chosen as lawgiver, wrote the laws for the Syracusans. How the Syracusans sent a notable force to the Lacedaemonians. How the Athenians, having defeated the admiral of the Lacedaemonians in a sea-battle, took Cyzicus by siege. How, the Lacedaemonians having sent fifty ships from Euboea to the aid of the defeated, all were destroyed with their men about Athos by the storm. The return of Alcibiades and his generalship. The war of the Egestaeans and Selinuntians over the disputed land. How the Lacedaemonians, having dammed up the Euripus, made Euboea mainland. On the faction and slaughter that took place in Corcyra. A sea-battle of the Athenians and Lacedaemonians about Sigeium and a victory of the Athenians. How Alcibiades and Theramenes conquered the Lacedaemonians most brilliantly both by land and by sea. How the Carthaginians, having ferried great forces into Sicily, took Selinus and Himera by storm. How Alcibiades, having sailed into the Piraeus with much booty, met with great acceptance. How Agis the king, having undertaken to besiege Athens with a great force, was driven off. The flight of Alcibiades, and the founding of Therma in Sicily. A sea-battle of the Syracusans against the Carthaginians and a victory of the Syracusans. On the prosperity in Acragas and the constructions in it. How the Carthaginians, having campaigned into Sicily with three hundred thousand, besieged Acragas. How the Syracusans, having taken along the allies, came to the aid of the Acragantines with ten thousand soldiers. How, forty thousand Carthaginians having met them, the Syracusans conquered and cut down more than six thousand. How, the Carthaginians cutting off the provisions, the Acragantines, because of the lack of food, were compelled to abandon their native land. How Dionysius, chosen as general, became tyrant of the Syracusans. How the Athenians, having conquered in a most brilliant sea-battle at Arginusae, unjustly put their generals to death. How the Athenians, being worsted in a great sea-battle, were compelled to make peace on whatever terms were possible, and so the Peloponnesian War was ended. How the Carthaginians, having fallen into a plague, were compelled to make peace with Dionysius the tyrant.

1.1. If we were composing a history like the others, it would be possible, after discussing certain matters in the preface as far as was opportune, thus to bring the account over to the continuous deeds; for, taking up only a little time for the writing, we should have the opportunity to add the fruit that comes from the prefaces.

1.2. But since in a few books we have undertaken not only to write the deeds as far as we are able, but also to comprehend a period of more than eleven hundred years, it is necessary, having passed over the lengthy discourse of the prefaces, to come to the deeds themselves, saying only this beforehand, that in the preceding six books we have recorded the deeds from the Trojan times down to the war voted by the Athenians against the Syracusans, to which, from the capture of Troy, are seven hundred and sixty-eight years;

1.3. and in this book, filling in the continuous time, we shall begin from the expedition against the Syracusans and conclude at the beginning of the second war of the Carthaginians against Dionysius the tyrant of the Syracusans.

2.1. For when Chabrias was archon at Athens, the Romans, instead of consuls, appointed three military tribunes, Lucius Sergius, Marcus Papirius, Marcus Servilius. In their time the Athenians, having voted the war against the Syracusans, refitted the ships and, gathering money, with much zeal prepared everything for the expedition. Having chosen three generals, Alcibiades, Nicias, Lamachus, they appointed them plenipotentiary over all the matters of the war.

2.2. Of the private citizens, some of those well off in property, wishing to gratify the zeal of the people, constructed triremes of their own, while others undertook to give money for the maintenance of the force; and many of the common citizens and foreigners, and besides the allies, coming voluntarily to the generals, bade them enroll them among the soldiers. Thus all, elated in their hopes, hoped readily to apportion Sicily by lot.

2.3. When the fleet was already prepared, it came about that the Hermae throughout the city, being very numerous, were mutilated in a single night. The people, then, thinking that the deed had been done not by chance persons but by those who excelled in reputation, with a view to the overthrow of the democracy, hated wickedness and sought the doers, setting great rewards before the informer.

2.4. A certain one of the private citizens, coming to the council, said that he had seen some men entering a metic's house at the new moon about midnight, among whom was Alcibiades. Being examined by the council, how, it being night, he recognized the faces, he said that he had seen by the light of the moon. This man, then, having convicted himself of lying, was distrusted, and of the others no one was able to find even a trace of the deed.

2.5. A hundred and forty triremes had been prepared, and of the merchant ships and the horse-transports, and besides those carrying the grain and the other supplies, there was a great number; the hoplites and slingers, and besides these the cavalry and the allies, were more than seven thousand apart from those in the crews.

2.6. At that time, then, the generals, sitting in council with the council in secret, deliberated how they ought to manage the affairs in Sicily, if they should gain control of the island. It seemed best to them, then, to enslave the Selinuntians and the Syracusans, and on the rest simply to impose tributes, which they should pay each year to the Athenians.

3.1. On the next day the generals went down with the soldiers to the Piraeus, and all the crowd in the city accompanied them, mingled together of citizens and foreigners, each escorting his own kinsmen and friends.

3.2. The triremes, then, lay at anchor along the whole harbor, adorned with the figureheads on their prows and the brightness of their armor; and the whole circle of the harbor was full of censers and silver mixing-bowls, from which, with golden cups, those who honored the divine poured libations and prayed to succeed in the expedition.

3.3. Putting out, then, from the Piraeus, they sailed around the Peloponnese and put in at Corcyra; for there they had been ordered to remain and to take on the neighboring allies. When all had been gathered, they crossed the Ionian strait and put in at the cape of Iapygia, and from there now coasted along Italy.

3.4. By the Tarentines, then, they were not received, but they sailed past the Metapontines and Heracleotes; and, putting in at Thurii, they met with every kindness. From there, sailing in to Croton and getting a market from the Crotoniates, they sailed past the temple of Lacinian Hera and rounded the cape called Dioscurias.

3.5. After this they passed the place called Scylletium and the Locrians, and, having anchored near Rhegium, tried to persuade the Rhegians to ally with them; but they replied that they would deliberate together with the other Italiotes.

4.1. The Syracusans, hearing that the forces of the Athenians were at the strait, appointed three plenipotentiary generals, Hermocrates, Sicanus, Heracleides, who enrolled the soldiers and sent ambassadors to the cities in Sicily, begging them to take part in the common safety; for the Athenians, they said, in word were undertaking the war against the Syracusans, but in truth wished to subdue the whole island.

4.2. The Acragantines, then, and the Naxians said they would ally with the Athenians, while the Camarinaeans and Messenians agreed to keep the peace but deferred their answers about the alliance; the Himeraeans and Selinuntians, and besides these the Geloans and Catanaeans, undertook to fight together with the Syracusans. The cities of the Sicels inclined in goodwill toward the Syracusans, but nevertheless, remaining quiet, awaited the outcome.

4.3. As the Egestaeans did not agree to give more than thirty talents, the generals of the Athenians, accusing them, put out from Rhegium with the force and put in at Naxos in Sicily. Those in the city having received them kindly, they sailed from there to Catana.

4.4. As the Catanaeans did not receive the soldiers into the city but allowed the generals to enter and granted them an assembly, the generals of the Athenians discussed the alliance.

4.5. As Alcibiades was addressing the assembly, some of the soldiers, having broken open a postern gate, burst into the city; for which reason the Catanaeans were compelled to take part in the war against the Syracusans.

5.1. While these things were being done, those at Athens who hated Alcibiades because of their private enmity, having as a pretext the mutilation of the statues, slandered him in their public speeches as having made a conspiracy against the people. There contributed to their slanders what had been done among the Argives; for the personal guest-friends who had agreed to overthrow the democracy in Argos were all put to death by the citizens.

5.2. The people, then, trusting the accusations and being terribly provoked by the demagogues, sent the Salaminian ship to Sicily, ordering Alcibiades to come as quickly as possible for the trial. The ship having arrived at Catana, Alcibiades, hearing from the ambassadors what had been decided by the people, took up those who had been slandered with him into his own trireme and sailed out together with the Salaminian.

5.3. When he had put in at Thurii, Alcibiades, whether conscious of the impiety or fearing the magnitude of the danger, slipped away with those slandered with him and went out of the way. Those in the Salaminian ship, having arrived, at first sought Alcibiades and his men; but when they did not find them, they sailed off to Athens and reported to the people what had happened.

5.4. The Athenians, then, having handed over to a court the names of Alcibiades and the others who had fled with him, condemned them to death in absentia. Alcibiades, having crossed from Italy to the Peloponnese, fled to Sparta and provoked the Lacedaemonians to attack the Athenians.

6.1. The generals in Sicily, with the force of the Athenians, having sailed to Egesta, took Hyccara, a small Sicel town, and from the spoils gathered a hundred talents; and, having received also thirty talents from the Egestaeans, they sailed back to Catana.

6.2. Wishing to seize without danger the place by the great harbor of the Syracusans, they sent a Catanaean man, trustworthy to themselves but plausible to the Syracusan generals, ordering him to tell the leaders of the Syracusans that some of the Catanaeans had banded together and wished, by suddenly seizing by night many of the Athenians who were quartered apart from their arms in the city, to burn the ships in the harbor; and toward the accomplishment of this they asked the generals to appear with a force, lest they fail of the design.

6.3. The Catanaean having come to the leaders of the Syracusans and made plain the aforesaid, the generals, trusting in these things, arranged the night on which they would lead out their force and sent the man off to Catana.

6.4. The Syracusans, then, on the appointed night led their army toward Catana, while the Athenians, having sailed across to the great harbor of the Syracusans with much quiet, gained control of the Olympieium, and, having seized all the surrounding place, made a camp.

6.5. The generals of the Syracusans, when they perceived the trick, quickly turning back, assaulted the camp of the Athenians. The enemy having come out, a battle took place, in which the Athenians, having slain four hundred of their opponents, compelled the Syracusans to flee.

6.6. The generals of the Athenians, observing that the enemy were superior in cavalry, and wishing to prepare better for the siege, sailed back again to Catana. Sending some men to Athens, they wrote letters to the people, in which they asked them to send cavalry and money; for they supposed the siege would be a long one. The Athenians voted to send three hundred talents and some of the cavalry to Sicily.

6.7. While these things were being done, Diagoras, called the Atheist, having met with a charge of impiety and fearing the people, fled from Attica; and the Athenians proclaimed a talent of silver to whoever should kill Diagoras.

6.8. In Italy the Romans, having a war against the Aequi, took Labici by siege. These things, then, were done in this year.

7.1. When Tisander was archon at Athens, the Romans, instead of consuls, appointed four military tribunes, Publius Lucretius, Gaius Servilius, Agrippa Menenius, Spurius Veturius. In their time the Syracusans, having sent ambassadors to Corinth and Lacedaemon, urged them to come to their aid and not to look on while they were endangered concerning the whole.

7.2. Alcibiades having spoken in support of them, the Lacedaemonians, having voted to come to the aid of the Syracusans, chose Gylippus as general, while the Corinthians prepared to send more triremes, but then sent ahead with Gylippus Pythes with two triremes to Sicily.

7.3. In Catana, Nicias and Lamachus the generals of the Athenians, two hundred and fifty cavalry and three hundred talents of silver having come to them from Athens, took up the force and sailed to Syracuse. Approaching the city by night, they escaped the notice of the Syracusans and seized Epipolae. The Syracusans, perceiving it, came quickly to the aid, and, having lost three hundred of their soldiers, were pursued together into the city.

7.4. After this, three hundred cavalry having come to the Athenians from Egesta, and from the Sicels two hundred and fifty cavalry, they gathered in all eight hundred cavalry. Having constructed a fortification about Labdalum, they walled off the city of the Syracusans and brought much fear upon the Syracusans.

7.5. Therefore, coming out from the city, they attempted to hinder those building the wall; and a cavalry-battle taking place, they lost many and were routed. The Athenians, with part of their force, seized the place overlooking the harbor, and, having walled the place called Polichne, enclosed the temple of Zeus and besieged Syracuse from both sides.

7.6. Such reverses having befallen the Syracusans, those in the city were despondent; but when they heard that Gylippus had put in at Himera and was gathering soldiers, they again took courage.

7.7. For Gylippus, having put in at Himera with four triremes, drew up the ships on land, and, having persuaded the Himeraeans to ally with the Syracusans, gathered soldiers from these and from the Geloans, and besides from the Selinuntians and Sicanians. Having gathered in all three thousand foot and two hundred cavalry, he advanced through the interior to Syracuse.

8.1. And after a few days he led out the force with the Syracusans against the Athenians. A fierce battle taking place, Lamachus the general of the Athenians died fighting; and many having been slain on both sides, the Athenians conquered.

8.2. After the battle, thirteen triremes having come from Corinth, Gylippus, taking up the men from the crews, with the Syracusans assaulted the camp of the enemy and besieged Epipolae. The Athenians having come out, the Syracusans joined battle, and, having killed many of the Athenians, conquered, and throughout the whole of Epipolae razed the wall; the Athenians, abandoning the place by Epipolae, transferred their whole force to the other camp.

8.3. These things being done, the Syracusans sent ambassadors to Corinth and Lacedaemon about aid; the Corinthians sent them, with the Boeotians and Sicyonians, a thousand, and the Spartiates six hundred.

8.4. Gylippus, going around the cities in Sicily, urged many to ally, and, taking three thousand soldiers from the Himeraeans and Sicanians, led them through the interior. The Athenians, learning of their presence, attacked and slew half of them; the survivors were saved into Syracuse.

8.5. The allies having come, the Syracusans, wishing to lay claim also to the contests at sea, launched the existing ships and constructed others besides. In the small harbor they made their practice-runs.

8.6. Nicias the general of the Athenians sent letters to Athens, in which he made plain that many allies were present for the Syracusans, and that, having manned not a few ships, they had resolved to fight at sea; he asked, therefore, that they quickly send triremes and money and generals to help manage the war; for, Alcibiades having fled and Lamachus having died, he alone was left, and that in poor health.

8.7. The Athenians sent with Eurymedon the general ten ships to Sicily and a hundred and forty talents of silver about the winter solstice; and about the spring season they prepared to send a great fleet. Therefore they enrolled soldiers from every side from the allies and gathered money.

8.8. In the Peloponnese the Lacedaemonians, provoked by Alcibiades, broke the treaties with the Athenians, and this war lasted twelve years.

9.1. When this year had passed, Cleocritus was archon of the Athenians, and in Rome, instead of consuls, there were four military tribunes, Aulus Sempronius and Marcus Papirius, Quintus Fabius, Spurius Nautius.

9.2. In their time the Lacedaemonians with the allies invaded Attica, Agis being in command, and Alcibiades the Athenian. Having seized a strong place, Decelea, they made it a fort against Attica; therefore it came about that this war was called the Decelean. The Athenians sent against Laconia thirty triremes and Charicles as general, and to Sicily they voted to send eighty triremes and five thousand hoplites.

9.3. The Syracusans, having resolved to fight at sea and manned eighty triremes, sailed against the enemy. The Athenians having put out against them with sixty ships, and the sea-battle being now in progress, all the Athenians from the forts went down to the sea; for some desired to watch the battle, and others, if they should stumble in the sea-battle, hoped to come to the aid of the fugitives.

9.4. The generals of the Syracusans, foreseeing what was happening, had sent those in the city against the fortifications of the Athenians, which were full of money and naval equipment, and besides of the other supplies; these the Syracusans, seized while guarded by altogether few men, held, and killed many of those coming to the aid from the sea.

9.5. Much shouting having arisen about the forts and the camp, the Athenians who were fighting at sea, dismayed, were routed and fled toward the remaining one of the forts. The Syracusans pursuing in disorder, the Athenians, being unable to flee to the land because the Syracusans held control of two forts, were compelled by a turn to fight at sea again.

9.6. The Syracusans having broken their ranks and being scattered in the pursuit, the Athenians, sailing against them with their ships in a mass, sank eleven and pursued the rest as far as the Island. The battle having been broken off, each side set up a trophy, the Athenians of the sea-battle, the Syracusans of the successes on land.

10.1. The sea-battle having taken such an end, the Athenians, learning that the fleet with Demosthenes would come in a few days, resolved no longer to run the risk until that force should arrive, while the Syracusans, on the contrary, wishing before the army with Demosthenes came to decide the whole matter, each day sailing against the ships of the Athenians, set on the battle.

10.2. Ariston the Corinthian helmsman having advised them to make the prows of their ships shorter and lower, the Syracusans, persuaded, had the advantage in many of the later dangers for this reason.

10.3. For the Attic triremes had weaker and higher prows; therefore it came about that their rammings wounded the parts above the sea, so that the enemy did not fall into great damage; but the Syracusan ships, having the part about the prow strong and low, in the giving of their rammings often with a single blow sank the triremes of the Athenians.

10.4. For many days, then, the Syracusans, assaulting the camp of the enemy both by land and by sea, accomplished nothing, the Athenians keeping quiet; but when some of the trierarchs, no longer able to endure the contempt of the Syracusans, put out against the enemy in the great harbor, there arose a sea-battle of all the triremes.

10.5. The Athenians, then, having swift-sailing triremes and being superior in their experience at sea, and besides in the skills of their helmsmen, had this superiority useless, the sea-battle taking place in a narrow space; the Syracusans, engaging and giving the enemy no room to turn, hurled javelins at those on the decks and, throwing stones, compelled them to abandon the prows, and, in a word, giving rammings to many of the ships that fell upon them and leaping into the ships of their opponents, joined an infantry battle on the ships.

10.6. Being pressed from every side, the Athenians rushed to flight; the Syracusans, pursuing, sank seven triremes and made many unfit for use.

11.1. As the Syracusans were elated in their hopes because they had conquered the enemy both by land and by sea, Eurymedon and Demosthenes were present, having sailed from Athens with a great force, and on the voyage having taken on an alliance from the Thurians and Messapians.

11.2. They brought more than eighty triremes, and of soldiers, apart from those in the crews, five thousand; and arms and money, and besides these the engines for siege and the other supplies, they conveyed in round ships. For which reason the Syracusans were again humbled in their hopes, thinking that they would no longer easily be able to be a match for the enemy.

11.3. Demosthenes, having persuaded his fellow-commanders to attack Epipolae—for otherwise it was not possible to wall off the city—took ten thousand hoplites and as many others light-armed, and by night attacked the Syracusans. The onset being unexpected, they gained control of some forts and, bursting within the fortification of Epipolae, threw down part of the wall.

11.4. The Syracusans having run together from every side to the place, and Hermocrates moreover having come to the aid with the picked men, the Athenians were driven out, and, it being night, because of their inexperience of the places, some were scattered in some places, others in others.

11.5. The Syracusans with the allies, having pursued and killed two thousand five hundred of the enemy and made not a few wounded, gained control of many arms.

11.6. After the battle the Syracusans sent Sicanus, one of the generals, with twelve triremes to the other cities, to announce the victory to the allies and to ask them to come to the aid.

12.1. The Athenians, their affairs having turned out for the worse, and, because the surrounding place was marshy, a plague having fallen into the camp, deliberated how they ought to deal with the situation.

12.2. Demosthenes, then, thought they ought to sail off to Athens as quickly as possible, saying that it was preferable to run the risk against the Lacedaemonians on behalf of their native land than, sitting in Sicily, to accomplish nothing useful; but Nicias said they ought not so shamefully to abandon the siege, well supplied with triremes and soldiers and besides money; and in addition, if without the consent of the people they should make peace with the Syracusans and sail off to their native land, danger would follow upon them from those accustomed to maliciously prosecute the generals.

12.3. Of those taken into the council, some agreed with Demosthenes about the departure, others declared the same opinion as Nicias; therefore, deciding nothing clear, they remained quiet.

12.4. As an alliance came to the Syracusans from the Sicels and Selinuntians, and besides from the Geloans, and besides these the Himeraeans and Camarinaeans, the Syracusans grew more confident, while the Athenians became very fearful. As the disease took a great increase, many of the soldiers died, and all repented that they had not long before made the departure.

12.5. Therefore, the multitude being in tumult and all the others rushing to the ships, Nicias was compelled to consent about the departure home. The generals being of one mind, the soldiers put their equipment aboard and, manning the triremes, raised the yard-arms; and the generals ordered the multitudes, whenever the signal should be given, that no one should be late from the camp, since the laggard would be left behind.

12.6. As they were about to sail on the next day, the moon was eclipsed the following night. Therefore Nicias, being naturally superstitious and, because of the disease in the camp, cautiously disposed, summoned the seers. These having declared that it was necessary to defer the departure for the customary three days, Demosthenes and his men too were compelled to consent because of the scruple toward the divine.

13.1. The Syracusans, learning from some deserters the reason for the postponement of the departure, manned all their triremes, being seventy-four, and, leading out their land forces, assaulted the enemy both by land and by sea.

13.2. The Athenians, having manned eighty-six triremes, gave the right wing to Eurymedon the general, opposite where Agatharchus the general of the Syracusans was stationed; on the other part Euthydemus was stationed, opposite whom Sicanus, leading the Syracusans, was drawn up; and the command of the center was held among the Athenians by Menander, among the Syracusans by Pythes the Corinthian.

13.3. As the phalanx of the Athenians extended beyond, because they fought with more triremes, in that very respect in which they seemed to have the advantage they were worsted. For Eurymedon, having attempted to sail around the wing of his opponents, when he was drawn away from the line, the Syracusans having turned upon him, was cut off toward the gulf called Dascon, which was held by the Syracusans.

13.4. Shut into a narrow place and forced to be driven onto the land, he himself, being wounded by someone with a mortal blow, ended his life, and seven ships were destroyed in this place.

13.5. The sea-battle now taking place with the whole fleets, when a report was spread that the general had been killed and some ships lost, at first those nearest to the destroyed ships gave way, and after this, the Syracusans pressing on and, because of the success that had occurred, fighting boldly, the Athenians, being forced, were all compelled to flee.

13.6. The pursuit taking place toward the shoal part of the harbor, not a few of the triremes ran aground in the shallows. These things happening, Sicanus the general of the Syracusans quickly filled a cargo-ship with brushwood and pine-torches, and besides pitch, and set fire to the ships rolling about in the shallows.

13.7. These having been kindled, the Athenians quickly quenched the flame and from the ships vigorously defended themselves against those bearing upon them, finding no other safety; and the land forces came to the aid along the shore onto which the ships had run.

13.8. All enduring the danger vigorously, on the land the Syracusans were routed, but by sea, having gained the advantage, they sailed off to the city. There perished of the Syracusans few, but of the Athenians men not fewer than two thousand and eighteen triremes.

14.1. The Syracusans, thinking that the danger was no longer about the city, but that the contest now lay much more about taking the camp with the enemy captive, blocked the mouth of the harbor by constructing a barrier.

14.2. For, mooring small boats and triremes, and besides round ships, on anchors, and binding them together with iron chains, they constructed bridges of planks onto the vessels, and finished the works in three days.

14.3. The Athenians, observing that their safety was cut off from every side, resolved to man all the triremes and to put aboard the best of the foot, in order, by the multitude of the ships and the desperation of those fighting for their safety, to dismay the Syracusans.

14.4. Therefore, putting aboard those appointed to commands and the best from the whole army, they manned a hundred and fifteen triremes, and the rest they stationed on the land along the shore. The Syracusans stationed their land force before the city, and manned seventy-four triremes; and there sailed alongside them, having the service-boats, free boys, who in their years were under the age of the young men and were fighting together with their fathers.

14.5. The walls about the harbor and all the place overlooking the city were full of people; for women and maidens and those whose ages could not furnish use in war, the whole war taking its decision, with much anxiety watched the battle.

15.1. At which time Nicias the general of the Athenians, looking at the ships and reckoning the magnitude of the danger, did not remain at the station on land, but, leaving the foot, went aboard a ship and sailed along the triremes of the Athenians. Addressing each of the trierarchs by name and stretching out his hands, he begged all, if ever before, now to lay hold of the only hope that was left; for in the valor of those about to fight at sea lay the safety both of all of themselves and of their native land.

15.2. And to those who were fathers of children he made mention of their sons, exhorting those born of glorious fathers not to disgrace the valor of their ancestors, urging those honored by the people to appear worthy of the crowns, and asking all, mindful of the trophies at Salamis, not to throw down the far-famed glory of their native land, nor to give themselves over like slaves to the Syracusans.

15.3. Nicias, then, having used such words, returned again to his own station; and those in the ships, having raised the paean, sailed, and, anticipating the enemy, began to break the barrier. The Syracusans, quickly putting out, drew up their triremes, and, engaging the enemy, compelled them to turn from the barrier and to fight it out.

15.4. As some backed water toward the shore, some toward the middle of the harbor, and some toward the walls, quickly all the triremes were drawn apart from one another, and, being separated from the bars, the harbor was full of those fighting at sea in small groups.

15.5. Thereupon, both sides contending recklessly for the victory, the Athenians, confident in the multitude of their ships and seeing no other safety, ran risks boldly and nobly endured death in the battle; while the Syracusans, having as spectators of the contest their parents and children, vied with one another, each wishing through himself to win the victory for his native land.

16.1. Therefore many, having boarded the prows of their opponents, when their own ship was wounded by another, were cut off in the midst of the enemy. Some, throwing on iron hands, compelled those drawn up against them to fight an infantry battle on the ships.

16.2. Often, having their own ships shattered, leaping into those of their opponents, and slaying some, thrusting others into the sea, they gained control of the triremes. In a word, throughout the whole harbor there was a din of rammings and a shout of those fighting, who were perishing in turn.

16.3. For whenever a ship was cut off by several triremes, being struck on every side by the bronze rams, the stream pouring in, it was swallowed up with all its men by the sea. Some, as the ships sank, swimming away, were wounded by arrows and, being struck by spears, were destroyed.

16.4. The helmsmen, observing the battle confused, and every place full of tumult, and often several ships bearing upon a single one, neither had anything to signal, since the same things were not advantageous against all, nor was it possible to look toward those giving orders, because of the multitude of missiles.

16.5. In a word, no one heard any of the orders, the vessels being shattered and the oars sheared off, and at the same time with the shout of those fighting at sea and of those vying with them from the land.

16.6. For the whole shore was held, partly by the foot of the Athenians, partly by the Syracusans, so that sometimes those fighting at sea near the land had as allies those encamped on the dry land.

16.7. Those on the walls, whenever they saw their own men prevailing, raised the paean, but whenever they saw them worsted, groaned and with tears prayed to the gods. For sometimes, as it chanced, it came about that some of the Syracusan triremes were destroyed near the walls, and their own men were killed before the eyes of their kinsmen, and parents saw the destruction of their children, sisters and wives the piteous end of their husbands and brothers.

17.1. For a long time, many perishing, the battle took no end; for not even those being pressed dared to flee to the land. For the Athenians asked those who withdrew from the battle and sailed toward the land whether they thought they could sail through the land to Athens, and the foot-soldiers of the Syracusans questioned those who sailed in, why, when they wished to embark on the triremes, having prevented them from fighting, they now betrayed their native land, and whether it was for this that they had blocked the mouth of the harbor, that, having shut off the enemy, they themselves might flee to the shore, and, death being owed to all men, what fairer death they sought than the one for their native land, which, having as a witness of their struggles, they shamefully abandoned.

17.2. As such things were being reproached by the soldiers on the land to those sailing in, those fleeing to the shore turned back again, although they had their ships shattered and were weighed down by their wounds.

17.3. As the Athenians fighting near the city were forced back and rushed to flight, the nearest of the Athenians always gave way, and little by little all were routed.

17.4. The Syracusans, then, with much shouting pursued the ships to the land; and of the Athenians, as many as were not destroyed in the open, when they were brought to the shoals, leaping out of the ships, fled to the land army.

17.5. The harbor was full of arms and wrecks, since of the Attic ships sixty were lost, and of the Syracusans eight were utterly destroyed and sixteen shattered. The Syracusans hauled onto the land as many of the triremes as was possible, and, taking up their dead citizens and allies, deemed them worthy of a public burial.

18.1. The Athenians, running together to the tents of the commanders, begged the generals to take thought not for the ships, but for their own safety. Demosthenes, then, said that, the barrier having been broken, they ought quickly to man the triremes, and, attacking unexpectedly, he undertook that they would easily master the design;

18.2. but Nicias advised, leaving the ships, to withdraw through the interior to the allied cities. With him all being of one mind, they burned some of the ships and prepared for the departure.

18.3. It being evident that they would break camp by night, Hermocrates advised the Syracusans to lead out the whole army by night and to seize all the roads beforehand.

18.4. The generals not being persuaded, because many of the soldiers were wounded and all were worn out in body by the battle, he sent some of the cavalry to the camp of the Athenians to say that the Syracusans had sent ahead those who would seize the roads and the most critical places.

18.5. The cavalry having done what was ordered, it now being night, the Athenians, thinking that some of the Leontines had announced it out of goodwill, were no little troubled and deferred the departure; by which, if they had not been deceived, they would have withdrawn safely.

18.6. The Syracusans, then, at the breaking of day sent those who would seize beforehand the narrow passes of the roads; and the generals of the Athenians, having divided the soldiers into two parts, and taking the baggage and the sick into the middle, and stationing those able to fight to lead and to bring up the rear, advanced toward Catana, with Demosthenes leading some and Nicias others.

19.1. The Syracusans, having taken in tow the fifty ships that had been left, brought them into the city, and, having disembarked all from the triremes and armed them, with all their force followed the Athenians, harassing them and hindering them from advancing forward.

19.2. For three days, following and surrounding them on every side, they prevented them from going straight to the allied Catana, and, having compelled them to make their way back through the Elorine plain, encircling them by the river Asinarus, they killed eighteen thousand and took alive seven thousand, among whom were the generals Demosthenes and Nicias; the rest were plundered by the soldiers.

19.3. For the Athenians, their safety cut off on every side, were compelled to surrender their arms and themselves to the enemy. These things being done, the Syracusans, having set up two trophies and nailed the arms of the generals to each, returned to the city.

19.4. Then, indeed, they sacrificed to the gods in full force, and on the next day, an assembly having been gathered, they deliberated how they should deal with the captives. A certain Diocles, the most distinguished of the demagogues, declared the opinion that they ought to put the generals of the Athenians to death with torture, and that all the other captives should for the present be placed in the quarries, and after this that those who had allied with the Athenians should be sold as booty, and that the Athenians, working in the prison, should receive two cotylae of barley-meal.

19.5. The decree having been read, Hermocrates, coming forward into the assembly, undertook to say that it was nobler than to conquer to bear the victory in a human way.

19.6. The people being in tumult and not enduring the speech, a certain Nicolaus, who had been deprived of two sons in the war, mounted the platform, supported by his servants because of his age. When the people saw him, they ceased their tumult, thinking he would accuse the captives. Silence having arisen, the old man thus began his speech.

20.1. "Of the misfortunes in the war, men of Syracuse, I have shared no smallest part; for, having become the father of two sons, I sent them out to the danger on behalf of their native land, but received in their place a message which announced their death.

20.2. Therefore, each day longing for their company and reckoning up their death, I count them blessed but pity my own life, considering myself the most unfortunate of all.

20.3. For they, having spent the death owed to nature on the safety of their native land, have left behind for themselves an immortal glory, while I, in my last age, bereft of those who should tend my old age, have a double grief, longing at once for kinship and for valor;

20.4. for by how much more nobly they died, by so much more longed-for a memory of them they have left behind. Reasonably, then, I hate the Athenians, since because of them I am led by the hand, as you see, not by my children, but by servants.

20.5. If, then, men of Syracuse, I saw that the present deliberation had to do with the Athenians alone, reasonably, both because of the common misfortunes of my native land and because of my own private calamities, I would deal bitterly with them; but since, together with the pity toward the unfortunate, both the common advantage and the reputation that will be reported about the people of the Syracusans to all men is being judged, I will make my counsel of the advantageous pure.

21.1. The people of the Athenians, then, has received the punishment worthy of its own folly, first from the gods, and after this from us, the wronged.

21.2. For it is a good thing that the divine power should enwrap those who begin an unjust war and do not bear their own superiority in a human way with unexpected calamities.

21.3. For who would have hoped that the Athenians, having taken ten thousand talents from Delos and having sent two hundred triremes to Sicily and men to fight more than forty thousand, would fall into such great calamities? For from so great a preparation neither ship nor man returned, so that not even one to announce the calamity to them was left.

21.4. Knowing, then, men of Syracuse, that the arrogant are hated both by gods and by men, do reverence to fortune and do nothing beyond what is human. For what is solemn in slaughtering one who has fallen at one's feet? What is glorious in enwrapping him with punishment? For he who has an unalterable savagery concerning misfortunes wrongs along with him the common weakness of men.

21.5. For no one is so prudent as to prevail over fortune, which, by nature delighting in human calamities, makes the changes of prosperity swift. Some will say perhaps, 'They did wrong, and we have the authority for punishment against them.'

21.6. Have you not, then, received from the people a many-fold punishment, and from the captives have you a sufficient chastisement? For they handed themselves over with their arms, trusting in the good sense of their conquerors; therefore it is not right that they be deceived of our humanity.

21.7. For those who kept their enmity unalterable have died fighting, but those who put themselves into our hands have become, instead of enemies, suppliants. For those who in battles put their bodies into the hands of their opponents do this in hope of safety; but if, having trusted, they shall meet with so great a punishment, those who suffer will take on the calamity, while those who do it would be called senseless.

21.8. It is necessary, men of Syracuse, that those who lay claim to leadership make themselves strong not so much by arms as that they show themselves reasonable in their characters.

22.1. For subjects, biding their time, take vengeance, because of hatred, on those who hold them down by fear, but, steadfastly loving those who lead them with humanity, always increase their leadership. What pulled down the empire of the Medes? Its savagery toward the more humble.

22.2. For when the Persians revolted, most of the peoples joined in the attack. For how did Cyrus, from a private man, become king of all Asia? By his good sense toward the conquered. For, having taken King Croesus captive, he so far from wronging him that he even did him further benefits; and likewise he dealt with the other kings and peoples.

22.3. Accordingly, his gentleness having been spread to every place, all those in Asia, anticipating one another, came into the alliance of the king.

22.4. Why do I speak of things far off in places and times? For in our own city not long ago Gelon, from a private man, became leader of all Sicily, the cities coming voluntarily into his power; for the man's reasonableness invited all men, having added to it forgiveness toward the unfortunate.

22.5. From those times, then, our city laying claim to the leadership of Sicily, let us not throw down the praise of our ancestors, nor show ourselves bestial and inexorable toward human misfortune. For it is not fitting to give envy a pretext to say against us that we are unworthily fortunate; for it is noble, even when fortune is against us, to have those who will share our grief, and again in our successes those who rejoice.

22.6. The advantages in arms are often decided by fortune and opportunity, but gentleness in good fortune is a peculiar sign of the valor of the fortunate. Therefore do not grudge your native land to become far-famed among all men, that it conquered the Athenians not only by arms, but also by humanity.

22.7. For those who pride themselves on surpassing others in gentleness will appear to be cared for by our good sense, and those who first established an altar of Pity will find this in the city of the Syracusans.

22.8. From which it will be evident to all that they justly stumbled, but we were worthily fortunate, if indeed they undertook to wrong such men as were of good sense even toward their enemies, while we conquered such men as dared to plot against those who share their pity even with their bitterest foes; so that the Athenians meet not only with accusation from the others, but also condemn themselves, if they undertook to wrong such men.

23.1. It is noble, men of Syracuse, to begin friendship and, by pity toward the unfortunate, to settle the difference. For one must keep goodwill toward friends immortal, but enmity toward opponents mortal; for thus it will come about that the allies become more numerous and the enemies fewer.

23.2. But to keep the difference eternal and to hand it down to the children of children is neither sensible nor safe; for sometimes those who seem to be superior become, in a turn of opportunity, weaker than those who before fell at their feet.

23.3. The war that has just taken place bears witness; for those who came to besiege us and, because of their superiority, walled off the city have, by a turn, become captives, as you see. It is noble, then, having shown ourselves gentle in the misfortunes of others, to have ready the pity of all, if anything human should befall. For life has many paradoxes—political factions, robberies, wars—in which it is not easy for one who is a man to escape danger.

23.4. Therefore, if we cut off pity toward those who fall at our feet, we shall set down a bitter law against ourselves for all time. For it is not possible that those who deal savagely with others should themselves ever meet with humanity from others; and those who do dreadful things, that they should suffer reasonable treatment; and, having killed so many men contrary to the customs of the Greeks, that in the changes of life they should invoke the common customs of all.

23.5. For who of the Greeks has deemed those who handed themselves over and trusted in the good sense of their conquerors worthy of inexorable punishment, or who has had pity less than savagery, and caution less than rashness?

24.1. All men rise up against those drawn up against them, but yield to those who fall at their feet, in the one case wearing down their daring, in the other pitying their misfortune. For our spirit is broken whenever he who before was an enemy, having by a turn become a suppliant, submits to suffer whatever may seem good to the conquerors.

24.2. The souls of gentle men, I think, are captured most of all somehow by pity, because of the common fellow-feeling of nature. For the Athenians, during the Peloponnesian War, having shut up many of the Lacedaemonians on the island of Sphacteria and taken them captive, released them for ransom to the Spartiates.

24.3. Again the Lacedaemonians, having taken captive many of the Athenians and their allies, dealt with them similarly. And both did these things nobly. For among the Greeks the enmity should last until victory, and one should punish until one prevails over one's opponents.

24.4. But he who beyond this punishes one who falls at his feet and takes refuge in the good sense of the conqueror, no longer punishes an enemy, but much rather wrongs human weakness.

24.5. For one might say to the hardness of such a man the pronouncements of the wise men of old: 'Man, be not high-minded; know thyself; behold that fortune is mistress of all.' For why did the ancestors of all the Greeks, in their victories in war, ordain to set up trophies not of stone, but of any chance wood?

24.6. Was it not in order that, lasting a little while, the memorials of enmity might quickly be effaced? In general, if you wish to set up the difference for ever, learn that you despise human weakness; for a single moment and a brief turn of fortune often humbles the arrogant.

25.1. But if, as is likely, you shall cease from war, what fairer opportunity will you find than the present, in which you will make your humanity toward those who have stumbled a starting-point of friendship? For do not think that the people of the Athenians has been utterly weakened because of the disaster in Sicily, when it controls nearly all the islands of Greece and holds the leadership of the coast both of Europe and of Asia.

25.2. For also formerly, having lost three hundred triremes with their crews about Egypt, it compelled the king who seemed to prevail to make disgraceful treaties; and again, the city having been razed by Xerxes, after a little it conquered even him and acquired the leadership of Greece.

25.3. For the city is good at receiving in its greatest misfortunes the greatest increase, and at never deliberating anything mean. It is noble, then, instead of increasing the enmity, to have them as allies by sparing the captives.

25.4. For by killing them we shall gratify only our spirit, fulfilling a fruitless desire, but by sparing them we shall have from those well treated gratitude, and from all others good repute.

26.1. 'Yes, but some of the Greeks have slaughtered their captives.' What then? If from this deed praises come to them, let us imitate those who have taken thought for glory; but if they meet with accusation from us first, let us not ourselves do the same things as those who have confessedly erred.

26.2. For so long as those who have handed themselves into our trust suffer nothing irremediable, all will justly blame the people of the Athenians; but if they hear that the captives have been put to death contrary to the common customs, they will transfer the accusation to us. And indeed, if for any others, it is worthy to respect the dignity of the city of the Athenians and to set aside for them a portion of gratitude for their benefits to mankind.

26.3. For these are the men who first gave the Greeks a share of civilized food, which, having privately received it from the gods, they made common to all by their use; these found out laws, through which the common life has come from a wild and unjust existence to a gentle and just society; these first, having saved those who fled to them, brought it about that the laws concerning suppliants prevailed among all men; of which, having been the founders, it is not worthy to deprive them. And these things I say to all; privately I will remind some of the humane deeds.

27.1. As many of you as have shared in eloquence and education in this city, give pity to those who furnish their native land as a common place of instruction for all men; as many as have shared in the most holy mysteries, save those who initiated you, some of you, having already shared in the kindnesses, giving the gratitude of the benefaction, others, about to share, not depriving yourselves of the hope by your wrath.

27.2. For what place is accessible to foreigners for liberal education, the city of the Athenians being destroyed? Brief is the hatred because of the error, but great and many are the things done by them toward goodwill. And apart from the respect due to the city, even privately, examining the captives, one would find them justly meeting with pity. For the allies, forced by the superiority of their masters, were compelled to campaign together with them.

27.3. Therefore, if it is just to punish those who do wrong from design, it would be fitting to deem those who err involuntarily worthy of forgiveness. Why do I speak of Nicias, who from the beginning shaped his policy on behalf of the Syracusans and alone spoke against the expedition to Sicily, and who has always taken thought for the Syracusans who sojourn at Athens and has continued to be their proxenos?

27.4. It is absurd, then, that Nicias, who has conducted his public life at Athens on our behalf, should be punished, and that because of his goodwill toward us he should not meet with humanity, but because of his service in public affairs should fall into inexorable punishment, and that Alcibiades, who brought on the war against the Syracusans, should escape punishment both from us and from the Athenians, while the man confessedly the most humane of the Athenians should not even meet with the common pity.

27.5. Therefore I, observing the change of his life, pity his fortune. For formerly, being among the most distinguished of the Greeks and praised for his nobility, he was counted blessed and looked up to in every city;

27.6. but now, with his arms bound and in an unseemly tunic, he has experienced the piteous things of captivity, as though fortune wished in this man's life to display her own power. Her good fortune it befits us to bear in a human way, and not to show barbarian savagery toward men of the same race."

28.1. Nicolaus, then, having used such words toward the Syracusans, ended his speech, having made his hearers sympathetic. But Gylippus the Laconian, keeping his hatred toward the Athenians inexorable, mounted the platform and made the beginning of his words from this point.

28.2. "I marvel greatly, men of Syracuse, observing you so quickly, concerning the very things in which you have in deed suffered ill, being in word taught otherwise. For if you, who ran the risk of being uprooted, against those who came for the razing of your native land are loosened in your spirits, why should we now strain ourselves, who have suffered no wrong?

28.3. But give me, by the gods, men of Syracuse, pardon as I set forth my counsel with frankness; for, being a Spartiate, I have also a Spartiate's speech. And first one might inquire how Nicolaus says he pities the Athenians, who have made his old age pitiful by childlessness, and, coming into the assembly in mourning dress, weeps and says one ought to pity the slayers of his own children.

28.4. For he is no longer reasonable who, forgetting his nearest kin after their death, chooses to save his bitterest foes. For how many of you in the assembly have mourned sons slain in the war?" Many of those seated, indeed, raised a tumult.

28.5. And he, taking it up, said, "Do you see those who by their tumult make their misfortune evident? And how many of you, having lost brothers or kinsmen or friends, long for them?" And many more gave a sign.

28.6. And Gylippus said, "Do you see the multitude of those unfortunate because of the Athenians? All these, doing them no wrong, were deprived of their nearest persons, and ought to hate the Athenians as much as they have loved their own.

29.1. How, then, is it not absurd, men of Syracuse, that the dead chose a voluntary death on your behalf, but you should not, on their behalf, take vengeance even from your bitterest foes, and that you should praise those who spent their own lives for the common freedom, but make the safety of their slayers of more account than their honor?

29.2. You voted to adorn publicly the tombs of those who have died; and what fairer adornment will you find than to punish those who slew them with their own hands? Unless, by Zeus, you wish, having enrolled them as citizens, to leave them as living trophies of the dead.

29.3. But, having changed the name of enemies, they have become suppliants. Whence has this humanity been conceded to them? For those who from the beginning ordained the customs concerning these things appointed pity for the unfortunate, but punishment for those who do wrong through wickedness.

29.4. In which of the two ranks, then, shall we place the captives? In that of the unfortunate? And what fortune, they having done no prior wrong, compelled them to make war on the Syracusans and, abandoning the peace praised by all, to come for the razing of your city?

29.5. Therefore, having voluntarily chosen an unjust war, let them stoutly endure its terrors, and not, when prevailing, have an inexorable savagery toward you, but, when failing, beg off their punishment by the humane plea of supplication.

29.6. But if they are convicted of having fallen into such reverses through wickedness and greed, let them not blame fortune, nor invoke the name of supplication. For this is reserved among men for those who have had a pure soul but a thankless fortune.

29.7. But these, having a life full of all wrongdoings, have left themselves no place accessible to pity and refuge.

30.1. For what of the most shameful things did they not plan, and what of the most dreadful did they not do? It is the property of greed not to be content with one's own good fortune but to desire things lying far off and in no way belonging to one; these men did this. For, being the most prosperous of the Greeks, not bearing their good fortune like a heavy burden, they desired to apportion by lot Sicily, separated from them by so great a sea, having enslaved its inhabitants.

30.2. It is dreadful to bring war on those who have done no prior wrong; and this they put into effect. For, being friends in the time before, they suddenly, unexpectedly, with so great a force besieged the Syracusans.

30.3. It is the mark of the arrogant to condemn beforehand to punishment, anticipating fortune, those not yet conquered; not even this have they left out. For before they set foot in Sicily they ratified a resolution to enslave the Syracusans and Selinuntians and to compel the rest to pay tribute. When, therefore, in the same men there is greed, plotting, arrogance, who in his senses would pity them?

30.4. For consider how the Athenians dealt with the Mytilenaeans. For, having prevailed over them, who wished to do no wrong but desired freedom, they voted to slaughter all in the city.

30.5. Savage and barbarous was the deed. And these things they did wrong against Greeks, against allies, against men who had often been their benefactors. Let them not now be indignant if, having done such things to others, they themselves shall meet with the like punishment; for it is most just that one who has set a law against others should not be indignant at being treated by it.

30.6. And why do I speak of the Melians, whom, having taken by siege, they killed all who had reached manhood, and the Scionaeans, who, being kinsmen, shared the same fortune as the Melians? So that two peoples, having stumbled against Attic wrath, had not even those who would bury the bodies of the dead.

30.7. Scythians did not do this, but the people that pretends to excel in humanity has utterly destroyed cities by decrees. Now reckon what they would have done if they had sacked the city of the Syracusans; for those who dealt so savagely with their own kin would have found a heavier punishment for those in no way connected with them.

31.1. There is not, then, justly any pity reserved for these men; for they have themselves destroyed it in their own misfortunes. For where is it worthy for them to take refuge? With the gods, whose ancestral honors they chose to take away? With men, whom they came to enslave? They invoke Demeter and Kore and their mysteries, having sacked their sacred island.

31.2. 'Yes, but the multitude of the Athenians is not to blame, but Alcibiades, who counseled these things.' But we shall find that counselors for the most part aim at the wish of their hearers, so that he who votes suggests to the orator a speech suited to his own purpose. For the speaker is not master of the multitude, but the people accustoms the orator to say the best things by deliberating well.

31.3. But if we shall give to those who do irremediable wrongs forgiveness, whenever they refer the blame to their counselors, we shall furnish the wicked an easy defense. In a word, of all things it is most unjust that the people should receive the thanks for the benefits from those well treated, not the counselors, but that the punishment for the wrongs should be transferred to the orators.

31.4. And some have so departed from reason that they say Alcibiades, over whom we have no authority, ought to be punished, but the captives, being led to their fitting punishment, ought to be released, and that they should show to all that the people of the Syracusans has not had a just hatred of wickedness.

31.5. But if in truth the counselors became responsible for the war, let the multitude blame the orators for the things in which they were deceived, but you will justly proceed against the multitude for the things in which you were wronged. In general, if knowing clearly they did wrong, by their very purpose they are worthy of punishment; but if, having deliberated rashly, they brought on the war, not even so are they to be released, lest they become accustomed to act recklessly in the lives of others. For it is not just that the ignorance of the Athenians should bring destruction to the Syracusans, nor that, in matters where the deed is irremediable, a defense should be left to the offenders.

32.1. 'By Zeus, but Nicias conducted his policy on behalf of the Syracusans and alone counseled not to make war.' The speech made there we hear, but the deeds done here we have seen.

32.2. For he who spoke against the expedition there was here general of the force; and he who conducts policy on behalf of the Syracusans walled off your city; and he who is humanely disposed toward you, when Demosthenes and all the others wished to raise the siege, alone forced them to remain and make war. Therefore I think that with you the word should not prevail more than the deeds, nor the report than the experience, nor the unseen than what has been seen by all.

32.3. 'By Zeus, but it is noble not to make the enmity eternal.' Well then, after the chastisement of the wrongdoers, if it seem good to you, you will fittingly settle the enmity. For it is not just, when they prevail, to treat the captured as slaves, but when they are defeated, to meet with forgiveness as having done no wrong. And they will be released from giving the penalty for what they did, but in a specious word they will remember the friendship whenever it is advantageous to them.

32.4. For I pass over that, doing this, along with many others you will wrong the Lacedaemonians, who on your account both took up the war there and sent an alliance here; for it was open to them to keep peace gladly and to look on while Sicily was being sacked.

32.5. Therefore, if, having released the captives, you join friendship, you will appear as betrayers of your allies, and, being able to humble the common enemies, by giving back so many soldiers you will again make them strong. For I would never trust that the Athenians, having taken up so great an enmity, will keep the friendship firm, but, being weak, they will counterfeit goodwill, but having recovered themselves, they will carry their ancient purpose to the end.

32.6. I, then, O Zeus and all gods, call you all to witness, do not save the enemies, do not abandon the allies, do not again bring another danger upon your native land. But you, men of Syracuse, having released these men, if anything difficult should result, will not even leave yourselves a specious defense."

33.1. The Laconian having spoken such things, the multitude changed their minds and ratified the opinion of Diocles. Therefore the generals were immediately put to death, and the allies; the Athenians were handed over to the quarries, of whom later some, having shared more in education, were carried off by the younger men and saved, but the rest, nearly all, being ill-treated in the prison, ended their lives piteously.

33.2. After the ending of the war Diocles wrote up the laws for the Syracusans, and a paradoxical reversal befell this man. For, being inexorable in his penalties and harshly punishing offenders, he wrote in the laws that if anyone should come into the marketplace having a weapon, the penalty should be death, granting forgiveness neither for ignorance nor for any other circumstance.

33.3. Enemies having been reported in the country, he went out having a sword; and a sudden faction and disturbance having arisen in the marketplace, he, forgetting himself, came into the marketplace with the sword. One of the private citizens, noticing it and saying that he was annulling his own laws, he cried out, "No, by Zeus, but I will make them valid"; and, drawing his sword, he killed himself. These things, then, were done in this year.

34.1. When Callias was archon at Athens, the Romans, instead of consuls, appointed four military tribunes, Publius Cornelius, Gaius Fabius; and the Olympiad celebrated among the Eleans was the ninety-second, in which Exaenetus of Acragas won the stadium-race. In their time, the Athenians having stumbled about Sicily, it came about that their leadership was despised;

34.2. for at once the Chians and Samians and Byzantines and many of the allies revolted to the Lacedaemonians. Therefore the people, becoming despondent, voluntarily gave up the democracy, and, having chosen four hundred men, entrusted to these the management of public affairs. Those who stood at the head of the oligarchy, having built more triremes, sent out forty and generals.

34.3. These, being at faction with one another, sailed out to Oropus; for there the triremes of the enemy were lying. A sea-battle, then, taking place, the Lacedaemonians conquered and gained control of twenty-two vessels.

34.4. The Syracusans, having ended the war against the Athenians, honored the Lacedaemonians who had allied with them, of whom Gylippus was leader, with the spoils from the war, and sent together with them to Lacedaemon, as an alliance for the war against the Athenians, thirty-five triremes, of which Hermocrates, the foremost of the citizens, was leader.

34.5. They themselves, having gathered the gains from the war, adorned the temples with votive offerings and spoils, and honored those of the soldiers who had behaved bravest with the fitting gifts.

34.6. After this, Diocles, who had the greatest power among them of the demagogues, persuaded the people to change the constitution so that the magistracies should be administered by lot, and to choose lawgivers also to order the constitution and to write new laws of their own.

35.1. Therefore the Syracusans chose as lawgivers those of the citizens who excelled in wisdom, of whom the most distinguished was Diocles. For he so far surpassed the others in intelligence and reputation that, though the legislation was written in common by all, the laws were named the laws of Diocles.

35.2. Not only did the Syracusans admire this man while living, but when he was dead they honored him with heroic honors and built a temple publicly, the one later pulled down by Dionysius in the building of the walls. This man was admired also among the other Sicilians;

35.3. at any rate, many of the cities in the island continued to use his laws until all the Sicilians were deemed worthy of the Roman citizenship. The Syracusans, then, in later times, Cephalus having legislated for them in the time of Timoleon, and Polydorus in the time of King Hieron, named neither of them lawgiver, but rather interpreter of the lawgiver, because the laws, written in an ancient dialect, seemed to be hard to understand.

35.4. The legislation having much in it to reflect upon, he appears as a hater of wickedness because he set the bitterest penalties of all the lawgivers against all wrongdoers, and as just because, more than those before him, he appointed the penalty for each according to desert, and as practical and very experienced because he deemed every disputed charge and matter, public and private, worthy of a defined punishment; and he is also concise in his diction and leaves the readers much to reflect upon.

35.5. The reversal concerning his death bore witness to his virtue and the hardness of his soul. These things, then, I was led to speak of more accurately because most of the historians have discussed him too carelessly.

36.1. The Athenians, learning that their force in Sicily had been utterly destroyed, bore the magnitude of the calamity heavily. Nevertheless they did not on this account cease from their ambition for the leadership, but built more ships and provided money, in order to contend to the last hope for the first place.

36.2. Having chosen four hundred men, they gave these plenipotentiary authority to manage the matters of the war; for they supposed that the oligarchy was more suitable than the democracy in such circumstances.

36.3. However, affairs did not follow their judgement, but they managed the war much worse. For, having sent forty ships, they sent along to lead them two generals who were hostilely disposed toward one another. And, the affairs of the Athenians having been humbled, the occasion required much concord, but the generals were at faction with one another.

36.4. And at last, having sailed out to Oropus unprepared, they fought at sea against the Peloponnesians; and, having both joined the battle badly and endured the danger ignobly, they lost twenty-two ships, and barely saved the rest into Eretria.

36.5. These things being done, the allies of the Athenians, because of the misfortunes about Sicily and the poor condition of their leaders, went over to the Lacedaemonians. Darius the king of the Persians being an ally of the Lacedaemonians, Pharnabazus, who held the command of the regions by the sea, supplied money to the Lacedaemonians; he summoned also the three hundred triremes from Phoenicia, reckoning to send them to the Lacedaemonians for aid.

37.1. Such reverses having come together for the Athenians at one time, all supposed the war to be ended; for no one any longer hoped that the Athenians, even for the briefest time, would withstand such things. However, affairs did not have an end consistent with the supposition of the many, but everything turned to the contrary, because of the superiorities of those who waged the war, for the following reasons.

37.2. Alcibiades, being an exile from Athens, fought for some time with the Lacedaemonians and furnished great services in the war; for he was most powerful in speech and far surpassed the citizens in daring, and besides was first of the Athenians in nobility and wealth.

37.3. This man, then, desiring to obtain his return to his native land, contrived everything to do the Athenians something useful, and especially at those times when they seemed to be utterly worsted.

37.4. Having friendship with Pharnabazus the satrap of Darius, and observing him about to send three hundred ships to the Lacedaemonians as an alliance, he persuaded him to desist from the action; for he taught that it was not advantageous to the king to make the Lacedaemonians too strong, for it would not profit the Persians; it was better, then, to look on while those waging war were equal, in order that they might be at variance with one another as long as possible.

37.5. Whence Pharnabazus, judging that Alcibiades spoke well, sent the fleet back to Phoenicia. Then, indeed, he took away from the Lacedaemonians so great an alliance; and after some time, having obtained his return and led a force, he conquered the Lacedaemonians in many battles, and again raised up the affairs of the Athenians, which had utterly fallen.

37.6. But concerning these things we shall speak more accurately in their proper times, lest we anticipate the occasions in our writing contrary to nature.

38.1. For when the annual period had passed, at Athens Theopompus was archon, and the Romans, instead of consuls, appointed four military tribunes, Tiberius Postumius and Gaius Cornelius, and besides these Gaius Valerius and Caeso Fabius. About these times the Athenians overthrew the oligarchy of the four hundred and constituted the system of the constitution from the citizens.

38.2. Of all these the proposer was Theramenes, a man orderly in his life and reputed to surpass the others in intelligence; for this man alone counseled to bring back Alcibiades, through whom they recovered themselves, and, having become the proposer of many other things for the good of his native land, he met with no moderate acceptance.

38.3. But these things happened a little later; and for the war the Athenians appointed as generals Thrasyllus and Thrasybulus, who, having gathered the fleet at Samos, trained the soldiers for a sea-battle, making practice-runs each day.

38.4. Mindarus the admiral of the Lacedaemonians for some time tarried about Miletus, awaiting the aid from Pharnabazus; for, hearing that three hundred triremes had put in from Phoenicia, he was elated in his hopes, thinking that with so great a fleet he would dissolve the leadership of the Athenians;

38.5. but after a little, learning from some that Pharnabazus, persuaded by Alcibiades, had sent the fleet back to Phoenicia, he gave up his hopes from Pharnabazus, and himself, having fitted out both the ships from the Peloponnese and those from the allies abroad, sent Dorieus with thirteen ships to Rhodes, learning that some of the Rhodians were banding together for revolution;

38.6. for some of the Greeks from Italy had recently sent the aforesaid ships to the Lacedaemonians as an alliance. He himself, taking up all the others, being eighty-three, set out for the Hellespont, because he learned that the fleet of the Athenians was tarrying at Samos.

38.7. At which time the generals of the Athenians, observing them sailing past, put out against them with sixty ships. The Lacedaemonians having put in at Chios, it seemed best to the generals of the Athenians to sail to Lesbos and there to gather triremes from the allies, in order that it might not happen that the enemy were superior in the multitude of ships.

39.1. These, then, were occupied about these things. Mindarus the admiral of the Lacedaemonians, having sailed out by night with the whole fleet to the Hellespont, was conveyed in haste, and on the second day put in at Sigeium. The Athenians, learning of the passage, did not wait for all the triremes from the allies, but, only three having joined them, pursued the Lacedaemonians.

39.2. When they came to Sigeium, they found the fleet had sailed out, and three ships left behind, of which they immediately gained control; and after this, having put in at Elaeus, they prepared for the sea-battle.

39.3. The Lacedaemonians, observing the enemy preparing the things for battle, themselves too, for five days making practice-runs and training the rowers, drew up the fleet for a sea-battle, being eighty-eight ships. These, then, stationed their ships on the side toward Asia, while the Athenians, holding the side toward Europe, put out against them, being inferior in number but superior in experience.

39.4. The Lacedaemonians, then, on the right wing stationed the Syracusans, of whom Hermocrates was leader, and themselves, the Peloponnesians, manned the left, Mindarus holding the command. Of the Athenians, on the right was stationed Thrasyllus, on the left Thrasybulus. And at first both were eager, vying about the position, in order that they might not have the current against them.

39.5. Therefore for a long time they sailed around one another, blocking the narrows and fighting for position; for, the sea-battle taking place between Abydus and Sestus, it came about that the current was no slight hindrance in the narrow places. Nevertheless, the helmsmen of the Athenians, far surpassing in experience, contributed much to the victory.

40.1. For though the Peloponnesians surpassed in the number of their ships and in the valor of their marines, the skill of the helmsmen made the superiority of their opponents useless. For whenever the Peloponnesians in haste bore upon them with their ships in a mass for a ramming, they so skillfully set their own that the others could not strike any other part of them, but were forced to come together only with the beaks of the rams.

40.2. Therefore Mindarus, seeing that the force of the rammings was useless, ordered them to engage in small groups and singly. But not even here did it happen that the skill of the helmsmen was useless, but, deftly evading the rammings of the ships that bore upon them, they struck them sideways and wounded many.

40.3. Ambition having fallen upon both, they ran risks not only with the rammings but, engaging, fought it out with the marines. And, much hindered from acting by the force of the current, they ran the risk for a sufficient time, neither being able to obtain the victory.

40.4. The battle being evenly balanced, there appeared over a certain headland twenty-five ships sent by the allies to the Athenians. The Peloponnesians, taking fright, fled to Abydus, the Athenians harassing them and pursuing more eagerly.

40.5. The sea-battle having taken such an end, the Athenians took ships—eight of the Chians, five of the Corinthians, two of the Ambraciots, and one each of the Syracusans and Pellenians and Leucadians; and they themselves lost five ships, all of which were sunk.

40.6. After this Thrasybulus and his men set up a trophy on the headland where the monument of Hecabe is, and sent those who would announce the victory to Athens, while they themselves with the whole fleet made the voyage to Cyzicus; for this city, before the sea-battle, had revolted to Pharnabazus the general of Darius and to Clearchus the leader of the Lacedaemonians. Finding it unwalled, they easily mastered the design, and, having exacted money from the Cyzicenes, sailed off to Sestus.

41.1. Mindarus the admiral of the Lacedaemonians, fleeing from the defeat to Abydus, repaired the damaged ships and sent to the triremes in Euboea Epicles the Spartiate, ordering him to bring them as quickly as possible.

41.2. He, when he had put in at Euboea, gathered the ships, being fifty, and in haste put out; and, the triremes being about Athos, so great a storm arose that all the ships were lost, and of the men only twelve were saved.

41.3. A votive offering set up in the temple at Coroneia, as Ephorus says, makes plain the things concerning these, having this inscription: These, from fifty ships having fled death, brought their bodies near the land at the cliffs of Athos, twelve; the rest the great deep of the sea destroyed, their ships having met with hateful winds.

41.4. About the same time Alcibiades, having thirteen triremes, put in toward those tarrying at Samos, who had long before heard that he had persuaded Pharnabazus no longer to aid the Lacedaemonians with the three hundred ships.

41.5. Those in Samos having received him kindly, he discussed with them about his return, undertaking many things, that he would be useful to his native land, likewise defending his own conduct, and weeping much over his own fortune, that he had been forced by his enemies to display his own valor against his native land.

42.1. The soldiers having gladly received his words, and having sent about these things to Athens, it seemed good to the people to release the man from the charges and to give him a share of the generalship; for, observing the effectiveness of his daring and his reputation among the Greeks, they supposed, as was likely, that there would be no small turn in their affairs by this man's joining.

42.2. For indeed Theramenes, who then led the state, a man reputed, if any other, to be intelligent, advised the people to bring back Alcibiades. These things having been reported to Samos, Alcibiades took on, in addition to his own thirteen ships, nine more, and with these, sailing out to Halicarnassus, exacted money from the city.

42.3. After this, having plundered Meropis, he sailed back to Samos with much booty. Much spoil having been gathered, having divided the gains among the soldiers in Samos and those with himself, he quickly made those well treated well-disposed toward himself.

42.4. About the same time the Antandrians, having a garrison, summoned soldiers from the Lacedaemonians, with whom, having cast out the garrison, they dwelt in their native land free; for the Lacedaemonians, accusing Pharnabazus concerning the sending of the three hundred ships to Phoenicia, allied with the inhabitants of Antandros.

42.5. Of the historians, Thucydides ended his history, having comprehended a period of twenty-two years in eight books, or, as some divide them, nine; Xenophon and Theopompus have made their beginning from where Thucydides left off, and Xenophon comprehended a period of forty-eight years, while Theopompus, going through the Greek deeds for seventeen years, brings his history to a close at the sea-battle about Cnidus in twelve books.

42.6. The affairs in Greece and Asia, then, were in this state. The Romans, at war with the Aequi, invaded their country with a great force; and, having encamped about a city called Bolae, took it by siege.

43.1. The deeds of this year having their end, at Athens Glaucippus was archon, and in Rome there were established as consuls Marcus Cornelius and Lucius Furius. About these times the Egestaeans in Sicily, having become allies of the Athenians against the Syracusans, the war having been ended, were in great fear; for they hoped, as was likely, to give the Sicilians punishment for the wrongs they had done them.

43.2. As the Selinuntians made war on them about the disputed land, they voluntarily withdrew, being wary lest, by this pretext, the Syracusans should join the Selinuntians in the war and they should risk utterly losing their native land.

43.3. But when the Selinuntians, apart from the disputed land, cut off much of the adjacent territory, then the inhabitants of Egesta sent ambassadors to Carthage, begging it to come to their aid and entrusting their city to it.

43.4. Those sent having put in and told the senate the instructions given by the people, the Carthaginians were in no slight perplexity; for at once they desired to take over a well-situated city, and at the same time they feared the Syracusans, having recently seen the forces of the Athenians utterly worsted.

43.5. Nevertheless, Hannibal, the foremost man among them, advising them to take over the city, they answered the ambassadors that they would come to their aid, and for the management of these matters, if there should be need to make war, they appointed as general Hannibal, who then by the laws was king. This man was the grandson of Hamilcar, who had warred against Gelon and died at Himera, and the son of Gescon, who, because of his father's defeat, was exiled and lived out his life in Selinus.

43.6. Hannibal, then, being by nature a Greek-hater, and at the same time wishing to set right the disgraces of his ancestors, was eager to accomplish through himself something useful to his native land. Observing, then, that the Selinuntians were not content with the cession of the disputed land, he sent ambassadors with the Egestaeans to the Syracusans, entrusting to them the judgement of these matters, in word pretending to act justly, but in truth thinking that, from the Selinuntians' not wishing to come to a decision, the Syracusans would not ally with them.

43.7. The Selinuntians having also sent ambassadors, who did not wish to come to a decision, and who spoke much against the ambassadors of the Carthaginians and the Egestaeans, finally it seemed good to the Syracusans to vote to keep the alliance with the Selinuntians, but the peace with the Carthaginians.

44.1. After the return of the ambassadors, the Carthaginians sent to the Egestaeans five thousand Libyans and eight hundred of the Campanians.

44.2. These had been hired by the Chalcidians for the Athenians for the war against the Syracusans, and after the defeat, having put in, they had no one to pay them; the Carthaginians, having bought horses for all and given notable wages, settled them in Egesta.

44.3. The Selinuntians at that time, being prosperous and their city being populous, despised the Egestaeans. And at first they ravaged the bordering land in good order, being far superior in forces, but afterward, out of contempt, they were scattered throughout all the country.

44.4. The generals of the Egestaeans, having watched for them, attacked with the Carthaginians and the Campanians. The onset being unexpected, they easily routed the Selinuntians, and killed about a thousand of the soldiers and gained control of all the booty. After the battle they immediately sent ambassadors, the Selinuntians to the Syracusans, the Egestaeans to the Carthaginians, about aid.

44.5. Both having undertaken to ally, the Carthaginian war took this beginning; and the Carthaginians, foreseeing the magnitude of the war, gave to Hannibal the general discretion concerning the magnitude of the force, and zealously served in everything.

44.6. Hannibal, that summer and the following winter, hired many men from Iberia, and enrolled not a few of the citizens; he went also through Libya, picking out from every city the strongest, and prepared ships, intending, when the spring season set in, to ferry over the forces. The affairs in Sicily, then, were in this state.

45.1. In Greece Dorieus the Rhodian, being admiral of the triremes from Italy, when he had settled the disturbance in Rhodes, sailed out to the Hellespont, eager to join Mindarus; for he, tarrying in Abydus, was gathering from every side the ships allied to the Peloponnesians.

45.2. Dorieus being now about Sigeium of the Troad, the Athenians at Sestus, learning of the passage, put out against them with all their ships, being seventy-four.

45.3. Dorieus, for a while ignorant of what was happening, sailed in the open; but, perceiving the magnitude of the fleet, he was dismayed, and, seeing no other safety, fled for refuge to Dardanus.

45.4. Disembarking his soldiers and taking on those guarding the city, he quickly brought up a great quantity of missiles, and of his soldiers some he stationed on the prows, others he stationed advantageously on the land.

45.5. The Athenians, having put in with much haste, attempted to drag off the ships, and, pouring around with their multitude from every side, wore down their opponents.

45.6. Mindarus the admiral of the Peloponnesians, learning of this, at once put out from Abydus with the whole fleet, and put in toward Dardanus with eighty-four ships, to come to the aid of Dorieus and his men; and the land army of Pharnabazus was also present, coming to the aid of the Lacedaemonians.

45.7. When the fleets came near one another, both drew up their triremes for a sea-battle; and Mindarus, having ninety-seven ships, stationed on the left wing the Syracusans, and himself held the command of the right; of the Athenians, Thrasybulus led the right part, Thrasyllus the other.

45.8. They having been thus equipped, their leaders raised the signal of battle, and the trumpeters at a single command began to sound the call to battle; and, the rowers falling short in no zeal, and the helmsmen using the tillers skillfully, the contest came to be terrifying.

45.9. For whenever the triremes bore upon one another for a ramming, then the helmsmen, at the very turn of the moment, turned the ships skillfully, so that the blows came as ram against ram.

45.10. The marines, observing their own ships borne sideways together with the triremes of the enemy, became very fearful, anxious for themselves; but whenever the helmsmen by their skill warded off the onsets, again they became overjoyed and elated in their hopes.

46.1. Nor did those mounted on the decks have their ambition idle, but those stationed at a great distance shot arrows continuously, and quickly the place was full of missiles; those ever coming nearer hurled their spears, some at the defending marines, some vying to strike the helmsmen themselves; and whenever the ships came together, they fought with spears and, in the approaches, leaping into the triremes of the enemy, defended themselves against one another with their swords.

46.2. In the reverses that occurred, the victors raising the war-cry and the others with shouting coming to the aid, a mingled cry arose over the whole place of the sea-battle. For a long time, then, the battle was evenly balanced because of the surpassing ambition on both sides; but after this Alcibiades, from Samos, unexpectedly appeared with twenty ships, sailing by chance to the Hellespont.

46.3. These being far off, both sides, hoping that aid was coming to them, were elated in their hopes and ran risks much more eagerly in their daring; but when the fleet was now near, and to the Lacedaemonians no signal appeared, but to the Athenians Alcibiades raised a purple ensign aloft from his own ship, which was the signal arranged for them, the Lacedaemonians, dismayed, were routed, and the Athenians, elated by the advantage, eagerly pursued those fleeing.

46.4. And they immediately gained control of ten ships, but after this a storm having arisen and great winds, they were much hindered in the pursuit; for because of the magnitude of the waves the vessels disobeyed the tillers, and it came about that the rammings were useless, the struck ships giving way.

46.5. Finally the Lacedaemonians, being driven toward the land, fled to the land camp of Pharnabazus, and the Athenians at first attempted to drag off the ships from the land and ran risks recklessly, but, being beaten back by the Persian army, sailed off to Sestus.

46.6. For Pharnabazus, wishing to make a defense to the Lacedaemonians concerning the things of which they accused him, fought more vigorously against the Athenians; and at the same time he instructed them concerning the three hundred ships sent to Phoenicia, that he had done this learning that both the king of the Arabs and the king of the Egyptians were plotting against the affairs about Phoenicia.

47.1. The sea-battle having taken such an end, the Athenians then sailed off to Sestus, it being already night, and at daybreak they gathered the wrecks and set up another trophy beside the former one.

47.2. Mindarus, by night about the first watch having put in to Abydus, repaired the damaged ships and sent to the Lacedaemonians about aid both of foot and of ships; for he intended, while the things concerning the fleet were being made ready, to besiege on land, with Pharnabazus, the cities in Asia allied to the Athenians.

47.3. The Chalcidians and nearly all the others who inhabit Euboea had revolted from the Athenians, and on this account were very fearful, lest, inhabiting an island, they should be taken by siege by the Athenians, who held command of the sea; they asked, then, the Boeotians in common to dam up the Euripus, so as to join Euboea to Boeotia.

47.4. The Boeotians having consented, because it was advantageous to them too that Euboea should be to the others an island, but to themselves mainland; therefore all the cities were eager for the damming and vied with one another; for not only did they order the citizens to come out in full force, but also the foreigners dwelling among them, so that, because of the multitude of those engaged on the works, the project quickly came to completion.

47.5. On the side of Euboea the mound was constructed at Chalcis, and on the side of Boeotia near Aulis; for there the place between was narrowest. It came about that even before, there was always at that place a current, and the sea made frequent turns, but then much more were the conditions of the current intensified, as the sea was shut into a very narrow space; for the passage was left open for a single ship. They built also high towers on both points, and set wooden bridges over the channels.

47.6. Theramenes, having been sent by the Athenians with thirty ships, at first attempted to hinder those at the works, but, a great multitude of soldiers being present with those constructing the mounds, he desisted from this attempt and made his voyage to the islands.

47.7. Wishing to relieve the citizens and allies from contributions, he ravaged the country of the enemy and gathered much booty. He went also to the allied cities and exacted money from those attempting revolution in them.

47.8. Having put in to Paros and finding an oligarchy in the city, he restored freedom to the people, and from those who had taken part in the oligarchy he exacted a quantity of money.

48.1. It came about about this time that in Corcyra there arose a great faction and slaughter, which is said to have arisen from other causes, but especially because of the existing hatred among them toward one another.

48.2. For in no city ever were such murders of citizens accomplished, nor a greater strife and contentiousness reaching to destruction. For those who had been killed by one another before this faction seem to have been about fifteen hundred, and all these the foremost of the citizens.

48.3. These misfortunes having occurred, fortune set upon them another calamity, again increasing their difference toward one another. For those of the Corcyraeans who excelled in dignity, reaching for oligarchy, favored the Lacedaemonians, while the democratic crowd was eager to ally with the Athenians.

48.4. For the peoples contending for the leadership had differing aims; for the Lacedaemonians made the foremost men in the allied cities masters of the management of public affairs, while the Athenians established democracies in the cities.

48.5. The Corcyraeans, then, observing that the most powerful of the citizens were about to put the city into the hands of the Lacedaemonians, summoned from the Athenians a force to guard the city.

48.6. Conon the general of the Athenians, having sailed to Corcyra, left in the city six hundred of the Messenians from Naupactus, and himself with the ships sailed along and anchored by the precinct of Hera.

48.7. The six hundred, with the democrats, rushing upon those who favored the Lacedaemonians, suddenly, the marketplace being full, seized some and slew others, and exiled more than a thousand; and they made the slaves free and the foreigners citizens, being wary of the multitude and power of the exiles.

48.8. Those driven from their native land fled to the mainland opposite; but after some days some of those in the city who favored the exiles seized the marketplace, and, having summoned the exiles, fought it out about the whole. Finally, night coming on, they came to terms with one another, and, ceasing from the contentiousness, dwelt in their native land in common. The slaughter in Corcyra, then, had such an end.

49.1. Archelaus the king of the Macedonians, the Pydnaeans being disobedient, encamped about the city with a great force. Theramenes too came to his aid, having a fleet; but, the siege dragging on, he sailed off to Thrace to Thrasybulus, the leader of the whole fleet.

49.2. Archelaus, then, having besieged Pydna more eagerly and prevailed, removed it from the sea about twenty stadia. Mindarus, the winter now ending, gathered the triremes from every side; for many had come from the Peloponnese and likewise from the other allies. The generals of the Athenians at Sestus, learning of the magnitude of the fleet being gathered by the enemy, were very fearful lest, with all their triremes the enemy sailing against them, they should gain control of the ships.

49.3. Whence they themselves, having launched the ships at Sestus, sailed around the Chersonese and anchored at Cardia; and they sent triremes to Thrace to Thrasybulus and Theramenes, urging them to come with the fleet as quickly as possible; they summoned also Alcibiades from Lesbos with the ships he had, and the whole fleet was gathered into one place, the generals being eager to risk all.

49.4. Mindarus the admiral of the Lacedaemonians, having sailed to Cyzicus, disembarked his whole force and encamped about the city. Pharnabazus too came with a great army, with whom Mindarus, having besieged it, took Cyzicus by storm.

49.5. The generals of the Athenians, having resolved to sail against Cyzicus, put out with all the ships and sailed around the Chersonese. And first they came to Elaeus; after this they took care by night to sail past the city of the Abydenes, in order that the multitude of their ships might not be observed by the enemy.

49.6. When they came to Proeconnesus, that night they bivouacked there, and on the next day they ferried the soldiers aboard into the country of the Cyziceni, and ordered Chaereas, who was general of these, to lead the army against the city.

50.1. They themselves divided the navy into three parts, and of one Alcibiades was in command, of another Theramenes, of the third Thrasybulus. Alcibiades, then, with his own part, sailed far ahead of the others, wishing to challenge the Lacedaemonians to a sea-battle; while Theramenes and Thrasybulus contrived to encircle them and to shut off those who had sailed out from their return to the city.

50.2. Mindarus, seeing only the twenty ships of Alcibiades bearing upon him, and ignorant of the others, despised them, and with eighty ships boldly made the onset from the city. When he came near Alcibiades and his men, the Athenians, as had been ordered them, pretended to flee, and the Peloponnesians, overjoyed, followed in haste as conquerors.

50.3. Alcibiades, when he had drawn them off farther from the city, raised the signal; which having been given, the triremes with Alcibiades suddenly at one moment turned prow-foremost upon the enemy, and Theramenes and Thrasybulus sailed toward the city and cut off the return of the Lacedaemonians.

50.4. Those with Mindarus, now seeing the multitude of the enemy ships, and learning that they had been outgeneralled, were very fearful. Finally, the Athenians appearing from every side and shutting off the Peloponnesians from their entrance into the city, Mindarus was compelled to flee to the place called Cleri, where Pharnabazus too had his force.

50.5. Alcibiades, pursuing in haste, sank some and, wounding others, took them in hand, and most of them, having anchored near the very land, he caught, threw on iron hands, and attempted with these to drag them off the land.

50.6. The foot coming to the aid of the Peloponnesians from the land, much slaughter took place, since the Athenians, because of their advantage, fought more boldly than was profitable, and the Peloponnesians far exceeded them in numbers; for the army of Pharnabazus too came to the aid of the Lacedaemonians, and, making the battle from the land, had the more secure position.

50.7. Thrasybulus, observing the foot aiding the enemy, disembarked the rest of the marines onto the land, eager to come to the aid of Alcibiades; and he exhorted Theramenes, having joined the foot with Chaereas, to come as quickly as possible, in order that they might fight it out on land.

51.1. The Athenians being about this, Mindarus the leader of the Lacedaemonians himself fought it out against Alcibiades concerning the ships being dragged off, and sent Clearchus the Spartiate with part of the Peloponnesians against Thrasybulus; he sent along with him also the mercenaries serving with Pharnabazus.

51.2. Thrasybulus with the marines and the archers at first stoutly withstood the enemy and killed many, but saw not a few of his own falling; but as the mercenaries of Pharnabazus encircled the Athenians and poured around them with their multitude from every side, Theramenes appeared, leading his own men and the foot with Chaereas.

51.3. Those with Thrasybulus, worn down and having given up the hopes of safety, were suddenly again roused in their spirits, so great an aid having come.

51.4. A fierce battle taking place for a long time, at first the mercenaries of Pharnabazus began to flee, and the continuity of the line was ever being broken; finally the Peloponnesians, left with Clearchus, having done much and suffered much, were driven off.

51.5. These having been worn down, Theramenes and his men hastened to come to the aid of those running risks with Alcibiades. The forces having run together to one place, Mindarus was not dismayed at the onset of Theramenes and his men, but, dividing the Peloponnesians, with half he met those coming on, and with half, which he himself had, and entreating each not to disgrace the dignity of Sparta, and that fighting an infantry battle, they were drawn up against Alcibiades and his men.

51.6. Concerning the ships having joined a heroic battle, and himself running risks before all, he killed many of those drawn up against him, but at the last, having fought worthily of his native land, he was killed by Alcibiades and his men. This man having fallen, the Peloponnesians and all the allies ran together and, dismayed, rushed to flight.

51.7. The Athenians, having pursued the enemy for a while, but learning that Pharnabazus with much cavalry was hastening in haste, turned back to the ships, and took the city, and set up two trophies for each victory, that of the sea-battle on the island called Polydorus, that of the infantry battle where they made the first rout.

51.8. The Peloponnesians in the city and all who escaped from the battle fled to the camp of Pharnabazus; and the generals of the Athenians gained control of all the ships and gathered many captives and an innumerable multitude of spoils, as having conquered two such great forces at once.

52.1. The victory having been reported to Athens, the people, seeing unexpected good fortunes added to the city out of its former calamities, was elated by the successes, and made to the gods sacrifices and festivals in full force, and for the war picked out a thousand of the best hoplites and a hundred cavalry, and besides these sent thirty triremes to Alcibiades and his men, in order that, holding command of the sea, they might fearlessly ravage the cities about the Lacedaemonians.

52.2. The Lacedaemonians, when they heard of the calamity that had befallen them about Cyzicus, sent ambassadors to Athens about peace, of whom Endius was chief ambassador. Authority having been given him, he came forward and spoke concisely and laconically; therefore I judged it right not to pass over the words spoken.

52.3. "We wish to keep peace with you, men of Athens, and that each side hold the cities of which we are masters, and dismantle the forts in one another's territory, and, ransoming the captives, take one Laconian for one Athenian. For we are not ignorant that the war is harmful to both, but much more to you.

52.4. But, passing over my speech, learn from the facts. We farm the whole Peloponnese, but you a small part of Attica; and to the Laconians the war has joined many allies, but from the Athenians it has taken away as many as it gave to the enemy; and to us the richest of the kings in the inhabited world is supplier of the war, but to you the poorest in the inhabited world;

52.5. therefore our men, in proportion to the magnitude of the wages, campaign eagerly, while yours, giving the contributions from their own property, at once flee both the hardships and the expenses.

52.6. Then we, warring at sea, run the risk only with public vessels, but you have citizens as most of those in the ships. And the greatest thing: we, even if we be worsted in the affairs at sea, have at least the leadership on land, by common consent; for not even does a Spartiate know how to flee on land; but you, cast out of the sea, contend not for leadership on land, but for your very existence.

52.7. It remains for me to instruct you how, having so many and so great advantages in war, we summon you to keep peace. I do not say that Sparta is benefited by making war, but rather that it is harmed less than the Athenians. It is the part of madmen to be well content to share misfortune with their enemies, when it is open to them not to take experience of misfortune at all; for the destruction of the enemies does not bring so great joy as the suffering of one's own brings grief.

52.8. And not only for these reasons are we eager to be reconciled, but also keeping our ancestral custom; for, observing the contentiousness in war making many dreadful sufferings, we think it necessary to make plain to all, both gods and men, that of these things we are least of all the cause."

53.1. The Laconian having spoken such things and the like, the most reasonable of the Athenians inclined in their opinions toward peace, but those accustomed to make war and to make the public disturbances their private revenues chose war.

53.2. There joined in this opinion also Cleophon, who was then the greatest demagogue. He, coming forward and discussing many things suited to the matter, elated the people, putting forward the magnitude of their successes, as though fortune were not accustomed to award alternately the advantages in war.

53.3. The Athenians, then, having deliberated badly, repented when there was no benefit, and, deceived by words spoken for their pleasure, so stumbled in the whole that they were never afterward able genuinely to recover themselves.

53.4. But these things, done later, will receive an account in their proper times; then the Athenians, elated by their successes and having many great hopes in Alcibiades' leading their own forces, thought they would quickly recover the leadership.

54.1. The deeds of this year having their end, at Athens Diocles took over the office, and in Rome the consular office was held by Quintus Fabius and Gaius Furius. About these times Hannibal the general of the Carthaginians gathered the soldiers hired from Iberia and those enrolled from Libya, and manned sixty warships and prepared about fifteen hundred cargo ships.

54.2. In these he conveyed the force and the engines for sieges and missiles and all the other supplies. Having crossed with the fleet the Libyan sea, he put in at the cape of Sicily opposite Libya, called Lilybaeum;

54.3. at which time some of the Selinuntian cavalry, tarrying about the places and observing the magnitude of the fleet putting in, quickly made plain to the citizens the presence of the enemy. And the Selinuntians at once sent the letter-carriers to the Syracusans, begging them to come to their aid;

54.4. and Hannibal, having disembarked his force, encamped, beginning from the well which at that time was called Lilybaeum, but afterward, many years later, a city having been founded by it, became the cause of the name to the city.

54.5. Hannibal had in all, as Ephorus recorded, two hundred thousand foot and four thousand cavalry, but as Timaeus says, not much more than a hundred thousand. The ships he hauled up on land all in the gulf about Motya, wishing to give the Syracusans the notion that he was not present to make war on them nor to sail with a naval force against Syracuse;

54.6. and, taking on the soldiers from the Egestaeans and those from the other allies, he broke camp from Lilybaeum, making his march toward Selinus. When he came to the river Mazarus, he took the trading-post lying beside it at the first onset, and, coming to the city, divided his force into two parts; and, encamping about it and setting up the engines, with all zeal he made the assaults.

54.7. For he set up six towers surpassing in size, and brought against the walls an equal number of rams sheathed in iron; and apart from these, using many archers and slingers, he kept back those fighting on the battlements.

55.1. The Selinuntians, for a long time inexperienced in siege, and having alone of the Sicilians fought together with the Carthaginians in the war against Gelon, never expected to be shut into such fears by those they had benefited.

55.2. Observing the magnitude of the engines and the multitudes of the enemy, they were very fearful and dismayed at the magnitude of the danger that surrounded them.

55.3. Nevertheless, they did not altogether despair of safety, but, expecting that the Syracusans and the other allies would soon come, they defended themselves in full force against the enemy from the walls.

55.4. For those in the prime of their ages, being in arms, ran the risks, while the older men were about the preparations and, going around the wall, begged the young not to look on while they became subject to the enemy; and women and children brought provisions and missiles to those fighting for their native land, holding as nothing the modesty and shame they felt in peace.

55.5. So great a consternation had set in that the magnitude of the situation needed even the aid of the women. Hannibal, having promised the soldiers to give the city for plunder, set up the engines and assaulted the walls with the best soldiers by relays.

55.6. At the same time the trumpets sounded the battle and at a single command the whole army of the Carthaginians raised the war-cry, and by the force of the rams the walls were shaken, and by the height of the towers those fighting killed many of the Selinuntians;

55.7. for, having been in a long peace and having taken no care whatever of their walls, they were easily worn down, the wooden towers far overtopping them in height. The wall having fallen, the Campanians, eager to do something conspicuous, quickly burst into the city.

55.8. At first they dismayed those who withstood them, being few; but afterward, many having run together to the aid, they were driven out and lost not a few of their own; for, the wall not yet being completely cleared, having forced their way and in the onset falling into difficult places, they were easily worsted. Night coming on, the Carthaginians raised the siege.

56.1. The Selinuntians, having picked out the best of the cavalry, immediately by night sent some to Acragas, others to Gela and Syracuse, begging them to come to their aid as quickly as possible, since the city was unable for a longer time to withstand the force of the enemy.

56.2. The Acragantines, then, and the Geloans waited for the Syracusans, wishing to lead the force in a mass against the Carthaginians; but the Syracusans, learning of the siege, having a war against the Chalcidians, settled it, and, gathering the forces from the country and making a great preparation, delayed, thinking the city would be taken by siege, but not snatched in an assault.

56.3. Hannibal, the night having passed, at daybreak attacked from every side, and the part of the wall that had fallen at the city and the part joining it he threw down with the engines.

56.4. Having cleared the fallen place of the wall and fighting with the best men by relays, he drove the Selinuntians back a little; yet it was not possible to force back those contending for the whole.

56.5. Many being slain on both sides, fresh men relieved the Carthaginians in the battle, but the Selinuntians had no one to aid them. The siege having lasted nine days with unsurpassable ambition, it came about that the Carthaginians suffered much and did dreadful things.

56.6. The Iberians having mounted the fallen wall, the women on the houses cried out, and the Selinuntians, thinking the city was being taken, were dismayed, and, abandoning the walls, gathered in a mass at the entrances of the lanes, and undertook to wall up the roads, and for a long time defended themselves against the enemy.

56.7. The Carthaginians forcing their way in, the multitudes of women and children fled to the houses and threw stones and tiles at the enemy. For a long time the Carthaginians fared badly, being neither able to surround those in the lanes because of the walls of the houses, nor to fight on equal terms because of those throwing from the roofs.

56.8. Nevertheless, the danger extending until afternoon, the missiles of those fighting from the houses ran out, while for the Carthaginians those who relieved the worn-out fought fresh. Finally, the force within taking diminution, and ever more of the enemy bursting into the city, the Selinuntians were driven out of the lanes.

57.1. Therefore, as the city was being taken, among the Greeks one might see lamentations and tears, but among the barbarians a war-cry and a mingled shout; for the Greeks, having before their eyes the magnitude of the calamity that surrounded them, were very fearful, while the barbarians, elated by their successes, urged on the slaughter.

57.2. The Selinuntians having run together to the marketplace, these, fighting there, were all killed; and the barbarians, scattered throughout the whole city, snatched up the wealth in the houses, and of the persons caught within, some they burned together with the houses, others, who forced their way into the roads, distinguishing neither sex nor age, but alike, slew—infant children, women, old men—taking no compassion.

57.3. They mutilated the corpses according to their ancestral custom, and some carried about handfuls of hands on their bodies, others bore heads transfixed on their javelins and spears. As many of the women as they caught having fled with their children into the temples, they ordered not to be killed, and to these alone they gave a pledge.

57.4. This they did not pitying the unfortunate, but being wary lest the women, despairing of safety, should burn down the temples, and they should be unable to plunder the costly things consecrated in them.

57.5. So far did the barbarians differ from others in savagery that, whereas the rest, for the sake of doing no impiety toward the divine, save those who have fled to the temples, the Carthaginians, on the contrary, abstained from the enemy in order to plunder the temples of the gods.

57.6. It being now night, the city had been plundered, and of the houses some were burned, others razed, and every place was full of blood and corpses. Sixteen thousand bodies were found fallen, and apart from these more than five thousand were gathered as captives.

58.1. Observing the change of fortune, the Greeks allied with the Carthaginians pitied the lot of the unfortunate. The women, deprived of their accustomed luxury, passed the night amid the outrage of the enemy, enduring dreadful hardships; some of them were compelled to see their marriageable daughters suffering things unsuited to their age.

58.2. For the savagery of the barbarians, sparing neither free children nor maidens, set dreadful calamities before the unfortunate. Therefore the women, reckoning up the slavery that was to be theirs in Libya, and seeing themselves with their children, in dishonor and abuse, compelled to obey masters, and seeing these to have an unintelligible speech and a bestial character, mourned for their living children, and, at each of the wrongs done to them, receiving as it were stings into their souls, became deeply distressed and bewailed much their own fortune; but their fathers, and besides their brothers, who, fighting for their native land, had died, they counted blessed, as having seen nothing unworthy of their own valor.

58.3. Those of the Selinuntians who escaped captivity, being two thousand six hundred in number, were saved to Acragas and met with every humanity; for the Acragantines, having measured out grain to them publicly, distributed it among the houses, exhorting the private citizens, who were themselves eager, to furnish all things for their living.

59.1. While these things were being done, there came to Acragas three thousand picked soldiers from the Syracusans, sent ahead in haste for aid. Learning that the city had been taken, they sent ambassadors, asking Hannibal to ransom the captives and to spare the temples of the gods.

59.2. Hannibal answered that the Selinuntians, having been unable to keep their freedom, would take experience of slavery, and that the gods, having taken offense at the inhabitants, had departed from Selinus.

59.3. Nevertheless, the fugitives having sent Empedion as ambassador, to him Hannibal restored his property; for he had always favored the Carthaginians and before the siege had advised the citizens not to make war on the Carthaginians; and he granted him his kinsmen who were among the captives, and gave the Selinuntians who had escaped permission to inhabit the city and to farm the land, paying tribute to the Carthaginians.

59.4. This city, then, having been inhabited from its founding for a period of two hundred and forty-two years, was captured. Hannibal, having pulled down the walls of Selinus, broke camp with his whole force toward Himera, desiring above all to raze this city.

59.5. For because of this his father was an exile, and his grandfather Hamilcar, outgeneralled by Gelon near it, was killed, and with him a hundred and fifty thousand soldiers were killed, and others not fewer than these were taken captive.

59.6. Eager to take vengeance for these, Hannibal with forty thousand men encamped not far from the city on certain hills, and with all the rest of his force encamped about the city, twenty thousand other soldiers from the Sicels and Sicanians having joined him.

59.7. Setting up engines, he shook the wall in several places, and, fighting with a great multitude by relays, wore down the besieged, since the soldiers too were elated by their good fortunes.

59.8. He undermined the walls and propped them with timbers, which having been burned, quickly a great part of the wall fell. Thereupon a very fierce battle took place, some forcing their way to burst within the wall, others fearing lest they suffer the same things as the Selinuntians.

59.9. Therefore, as they made the last struggle on behalf of children and parents and their fatherland fought over by all, the barbarians were driven out, and quickly they rebuilt the part of the wall. There came to their aid the Syracusans from Acragas and some of the other allies, in all about four thousand, of whom Diocles the Syracusan was leader.

60.1. Then, indeed, night having taken away the contention from going further, they raised the siege; and at daybreak it seemed good to the Himeraeans not to look on while they were ignobly shut up, like the Selinuntians, but, stationing guards on the walls, they led out the other soldiers with the allies who had come, being about ten thousand.

60.2. Meeting the enemy unexpectedly, they brought the barbarians into consternation, thinking that the allies of the besieged were coming. Far surpassing in daring and in skill, and, the greatest thing, with a single hope for safety, if they should prevail in the battle, they immediately killed the first who withstood them.

60.3. The multitude of the barbarians running together in much disorder, because they would never have expected those shut up to dare such things, were no slightly worsted; for, eighty thousand having run together into one place in disorder, it came about that the barbarians fell upon one another and suffered more from themselves than from the enemy.

60.4. The Himeraeans, having as spectators from the walls their parents and children, and besides all their household, used their own bodies unsparingly for the common safety.

60.5. They fighting brilliantly, the barbarians, dismayed at their daring and the unexpectedness, were turned to flight. These fleeing in no order toward those encamped on the hills, the Himeraeans followed, exhorting one another to take no one alive, and killed more than six thousand, as Timaeus says, but, as Ephorus says, twenty thousand.

60.6. Hannibal, seeing his own men worn down, brought down those encamped on the hills, and, coming to the aid of those being worsted, caught the Himeraeans making the pursuit in no order.

60.7. A fierce battle taking place, the multitude of the Himeraeans rushed to flight, but three thousand of them, withstanding the force of the Carthaginians and having done much, were all killed.

61.1. This battle now having its end, there put in to Himera twenty-five triremes from the Sicilians, which they had previously sent to the Lacedaemonians as an alliance, but had then returned from the campaign.

61.2. A report was spread also throughout the city that the Syracusans in full force with the allies were marching to aid the Himeraeans, and that Hannibal was about to fill the triremes at Motya with the strongest men and, sailing around to Syracuse, to seize the city, empty of its defenders.

61.3. Therefore Diocles the general of those in Himera advised the admirals to sail out to Syracuse as quickly as possible, lest the city be taken by storm, the strongest men being absent in the battle.

61.4. Therefore it seemed advantageous to them to abandon the city, and to embark half on the triremes—for these would convey them until they got outside the Himeraean territory—while with the other half they would keep watch until the triremes should return again.

61.5. The Himeraeans being indignant at what was said, but having nothing else to do, the triremes were manned by night in haste, mingled together with women and children and the other persons, who sailed off on these as toward Messene;

61.6. and Diocles, taking his own soldiers and leaving behind those who had fallen in the battle, set out, making the journey homeward. Many of the Himeraeans with their children and wives set out with Diocles, since the triremes could not hold the crowd.

62.1. Those left behind in the city passed the night under arms on the walls; and at daybreak, the Carthaginians having encamped about the city and made frequent assaults, the Himeraeans who were left fought unsparingly, awaiting the arrival of the ships.

62.2. That day, then, they held out, but on the next, the triremes now appearing, it came about that the wall fell under the engines, and the Iberians burst into the city in a mass. Some of the barbarians defended themselves against the Himeraeans coming to the aid, others, having seized the walls, received their own men.

62.3. The city, then, having been taken by storm, for a long time the barbarians killed all whom they caught without compassion. When Hannibal ordered them to take alive, the slaughter ceased, but the wealth in the houses was plundered.

62.4. Hannibal, having plundered the temples and dragged off the suppliants who had fled to them, burned them, and razed the city to the ground, which had been inhabited two hundred and forty years; and of the captives, having distributed the women and children to the army, he kept them under guard, but the men captured, being about three thousand, he led to the place where formerly Hamilcar his grandfather had been killed by Gelon, and, having tortured them all, he slaughtered them.

62.5. After this, having disbanded the army, he sent the allies from Sicily to their native lands, with whom the Campanians too went, accusing the Carthaginians of having been the chief causes of the successes but of having received unworthy thanks for their deeds;

62.6. and Hannibal, having put aboard the warships and cargo ships the force, and leaving behind enough soldiers for the allies, sailed out of Sicily. When he put in to Carthage with much booty, all met him, welcoming and honoring him as having accomplished in a short time greater things than the former generals.

63.1. To Sicily there put in Hermocrates the Syracusan. This man, having been general in the war against the Athenians and having become very useful to his native land, had the greatest power among the Syracusans; but afterward, having been sent as admiral with thirty-five triremes to ally with the Lacedaemonians, he was overthrown in faction by his political opponents, and became a condemned exile, and handed over the fleet in the Peloponnese to those sent for the succession.

63.2. He himself, having from the campaign a friendship with Pharnabazus the satrap of the Persians, received from him much money, with which, having sailed to Messene, he built five triremes and hired a thousand soldiers.

63.3. Taking on also about a thousand of the exiled Himeraeans, he attempted to return to Syracuse with his friends fighting together with him; but, failing of the design, he set out through the interior, and, having seized Selinus, fortified part of the city and called together from every side those of the Selinuntians who survived.

63.4. Receiving also many others into the place, he gathered a force of six thousand picked men. Setting out from there, first he ravaged the country of the Motyans, and, having conquered in battle those who came out from the city, he killed many and pursued the rest within the wall. After this, having plundered the country of the Panormitans, he gained control of innumerable booty, and, the Panormitans having drawn up in full force before the city, he killed about five hundred of them and shut the rest within the walls.

63.5. Likewise ravaging all the other country that was under the Carthaginians, he met with praise among the Sicilians. And at once most of the Syracusans too repented, seeing Hermocrates exiled unworthily of his own valor.

63.6. Therefore, many speeches being made about him in the assemblies, the people was evidently wishing to receive the man back, but Hermocrates, hearing the report about himself in Syracuse, prepared carefully for his return, knowing that his political opponents would oppose him. And the affairs in Sicily were in this state.

64.1. In Greece Thrasybulus, sent by the Athenians with thirty ships and many hoplites along with a hundred cavalry, put in at Ephesus; and, having disembarked his force at two places, he made assaults. Those within having come out, a fierce battle took place; and the Ephesians having fought in full force, four hundred of the Athenians fell, and the rest Thrasybulus took up into the ships and sailed off to Lesbos.

64.2. The generals of the Athenians at Cyzicus, having sailed to Chalcedon, settled the fort Chrysopolis and left a sufficient force in it; and to those appointed over it they ordered to exact a tithe from those sailing out of the Pontus.

64.3. After this, having divided their forces, Theramenes was left with fifty ships to besiege Chalcedon and Byzantium, while Thrasybulus, sent to Thrace, won over the cities in those places.

64.4. Alcibiades, having released Thrasybulus with the thirty ships, sailed to the country under Pharnabazus, and, having jointly ravaged much of it, they filled the soldiers with gain and themselves gathered money from the spoils, wishing to relieve the people of contributions.

64.5. The Lacedaemonians, learning that all the forces of the Athenians were about the Hellespont, campaigned against Pylos, which the Messenians held with a garrison, by sea with eleven ships, of which five were from Sicily and six manned from the citizens; and by land they led up a sufficient force, and, encamping about the fort, they besieged it at once both by land and by sea.

64.6. Learning of this, the people of the Athenians sent out to the besieged for aid thirty ships and Anytus the son of Anthemion as general. He, having sailed out and, because of certain storms, being unable to round Malea, sailed back to Athens. At this the people, being angered and accusing him of treason, brought him to trial; but Anytus, being in great danger, saved his own life with money, and seems to have been the first of the Athenians to bribe a court.

64.7. The Messenians in Pylos for a while held out, expecting aid from the Athenians; but as the enemy made the assaults by relays, and of their own men some died of their wounds, others fared badly from the lack of grain, they abandoned the place under truce. The Lacedaemonians, then, gained control of Pylos, after the Athenians had held it fifteen years, from the time Demosthenes fortified it.

65.1. While these things were being done, the Megarians took Nisaea, which was under the Athenians; and the Athenians sent against them Leotrophides and Timarchus with a thousand foot and four hundred cavalry. The Megarians, having met them in arms in full force and taken along some of those from Sicily, drew up at the hills called Cerata;

65.2. and the Athenians, having fought brilliantly and routed the enemy, who were many times more numerous, many of the Megarians fell, but of the Lacedaemonians only twenty; for the Athenians, bearing it heavily that Nisaea had been taken, did not pursue the Lacedaemonians, but, being harshly disposed toward the Megarians, killed very many.

65.3. The Lacedaemonians, having chosen Cratesippidas as admiral and manned twenty-five of their own ships from the allies, ordered him to come to the aid of the allies. He for some time tarried about Ionia, accomplishing nothing worth mention; but afterward, having taken money from the exiles of Chios, he brought them back and seized the acropolis of the Chians.

65.4. Those of the Chians who returned exiled their political opponents, who were responsible for their expulsion, being about six hundred in number. These seized a place on the mainland opposite called Atarneus, very strong by nature, and from this for the rest of the time, having their base, made war on those who held Chios.

66.1. While these things were being done, Alcibiades and Thrasybulus, having fortified Lampsacus, left in it a sufficient garrison, and themselves with the force sailed out to Theramenes, who was ravaging Chalcedon, having seventy ships and five thousand soldiers. The forces having been gathered into one place, they walled off the city from sea to sea with a wooden wall.

66.2. Hippocrates, the leader established in the city by the Lacedaemonians, whom the Laconians called harmost, led up his own soldiers and all the Chalcedonians. A fierce battle taking place, and Alcibiades and his men fighting vigorously, both Hippocrates fell and of the rest some were killed, others, being wounded, fled together into the city.

66.3. After this Alcibiades sailed out to the Hellespont and the Chersonese, wishing to gather money, while Theramenes and his men made an agreement with the Chalcedonians to take tribute from them as much as before. From there, having led off their forces toward Byzantium, they besieged the city and with much zeal attempted to wall it off.

66.4. Alcibiades, having gathered money, persuaded many of the Thracians to campaign with him, and took along also the inhabitants of the Chersonese in full force, and with all his force breaking camp, first took Selybria by treason, from which, having exacted much money, he left in it a garrison, and himself in haste came to Theramenes and his men at Byzantium.

66.5. The forces having been gathered, these prepared the things for the siege; for they were about to conquer a city of weight and full of those defending it; for, apart from the Byzantines, who were many, Clearchus the Lacedaemonian harmost had many of the Peloponnesians and mercenaries in the city.

66.6. For a while, then, making assaults, they continued doing no notable harm to those within; but when the governor of the city departed to Pharnabazus to get money, then some of the Byzantines, hating the weight of the governorship—for Clearchus was harsh—betrayed the city to Alcibiades and his men.

67.1. These, as though about to raise the siege and lead off their forces to Ionia, in the afternoon sailed out with all the ships, and, having led off the land army for a while, when night came on, they turned back again and about midnight approached the city, and sent off the triremes with orders to drag off the boats and to make a shout, as though all the force were there, while they themselves with the land army by the walls watched for the signal arranged by those who were betraying.

67.2. Those in the triremes having done what was ordered, and shattering some of the boats with rammings, attempting to drag off others with iron hands, and besides making an extraordinary shout, the Peloponnesians in the city and all who were ignorant of the trick came to the aid at the harbors.

67.3. Therefore those betraying the city raised the signal from the wall, and received Alcibiades and his men through the ladders in much safety, the multitude having run together to the harbor.

67.4. The Peloponnesians, learning of what had happened, at first left half at the harbor, and with the rest came in haste to the aid at the seized walls.

67.5. Nearly the whole force of the Athenians having now burst in, they were nevertheless not dismayed, but, withstanding for a long time, stoutly defended themselves against the Athenians, the Byzantines fighting together with them. And in the end the Athenians would not have prevailed over the city by battle, had not Alcibiades, perceiving the moment, proclaimed that no wrong should be done to the Byzantines; for thus the citizens, changing sides, defended themselves against the Peloponnesians.

67.6. Whence most of them were killed, having fought nobly, but the survivors, about five hundred, fled to the altars in the temples.

67.7. The Athenians gave the city back to the Byzantines, having made them allies, and with the suppliants at the altars they made agreements, to take their arms and, conveying their persons to Athens, to entrust the people with their fate.

68.1. The year having passed, the Athenians handed over the office to Euctemon, and the Romans appointed as consuls Marcus Papirius and Spurius Nautius, and the ninety-third Olympiad took place, in which Eubatus of Cyrene won the stadium-race. About these times the generals of the Athenians, having gained control of Byzantium, went over the Hellespont and took all the cities in it except Abydus.

68.2. After this they left Diodorus and Mantitheus as overseers with a sufficient force, and themselves with the ships and the spoils sailed to Athens, having accomplished many great things for their native land. As they drew near, the whole people came out overjoyed at the successes; and there ran together to the Piraeus many of the foreigners too, and besides children and women.

68.3. For the return of the generals brought much amazement; for they brought of the captured ships not fewer than two hundred, and a multitude of captive men and spoils; and they had their own triremes adorned with gilded arms and crowns, and besides with spoils and all the other things, carefully ornamented. Very many ran together to the harbors to see Alcibiades, so that the city was altogether emptied, the slaves vying in eagerness with the free.

68.4. For at those times it came about that this man was so admired that the foremost of the Athenians barely thought they had found a capable man, one able openly and boldly to oppose the people, while the poor supposed they would have him as the best fellow-fighter, one to throw the city into confusion recklessly and to set right their own poverty.

68.5. For in daring he far surpassed the others, and was most clever at speaking, and in generalship best, and in daring most effective; and he was also in appearance exceedingly handsome, and in spirit brilliant and great in his designs.

68.6. In general nearly all had so great a supposition about him that, together with his return, they supposed the good fortune of affairs too had come to the city. And besides, just as the Lacedaemonians prevailed while he fought with them, so again they hoped to set themselves right, having this man as an ally.

69.1. When, then, the fleet put in, the multitude turned to the ship of Alcibiades, from which, as the man disembarked, all welcomed him, congratulating him at once on his successes and his return. He, having greeted the multitudes kindly, gathered an assembly, and, having defended much of his own conduct, brought the crowds to so great goodwill that all agreed the city had been the cause of the decrees against him.

69.2. Therefore they restored to him the property they had confiscated, then sank the pillars on which were the condemnation and the other things ratified against him; and they voted also that the Eumolpidae should remove the curse which they had made against him at the time when he seemed to commit impiety concerning the mysteries.

69.3. And finally, having appointed him general plenipotentiary both by land and by sea, they put all the forces into his hands. They chose also other generals whom he wished, Adeimantus and Thrasybulus.

69.4. Alcibiades, having manned a hundred ships, sailed out to Andros, and, having seized Gaurium, fortified it. The Andrians having come out in full force with the Peloponnesians guarding the city, a battle took place, in which the Athenians conquered; of those from the city many were killed, and of the survivors some were scattered through the country, others fled together within the walls.

69.5. Alcibiades himself, having made assaults on the city, left a sufficient garrison in the fortified wall and appointed Thrasybulus as leader, while he himself with the force sailing out ravaged Cos and Rhodes, and gathered much booty for the maintenance of the soldiers.

70.1. The Lacedaemonians, having utterly lost their naval force and with it Mindarus the leader, did not in their spirits give way, but chose as admiral Lysander, who was reputed to surpass the others in generalship and to have an effective daring for every circumstance. He, having taken over the command, from the Peloponnese enrolled sufficient soldiers and manned as many ships as he could.

70.2. Having sailed out to Rhodes and taken on from there as many ships as the cities had, he sailed to Ephesus and Miletus. Having fitted out also the triremes in these cities, he summoned those from Chios, and equipped a fleet at Ephesus of nearly seventy ships.

70.3. Hearing that Cyrus the son of King Darius had been sent by his father to make war together with the Lacedaemonians, he came to Sardis to him, and, having provoked the young man toward the war against the Athenians, immediately received ten thousand darics for the soldiers' pay; and for the future Cyrus bade him ask without holding back; for he had instructions from his father to supply the Lacedaemonians with whatever they chose.

70.4. Returning to Ephesus, he summoned the most powerful men from the cities, with whom, making compacts of comradeship, he undertook, when affairs should be set right, to make each of them masters of their cities. For which reason it came about that these, vying with one another, served more than was ordered, and quickly, unexpectedly, Lysander was well supplied with everything useful for war.

71.1. Alcibiades, learning that Lysander was equipping the fleet at Ephesus, put out with all his ships to Ephesus. Having sailed against the harbors, when no one put out against him, he anchored most of the ships about Notium, handing over the command of them to Antiochus his own helmsman, ordering him not to fight at sea until he himself should be present, and took up the troop-ships and sailed in haste to Clazomenae; for this city, being an ally of the Athenians, was suffering ill, being ravaged by some exiles.

71.2. Antiochus, being by nature rash and eager to accomplish through himself something brilliant, neglected the orders of Alcibiades, and, having manned ten of the best ships and ordered the other trierarchs to keep ready, if there should be need to fight at sea, sailed against the enemy, challenging them to a sea-battle.

71.3. Lysander, having learned from some deserters of the departure of Alcibiades and the best soldiers with him, judged it was the moment to do something worthy of Sparta. Therefore, putting out with all his ships, he sank one of the ten that sailed ahead, that on which Antiochus was drawn up, and, routing the others, pursued them until the trierarchs of the Athenians, having manned the rest, came to the aid in no order.

71.4. A sea-battle taking place with the ships in a mass not far from the land, the Athenians, because of their disorder, were worsted and lost twenty-two ships; and of the men in them few were taken alive, the rest swam to the land. Alcibiades, learning of what had happened, came in haste back to Notium, and, having manned all the triremes, sailed against the harbors of the enemy. Lysander not daring to put out against him, he made his voyage to Samos.

72.1. While these things were being done, Thrasybulus the general of the Athenians, with fifteen ships sailing to Thasos, conquered in battle those from the city and killed about two hundred of them; and, shutting them up in a siege, he compelled them to receive back the exiles who favored the Athenians, and, taking a garrison, to be allies of the Athenians.

72.2. After this, sailing to Abdera, he won over a city that was then among the most powerful of those on Thrace. The generals of the Athenians, then, did these things after their voyage from home.

72.3. Agis the king of the Lacedaemonians happened to be tarrying at Decelea with his force, and, learning that the best of the Athenians were campaigning with Alcibiades, on a moonless night led his army against Athens.

72.4. He had twenty-eight thousand foot, of whom half were picked hoplites, the other half light-armed; there followed him also about twelve hundred cavalry, of whom nine hundred the Boeotians furnished, the rest the Peloponnesians sent. When he came near the city, he approached the outposts unobserved, and easily routing them because of the unexpectedness, he killed a few, and pursued the rest within the walls.

72.5. The Athenians, learning of what had happened, ordered all the older men and the oldest boys to come out under arms; these having quickly done what was ordered, the circle of the wall became full of those who had run together to the common danger,

72.6. and the generals of the Athenians at daybreak, observing the force of the enemy drawn up in a phalanx four men deep and eight stadia long, then for the first time were dismayed, observing nearly two parts of the wall surrounded by the enemy.

72.7. After this they sent out the cavalry, about equal in number to their opponents; these having made a cavalry-battle before the city, a fierce battle took place for a while. For the phalanx was about five stadia distant from the wall, but the cavalry, engaging one another, fought it out at the very walls.

72.8. The Boeotians, having by themselves previously conquered the Athenians at Delium, thought it dreadful to appear inferior to the conquered; while the Athenians, having as spectators of their valor those stationed on the walls and being recognized man by man, endured everything for the victory.

72.9. Finally, having forced their opponents, they killed many of them and pursued the rest as far as the phalanx of the foot. After this, the foot coming on, these withdrew into the city.

73.1. Agis, then, not resolving to besiege at that time, encamped in the Academy, and on the next day, the Athenians having set up a trophy, he drew up his force and challenged those in the city to fight it out about the trophy.

73.2. The Athenians having led out their soldiers and drawn up by the wall, at first the Lacedaemonians rushed to battle, but, a great quantity of missiles being thrown upon them from the walls, they led off their force from the city; and after this, having ravaged the rest of Attica, they departed to the Peloponnese.

73.3. Alcibiades, having sailed from Samos with all the ships to Cyme, brought false charges against the Cymaeans, wishing with a pretext to plunder their country. And at first, having gained control of many captive persons, he led them off to the ships;

73.4. but those from the city having come out in full force and fallen upon them unexpectedly, Alcibiades and his men held out for a while, but afterward, many from the city and the country having joined the Cymaeans, they were compelled, abandoning the captives, to flee to the ships.

73.5. Alcibiades, deeply pained at the reverses, summoned the hoplites from Mitylene, and, having drawn up his force before the city, challenged the Cymaeans to battle; but no one coming out, having ravaged the country, he sailed off to Mitylene.

73.6. The Cymaeans having sent an embassy to Athens and accused Alcibiades, because he had ravaged an allied city that had done no wrong; and many other slanders too arose against him; for some of the soldiers in Samos, being hostilely disposed toward him, sailed to Athens and accused Alcibiades in the assembly, saying that he favored the Lacedaemonians and had a friendship with Pharnabazus, through which he hoped, the war being ended, to lord it over the citizens.

74.1. The multitude quickly trusting the slanders, the reputation about Alcibiades was shattered because of the reverse in the sea-battle and the errors about Cyme, and the people of the Athenians, suspecting the man's daring, chose ten generals, Conon, Lysias, Diomedon, Pericles, and besides these Erasinides, Aristocrates, Archestratus, Protomachus, Thrasybulus, Aristogenes; and, preferring Conon from among these, quickly sent him to take over the navy from Alcibiades.

74.2. Alcibiades, having given up the command to Conon and handed over the forces, gave up his return to Athens, and with a single trireme withdrew to Pactye in Thrace; for, apart from the wrath of the multitude, he was wary also of the suits brought against him.

74.3. For many, seeing him faring badly, had brought many charges; the greatest was that concerning the horses, valued at eight talents. For a certain Diomedes, one of his friends, having sent along with him a four-horse team to Olympia, Alcibiades, in the registration customarily made, registered the horses as his own, and, having won the four-horse race, carried off himself the glory from the victory and did not give back the horses to the man who had trusted him.

74.4. Considering all these things, he feared lest the Athenians, getting an opportunity, should inflict punishment for all the wrongs he had done them; therefore he himself condemned himself to exile.

75.1. There was added also a two-horse chariot race in the same Olympiad, and among the Lacedaemonians Pleistonax the king died, having ruled fifty years; and Pausanias, succeeding to the rule, ruled fourteen years. Those inhabiting the island Rhodes and Ialysus and Lindus and Cameirus were removed into one city, the one now called Rhodes.

75.2. Hermocrates the Syracusan, taking up those campaigning with him, set out from Selinus, and, coming to Himera, encamped in the suburbs of the overthrown city. Having learned in what place the Syracusans had drawn up, he gathered the bones of the dead, and, having prepared wagons costlily adorned, on these he conveyed them to Syracuse.

75.3. He himself remained at the borders, because the exiles were prevented by the laws from coming together, but sent some of his men, who conveyed the wagons into Syracuse.

75.4. Hermocrates did this, in order that Diocles, who opposed him concerning his return and was reputed to be responsible for the dead being neglected unburied, might give offense to the multitudes, while he himself, having dealt humanely with these, might bring the multitude into its former goodwill.

75.5. The bones having been conveyed, faction fell upon the multitudes, Diocles preventing their burial, the many consenting to it. Finally the Syracusans buried the remains of the dead and honored the funeral in full force. And Diocles was exiled, but Hermocrates not even so did they receive back; for they suspected the man's daring, lest, getting a command, he should declare himself tyrant.

75.6. Hermocrates, then, not seeing the moment suitable for forcing the matter, withdrew again to Selinus. After some time his friends summoning him, he set out with three thousand soldiers, and, marching through the Geloan territory, came by night to the appointed place.

75.7. Not all the soldiers being able to follow, Hermocrates with a few coming to the gate by Achradina, and finding some of his friends having seized the places beforehand, waited for the latecomers;

75.8. but the Syracusans, hearing of what had happened, came with arms to the marketplace, where, appearing with a great multitude, they killed Hermocrates and most of those acting with him. Those saved from the battle they brought to trial and condemned to exile;

75.9. therefore some of them, having fallen into many wounds, were handed over by their kinsmen as dead, that they might not be given over to the wrath of the multitude; among whom was Dionysius, who afterward became tyrant of the Syracusans.

76.1. The deeds of this year having their end, at Athens Antigenes took over the office, and the Romans appointed as consuls Gaius Manius Aemilius and Gaius Valerius. About these times Conon the general of the Athenians, when he had taken over the forces at Samos, equipped the present ships and gathered those from the allies, eager to make the fleet a match for the ships of the enemy.

76.2. The Spartiates, the time of Lysander's admiralship having now passed, sent Callicratidas to the succession. This man was altogether young, but guileless and simple in soul, not yet having taken experience of foreign characters, and the most just of the Spartiates; and by common consent he did nothing unjust during his command either to a city or to a private man, but was harshly disposed toward those who attempted to corrupt him with money and exacted justice from them.

76.3. He, having put in to Ephesus, took over the ships, and, having summoned the ships from the allies, took over in all, with those from Lysander, a hundred and forty. The Athenians holding Delphinium in the territory of the Chians, he sailed against these with all his ships and attempted to besiege them.

76.4. The Athenians, being about five hundred, were dismayed at the magnitude of the force, and, having come out, abandoned the place under truce. Callicratidas, having taken over the fort, razed it, and, having sailed against the Teians, and by night having burst within the walls, plundered the city.

76.5. After this, having sailed to Lesbos, he assaulted Methymna with his force, which had a garrison from the Athenians. Making continuous assaults, at first he accomplished nothing, but after a little, some having given up the city to him, he burst within the walls, and plundered the property, but, sparing the men, gave back the city to the Methymnaeans.

76.6. These things being done, he set out against Mitylene, and, having handed over the hoplites to Thorax the Lacedaemonian, ordered him to hasten in haste by land, while he himself with the ships sailed along.

77.1. Conon the general of the Athenians had seventy ships, so equipped for a sea-battle as no other of the former generals had constructed. He happened to have put out with all of them to the aid of Methymna;

77.2. but finding it taken, then he bivouacked near one of the islands called the Hundred Isles; and at daybreak, observing the enemy ships sailing against him, he judged it dangerous to fight there against double the triremes, and intended, sailing out, to flee and, drawing on after him some of the enemy triremes, to fight at sea near Mitylene; for thus he supposed that, if he conquered, he would have room to pursue, but if worsted, to flee for refuge into the harbor.

77.3. Having embarked the soldiers, he sailed slowly, using the oars, in order that the Peloponnesians might draw near. The Lacedaemonians, approaching, ever more drove their ships, hoping to take the hindmost of the enemy.

77.4. Conon withdrawing, those of the Peloponnesians who had the best ships pursued in haste, and wore out the rowers by the continuity of the rowing, and themselves were drawn far away from the others. Conon, perceiving this, as they were now near Mitylene, raised from his own ship a purple flag; for this was the signal to the trierarchs.

77.5. Therefore the ships, the enemy being engaged, suddenly at one moment turned, and the multitude raised the paean, and the trumpeters sounded the call to battle; and the Peloponnesians, dismayed at what had happened, quickly attempted to draw up their ships against them, but, the moment not giving room to turn, they were in much tumult because the ships left behind had abandoned their accustomed order,

78.1. while Conon, deftly using the moment, immediately pressed on and hindered their drawing up, wounding some and shearing off the oars of others. Of those drawn up against Conon, none turned to flight, but, backing water with the stern, they held out, awaiting those left behind;

78.2. but the Athenians holding the left part, having routed those against them, pressed on more eagerly, pursuing for a long time. Now all the ships of the Peloponnesians having been gathered, Conon, being wary of the multitude of the enemy, desisted from the pursuit, and with forty ships sailed off to Mitylene.

78.3. The ships of the Peloponnesians, all pouring around the pursuing Athenians, dismayed them, and, cutting off their return to the city, forced them to flee to the land. The Peloponnesians pressing on with all their ships, the Athenians, seeing no other safety, fled for refuge to the land, and, abandoning their vessels, were saved into Mitylene.

78.4. Callicratidas, having gained control of thirty ships, saw the navy of the enemy dissolved, but hoped the contests on land remained. Therefore he sailed against the city, while Conon, immediately upon putting in, expecting the siege, prepared the things about the entrance of the harbor; for into the shallows of the harbor he filled small boats with stones and sank them, and at the deep parts he anchored stone-bearing cargo ships.

78.5. The Athenians, then, and a great crowd of the Mitylenaeans gathered from the fields because of the war, quickly prepared the things for the siege. Callicratidas, having disembarked the soldiers on the shore near the city, made a camp, and set up a trophy from the sea-battle. On the next day, having picked out the best of the ships, and exhorting them not to fall short of his own ship, he put out, eager to sail into the harbor and to break the barrier of the enemy.

78.6. Conon embarked some on the triremes and stationed them prow-foremost along the passage, and others he stationed on the large boats, and some he sent to the moles of the harbor, in order that it might be fenced on every side both by land and by sea.

78.7. Conon himself, then, having the triremes, fought, filling the space between the barriers; and those stationed on the large boats threw the stones from the yard-arms upon the ships of the enemy; and those drawn up on the moles of the harbor prevented those who ventured from disembarking onto the land.

79.1. The Peloponnesians fell short in nothing of the ambition of the Athenians. For, having sailed against them with their ships in a mass, and stationed the best men on the decks, they made at once a sea-battle and an infantry battle; for, forcing their way into the ships of those drawn up against them, they boarded the prows daringly, as though those previously worsted would not withstand the danger.

79.2. The Athenians and Mitylenaeans, seeing one safety left, that from victory, were eager to die nobly rather than abandon their post. A surpassing ambition holding the armies, there was much slaughter, all recklessly throwing their bodies into the dangers.

79.3. For those on the decks were wounded by the multitude of missiles borne upon them, and some, struck mortally, fell into the sea, others, not perceiving, the wounds being still warm, fought on; and very many fell by the stone-bearing yard-arms, the Athenians from higher places throwing huge stones.

79.4. Nevertheless, the battle having lasted a long time, and many perishing on both sides, Callicratidas recalled the soldiers with the trumpet, wishing to give them rest.

79.5. After some time, having again manned the ships and fought it out for a long time, barely, by the multitude of his ships and the strength of his marines, he drove the Athenians back. These having fled together into the harbor in the city, he sailed through the barriers and anchored near the city of the Mitylenaeans.

79.6. For the entrance for which they contended had a fine harbor, but it is outside the city. For the ancient city is a small island, and the part later settled in addition is on the side opposite Lesbos; between them is a narrow channel which makes the city strong.

79.7. Callicratidas, having disembarked the force, encamped about the city and made assaults from every side. And the affairs about Mitylene were in this state.

79.8. In Sicily the Syracusans, having sent ambassadors to Carthage, both complained about the war and asked that for the future it should cease from the difference. To them the Carthaginians, having given ambiguous answers, prepared great forces in Libya, desiring to enslave all the cities in the island; but before ferrying over the armies, having enrolled some of the citizens and of the other Libyans those who wished, they founded in Sicily, by the very hot waters, a city, naming it Therma.

80.1. The deeds of this year having their end, at Athens Callias took over the office, and in Rome there were established as consuls Lucius Furius and Gnaeus Pompeius. About these times the Carthaginians, elated by their successes about Sicily and eager to gain control of the whole island, voted to prepare great forces; and, having chosen as general Hannibal, who had razed the cities of the Selinuntians and the Himeraeans, they entrusted to him all authority for the war.

80.2. He begging off because of his age, they appointed in addition another general, Himilco the son of Hanno, who was of the same kindred. These, having taken counsel in common, sent some of those held in dignity among the Carthaginians, with much money, some to Iberia, others to the Balearic islands, ordering them to hire as many men as possible.

80.3. They themselves went over Libya, enrolling Libyan and Phoenician soldiers and the strongest of the citizens. They summoned also from the peoples and kings allied to them soldiers, Mauretanians and Numidians and some of those inhabiting the parts inclining toward Cyrene.

80.4. From Italy they hired Campanians and ferried them to Libya; for they knew that their service contributed greatly, and that the Campanians left behind in Sicily, because they had given offense to the Carthaginians, would range themselves with the Sicilians.

80.5. Finally, the forces having been gathered to Carthage, there were assembled to them in all, with cavalry, not much more, as Timaeus says, than a hundred and twenty thousand, but, as Ephorus says, three hundred thousand. The Carthaginians, then, preparing the things for the crossing, fitted out all the triremes and gathered cargo ships more than a thousand;

80.6. and, having sent ahead forty triremes to Sicily, the Syracusans quickly appeared with about an equal number of ships at the places about Eryx. A sea-battle taking place for a long time, fifteen of the Phoenician ships were destroyed, and the others, night coming on, fled to the open sea.

80.7. The defeat having been reported to the Carthaginians, Hannibal the general put out with fifty ships; for he was eager both to prevent the Syracusans from using their advantage and to make safe the crossing for his own forces.

81.1. The aid of Hannibal having been noised abroad throughout the island, all expected the forces too immediately to be ferried over. The cities, hearing the magnitude of the preparation, and reckoning that the contest would be for the whole, were in no slight anxiety.

81.2. The Syracusans, then, sent to the Greeks in Italy and to the Lacedaemonians about an alliance; they sent also to the cities in Sicily those who would urge the multitudes to the danger for the common freedom.

81.3. The Acragantines, bordering on the Carthaginian dominion, supposed, as was the case, that the weight of the war would come first upon them. It seemed good to them, then, to convey the grain and the other crops, and besides all their property, from the country within the walls.

81.4. At that time it came about that both the city and the country of the Acragantines were full of prosperity; concerning which it seems to me not inappropriate to discourse. For there were vineyards . . . surpassing in size and beauty, and the greatest part of the country was planted with olive trees, from which they conveyed a very great quantity of fruit and sold it to Carthage;

81.5. for, Libya not yet being planted at those times, the inhabitants of the Acragantine territory, importing in exchange the wealth from Libya, possessed estates incredible in magnitude. Many signs of their wealth remain among them, concerning which it is not inappropriate to discourse briefly.

82.1. For the construction of the temples, and especially the temple of Zeus, displays the magnificence of the men of that time; of the other temples, some were burned, others completely razed, because the city was often captured, but the war prevented the Olympieium, which was about to receive its roof, from being finished; whence, the city having been razed, the Acragantines were never afterward able to put an end to their buildings.

82.2. The temple has a length of three hundred and forty feet, a breadth of sixty, a height of one hundred and twenty apart from the foundation. Being the greatest of those in Sicily and not unreasonably compared with those outside in the magnitude of its plan; for even if it did not happen to take its completion, the design at least is evident.

82.3. While others build their temples either with surrounding walls or enclosing the cellae with columns in a circle, this one partakes of both these plans; for the columns were built together with the walls, on the outside round, but having the part within the temple square; and the circumference of the outer part of them is twenty feet, into the fluting of which a human body can fit, and the inner part is twelve feet.

82.4. The porticoes having an extraordinary size and height, in the eastern part they made the Battle of the Giants in carvings surpassing in size and beauty, and in the western the Capture of Troy, in which it is possible to see each of the heroes fashioned suitably to the situation.

82.5. There was also at that time outside the city an artificial lake, having a circumference of seven stadia and a depth of twenty cubits; into which, waters being brought, they skillfully made a multitude of all kinds of fish in it for the public feasts, with which there dwelt swans and a great multitude of other birds, so as to furnish great delight to the spectators.

82.6. The luxury of the men is shown also by the costliness of their monuments, some of which they made for athletic horses, others for the little birds reared in the house by the maidens and boys, which Timaeus says he saw remaining until his own life.

82.7. And in the Olympiad before this, the ninety-second, Exaenetus of Acragas having won, they brought him into the city on a chariot; and there escorted him, apart from the others, three hundred two-horse chariots of white horses, all belonging to the Acragantines themselves.

82.8. In general they made their upbringing luxurious from childhood, wearing soft clothing to excess and gold ornaments, and besides using strigils and oil-flasks of silver and gold.

83.1. There was of the Acragantines nearly the richest at that time Tellias, who, having in his house many guest-chambers, stationed servants at the gates, to whom it had been ordered to invite all foreigners to hospitality. Many of the other Acragantines too did the like, dealing in an old-fashioned and humane way; therefore Empedocles too says of them, "Havens of reverence for strangers, untried in baseness."

83.2. And indeed once, five hundred cavalry having come from Gela, it being wintry weather, as Timaeus says in his fifteenth book, he himself received them all, and at once brought out and gave to all cloaks and tunics from within.

83.3. And Polycleitus in his histories relates, concerning the wine-cellar in the house, saying that he himself saw it remaining while he was campaigning in Acragas; and that in it there were three hundred jars cut from the very rock, each holding a hundred amphorae; and that beside them there was a plastered cistern, holding a thousand amphorae, from which the flow into the jars came.

83.4. They say Tellias was altogether mean in appearance, but wonderful in character. Having been sent on an embassy to the Centoripini, and having come forward into the assembly, the multitude fell into untimely laughter, observing him inferior to the reputation about him; but he, taking it up, said they should not marvel; for it was a custom among the Acragantines, toward the reputable cities, to send the handsomest, but toward the humble and very mean, the like.

84.1. Not only about Tellias was there magnificence of wealth, but also about many other Acragantines. Antisthenes, indeed, called Rhodos, celebrating the marriage of his daughter, feasted the citizens on the lanes in which each dwelt, and there followed the bride more than eight hundred carriages; and besides these, not only the cavalry in the city itself, but also many of the neighbors, invited to the marriage, escorted the bride.

84.2. They say the most extraordinary thing was the arrangement of the light; for he filled with wood the altars in all the temples and those in the lanes throughout the whole city, and gave to those in the workshops splinters and brushwood, ordering that, whenever fire should be kindled from the acropolis, all should do the like;

84.3. they having done what was ordered, at the time when the bride was led, many going before bearing torches, the city was full of light, and the public roads in succession could not hold the multitude that followed, all vying in the man's magnificence. For at that time the Acragantines were more than twenty thousand, and with the foreigners dwelling among them not fewer than two hundred thousand.

84.4. They say that Antisthenes, when he saw his son contending with a certain poor neighbor of his fields and forcing him to sell his little plot, for a while rebuked him, but, the desire taking increase, said he should not be eager how he might make his neighbor poor, but on the contrary how he might be rich; for thus he would desire a larger field, and, unable to buy it from the neighbor, would sell the one he had.

84.5. Because of the magnitude of the abundance in the city, there was so great luxury among the Acragantines that, a little later, the siege occurring, they made a decree concerning those passing the night at the guard-posts, that no one should have more than a mattress and a coverlet and a sheepskin and two pillows.

84.6. Such being the hardest bedding, one can reckon the luxury in the rest of their life. Concerning these things, then, we wished neither to pass over nor to be too lengthy, lest we fall away from the more necessary matters.

85.1. The Carthaginians, having ferried their forces over to Sicily, broke camp toward the city of the Acragantines and made two camps, one on certain hills, on which they stationed the Iberians and some of the Libyans, to the number of forty thousand; the other, not far from the city, they enclosed with a deep trench and palisade.

85.2. And first they sent ambassadors to the Acragantines, asking them, most of all, to ally with them, but if not, to keep quiet and to be friends of the Carthaginians, remaining at peace; those in the city not accepting the words, the siege was at once set in motion.

85.3. The Acragantines, then, armed all of military age, and, having drawn them up in order, stationed some on the walls, others as reserves for the relief of the worn out. There fought together with them Dexippus the Lacedaemonian, recently come from Gela with fifteen hundred mercenaries; for this man at that time, as Timaeus says, was tarrying in Gela, having dignity because of his native land.

85.4. Therefore the Acragantines asked him, having hired as many soldiers as possible, to come to Acragas; and along with these were hired also the Campanians who had previously allied with Hannibal, being about eight hundred. These held the hill above the city, called the Athenaeum, conveniently lying against the city.

85.5. Himilco and Hannibal the generals of the Carthaginians, having examined the walls and observing that the city was easy to assault at one place, brought up two huge towers against the walls. The first day, then, fighting at the walls from these and killing many, they recalled the fighters with the trumpet; night having come on, those in the city, having come out, set fire to the engines.

86.1. Hannibal and his men, eager to make the assaults at several places, ordered the soldiers to demolish the tombs and to construct mounds up to the walls. The works being quickly completed because of the multitude of hands, much superstitious fear fell upon the army.

86.2. For the tomb of Theron, being exceedingly great, happened to be shaken by a thunderbolt; therefore, as it was being demolished, some of the seers, taking forethought, prevented it, and at once a plague fell into the army, and many died, and not a few fell into torments and dreadful hardships.

86.3. Hannibal the general too died, and of those sent out to the watch-posts some reported that by night phantoms of the dead appeared. Himilco, observing the multitudes superstitious, first ceased from demolishing the monuments, and after this supplicated the gods according to the ancestral custom, having sacrificed a child to Cronus and drowned a multitude of victims to Poseidon. Nevertheless he did not desist from the works, but, having dammed the river by the city up to the walls, set up all the engines and made assaults each day.

86.4. The Syracusans, observing the siege of Acragas, and fearing lest the besieged should meet with the same fortune as the Selinuntians and Himeraeans, had long been eager to send the aid, and then, the allies from Italy and Messene having come, chose Daphnaeus as general.

86.5. Having gathered the force, they took along on the road the Camarinaeans and Geloans; and besides, having summoned some of those from the interior, they made their march toward Acragas, the thirty ships sailing alongside them. They had in all foot more than thirty thousand and cavalry not fewer than five thousand.

87.1. Himilco, learning of the onset of the enemy, sent against them the Iberians and Campanians and of the others not fewer than forty thousand. The Syracusans having already crossed the river Himeras, the barbarians met them, and a line of battle taking place for a long time, the Syracusans conquered and killed more than six thousand.

87.2. They would have utterly destroyed the whole army and pursued it to the city, but, the soldiers pursuing in disorder, the general was wary lest Himilco, appearing with the rest of the army, retrieve the defeat. For he knew that the Himeraeans had stumbled in the whole for the same reason. Nevertheless, the barbarians fleeing to the camp by Acragas, the soldiers in the city, observing the defeat of the Carthaginians, begged the generals to lead them out, saying it was the moment to destroy the force of the enemy.

87.3. They, whether corrupted by money, as was the report, or fearing lest, the city being emptied, Himilco should seize it, restrained the impulse of the soldiers. The fleeing, then, in all safety were saved into the camp by the city. Daphnaeus with his force, arriving at the encampment abandoned by the barbarians, encamped in it.

87.4. At once the soldiers from the city mingled with them, and Dexippus came down with them, and from a running together the multitudes came into an assembly. All being indignant that the moment had been let slip, and that, having prevailed over the barbarians, they had not taken from them the fitting punishment, but that the generals from the city, being able to come out and destroy the force of the enemy, had let go so many myriads;

87.5. tumult and much shouting holding the assembly, Menes the Camarinaean, appointed to a command, came forward and accused the generals of the Acragantines, and so provoked all that, when the accused attempted to defend themselves, no one accepted their words, and the multitude, rushing to throw stones, stoned four of them to death, but the fifth, called Argeius, being altogether younger in age, was released; and the Lacedaemonian Dexippus too met with reproach, because, being appointed to a command and being reputed not inexperienced in warlike works, he had done this for the sake of treason.

88.1. After the assembly, Daphnaeus and his men, having led forward the forces, attempted to besiege the camp of the Carthaginians, but, seeing it costlily fortified, desisted from this attempt, and, riding the roads, caught those of them out foraging and, cutting off the grain-convoys, brought them into much scarcity.

88.2. The Carthaginians, not daring to draw up in battle, but dreadfully oppressed by the lack of grain, fell into great misfortunes. For many of the soldiers died of the scarcity, and the Campanians with the other mercenaries, almost all, pushing to the tent of Himilco, demanded the rations previously appointed; if not, they threatened to go over to the enemy.

88.3. Himilco had heard from someone that the Syracusans were conveying a quantity of grain to Acragas by sea. Therefore, having this alone as a hope of safety, he persuaded the soldiers to hold on a few days, giving as pledge the drinking-cups of those campaigning from Carthage.

88.4. And he himself, having summoned forty triremes from Panormus and Motya, attacked those conveying the provisions; the Syracusans, the barbarians for the time before having yielded the sea and the winter being now set in, despised the Carthaginians, as no longer about to dare to man the triremes.

88.5. Therefore, as they conveyed the provisions carelessly, Himilco, having put out with forty triremes, suddenly sank eight of the warships and pursued the rest to the shore; and, having gained control of all the other vessels, he made the hopes of both turn so much to the contrary that the Campanians among the Acragantines, condemning the cause of the Greeks, were corrupted for fifteen talents and went over to the Carthaginians.

88.6. The Acragantines at first, the Carthaginians faring badly, enjoyed in abundance the grain and the other supplies, ever expecting the siege quickly to be raised; but when the hopes of the barbarians rose up and so many myriads were gathered into one city, the grain ran out without their noticing.

88.7. It is said that Dexippus the Lacedaemonian too was corrupted for fifteen talents; for he immediately answered the generals of the Italiotes that it was advantageous to set the war in another place, for the food was failing. Therefore the generals, bringing forward as a pretext that the appointed times of their command had passed, led off their forces to the strait.

88.8. After their departure, the generals, having come together with those appointed to commands, resolved to examine the grain in the city; finding it altogether little, they saw it was necessary to abandon the city. At once, then, night coming on, they ordered all to break camp.

89.1. So great a multitude of men, women, and children abandoning the city suddenly, much lamentation and tears held the houses. For at once the fear of the enemy struck them, and at the same time, because of the haste, they were compelled to leave for plunder to the barbarians the very things for which they had counted themselves blessed; for, fortune taking away the use of their household goods, they thought it desirable at least to save their persons.

89.2. Not only the prosperity of such a city was to be seen abandoned, but also a multitude of persons. For the sick were neglected by their household, each taking thought for his own safety, and those advanced in age were left because of the weakness of old age; and many, valuing the change of native land at death, laid hands on themselves, that they might breathe their last in their ancestral houses.

89.3. Nevertheless, the multitude leaving the city the soldiers escorted with their arms to Gela; and the road and all the parts of the country inclining toward the Geloan territory were full of women and children mingled with maidens, who, changing their accustomed luxury for a strenuous march and surpassing hardship, held out, fear straining their souls.

89.4. These, then, safely saved to Gela, afterward settled in Leontini, the Syracusans giving them this city as a dwelling.

90.1. Himilco, at daybreak, having brought his force within the walls, killed nearly all who had been left behind; at which time the Carthaginians, dragging off even those who had fled to the temples, killed them.

90.2. It is said that Tellias, the foremost of the citizens in wealth and nobility, shared the misfortune of his native land; wishing to flee with certain others into the temple of Athena, thinking the Carthaginians would abstain from impiety toward the gods, but observing their impiety, he set fire to the temple and burned himself together with the offerings in it. For by one deed he reckoned to take away from the gods impiety, from the enemy the plunder of much wealth, and, the greatest, from himself the outrage that would be done to his body.

90.3. Himilco, having plundered the temples and houses and searched zealously, gathered as much booty as it is likely a city inhabited by two hundred thousand men should have had, which had been unsacked from its founding, and had become nearly the richest of the Greek cities of that time, and that too the men in it being fond of beauty in the costliness of all kinds of constructions;

90.4. for paintings in great number were found worked to the highest pitch, and a surpassing number of statues of all kinds skillfully fashioned. The most costly of the works he sent to Carthage, among which it came about that the bull of Phalaris too was conveyed, and the rest of the booty he sold as spoil.

90.5. This bull Timaeus, having in his histories firmly maintained that it never existed at all, was refuted by fortune itself; for Scipio, later, about two hundred and sixty years after this capture, having sacked Carthage, restored to the Acragantines, with the other things that had remained among the Carthaginians, the bull, which, even at the time these histories were being written, was in Acragas.

90.6. Concerning this I was led to speak more zealously, because Timaeus, who most bitterly accused the historians before him and left no forgiveness to the writers, is himself found to be careless in the very matters in which he most declared himself accurate.

90.7. For one must, I think, grant forgiveness to historians in their ignorances, as being men and the truth in past times being hard to find, but those who by choice do not attain accuracy fittingly meet with accusation, whenever, flattering some or, through enmity, attacking too bitterly, they fall away from the truth.

91.1. Himilco, having besieged the city eight months, and having gained control of it a little before the winter solstice, did not immediately raze it, in order that the forces might winter in the houses. The calamity about Acragas having been reported, so great a fear held the island that of the Sicilians some removed to Syracuse, others conveyed their children and wives and the rest of their property to Italy.

91.2. The Acragantines who had escaped captivity, having come to Syracuse, accused the generals, saying that because of their treason their native land had perished. It came about that the Syracusans too met with reproach from the other Sicilians, because they choose such leaders, through whom all Sicily was in danger of perishing.

91.3. Nevertheless, an assembly having been gathered at Syracuse, and great fears hanging over them, no one dared to counsel about the war. All being at a loss, Dionysius the son of Hermocrates came forward and accused the generals as betraying their affairs to the Carthaginians, and provoked the multitudes to their punishment, urging them not to await the nonsense of the laws, but to inflict justice out of hand.

91.4. The magistrates fining Dionysius according to the laws as a disturber, Philistus, who afterward wrote the histories and had a great estate, paid the penalties, and bade Dionysius say as much as he chose. And, adding that, for the whole day, if they wished to fine him, he would pay the money on his behalf, thenceforth, taking courage, Dionysius stirred up the multitudes, and, throwing the assembly into confusion, slandered the generals, saying that, corrupted by money, they had abandoned the safety of the Acragantines. He accused along with them also the other most distinguished citizens, representing them as belonging to oligarchy.

91.5. Therefore he advised them to choose as generals not the most powerful, but the most well-disposed and democratic; for those, ruling the citizens despotically, despise the many and consider the calamities of their native land their own revenues, while the more humble would do nothing of the kind, fearing their own weakness.

92.1. Having addressed everything to the purpose of his hearers and his own design, he no slightly stirred up the spirit of the assembly; for the people, both having long hated the generals because they seemed to manage the war badly, and then provoked by the words, immediately released some from their office, and chose others as generals, among whom was Dionysius, who, in the battles against the Carthaginians, being reputed to have surpassed in courage, was looked up to among the Syracusans.

92.2. Therefore, elated in his hopes, he contrived everything toward becoming tyrant of his native land. For after taking over the office he neither sat in council with the generals nor at all associated with them; and doing this, he spread a report that they were communicating with the enemy. For thus he most hoped to take away their authority and to bring the generalship around to himself alone.

92.3. As he did this, the most respectable of the citizens suspected what was happening and at all the gatherings spoke ill of him, but the democratic crowd, ignorant of the plot, praised him and said the city had barely found a firm champion.

92.4. Nevertheless, an assembly often being gathered about the preparation for the war, observing the Syracusans dismayed by the fear from the enemy, he advised bringing back the exiles;

92.5. for it was absurd, he said, that from Italy and the Peloponnese they should summon aid from foreigners, but should not wish to take along to their own dangers their own citizens, who—the enemy promising great gifts if they should campaign with them—chose rather to die wandering on foreign soil than to plan anything foreign against their native land.

92.6. For those exiled because of the factions that had occurred in the city, having now obtained this benefaction, would fight eagerly, returning gratitude to those who had treated them well. Having discussed about this matter many things suited to affairs, he got the Syracusans of one vote with him; for not even of his fellow-magistrates did any dare to speak against this, because of the impulse of the multitude and because they saw the odium would fall on themselves, but on him the gratitude of those benefited.

92.7. This Dionysius did, hoping to make the exiles his own, men desiring change and well disposed toward the establishment of a tyranny; for they would gladly see the slaughters of their enemies, the confiscations of their property, the restoration of their money to themselves. And finally, the resolution concerning the exiles having been ratified, these immediately returned to their native land.

93.1. Letters being brought from Gela, that more soldiers should be sent, Dionysius got a suitable approach to his own design. For, sent out with two thousand foot and four hundred cavalry, he came quickly to the city of the Geloans, which Dexippus the Lacedaemonian, appointed by the Syracusans, then guarded.

93.2. Dionysius, then, finding the wealthiest at faction with the people, and having accused them in the assembly and condemned them, killed them and confiscated their property; and from this money he gave to those guarding the city, of whom Dexippus was leader, the wages owed; and to those who had come with him from Syracuse he undertook to make double the wages which the city had appointed.

93.3. By this means he made both the soldiers in Gela and those with him his own in their goodwill. He was praised also by the people of the Geloans as having become the cause of their freedom; for, envying the most powerful, they called their superiority a despotism over themselves.

93.4. Therefore they sent ambassadors to praise him at Syracuse and to bring the decrees, in which they honored him with great gifts. Dionysius undertook to persuade Dexippus to share in the design; but when he did not consent, he was ready to return to Syracuse with his own soldiers.

93.5. The Geloans, learning that the Carthaginians were about to campaign with their whole force first against Gela, begged Dionysius to remain and not to look on while they suffered the same things as the Acragantines. To them Dionysius, having promised to come quickly with a larger force, set out from Gela with his own soldiers.

94.1. A spectacle being held in Syracuse, at the time of the dismissal of those from the theater he came into the city. The crowds running together to him and asking about the Carthaginians, he said that they were ignorant that they had within enemies more hostile than those without—those presiding over public affairs—whom the citizens, trusting, kept festival, while they themselves, embezzling the public funds, had made the soldiers unpaid; and, the enemy making unsurpassable their preparations for war and about to lead their force against Syracuse, of these they took no care whatever.

94.2. The reason why they were doing this he had known even before, but now had learned more clearly; for Himilco had sent a herald to him, with the pretext of the captives, but to urge that—the multitude of his fellow-magistrates, having secured themselves, busied themselves with nothing of what was being done—he should at least not oppose, since he chose not to cooperate.

94.3. Therefore he no longer wished to be general, but was present to lay down his office; for it was not tolerable that, the others selling their native land, he alone should run risks with the citizens and at the same time seem to have shared in the treason.

94.4. The crowd being provoked at what was said, and the speech flowing through the whole force, then each man, in anxiety, withdrew home; but on the next day, an assembly having been gathered, in which he accused the magistrates of many things, he met with no moderate approval, and provoked the people against the generals.

94.5. Finally, some of those seated cried out to make him general plenipotentiary and not to wait until the enemy should come up to the walls; for the magnitude of the war needed such a general, through whom it was possible to be well off in affairs; the matters concerning the traitors they would deliberate in another assembly; for it was foreign to the present occasions; and previously too the three hundred thousand of the Carthaginians had been conquered at Himera, Gelon being general plenipotentiary.

95.1. The many quickly inclining, as is their wont, to the worse, Dionysius was declared general plenipotentiary. And when, then, affairs followed according to his mind, he wrote a decree that the wages should be double; for, he said, this being done, all would be more eager for the contest, and concerning the money he urged them to be in no anxiety; for the means for it would be easy.

95.2. The assembly having been dissolved, not a few of the Syracusans found fault with what had been done, as though they themselves had not ratified these things; for, coming in their reckonings to themselves, they considered the despotism that would come to be. They, then, wishing to make their freedom firm, had without their noticing established a master of their native land;

95.3. and Dionysius, wishing to anticipate the repentance of the crowds, sought how he might ask for guards for his person; for, this being conceded, he would easily master the tyranny. At once, then, he ordered all of military age up to forty years, taking provisions for thirty days, to come under arms to Leontini. This city was then a fort of the Syracusans, full of exiles and foreigners. For he hoped to have these as fellow-fighters, desiring change, and that the most of the Syracusans would not even come to Leontini.

95.4. Nevertheless, by night encamping in the country and pretending to be plotted against, he made an outcry and tumult through his own servants; having done this, he fled together into the acropolis, and passed the night, burning fires and summoning the most notable of the soldiers.

95.5. At daybreak, the multitude having gathered to Leontini, having spoken much plausibly to the purpose of his design, he persuaded the crowds to give him as guards six hundred of the soldiers, whichever he should choose. Dionysius is said to have done this imitating Pisistratus the Athenian;

95.6. for they say that he too, having wounded himself, came forward into the assembly as having been plotted against, and for this reason got a guard from the citizens, by which, using it, he won the tyranny. And then Dionysius, by a like device, having deceived the multitude, set in motion the things of the tyranny.

96.1. For at once, having picked out those needy of money but bold in soul, more than a thousand, he armed them with costly arms and elated them with the greatest promises, and, summoning the mercenaries and using kind words, made them his own. He changed also the commands, handing over the offices to the most trustworthy, and released Dexippus the Lacedaemonian to Greece; for he was suspicious of this man, lest, getting an opportunity, he should recover freedom for the Syracusans.

96.2. He summoned also the mercenaries in Gela, and gathered from every side the exiles and impious men, hoping through these most firmly to keep the tyranny. Nevertheless, having come to Syracuse, he quartered in the dockyard, openly declaring himself tyrant. The Syracusans, bearing it heavily, were compelled to keep quiet; for they could no longer accomplish anything, since the city was full of foreign arms, and they feared the Carthaginians, who had so great forces.

96.3. Dionysius, then, immediately married the daughter of Hermocrates, who had defeated the Athenians, and gave his sister to Polyxenus, the brother of the wife of Hermocrates; this he did, wishing to take into kinship a distinguished house, with a view to making the tyranny firm. After this, having gathered an assembly, he killed the most powerful of those who had opposed him, Daphnaeus and Demarchus.

96.4. Dionysius, then, from a scribe and a chance private man, became tyrant of the greatest of the Greek cities; and he preserved his dominion until his death, having been tyrant thirty-eight years. His particular deeds and the increase of his rule we shall go through in their proper times; for this man seems to have won for himself the greatest of recorded tyrannies, and the most long-lasting.

96.5. The Carthaginians, after the capture of the city, transferred the votive offerings and statues and the other most costly things to Carthage, and, having burned the temples and plundered the city, wintered there. For the spring season they prepared engines and missiles of all kinds, intending to besiege first the city of the Geloans.

97.1. While these things were being done, the Athenians, continually falling into reverses, made citizens of the metics and of the other foreigners those who wished to fight together with them; and quickly, a great multitude having been enrolled as citizens, the generals enrolled the suitable for the expedition. They prepared sixty ships, and, having fitted these out costlily, sailed out to Samos, where they found the other generals having gathered from the other islands eighty triremes.

97.2. Having asked also the Samians to man ten triremes in addition, they put out with all the ships, being a hundred and fifty, and put in at the Arginusae islands, eager to raise the siege of Mitylene.

97.3. Callicratidas the admiral of the Lacedaemonians, learning of the approach of the ships, left Eteonicus with the land force at the siege, while he himself, having manned a hundred and forty ships, in haste put out toward the other side of the Arginusae; these islands were then inhabited and had a small Aeolic town, lying between Mitylene and Cyme, at a very short distance from the mainland and from the cape Canis.

97.4. The Athenians immediately learned of the approach of the enemy, lying at anchor not far off, but, because of the magnitude of the winds, gave up fighting at sea, and for the next day prepared the things for the sea-battle, the Lacedaemonians doing the same, although the seers forbade both.

97.5. For the head of the victim, lying on the shore of the Lacedaemonians, had become invisible, the wave washing over it; therefore the seer foretold that the admiral would die fighting at sea; at which the saying, they say Callicratidas said that, dying in the battle, he would make Sparta no less reputable.

97.6. Of the Athenians the general Thrasyllus, who was in command that day, saw in the night such a vision: it seemed that at Athens, the theater being full, he himself and six of the other generals were acting the tragedy of Euripides, the Phoenician Women, while their opponents acted the Suppliant Women, and it seemed that a Cadmean victory befell them, and that all died imitating the affairs of those who campaigned against Thebes.

97.7. The seer, hearing this, made plain that seven of the generals would be killed. The sacrifices bringing victory, the generals forbade announcing to the others concerning their own destruction, but concerning the victory in the sacrifices they announced throughout the whole force.

98.1. Callicratidas the admiral, having gathered the multitudes and encouraged them with suitable words, finally said: "For the danger on behalf of my native land I am myself so eager that, though the seer says that to you victory is foreshown by the victims, but to me death, nevertheless I am ready to die. Knowing, then, that after the death of leaders armies fall into tumult, I now declare as admiral, if I suffer anything, my successor Clearchus, a man who has given proof of his deeds in war."

98.2. Callicratidas, then, having said these things, made not a few emulate his valor and become more eager for the battle. And the Lacedaemonians, exhorting one another, went up onto the ships; and the Athenians, exhorted by the generals to the contest, in haste manned the triremes and all took their places in order.

98.3. Of the right wing Thrasyllus was leader and Pericles, the son of the Pericles called Olympius for his power; he took along also Theramenes to the right wing, stationing him in command; this man, being then a private citizen, was campaigning with them, but previously had often led forces; and the other generals he stationed along the whole phalanx, and included in the array the islands called Arginusae, eager to extend the ships as far as possible.

98.4. Callicratidas put out having the right part himself, and gave the left to the Boeotians, of whom Thrasondas the Theban held the command. Being unable to equal the array to that of the enemy, because the islands held much space, he divided his force, and, having made two fleets, fought separately against each part.

98.5. Therefore he furnished great amazement in many respects to the spectators, since four fleets fought at sea, and the ships gathered into one place were not many fewer than three hundred; for this is recorded as the greatest sea-battle that took place of Greeks against Greeks.

99.1. At the same time the admirals ordered the trumpeters to signal, and the multitude on both sides, raising the war-cry in turn, made an extraordinary shout; and all, driving the surge in haste, vied with one another, each eager to be the first to begin the battle.

99.2. For most were experienced in the dangers because of the length of the war, and brought to bear an unsurpassable zeal, because the best men were gathered for the contest concerning the whole; for all supposed that those who conquered in this battle would put an end to the war.

99.3. Nevertheless, Callicratidas, having heard from the seer of the death that would be his, was eager to win for himself a most conspicuous death. Therefore, having first sailed against the ship of Lysias the general, and, with the triremes sailing along with him, having wounded it at the first onset, he sank it; and of the others, some, striking with his rams, he made unfit to sail, and of others, shearing off the oars, he made useless for the battle.

99.4. At last, having given a ramming to the trireme of Pericles more violently, he broke open the trireme over a wide space; but, the beak being fixed in the rent and they being unable to back water, Pericles threw on the ship of Callicratidas an iron hand, and, it being fastened, the Athenians, surrounding the ship, leaped in, and, pouring around, slaughtered all in it.

99.5. Then, they say, Callicratidas, having fought brilliantly and held out a long time, was at last, wounded on every side by the multitude, worn down. As the defeat about the admiral became evident, it came about that the Peloponnesians, taking fright, gave way.

99.6. The right part of the Peloponnesians having fled, the Boeotians who held the left held out for a while, fighting vigorously; for both they themselves and the Euboeans running risks with them, and all who had revolted from the Athenians, were wary lest the Athenians, having recovered their rule, take vengeance on them for the revolt; but when they saw most of their ships wounded and the multitude of the victors turned upon them, they were compelled to flee. Of the Peloponnesians, then, some were saved to Chios, others to Cyme.

100.1. The Athenians, having pursued the defeated for a sufficient distance, filled all the nearby part of the sea with corpses and wrecks. After this, of the generals some thought they ought to take up the dead, because the Athenians were harshly disposed toward those who looked on while the dead lay unburied, others said they ought to sail against Mitylene and as quickly as possible raise the siege.

100.2. A great storm came on, so that the triremes were tossed, and the soldiers, both because of the hardship from the battle and because of the magnitude of the waves, spoke against the taking up of the dead.

100.3. Finally, the storm intensifying, they neither sailed against Mitylene nor took up the dead, but, forced by the winds, put in at Arginusae. There perished in the sea-battle of the Athenians twenty-five ships with most of those in them, and of the Peloponnesians seventy-seven;

100.4. therefore, so many ships and the men in them having perished, the coast of the Cymaeans and Phocaeans was filled with corpses and wrecks.

100.5. Eteonicus, who was besieging Mitylene, learning from someone of the defeat of the Peloponnesians, sent the ships to Chios, and himself with the land force withdrew to the city of the Pyrrhaeans, which was an ally; for he feared lest, the Athenians sailing against them with the fleet and those from the city coming out, he should risk losing his whole force.

100.6. The generals of the Athenians, having sailed to Mitylene and taken on Conon with his forty ships, put in at Samos, and from there, setting out, ravaged the country of the enemy.

100.7. After this, those about Aeolis and Ionia and the islands allied to the Lacedaemonians came together to Ephesus, and, deliberating, it seemed good to them to send to Sparta and to ask for Lysander as admiral; for he, during the time of his admiralship, had set many things right and was reputed to surpass the others in generalship.

100.8. The Lacedaemonians, having a law not to send the same man twice, and not wishing to dissolve their ancestral custom, chose Aracus as admiral, but sent along with him Lysander as a private man, ordering Aracus to obey him in everything. These, sent out to the command, gathered from the Peloponnese and from the allies as many triremes as they could.

101.1. The Athenians, learning of the success at Arginusae, praised the generals for the victory, but were harshly disposed because they had looked on while those who had died for the leadership lay unburied.

101.2. Theramenes and Thrasybulus having gone ahead to Athens, the generals, supposing that these were those who had slandered them to the multitudes concerning the dead, sent letters against them to the people, making plain that they had ordered these men to take up the dead; which most of all became to them the cause of their misfortunes.

101.3. For, being able to have as fellow-fighters in the trial Theramenes and his men, men powerful in speech and having many friends, and, the greatest thing, having been present at the affairs in the sea-battle, they got, on the contrary, opponents and bitter accusers.

101.4. For, the letters being read in the assembly, immediately the multitudes were angry with Theramenes and his men, but, these having defended themselves, it came about that the wrath again fell back upon the generals.

101.5. Therefore the people set a trial for them, and, having released Conon from the charge, ordered the forces to be handed over to him, and voted that the others should come as quickly as possible. Of these, Aristogenes and Protomachus, fearing the wrath of the multitude, fled, while Thrasyllus and Calliades, and besides Lysias and Pericles and Aristocrates, with most of the ships sailed to Athens, hoping that those in the ships, being many, would be their helpers in the trial.

101.6. When the multitudes came together to the assembly, they listened to the accusation and to those addressing them for favor, but, raising a tumult with those who defended themselves, did not endure the words. They were harmed not least by the kinsmen of the dead, who came forward into the assembly in mourning, begging the people to punish those who had looked on while those who had died eagerly for their native land lay unburied.

101.7. Finally, the friends of these and those acting with Theramenes, being many, prevailed, and it came about that the generals were condemned to death and confiscation of their property.

102.1. These things having been ratified, and they being about to be led by the public officials to death, Diomedon, one of the generals, came forward into the midst, a man both effective in war and reputed to surpass in justice and the other virtues.

102.2. All being silent, he said: "Men of Athens, may the things ratified concerning us turn out for the good of the city; but the vows for victory, since fortune has prevented us from paying them, it is well for you to take thought of, and pay to Zeus the Savior and Apollo and the Solemn Goddesses; for to these we vowed when we defeated the enemy at sea."

102.3. Diomedon, then, having said these things, was led off to the ratified death with the other generals, having set great pity and tears before the good among the citizens; for that a man about to die unjustly should make no mention whatever of his own suffering, but should ask that, on behalf of the city that wronged him, the vows be paid to the gods, appeared the deed of a man pious and great-souled and unworthy of the fortune about him.

102.4. These, then, the eleven magistrates appointed by the laws put to death—not men who had done any wrong to the city, but who had conquered in the greatest sea-battle that had taken place of Greeks against Greeks, and had brilliantly fought in other battles, and through their own valor had set up trophies over the enemy.

102.5. So far had the people then lost its senses, and, unjustly provoked by the demagogues, vented its wrath on men worthy not of punishment, but of many praises and crowns.

103.1. Quickly both those who persuaded and those persuaded repented, as though the divine power had taken vengeance; for those deceived received the wages of their ignorance not long after, being subdued not by one master only, but by thirty;

103.2. and he who deceived them and spoke the proposal, Callixenus, immediately upon the multitude's repenting, came under accusation as having deceived the people; and, not deemed worthy of a defense, he was bound, and, thrown into the public prison, secretly with some others dug through the prison and escaped to the enemy at Decelea, in order that, having escaped death, he might have his wickedness pointed at with the finger not only at Athens, but also among the other Greeks, throughout his whole life.

103.3. The things done in this year, then, are about these. Of the historians, Philistus brought the first composition of the Sicilian affairs to a close at this year, at the capture of Acragas, having gone through in seven books a period of more than eight hundred years, and the beginning of the second composition he made from the end of the former, and wrote four books.

103.4. About the same time died Sophocles the son of Sophilus, the poet of tragedies, having lived ninety years and having eighteen victories. They say that this man, having brought in his last tragedy and won, fell into an unsurpassable joy, because of which he also died.

103.5. Apollodorus, who composed the chronological treatise, says that Euripides too died in the same year; but some say that, having gone out into the country at the court of Archelaus the king of the Macedonians, he fell among dogs and was torn to pieces a little before these times.

104.1. This year having passed, at Athens Alexias was archon, and in Rome, instead of consuls, three military tribunes were appointed, Gaius Julius, Publius Cornelius, Gaius Servilius. These having taken over the office, the Athenians, after the killing of the generals, appointed to the command Philocles, and, handing over the navy to him, sent him to Conon, ordering them to lead the forces in common.

104.2. He, when he had put in to Conon at Samos, manned all the ships, being a hundred and seventy-three. Of these it seemed good to leave twenty there, and with all the others they put out to the Hellespont, Conon and Philocles being leaders.

104.3. Lysander the admiral of the Lacedaemonians, having gathered from the Peloponnese, from the nearby allies, thirty-five ships, put in at Ephesus. Having summoned also the fleet from Chios . . . he equipped; he went up also to Cyrus the son of King Darius, and received much money for the maintenance of the soldiers.

104.4. Cyrus, his father summoning him to Persia, handed over to Lysander the governorship of the cities under him and arranged that the tributes should be paid to him. Lysander, being well supplied with everything for war, returned to Ephesus.

104.5. At which time in Miletus some, reaching for oligarchy, overthrew the democracy, the Lacedaemonians cooperating with them. And at first, it being the Dionysia, in the houses they seized those most opposed to them and, being about forty, slaughtered them; afterward, the marketplace being full, having picked out the three hundred wealthiest, they killed them.

104.6. The most respectable of those favoring the people, being not fewer than a thousand, fearing the circumstance, fled to Pharnabazus the satrap; he, having received them kindly and given each a gold stater, settled them in Blauda, a certain fort of Lydia.

104.7. Lysander with most of the ships sailed to Iasos in Caria, and took it by storm, it being an ally of the Athenians, and slaughtered the men of military age, being eight hundred, and, having sold the children and women as spoil, razed the city.

104.8. After this, having sailed to Attica and to many places, he did nothing great or worth mention; therefore we have not been zealous to record these things; but at last, having taken Lampsacus, he released the Athenian garrison under truce, and, having seized the property, gave the city back to the Lampsacenes.

105.1. The generals of the Athenians, learning that the Lacedaemonians with their whole force were besieging Lampsacus, gathered triremes from every side and in haste put out against them with a hundred and eighty ships.

105.2. Finding the city taken, then they anchored their ships at Aegospotami, and after this, sailing against the enemy each day, challenged them to a sea-battle. The Peloponnesians not putting out against them, the Athenians were at a loss how to deal with the situation, being unable for a longer time to maintain their forces there.

105.3. Alcibiades having come to them and saying that Medocus and Seuthes the kings of the Thracians were his friends and had agreed to give him a large force, if he wished to make war on the Lacedaemonians; therefore he asked them to give him a share of the command, undertaking to them one of two things, either to compel the enemy to fight at sea, or to fight it out against them on land with the Thracians.

105.4. Alcibiades did this, desiring through himself to accomplish something great for his native land and through his benefactions to restore the people to its ancient goodwill. But the generals of the Athenians, thinking that the blame for the reverses would follow upon themselves, but that all would attribute the successes to Alcibiades, quickly ordered him to depart and no longer to approach the camp.

106.1. Since the enemy did not wish to fight at sea, and the camp was held by lack of grain, Philocles, in command that day, ordered the other trierarchs to man the triremes and follow, while he himself, having thirty ships ready, sailed out more quickly.

106.2. Lysander, hearing this from some deserters, put out with all his ships, and, having routed Philocles, pursued him to the other ships.

106.3. The triremes of the Athenians not yet being manned, tumult held all because of the unexpected appearance of the enemy.

106.4. Lysander, perceiving the confusion of his opponents, quickly disembarked Eteonicus with those accustomed to fight on land; he, sharply using the turn of the moment, seized part of the camp; and Lysander himself, having sailed against them with all his triremes equipped, and throwing on iron hands, dragged off the ships moored on the land.

106.5. The Athenians, dismayed at the unexpectedness, and having neither room to put out with their ships nor able to fight it out on land, having held out a short time, were routed, and immediately some, abandoning the ships, others the camp, fled, wherever each hoped to be saved.

106.6. Of the triremes only ten broke through, one of which Conon the general had; he gave up his return to Athens, fearing the wrath of the people, and fled for refuge to Evagoras, the ruler of Cyprus, having a friendship with him; of the soldiers most, having fled by land, were saved to Sestus.

106.7. Lysander, having taken the rest of the ships as captives and taken alive Philocles the general, led him off to Lampsacus and slaughtered him. After this he sent to Lacedaemon those who would announce the victory on the best trireme, having adorned the ship with the costliest arms and spoils.

106.8. Having campaigned against the Athenians who had fled to Sestus, he took the city, but released the Athenians under truce. Immediately, having sailed with his force against Samos, he himself besieged it, and sent Gylippus, who had fought together with the Syracusans by sea in Sicily, to Sparta, conveying the spoils and with these fifteen hundred talents of silver.

106.9. The money being in bags, and each having a scytale bearing the inscription that showed the amount of the money, Gylippus, ignorant of this, opened the bags, and, having taken out three hundred talents, and, being recognized through the inscription by the ephors, fled and was condemned to death.

106.10. Likewise it came about that the father of Gylippus, Clearchus, fled in former times, because, being reputed to have taken money from Pericles for not making the invasion into Attica, he was condemned to death, and, fleeing, dwelt in Thurii in Italy. These men, then, reputed otherwise capable, by doing these things disgraced the rest of their life.

107.1. The Athenians, hearing of the destruction of their forces, gave up holding the sea, and busied themselves about the construction of the walls and the blocking of the harbors, expecting, as was likely, to be brought into a siege.

107.2. For immediately the kings of the Lacedaemonians, Agis and Pausanias, with a great force, invading Attica, encamped by the walls, and Lysander with more than two hundred triremes put in at the Piraeus. The Athenians, surrounded by such great evils, nevertheless held out, and easily guarded the city for some time.

107.3. It seemed good to the Peloponnesians, since the siege was difficult, to lead off their forces from Attica, but with the ships to lie in wait, in order that no grain should be conveyed to them.

107.4. This being accomplished, the Athenians fell into dire scarcity of all things, but especially of food, because this was always conveyed to them by sea. The danger intensifying each day, the city was full of corpses, and the survivors, having sent an embassy to the Lacedaemonians, agreed to peace on these terms: to take down the long legs and the walls of the Piraeus, to have no more than ten warships, to withdraw from all the cities, and to use the Lacedaemonians as leaders.

107.5. The Peloponnesian War, then, the longest of those we know, had such an end, having lasted twenty-seven years.

108.1. A little after the peace died Darius the king of Asia, having ruled nineteen years, and the eldest of his sons, Artaxerxes, succeeded to the leadership and ruled forty-three years. At which time Apollodorus the Athenian says that Antimachus the poet flourished.

108.2. In Sicily Himilco the leader of the Carthaginians, the summer beginning, razed the city of the Acragantines, and of the temples, as many as did not seem to have been sufficiently destroyed by the fire, he cut off the carvings and the more elaborately worked parts; and from there, taking up his whole force, he invaded the country of the Geloans.

108.3. Going over all of this and the Camarinaean territory, he filled the army with all kinds of booty. After this, marching against Gela, he encamped by the river of the same name as the city.

108.4. The Geloans having outside the city a very great bronze statue of Apollo, they plundered it and sent it to Tyre. This the Geloans had dedicated according to the oracle of the god, but the Tyrians, at the time when later they were besieged by Alexander the Macedonian, outraged it as helping the enemy; but Alexander having taken the city, as Timaeus says, on the day of the same name and the same hour in which the Carthaginians plundered the Apollo at Gela, it came about that it was honored with sacrifices and the greatest processions by the Greeks, as having become the cause of the capture.

108.5. These things, then, although done at other times, we thought not inappropriate to place side by side because of the paradox. The Carthaginians, then, felling the trees of the country, threw a trench about their camp; for they expected Dionysius to come with a great force to aid those in danger.

108.6. The Geloans at first voted to send away their children and wives to Syracuse because of the magnitude of the expected danger; but, the women having fled to the altars in the marketplace and begging to share the same fortune as the men, they consented.

108.7. After this, having made very many companies, they sent the soldiers by turns into the country; these, having experience, attacked the enemy as they wandered, and brought back many of them alive each day, and killed not a few.

108.8. The Carthaginians attacking the city in part and throwing down the walls with the rams, they nobly defended themselves; for the parts of the walls that fell by day they rebuilt by night, the women and children helping; for those in the prime of their ages continued fighting in arms, while the rest of the multitude attended to the works and the other preparations with all eagerness;

108.9. and in general they so vigorously received the onset of the Carthaginians that, though having an unfortified city and being destitute of allies, and besides observing the walls falling at several places, they were not dismayed at the danger that surrounded them.

109.1. Dionysius the tyrant of the Syracusans, having summoned aid from the Greeks in Italy, led out a force also from the other allies; he picked out also most of the Syracusans of military age and enrolled the mercenaries into the army.

109.2. He had in all, as some say, fifty thousand, but, as Timaeus recorded, thirty thousand foot, a thousand cavalry, and fifty decked ships. Having set out with so great a force to the aid of the Geloans, when he drew near the city, he encamped by the sea.

109.3. For he was eager not to split his army, but, making his attack from the same place, to fight at once by land and by sea; for with the light-armed he fought and did not allow the country to be foraged, and with the cavalry and the ships he tried to take away the provisions conveyed to the Carthaginians from their own dominion.

109.4. For twenty days, then, they tarried, doing nothing worth mention; after this Dionysius divided the foot into three parts, making one division of the Sicilians, whom he ordered, having the city on the left, to march toward the palisade of the enemy; the other division, having appointed of the allies, he ordered, having the city on the right, to hasten by the very shore; and he himself, having the company of the mercenaries, set out through the city toward the place where the engines of the Carthaginians were.

109.5. And to the cavalry he gave orders, whenever they should see the foot set out, to cross the river and ride about the plain, and, if they should see their own men prevailing, to join in the battle, but if worsted, to receive those being pressed; and to those in the ships he gave orders, against the onset of the Italiotes, to sail against the camp of the enemy.

110.1. They having done what was ordered at the right time, the Carthaginians came to the aid at that part, warding off those disembarking from the ships; for they had this part unfortified, all the part along the shore;

110.2. and the Italiotes at this time, having traversed the whole way along the sea, attacked the camp of the Carthaginians, finding most of them gone to the aid at the ships; and, having routed those left behind at this part, they burst into the encampment.

110.3. This having happened, the Carthaginians, having turned with the greatest part of their force and fought it out for a long time, barely drove out those who had forced their way inside the trench. The Italiotes, worn down by the multitude of the barbarians, in the withdrawal fell upon the sharpened part of the palisade, having no aid;

110.4. for the Sicilians, marching through the plain, were late for the moment, and the mercenaries with Dionysius barely got through the streets of the city, being unable, according to their own purpose, to hasten. The Geloans, coming out for a while, came to the aid of the Italiotes over a short stretch, being wary of abandoning the guard of the walls; therefore they were late with the aid.

110.5. The Iberians and Campanians campaigning with the Carthaginians, pressing heavily on the Greeks from Italy, killed more than a thousand of them. As those in the ships warded off the pursuers with arrows, the rest were saved in safety to the city.

110.6. On the other side the Sicilians, fighting it out against the Libyans who met them, killed many of them, and pursued the rest into the encampment; but the Iberians and Campanians, and besides the Carthaginians, coming to the aid of the Libyans, they, having lost about six hundred, withdrew to the city.

110.7. The cavalry, when they saw their own men defeated, themselves too went to the city, the enemy pressing on them. Dionysius, having barely gotten through the city, when he found the army worsted, then withdrew within the walls.

111.1. After this, having gathered a council of his friends, he deliberated about the war. All saying that the place was unsuitable to decide the whole matter against the enemy, toward evening he sent a herald about the taking up of the dead on the morrow, and the crowd from the city he sent off about the first watch of the night, while he himself about midnight set out, leaving behind about two thousand of the light-armed.

111.2. To these it had been ordered to burn fires throughout the whole night and to make noise, in order to give the Carthaginians the notion that he was remaining in the city. These, then, at daybreak set out toward Dionysius, and the Carthaginians, perceiving what had happened, moved their camp into the city and plundered what was left behind in the houses.

111.3. Dionysius, having come to Camarina, compelled those there too, with their children and wives, to depart to Syracuse. The fear giving no respite, some packed up silver and gold and the things easily carried, others, taking their parents and infant children, fled, making no account of their property; some, being aged or weighed down by disease, for lack of kinsmen or friends were left behind, the Carthaginians being expected at any moment;

111.4. for the calamity about Selinus and Himera, and besides Acragas, struck men, all as it were taking under their eyes the dreadful nature of the Carthaginians. For there was among them no sparing of the captured, but unsympathetically of the unfortunate they crucified some, and on others they brought intolerable outrages.

111.5. Nevertheless, two cities being driven out, the country was full of women and children and the other crowds; observing which, the soldiers were angry with Dionysius, but pitied the fortunes of the unfortunate;

111.6. for they saw free children and marriageable maidens, unworthily of their age, set out on the road as it chanced, since the occasion took away the dignity and the modesty toward strangers. Likewise they grieved also with the older ones, seeing them compelled, contrary to nature, to hasten along with those in their prime.

112.1. At which the hatred against Dionysius was kindled; for they supposed that he had done this by design, in order to lord it safely over the other cities through the fear of the Carthaginians.

112.2. For they reckoned up the slowness of the aid, the fact that none of the mercenaries had fallen, that, no serious reverse having occurred, he had fled unreasonably, and, the greatest, that none of the enemy had followed; so that to those who had previously desired to get an occasion for revolt, everything contributed, as by the providence of the gods, to the overthrow of the dominion.

112.3. The Italiotes, then, abandoning him, made their march homeward through the interior, while the cavalry of the Syracusans at first watched, to see if they could kill the tyrant on the road; but when they saw the mercenaries not abandoning him, with one accord they rode off to Syracuse.

112.4. Finding those in the dockyards ignorant of the affairs about Gela, they entered with none preventing, and plundered the house of Dionysius, full of silver and gold and all the other costliness, and, having seized his wife, so ill-treated her that even the tyrant kept his wrath grievous, thinking that the punishment for this was the greatest pledge of their fellowship with one another in the attack.

112.5. Dionysius, in the journey conjecturing what had happened, picked out the most trustworthy of the cavalry and the foot, with whom he hastened toward the city, falling short in no haste; for he reckoned it would not otherwise be possible to prevail over the cavalry unless he hastened; which he did. For if he should make his arrival more unexpectedly than they, he hoped easily to master the design; which indeed turned out.

112.6. For the cavalry supposed that Dionysius would neither still depart nor remain at the camp; therefore, thinking they had mastered the design, they said that he had at Gela pretended to be fleeing from the Phoenicians, but now had in truth fled from the Syracusans.

113.1. Dionysius, having traversed about four hundred stadia, was present about midnight at the gate of Achradina with a hundred cavalry and six hundred foot; finding it shut, he applied to it the reed brought down from the marshes, which the Syracusans are accustomed to use for the binding of the plaster. While the gates were being burned, he took up the latecomers.

113.2. When the fire destroyed the gates, he with those who had followed rode in through Achradina, and the most powerful of the cavalry, hearing of what had happened, did not wait for the multitude, but immediately came out to the aid, being altogether few—they were about the marketplace—and, being encircled by the mercenaries, were all shot down.

113.3. Dionysius, going over the city, killed those who came out scattered to the aid, and went to the houses of those hostilely disposed, of whom some he killed, others he cast out of the city. The rest of the multitude of the cavalry, driven out of the city, seized the place now called Aetna.

113.4. At daybreak the multitude of the mercenaries and the army of the Sicilians came to Syracuse, but the Geloans and Camarinaeans, being at variance with Dionysius, departed to Leontini.

114.1. . . . Therefore, compelled by the situation, Himilco sent a herald to Syracuse, urging the defeated to come to terms. Dionysius gladly listening, they made peace on these terms: that the Carthaginians, with the original colonists, should have the Elymi and Sicani; that the Selinuntians and Acragantines, and besides the Himeraeans, and besides these the Geloans and Camarinaeans, should dwell in unwalled cities and pay tribute to the Carthaginians; that the Leontines and Messenians and all the Sicels should be autonomous, and that the Syracusans should be ranged under Dionysius, and that those holding the captives and the ships should give them back to those who had lost them.

114.2. The treaties having been made, the Carthaginians sailed off to Libya, having lost more than half their soldiers from the disease; and none the less, the plague remaining in Libya too, a very great number both of the Carthaginians themselves and of the allies were destroyed.