Volume 7 — CHAPTER LX. FROM THE RESUMPTION OF DIRECT HOSTILITIES BETWEEN ATHENS AND SPARTA, DOWN TO THE DESTRUCTION OF THE ATHENIAN ARMAMENT IN SICILY. (continued 2)

Every hour added to the distress of their position; for their food was all but exhausted, nor could any man straggle from the main body without encountering certain destruction from the cavalry. Accordingly, on the next morning, they tried one more desperate effort to get over the hilly ground into the interior. Starting very early, they arrived at the foot of the hill called the Akræan cliff, where they found the barricades placed across the road, with deep files of Syracusan hoplites behind them, and crowds of light troops lining the cliffs on each border. They made the most strenuous and obstinate efforts to force this inexpugnable position, but all their struggles were vain, while they suffered miserably from the missiles of the troops above. Amidst all the discouragement of this repulse, they were yet farther disheartened by storms of thunder and lightning, which occurred during the time, and which they construed as portents significant of their impending ruin.[503]

This fact strikingly illustrates both the change which the last two years had wrought in the contending parties, and the degree to which such religious interpretations of phenomena depended for their efficacy on predisposing temper, gloomy or cheerful. In the first battle between Nikias and the Syracusans, near the Great Harbor, some months before the siege was begun, a similar thunder-storm had taken place: on that occasion the Athenian soldiers had continued the battle unmoved, treating it as a natural event belonging to the season, and such indifference on their part had still farther imposed upon the alarmed Syracusans.[504] Now, both the self-confidence and the religious impression had changed sides.

Exhausted by their fruitless efforts, the Athenians fell back a short space to repose, when Gylippus tried to surround them by sending a detachment to block up the narrow road in their rear. This, however, they prevented, effecting their retreat into the open plain, where they passed the night, and on the ensuing day attempted once more the hopeless march over the Akræan cliff. But they were not allowed even to advance so far as the pass and the barricade. They were so assailed and harassed by the cavalry and darters, in flank and rear, that, in spite of heroic effort and endurance, they could not accomplish a progress of so much as one single mile. Extenuated by fatigue, half-starved, and with numbers of wounded men, they were compelled to spend a third miserable night in the same fatal plain.

As soon as the Syracusans had retired for the night to their camp, Nikias and Demosthenês took counsel. They saw plainly that the route which they had originally projected, over the Akræan cliff into the Sikel regions of the interior and from thence to Katana, had become impracticable, and that their unhappy troops would be still less in condition to force it on the morrow than they had been on the day preceding. Accordingly, they resolved to make off during the night, leaving numerous fires burning to mislead the enemy; but completely to alter the direction, and to turn down towards the southern coast on which lay Kamarina and Gela. Their guides informed them that if they could cross the river Kakyparis, which fell into the sea south of Syracuse, on the southeastern coast of Sicily, or a river still farther on, called the Erineus,—they might march up the right bank of either into the regions of the interior. Accordingly, they broke up in the night, amidst confusion and alarm; in spite of which, the front division of the army under Nikias got into full march, and made considerable advance. By daybreak this division reached the southeastern coast of the island not far south of Syracuse, and fell into the track of the Helôrine road, which they pursued until they arrived at the Kakyparis. Even here, however, they found a Syracusan detachment beforehand with them, raising a redoubt, and blocking up the ford; nor could Nikias pass it without forcing his way through them. He marched straightforward to the Erineus, which he crossed on the same day, and encamped his troops on some high ground on the other side.[505]

Except at the ford of the Kakyparis, his march had been all day unobstructed by the enemy; and he thought it wiser to push hid troops as fast as possible, in order to arrive at some place both of safety and subsistence, without concerning himself about the rear division under Demosthenês. That division, the larger half of the army, started both later and in great disorder. Unaccountable panics and darkness made them part company or miss their way, so that Demosthenês, with all his efforts to keep them together, made little progress, and fell much behind Nikias. He was overtaken by the Syracusans during the forenoon, seemingly before he reached the Kakyparis,[506] and at a moment when the foremost division was nearly six miles ahead, between the Kakyparis and the Erineus.

When the Syracusans discovered at dawn that their enemy had made off in the night, their first impulse was to accuse Gylippus of treachery in having permitted the escape. Such ungrateful surmises, however, were soon dissipated, and the cavalry set forth in rapid pursuit, until they overtook the rear division, which they immediately began to attack and impede. The advance of Demosthenês had been tardy before, and his division disorganized: but he was now compelled to turn and defend himself against an indefatigable enemy, who presently got before him and thus stopped him altogether. Their numerous light troops and cavalry assailed him on all sides and without intermission; employing nothing but missiles, however, and taking care to avoid any close encounter. While this unfortunate division were exerting their best efforts both to defend themselves, and if possible to get forward, they found themselves inclosed in a walled olive-ground, through the middle of which the road passed; a farm bearing the name, and probably once the property, of Polyzêlus, brother of the despot Gelon.[507] Entangled and huddled up in this inclosure, from whence exit at the farther end in the face of an enemy was found impossible, they were now overwhelmed with hostile missiles from the walls on all sides.[508] Though unable to get at the enemy, and deprived even of the resources of an active despair, they endured incessant harassing for the greater part of the day, without refreshment or repose, and with the number of their wounded continually increasing; until at length the remaining spirit of the unhappy sufferers was thoroughly broken. Perceiving their condition, Gylippus sent to them a herald with a proclamation; inviting all the islanders among them to come forth from the rest, and promising them freedom if they did so. The inhabitants of some cities, yet not many,—a fact much to their honor,—availed themselves of this offer and surrendered. Presently, however, a larger negotiation was opened, which ended by the entire division capitulating upon terms, and giving up their arms. Gylippus and the Syracusans engaged that the lives of all should be spared; that is, that none should be put to death either by violence, or by intolerable bonds, or by starvation. Having all been disarmed, they were forthwith conveyed away as prisoners to Syracuse, six thousand in number. It is a remarkable proof of the easy and opulent circumstances of many among these gallant sufferers, when we are told that the money which they had about them, even at this last moment of pressure, was sufficient to fill the concavities of four shields.[509] Disdaining either to surrender or to make any stipulation for himself personally, Demosthenês was on the point of killing himself with his own sword the moment that the capitulation was concluded; but his intention was prevented, and he was carried off a disarmed prisoner by the Syracusans.[510]

On the next day, Gylippus and the victorious Syracusans overtook Nikias on the right bank of the Erineus, apprized him of the capitulation of Demosthenês, and summoned him to capitulate also. He demanded leave to send a horseman for the purpose of verifying the statement; and on the return of the horseman, he made a proposition to Gylippus, that his army should be permitted to return home, on condition of Athens reimbursing to Syracuse the whole expense of the war, and furnishing hostages until payment should be made; one citizen against each talent of silver. These conditions were rejected; but Nikias could not yet bring himself to submit to the same terms for his division as Demosthenês. Accordingly, the Syracusans recommenced their attacks, which the Athenians, in spite of hunger and fatigue, sustained as they best could until night. It was the intention of Nikias again to take advantage of the night for the purpose of getting away. But on this occasion the Syracusans were on the watch, and as soon as they heard movement in the camp, they raised the pæan, or war-shout; thus showing that they were on the lookout, and inducing the Athenians again to lay down the arms which they had taken up for departure. A detachment of three hundred Athenians, nevertheless, still persisting in marching off, apart from the rest, forced their way through the posts of the Syracusans. These men got safely away, and nothing but the want of guides prevented them from escaping altogether.[511]

During all this painful retreat, the personal resolution displayed by Nikias was exemplary; his sick and feeble frame was made to bear up, and even to hearten up stronger men, against the extremity of hardship, exhausting the last fragment of hope or even possibility. It was now the sixth day of the retreat,—six days[512] of constant privation, suffering, and endurance of attack,—yet Nikias early in the morning attempted a fresh march, in order to get to the river Asinarus, which falls into the same sea, south of the Erineus, but is a more considerable stream, flowing deeply imbedded between lofty banks. This was a last effort of despair, with little hope of final escape, even if they did reach it. Yet the march was accomplished, in spite of renewed and incessant attacks all the way, from the Syracusan cavalry; who even got to the river before the Athenians, occupying the ford, and lining the high banks near it. Here the resolution of the unhappy fugitives at length gave way; when they reached the river, their strength, their patience, their spirit, and their hopes for the future, were all extinct. Tormented with raging thirst, and compelled by the attacks of the cavalry to march in one compact mass, they rushed into the ford all at once, treading down and tumbling over each other in the universal avidity for drink. Many thus perished from being pushed down upon the points of the spears, or lost their footing among the scattered articles of baggage, and were thus borne down under water.[513] Meanwhile, the Syracusans from above poured upon the huddled mass showers of missiles, while the Peloponnesian hoplites even descended into the river, came to close quarters with them, and slew considerable numbers. So violent, nevertheless, was the thirst of the Athenians, that all other suffering was endured in order to taste relief by drinking. And even when dead and wounded were heaped in the river,—when the water was tainted and turbid with blood, as well as thick with the mud trodden up,—still, the new-comers pushed their way in and swallowed it with voracity.[514]

Wretched, helpless, and demoralized as the army now was, Nikias could think no farther of resistance. He accordingly surrendered himself to Gylippus, to be dealt with at the discretion of that general and of the Lacedæmonians,[515] earnestly imploring that the slaughter of the defenceless soldiers might be arrested. Accordingly, Gylippus gave orders that no more should be killed, but that the rest should be secured as captives. Many were slain before this order was understood; but of those who remained, almost all were made captive, very few escaping. Nay, even the detachment of three hundred, who had broken out in the night, having seemingly not known whither to go, were captured, and brought in by troops sent forth for the purpose.[516] The triumph of the Syracusans was in every way complete, they hung the trees on the banks of the Asinarus with Athenian panoplies as trophy, and carried back their prisoners in joyous procession to the city.

The number of prisoners thus made, is not positively specified by Thucydidês, as in the case of the division of Demosthenês, which had capitulated and laid down their arms in a mass within the walls of the olive-ground. Of the captives from the division of Nikias, the larger proportion were seized by private individuals, and fraudulently secreted for their own profit; the number obtained for the state being comparatively small, seemingly not more than one thousand.[517] The various Sicilian towns became soon full of these prisoners, sold as slaves for private account.

Not less than forty thousand persons in the aggregate had started from the Athenian camp to commence the retreat, six days before. Of these probably many, either wounded or otherwise incompetent even when the march began, soon found themselves unable to keep up, and were left behind to perish. Each of the six days was a day of hard fighting and annoyance from an indefatigable crowd of light troops, with little, and at last seemingly nothing, to eat. The number was thus successively thinned, by wounds, privations, and straggling, so that the six thousand taken with Demosthenês, and perhaps three thousand or four thousand captured with Nikias, formed the melancholy remnant. Of the stragglers during the march, however, we are glad to learn that many contrived to escape the Syracusan cavalry and get to Katana, where also those who afterwards ran away from their slavery under private masters, found a refuge.[518] These fugitive Athenians served as auxiliaries to repel the attacks of the Syracusans upon Katana.[519]

It was in this manner, chiefly, that Athens came to receive again within her bosom a few of those ill-fated sons whom she had drafted forth in two such splendid divisions to Sicily. For of those who were carried as prisoners to Syracuse, fewer yet could ever have got home. They were placed for safe custody, along with the other prisoners, in the stone-quarries of Syracuse,—of which there were several, partly on the southern descent of the outer city towards the Nekropolis, or from the higher level to the lower level of Achradina,—partly in the suburb afterwards called Neapolis, under the southern cliff of Epipolæ. Into these quarries—deep hollows of confined space, with precipitous sides, and open at the top to the sky—the miserable prisoners were plunged, lying huddled one upon another, without the smallest protection or convenience. For subsistence, they received each day a ration of one pint of wheaten bread,—half the daily ration of a slave,—with no more than half a pint of water, so that they were not preserved from the pangs either of hunger or of thirst. Moreover, the heat of the midday sun, alternating with the chill of the autumn nights, was alike afflicting and destructive; while the wants of life having all to be performed where they were, without relief, the filth and stench presently became insupportable. Sick and wounded even at the moment of arrival, many of them speedily died; and happiest was he who died the first, leaving an unconscious corpse, which the Syracusans would not take the trouble to remove, to distress and infect the survivors. Under this condition and treatment they remained for seventy days; probably serving as a spectacle for the triumphant Syracusan population, with their wives and children, to come and look down upon, and to congratulate themselves on their own narrow escape from sufferings similar in kind at least, if not in degree. After that time the novelty of the spectacle had worn off, while the place must have become a den of abomination and a nuisance intolerable even to the citizens themselves. Accordingly, they now removed all the surviving prisoners, except the native Athenians and the few Italian or Sicilian Greeks among them. All those so removed were sold for slaves;[520] while the dead bodies were probably at the same time taken away, and the prison rendered somewhat less loathsome. What became of the remaining prisoners, we are not told; it may be presumed that those who could survive so great an extremity of suffering might after a certain time be allowed to get back to Athens on ransom. Perhaps some of them may have obtained their release; as was the case, we are told, with several of those who had been sold to private masters, by the elegance of their accomplishments and the dignity of their demeanor. The dramas of Euripidês were so peculiarly popular throughout all Sicily, that those Athenian prisoners who knew by heart considerable portions of them, won the affections of their masters. Some even of the stragglers from the army are affirmed to have procured for themselves, by the same attraction, shelter and hospitality during their flight. Euripidês, we are informed, lived to receive the thanks of several among these unhappy sufferers, after their return to Athens.[521] I cannot refrain from mentioning this story, though I fear its trustworthiness as matter of fact is much inferior to its pathos and interest.

Upon the treatment of Nikias and Demosthenês, not merely the Syracusans, but also the allies present, were consulted, and much difference of opinion was found. To keep them in confinement simply, without putting them to death, was apparently the opinion advocated by Hermokratês.[522] But Gylippus, then in full ascendency and an object of deep gratitude for his invaluable services, solicited as a reward to himself to be allowed to conduct them back as prisoners to Sparta. To achieve this would have earned for him signal honor in the eyes of his countrymen; for while Demosthenês, from his success at Pylos, was their hated enemy, Nikias had always shown himself their friend as far as an Athenian could do so. It was to him that they owed the release of their prisoners taken at Sphakteria; and he had calculated upon this obligation when he surrendered himself prisoner to Gylippus, and not to the Syracusans.

In spite of all his influence, however, Gylippus could not carry this point. First, the Corinthians both strenuously opposed him themselves, and prevailed on the other allies to do the same. They were afraid that the wealth of Nikias would always procure for him the means of escaping from imprisonment, so as to do them farther injury, and they insisted on his being put to death. Next, those Syracusans, who had been in secret correspondence with Nikias during the siege, were yet more anxious to get him put out of the way, being apprehensive that, if tortured by their political opponents, he might disclose their names and intrigues. Such various influences prevailed, and Nikias as well as Demosthenês was ordered to be put to death by a decree of the public assembly, much to the discontent of Gylippus. Hermokratês vainly opposed the resolution, but perceiving that it was certain to be carried, he sent to them a private intimation before the discussion closed; and procured for them, through one of the sentinels, the means of dying by their own hands. Their bodies were publicly exposed before the city gates to the view of the Syracusan citizens;[523] while the day on which the final capture of Nikias and his army was accomplished, came to be celebrated as an annual festival, under the title of the Asinaria, on the twenty-sixth day of the Dorian month Karneius.[524]

Such was the close of the expedition, or rather of the two expeditions, undertaken by Athens against Syracuse. Never in Grecian history had a force so large, so costly, so efficient, and so full of promise and confidence, been turned out; never in Grecian history had ruin so complete and sweeping, or victory so glorious and unexpected, been witnessed.[525] Its consequences were felt from one end of the Grecian world to the other, as will appear in the coming chapters.

The esteem and admiration felt at Athens towards Nikias had been throughout lofty and unshaken; after his death it was exchanged for disgrace. His name was omitted, while that of his colleague Demosthenês was engraved, on the funereal pillar erected to commemorate the fallen warriors. This difference Pausanias explains by saying that Nikias was conceived to have disgraced himself as a military man by his voluntary surrender, which Demosthenês had disdained.[526]

The opinion of Thucydidês deserves special notice, in the face of this judgment of his countrymen. While he says not a word about Demosthenês, beyond the fact of his execution, he adds in reference to Nikias a few words of marked sympathy and commendation. “Such, or nearly such, (he says,) were the reasons why Nikias was put to death; though he assuredly, among all Greeks of my time, least deserved to come to so extreme a pitch of ill-fortune, considering his exact performance of established duties to the divinity.”[527]

If we were judging Nikias merely as a private man, and setting his personal conduct in one scale against his personal suffering on the other, the remark of Thucydidês would be natural and intelligible. But the general of a great expedition, upon whose conduct the lives of thousands of brave men as well as the most momentous interests of his country, depend, cannot be tried by any such standard. His private merit becomes a secondary point in the case, as compared with the discharge of his responsible public duties, by which he must stand or fall.

Tried by this more appropriate standard, what are we to say of Nikias? We are compelled to say, that if his personal suffering could possibly be regarded in the light of an atonement, or set in an equation against the mischief brought by himself both on his army and his country, it would not be greater than his deserts. I shall not here repeat the separate points in his conduct which justify this view, and which have been set forth as they have occurred, in the preceding pages. Admitting fully both the good intentions of Nikias, and his personal bravery, rising even into heroism during the last few days in Sicily, it is not the less incontestable, that, first, the failure of the enterprise, next, the destruction of the armament, is to be traced distinctly to his lamentable misjudgment. Sometimes petty trifling, sometimes apathy and inaction, sometimes presumptuous neglect, sometimes obstinate blindness even to urgent and obvious necessities, one or other of these his sad mental defects, will be found operative at every step, whereby this fated armament sinks down from exuberant efficiency into the last depth of aggregate ruin and individual misery. His improvidence and incapacity stand proclaimed, not merely in the narrative of the historian, but even in his own letter to the Athenians, and in his own speeches both before the expedition and during its closing misfortunes, when contrasted with the reality of his proceedings. The man whose flagrant incompetency brought such wholesale ruin upon two fine armaments intrusted to his command, upon the Athenian maritime empire, and ultimately upon Athens herself, must appear on the tablets of history under the severest condemnation, even though his personal virtues had been loftier than those of Nikias.

And yet our great historian, after devoting two immortal books to this expedition, after setting forth emphatically both the glory of its dawn and the wretchedness of its close, with a dramatic genius parallel to the Œdipus Tyrannus of Sophoklês, when he comes to recount the melancholy end of the two commanders, has no words to spare for Demosthenês,—far the abler officer of the two, who perished by no fault of his own,—but reserves his flowers to strew on the grave of Nikias, the author of the whole calamity—“What a pity! Such a respectable and religious man!”

Thucydidês is here the more instructive, because he exactly represents the sentiment of the general Athenian public towards Nikias during his lifetime. They could not bear to condemn, to mistrust, to dismiss, or to do without, so respectable and religious a citizen. The private qualities of Nikias were not only held to entitle him to the most indulgent construction of all his public shortcomings, but also insured to him credit for political and military competence altogether disproportionate to his deserts. When we find Thucydidês, after narrating so much improvidence and mismanagement on the grand scale, still keeping attention fixed on the private morality and decorum of Nikias, as if it constituted the main feature of his character, we can understand how the Athenian people originally came both to over-estimate this unfortunate leader, and continued over-estimating him with tenacious fidelity even after glaring proof of his incapacity. Never in the political history of Athens did the people make so fatal a mistake in placing their confidence.

In reviewing the causes of popular misjudgment, historians are apt to enlarge prominently, if not exclusively, on demagogues and demagogic influences. Mankind being usually considered in the light of governable material, or as instruments for exalting, arming, and decorating their rulers, whatever renders them more difficult to handle in this capacity, ranks first in the category of vices. Nor can it be denied that this was a real and serious cause: clever criminative speakers often passed themselves off for something above their real worth; though useful and indispensable as a protection against worse, they sometimes deluded the people into measures impolitic or unjust. But, even if we grant, to the cause of misjudgment here indicated, a greater practical efficiency than history will fairly sanction, still, it is only one among others more mischievous. Never did any man at Athens, by mere force of demagogic qualities, acquire a measure of esteem at once so exaggerated and so durable, combined with so much power of injuring his fellow-citizens, as the anti-demagogic Nikias. The man who, over and above his shabby manœuvre about the expedition against Sphakteria, and his improvident sacrifice of Athenian interests in the alliance with Sparta, ended by inflicting on his country that cruel wound which destroyed so many of her citizens as well as her maritime empire, was not a leather-seller of impudent and criminative eloquence, but a man of ancient family and hereditary wealth, munificent and affable, having credit not merely for the largesses which he bestowed, but also for all the insolences, which as a rich man he might have committed, but did not commit,—free from all pecuniary corruption,—a brave man, and above all, an ultra-religious man, believed therefore to stand high in the favor of the gods, and to be fortunate. Such was the esteem which the Athenians felt for this union of good qualities purely personal and negative with eminent station, that they presumed the higher aptitudes of command,[528] and presumed them, unhappily, after proof that they did not exist,—after proof that what they had supposed to be caution was only apathy and mental weakness. No demagogic arts or eloquence would ever have created in the people so deep-seated an illusion as the imposing respectability of Nikias. Now it was against the overweening ascendency of such decorous and pious incompetence, when aided by wealth and family advantages, that the demagogic accusatory eloquence ought to have served as a natural bar and corrective. Performing the functions of a constitutional opposition, it afforded the only chance of that tutelary exposure whereby blunders and shortcomings might be arrested in time. How insufficient was the check which it provided,—even at Athens, where every one denounces it as having prevailed in devouring excess,—the history of Nikias is an ever-living testimony.