Justin, Epitome of Pompeius Trogus (1886). pp. 1-90. Preface, Books 1-10
EXTRACTED FROM
AFTER many Romans,1 men even of consular dignity, had committed the acts of their countrymen to writing in Greek, a foreign language, 2 Trogus Pompeius, a man of eloquence equal to that of the ancients, 3 whether prompted by a desire to emulate their glory, or charmed by the variety and novelty of the undertaking, composed the history of Greece, and of the whole world, in the Latin tongue, in order that, as our actions might be read in Greek, so those of the Greeks might be read in our language; attempting a work that demanded extraordinary resolution and labour. For when, to most authors who write the history only of particular princes or nations, their task appears an affair of arduous effort, must not Trogus Pompeius, in attempting the whole world, seem to have acted with a boldness like that of Hercules, since in his books are contained the actions of all ages, monarchs, nations, and people? All that the historians of Greece had undertaken separately, according to what was suitable to each, Trogus Pompeius, omitting only what was useless, has put |2 together in one narration, everything being assigned to its proper period, and arranged in the regular order of events. From these forty-four volumes therefore (for such was the number that he published), I have extracted, during the leisure that I enjoyed in the city, whatever was most worthy of being known; and, rejecting such parts as were neither attractive for the pleasure of reading, nor necessary by way of example, have formed, as it were, a small collection of flowers, that those who are acquainted with the history of Greece might have something to refresh their memories, and those who are strangers to it something for their instruction. This work I have sent to you, 4 not so much that it may add to your knowledge, as that it may receive your correction; and that, at the same time, the account of my leisure, of which Cato thinks that an account must be given, may stand fair with you. For your approbation is sufficient for me for the present, with the expectation of receiving from posterity, when the malice of detraction has died away, an ample testimony to my diligence. |3
The monarchy of the Assyrians, Ninus, I.----Semiramis, II. ----Sardanapalus, III.----The monarchy of the Medes; Astyages, IV.----The youth of Cyrus, V.----He becomes king, VI.----His victory over Croesus; Candaules and Gyges, VII.----Expedition of Cyrus against the Scythians; his death, VIII.----Cambyses; the Magi; Otanes, IX.----Darius, the son of Hystaspes, X.
I. ORIGINALLY,5 the government of nations and tribes was in the hands of kings; 6 whom it was not their flattery of the people, but their discretion, as commended by the prudent, that elevated to the height of this dignity. The people were not then bound by any laws; the wills of their princes were instead of laws. It was their custom to defend, rather than advance, 7 the boundaries of their empire. The dominions of each were confined within his own country.
The first of all princes, who, from an extravagant desire of ruling, changed this old and, as it were, hereditary custom, was Ninus, king of the Assyrians. It was he who first made war upon his neighbours, and subdued the nations, as yet too barbarous to resist him, as far as the frontiers of Libya Sesostris,8 king of Egypt, and Tanaus,9 king of Scythia, were indeed prior to him in time; the one of whom advanced into Pontus, and the other as far as Egypt; but these princes engaged in distant wars, not in struggles with their |4 neighbours; they did not seek dominion for themselves, but glory for their people, and, content with victory, declined to govern those whom they subdued. But Ninus established the greatness of his acquired dominion by immediately possessing himself of the conquered countries.10 Overcoming, accordingly, the nearest people, and advancing, fortified with an accession of strength, against others, while each successive victory became the instrument of one to follow, he subjugated the nations of the whole east. His last war was with Zoroaster, 11 king of the Bactrians, who is said to have been the first that invented magic arts, and to have investigated, with great attention, the origin of the world and the motions of the stars. After killing Zoroaster, Ninus himself died, leaving a son called Ninyas, still a minor, and a wife, whose name was Semiramis.12
II. Semiramis, not daring to entrust the government to a youth, or openly to take it upon herself (as so many great, nations would scarcely submit to one man, much less to a woman), pretended that she was the son of Ninus instead of his wife, a male instead of a female. The stature of both mother and son was low, their voice alike weak, and the cast of their features similar. She accordingly clad her arms and legs in long garments, and decked her head with a turban; and, that she might not appear to conceal any thing by this new dress, she ordered her subjects also to wear the same apparel; a fashion which the whole nation has since retained. Having thus dissembled her sex at the commencement of her |5 reign, she was believed to be a male. Sbe afterwards performed many noble actions; and when she thought envy was overcome by the greatness of them, she acknowledged who she was, and whom she had personated. Nor did this confession detract from her authority as a sovereign, but increased the admiration of her, since she, being a woman, surpassed, not only women, but men, in heroism.
It was she that built Babylon,13 and constructed round the city a wall of burnt brick; bitumen, a substance which everywhere oozes from the ground in those parts, being spread between the bricks instead of mortar. 14 Many other famous acts, too, were performed by this queen; for, not content with preserving the territories acquired by her husband, she added Ethiopia also to her empire; and she even made war upon India, into which no prince, 15 except her and Alexander the Great, ever penetrated. At last, conceiving a criminal passion for her son, she was killed by him, after holding the kingdom two and forty years from the death of Ninus.
Her son Ninyas, content with the empire acquired by his parents, laid aside the pursuits of war, and, as if he had changed sexes with his mother, was seldom seen by men, but grew old in the company of his women. His successors too, following his example, gave answers to their people through their ministers. The Assyrians, who were afterwards called Syrians, held their empire thirteen hundred years.
III. The last king that reigned over them was Sardanapalus, a man more effeminate than a woman. One of his satraps, named Arbaces, governor of the Medes, having, with great difficulty and after much solicitation, obtained admission to visit him, found him, among crowds of concubines, and in the dress, of a woman, spinning purple wool with a distaff, and |6 distributing tasks to girls, but surpassing all the women in the effeminacy of his person and the wantonness of his looks. At that sight, feeling indignant that so many men should be subject to one so much of a woman, and that those who bore swords and arms should obey one that handled wool, he proceeded to his companions, and told them what he had seen, protesting that he could not submit to a prince who had rather be a woman than a man. A conspiracy was consequently formed, and war raised against Sardanapalus; who, hearing of what had occurred, and acting, not like a man that would defend his kingdom, but as women are wont to do under fear of death, first looked about for a hiding-place, but afterwards marched into the field with a few ill-disciplined troops. Being conquered in battle, he withdrew into his palace, and, having raised and set fire to a pile of combustibles, threw himself and his riches into the flames, in this respect only acting like a man. After him Arbaces, who was the occasion of his death, and who had been governor of the Medes, was made king, and transferred the empire from the Assyrians to the Medes.
IV. After several kings, the crown, by order of succession, descended to Astyages. This prince, in a dream, saw a vine spring from the womb of his only daughter, with the branches of which all Asia was overshadowed. The soothsayers being consulted concerning the vision, replied, that he would have a grandson by that daughter, whose greatness was foreshown, and the loss of Astyages's kingdom portended. Alarmed at this answer, he gave his daughter in marriage, not to an eminent man, nor to one of his own subjects (lest nobility on the father or mother's side should rouse the spirit of his grandson), but to Cambyses, a man of mean fortune, and of the race of the Persians, which was at that time obscure. But not having, even thus, got rid of his fear of the dream, he sent for his daughter, while she was pregnant, that her child might be put to death under the very eye of his grandfather. The infant, as soon as it was born, was given to Harpagus, a friend of the king's and in his secrets, to be killed. Harpagus, fearing that if the crown, on the death of the king (as Astyages had no male issue), should devolve upon his daughter, she might exact from the agent, for the murder of her child, that revenge which she could not inflict on her |7 father, gave the infant to the herdsman of the king's cattle to be exposed. The herdsman, by chance, had a son born at the same time; and his wife, hearing of the exposure of the royal infant, entreated, with the utmost earnestness, that the child might be brought and shown to her. The herdsman, overcome by her solicitations, went back into the wood, and found a dog by the infant, giving it her teats, and protecting it from the beasts and birds of prey. Being moved with pity, with which he saw even a dog moved, he carried the child to the cattle-folds, the dog vigilantly following him. When the woman took the babe into her hands, it smiled upon her as if it knew her; and there appeared so much vivacity in it, with a certain sweetness in its smile as it clung to her, that the wife at once entreated the herdsman to expose her own child instead of the other, and to allow her to bring up the royal infant, whether to his own fortune or to her hopes.16 Thus the lot of the children being changed, the one was brought up as the shepherd's son, and the other exposed as the king's grandson. The nurse had afterwards the name of Spaco; for so the Persians call a dog.
V. The boy after a time, while he was among the shepherds, received the name of Cyrus. Subsequently, being chosen by lot king among his play-fellows, and having boldly scourged such of them as were disobedient to him, a complaint was made to the king by the parents of the boys, who were angry that free-born youths should be lashed with servile stripes by the king's slave. Astyages having sent for the boy and questioned him, and the boy replying, without any change of countenance, that "he had acted as a king," was struck with his high spirit, and reminded of his dream and its interpretation. In consequence, as both the resemblance of his features, the time of his exposure, and the confession of the herdsman, concurred exactly, he acknowledged him as his grandson. And since he seemed to have had his dream accomplished, by the boy's exercise of rule among the shepherds, he subdued his feelings of animosity; but with regard to him only; for, being incensed with his friend Harpagus, he, in revenge for the preservation of his grandson, killed his son, |8 and gave him to his father to eat. Harpagus, dissembling his resentment for the present, deferred showing his malice towards the king, until a proper time for vengeance should occur.
Some time having elapsed, and Cyrus being grown up, Harpagus, prompted by his resentment for the loss of his child, wrote him an account how he had been banished to the Persians by his grandfather; how his grandfather had ordered him to be killed when he was an infant; how he had been saved by his kindness; how he himself had incurred the king's displeasure, and how he had lost his son. He exhorted him to raise an army, and march directly to seize the throne, promising that the Medes should join him. This letter, because it could not be conveyed openly, as the king's guards occupied all the roads, was enclosed in the body of a hare, of which the bowels had been taken out; and the hare was committed to a trusty slave, to be carried into Persia to Cyrus. Nets were also given him, that the plot might be concealed under the appearance of a hunting expedition.
VI. Cyrus, after reading the letter, was exhorted in a dream to make the same attempt; but was also admonished to take the first man that he should meet on the following day, as a companion in his enterprize. Commencing his journey from the country, accordingly, before it was light, he met a slave named Soebaris, coming from the slave-house of a certain Mede. Having questioned him as to his birth-place, and hearing that he was born in Persia, he knocked off his fetters, took him with him as his companion, and returned to Per-sepolis. Here, having called the people together, he ordered them all to attend him with axes, and to cut down a wood that skirted each side of the road. When they had thoroughly accomplished this, he invited them on the following day to a feast prepared for them. Then, as soon as he saw them exhilarated with the banquet, he asked them, "if an offer were made them, which sort of life they would choose, a life of labour like that of yesterday, or of feasting like the present?" As they all exclaimed, "A life of feasting like the present," he told them that, "as long as they obeyed the Medes, they must lead a life like the drudgery of yesterday; but, if they would follow him, a life like the present entertainment." All expressing their joy, he made war upon the Medes. |9
Astyages, forgetting his treatment of Harpagus, entrusted him with the management of the war. Harpagus immediately delivered up the forces, which he had received from Astyages, to Cyrus, and took revenge for the king's cruelty by a treacherous desertion of him. Astyages, hearing of this occurrence, and collecting troops from all quarters, marched against the Persians in person. Having vigorously renewed the contest, he posted part of his army, while his men were fighting, in their rear, and ordered that those who turned back should be driven on the enemy with the point of the sword; telling them that, "unless they conquered, they would find men in their rear not less stout than those in their front; and they were therefore to consider whether they would penetrate the one body by fleeing, or the other body by fighting." In consequence of this obligation to fight, great spirit and vigour was infused into his army. As the Persian troops, therefore, were driven back, and were gradually retiring, their mothers and wives ran to meet them, and besought them to return to the field. While they hesitated, they took up their garments, and showed them the secret parts of their persons, asking them, "if they would shrink back into the wombs of their mothers or their wives." Checked with this reproach, they returned to the battle, and, making a vigorous assault, compelled those from whom they had fled to flee in their turn. In this battle Astyages was taken prisoner; from whom Cyrus took nothing but his kingdom, and, acting towards him the part rather of a grandson than of a conqueror, made him ruler of the powerful nation of the Hyrcanians; for to the Medes he was unwilling to return. Such was the termination of the empire of the Medes, who had ruled three hundred and fifty years.
VII. In the beginning of his reign, Cyrus appointed Soebaris (his companion in his undertakings, whom, in conformity with his dream, he had released from the slave-house, and made a sharer in all his enterprises), governor of Persia, and gave him his sister in marriage. But several cities, which had been tributary to the Medes, thinking that their condition was changed by this change in the government, revolted from Cyrus; a revolt which was the occasion and source of many wars against him. When he had at length, however, reduced most of them to submission, and was carrying |10 on war against the Babylonians, Croesus, king of Lydia, whose power and riches were at that time extraordinary, came to the aid of that people, but, being soon defeated and abandoned, fled back to his kingdom. Cyrus, after his victory, as soon as he had settled affairs in Babylonia, transferred the war into Lydia, where he easily routed the army of Craesus, already dispirited by the event of the former battle. Croesus himself was taken prisoner. But in proportion to the smallness of the danger in the battle, was the greatness of the clemency shown by Cyrus on his victory. To Croesus was granted his life, part of his hereditary possessions, and the city Barene,17 in. which he lived, though not the life of a king, yet one scarcely inferior to royal dignity. This lenity was of no less advantage to the conqueror than to the conquered; for when it was known that war was made upon Craesus, auxiliaries flocked to him from the whole of Greece, 18 as if to extinguish a conflagration that threatened them all; so popular was Croesus in all the Greek cities; and Cyrus would have incurred a heavy war with Greece, if he had resolved on any severe treatment of Croesus.
Some time after, when Cyrus was engaged in other wars, the Lydians rebelled, and, being a second time conquered, their arms and horses were taken from them, and they were compelled to keep taverns, to turn their thoughts to amusements, and open houses of pleasure. Thus a nation, formerly powerful through its industry, and brave in the field, was rendered effeminate by ease and luxury, and lost its ancient spirit; and those whom their wars had proved invincible till the time of Cyrus, idleness and sloth overpowered when they had fallen into dissoluteness of manners.
The Lydians had many kings before Craesus, remarkable for various turns of fate; but none to be compared, in singularity |11 of fortune, to Candaules. This prince used to speak of his wife, on whom he doated for her extreme beauty, to every body, for he was not content with the quiet consciousness of his happiness, unless he also published the secrets of his married life; just as if silence concerning her beauty had been a detraction from it. At last, to gain credit to his representations, he showed her undressed to his confidant, Gyges; an act by which he both rendered his friend, who was thus tempted to corrupt his wife, his enemy, and alienated his wife from him, by transferring, as it were, her love to another; for, soon after, the murder of Candaules was stipulated as the condition of her marriage with Gyges, and the wife, making her husband's blood her dowry, bestowed at once his kingdom and herself on her paramour.
VIII. Cyrus, after subduing Asia,19 and reducing the whole of the east under his power, made war upon the Scythians. At that time, the Scythians were ruled by a queen named Tomyris, who, not alarmed like a woman at the approach of an enemy, suffered them to pass the river Araxes, though she might have hindered them from passing it; thinking that it would be easier for her to fight within the limits of her kingdom, and that escape would be harder for the enemy from the obstruction of the river. Cyrus accordingly, having carried his troops across, and advanced some distance into Scythia, pitched his camp. On the day following, having quitted his camp in pretended alarm, and as if in full flight, he left behind him abundance of wine, and such things as were proper for a feast. The news of this event being brought to the queen, she despatched her son, a very young man, with a third part of her army, in pursuit of him. When they reached the camp of Cyrus, the youth, inexperienced in military matters, seeming to think he was come to feast and not to fight, paid no attention
to the enemy, but allowed his barbarians, who were unused to wine, to overload themselves with it; so that the Scythians were overcome with wine before they were subdued by the enemy; for Cyrus, learning what had happened, and returning in the night, fell upon them unawares, 20 and killed all the Scythians together with the queen's son. |12
But Tomyris, after losing so great an army, and, what she still more lamented, her only son, did not pour forth her sorrow for her loss in tears, but turned her thoughts to the solace of revenge, and entrapped her enemies, exulting in their recent victory, by a deception and stratagem similar to their own. For, counterfeiting timidity on account of the damage which she had received, and taking to flight, she allured Cyrus into a narrow defile, where, placing an ambush on the hills, she slew two hundred thousand of the Persians with their king himself; a triumph in which this also was remarkable, that not a man to tell of such a massacre survived. The queen ordered the head of Cyrus to be cut off and thrown into a vessel full of human blood, adding this exclamation against his cruelty, "Satiate thyself with blood for which thou hast thirsted, and of which thou hast always been insatiable." Cyrus reigned thirty years, and was a man wonderfully distinguished, not only in the beginning of his reign, but during the whole course of his life.
IX. He was succeeded by his son Cambyses, who added Egypt to his father's dominions, but, disgusted at the superstitions of the Egyptians, ordered the temples of Apis and the other gods to be demolished. He also sent an army to destroy the celebrated temple of Ammon; which army was overwhelmed with tempests and heaps of sand, and utterly annihilated. Afterwards he learned in a dream that his brother Smerdis was to be king. Alarmed at this vision, he did not scruple to add fratricide 21 to sacrilege; nor was it to be expected, indeed, that he, who, in contempt of religion, had braved the gods themselves, would spare his own relations. To execute this cruel service, he selected from his confidants a man named Prexaspes, one of the Magi. But in the mean time, he himself, being severely hurt in the thigh by his sword, which had started out of its sheath,22 died of the wound, and |13 paid the penalty whether of the fratricide which he had intended, or of the sacrilege which he had perpetrated. The Magus, receiving intelligence of this event, despatched his commission before the report of the king's death was spread abroad, and, having killed Smerdis, to whom the kingdom belonged, set up in his room his own brother Orospastes, who closely resembled him in features and person, and, no one suspecting any imposture in the case, Orospastes was declared king instead of Smerdis. This transaction was the more easily kept secret, as, among the Persians, the person of. the king is concealed from public view, under pretext of keeping his majesty inviolate. The Magi,23 to gain the favour of the people, granted a remission of the taxes, and an immunity from military service, for three years, that they might secure by indulgence and bounties the kingdom which they had gained by fraud. The imposition was first suspected by Otanes, a man of noble birth, and extremely happy in forming conjectures. He accordingly, by the aid of certain agents, inquired of his daughter, who was one of the royal concubines, whether the son of king Cyrus was now king. She replied that "she neither knew, nor could learn from any other woman, as all the females were shut up in separate apartments." He then desired her to feel his head while he was asleep; as Cambyses had cut off both the Magus's ears. Being then assured by his daughter that "the king was without ears," he disclosed the affair to some of the Persian noblemen, and, having persuaded them to murder the pretended king, bound them to the commission of the deed by a solemn oath. To this conspiracy seven only were privy, who at once (lest if time were allowed for change of mind, the affair should be made public by any one) proceeded to the palace with swords hidden under their garments. Here, having killed all that they met, they made their way to the Magi, who indeed did not want courage to defend themselves, for they drew their swords and killed two of the conspirators. They were overpowered, however, by numbers. Gobryas, having seized one of them by the waist, and his companions hesitating to use |14 their swords, lest, as the affair was transacted in the dark, they should stab him instead of the Magus, desired them to thrust the weapon into the Magus even through his body; but, as good fortune directed, the Magus was slain, and Gobryas escaped unhurt.
X. The Magi being slain, the glory of the noblemen, in having recovered the kingdom, was indeed great, but proved far greater in this, that when they came to debate about the disposal of it, they were able to act in concert. They were so equal in merit and nobility of birth, that their very equality would have rendered it hard for the people to make a selection from them. They themselves, therefore, contrived a method by which they might refer the judgment respecting them to religion 24 and fortune, and agreed that, on an appointed day, they should all bring their horses early in the morning before the palace, and that he whose horse should neigh first, on the rising of the sun, 25 should be king. For the Persians believe the sun to be the only god, and regard horses as sacred to the god. Among the conspirators was Darius the son of Hystaspes, to whom, when he felt anxious about his chance of the kingdom, his groom said that, "if that matter was the only obstacle to his success, there would not be the least difficulty about it." The groom then took the horse, in the night before the appointed day, to the place agreed upon, and there let him cover a mare, thinking that from the pleasure of the leap would result what actually came to pass. On the next day, accordingly, when they were all met at the appointed hour, the horse of Darius, recognizing the place, set up a neigh from desire for the mare, and, while the other horses were silent, was the first to give a fortunate signal for his master. Such was the moderation of the other nobles, that when they heard the omen, they immediately leaped from their horses, and saluted Darius as king. The whole people too, following the judgment of their chiefs, acknowledged him as their ruler. Thus the kingdom of the Persians, recovered by |15 the valour of seven of its noblest men, was by so easy a mode of decision conferred upon one of them. It is incredible that they should have resigned, with so much patience, their pretensions to a kingdom, for which, in order to recover it from the Magi, they had not hesitated to expose their lives. However, besides possessing gracefulness of person, and merit deserving of such an empire, Darius was related to the preceding kings; and, in the beginning of his reign, he took to wife the daughter of Cyrus, in order to strengthen his kingdom by a royal marriage, so that it might not so much, seem transferred to a stranger, as to be restored to Cyrus's family.
Some time after, when the Assyrians had revolted and seized upon Babylon, and the capture of the city proved difficult, so that the king was in great anxiety about it, Zopyrus, one of the assassins of the Magi, caused himself to be mangled with stripes, in his own house, over his whole body, and his nose, ears, and lips to be cut off, and in this condition presented himself unexpectedly before the king; when he privately informed Darius, who was astonished, and inquired the cause and author of so dire an outrage, with what object he had done it, and, having settled his plan of action for the future, set out for Babylon in the character of a deserter. There he showed the people his lacerated body; complained of the barbarity of the king, by whom, in the competition for the throne, he had been defeated, not by merit but by fortune, not by the judgment of men but by the neighing of a horse; and bade them form an opinion, from his treatment of his friends, what was to be apprehended by his enemies; exhorting them not to trust to their walls more than to their arms, and to allow him, whose resentment was fresher, to carry on the war in common with them. The nobleness and bravery of the man was known to them all; nor did they doubt of his sincerity, of which they had the wounds on his person, and the marks of his ill-usage, as proofs. He was therefore chosen general by the suffrages of all; and, having received a small body of men, and the Persians, once or twice, purposely retreating from the field, he fought some successful battles. At last he betrayed the whole army, with which he had been entrusted, to Darius, and brought the city under his power. Some time after, Darius |16 made war upon the Scythians, as shall be related in the following book.
Account of the Scythians and their actions, I., II., III.----The Amazons, IV.----The war of the Scythians with their slaves; the expeditions of Darius against the Scythians and Ionians, V.----The Athenians, and Solon, VI., VII.----Pisistratus, VIII.----Hippias, being exiled, brings the Persians against Greece; the battle of Marathon; Miltiades, IX.----The sons of Darius; Xerxes invades Greece, X.----Leonidas at Thermopylae, XI.----The battle of Salamis, XII.----Mardonius; the flight of Xerxes, XIII.----The battle of Plataeae, XIV.----The walls of Athens; Pausanias; Aristides; Cimon, XV.
I. IN narrating the acts of the Scythians, which were very great and glorious, we must commence from their origin; for they had a rise not less illustrious than their empire; nor were they more famous for the government of their men than for the brave actions of their women. As the men were founders of the Parthians and Bactrians, the women settled the kingdom of the Amazons; so that to those who compare the deeds of their males and females, it is difficult to decide which of the sexes was more distinguished.
The nation of the Scythians was always regarded as very ancient; though there was long a dispute between them and the Egyptians concerning the antiquity of their respective races; the Egyptians alleging that, "In the beginning of things, when some countries were parched with the excessive heat of the sun, and others frozen with extremity of cold, so that, in their early condition, they were not only unable to produce human beings, but were incapable even of receiving and supporting such as came from other parts (before coverings for the body were found out against heat and cold, or the inconveniences of countries corrected by artificial remedies), Egypt was always so temperate, that neither the cold in winter nor the sun's heat in summer, incommoded its inhabitants; and its soil so fertile, that no land was ever more productive of food for the use of man; and that, consequently, men must |17reasonably be considered to have been first produced in that country,26 where they could most easily be nourished."
The Scythians, on the other hand, thought that the temperateness of the air was no argument of antiquity; "because Nature, when she first distributed to different countries degrees of heat and cold, immediately produced in them animals fitted to endure the several climates, and generated also numerous sorts of trees and herbs, happily varied according to the condition of the places in which they grew; and that, as the Scythians have a sharper air than the Egyptians, so are their bodies and constitutions in proportion more hardy. But that if the world, which is now distinguished into parts of a different nature, was once uniform throughout; whether a deluge of waters originally kept the earth buried under it; or whether fire, which also produced the world, 27 had possession of all the parts of it, the Scythians, under either supposition as to the primordial state of things, had the advantage as to origin. For if fire was at first predominant over all things, and, being gradually extinguished, gave place to the earth, no part of it would be sooner separated from the fire, by the severity of winter cold, than the northern, since even now no part is more frozen with cold; but Egypt and all the east must have been the latest to cool, as being now burnt up with the parching heat of the sun. But if originally all the earth were sunk under water, assuredly the highest parts would be first uncovered when the waters decreased, and the water must have remained longest in the lowest grounds; while the sooner any portion of the earth was dry, the sooner it must have begun to produce animals; but Scythia was so much higher than all other countries, that all the rivers which rise in it run down into the Maeotis, and then into the Pontic and Egyptian seas; whereas Egypt, (which, though it had been fenced by the care and expense of so many princes and generations, and furnished with such strong mounds against the violence of the encroaching waters, and though it had been intersected also by so many canals, the waters being kept out by the one, and retained by the other, was yet |18 uninhabitable, unless the Nile were excluded,28) could not be thought to have been the most anciently peopled; 29 being a land, which, whether from the accessions of soil collected by its kings, or those from the Nile, bringing mud with it, must appear to have been the most recently formed of all lands." The Egyptians being confounded with these arguments, the Scythians were always accounted the more ancient.
II. Scythia, which stretches towards the east, is bounded on one side by the Pontus Euxinus; on the other, by the Rhipaean Mountains; at the back,30 by Asia 31 and the river Phasis. It extends to a vast distance, both in length and breadth. The people have no landmarks, for they neither cultivate the soil, nor have they any house, dwelling, or settled place of abode, but are always engaged in feeding herds and flocks, and wandering through uncultivated deserts. They carry their wives and children with them in waggons, 32 which, as they are covered with hides against the rain and cold, they use instead of houses. Justice is observed among them, more from the temper of the people, than from the influence of laws. No crime in their opinion is more heinous than theft; for, among people that keep their flocks and herds without fence or shelter in the woods, what would be safe, if stealing were permitted? Gold and silver they despise, as much as other men covet them. They live on milk and honey. The use of wool and clothes is unknown among them, although they are pinched by perpetual cold; they wear, however, the skins of wild animals, great and small. 33 Such abstemiousness |19 has caused justice to be observed among them, as they covet nothing belonging to their neighbours; for it is only where riches are of use, that the desire of them prevails. And would that other men had like temperance, and like freedom from desire for the goods of others! There would then assuredly be fewer wars in all ages and countries, and the sword would not destroy more than the natural course of destiny. And it appears extremely wonderful, that nature should grant that to them which the Greeks cannot attain by long instruction from their wise men and the precepts of their philosophers; and that cultivated morals should have the disadvantage in a comparison with those of unpolished barbarians. So much better effect has the ignorance of vice in the one people than the knowledge of virtue in the other.
III. They thrice 34 aspired to the supreme command in Asia; while they themselves remained always either unmolested or unconquered by any foreign power. Darius, king of the Persians, they forced to quit Scythia in disgraceful flight. They slew Cyrus with his whole army. They cut off in like manner Zopyrion, a general of Alexander the Great, with all his forces. Of the arms of the Romans they have heard, but never felt them. They founded the Parthian and Bactrian powers. They are a nation hardy in toils and warfare; their strength of body is extraordinary; they take possession of nothing which they fear to lose, and covet, when they are conquerors, nothing but glory.
The first that proclaimed war against the Scythians was Sesostris, king of Egypt, previously sending messengers 35 to announce conditions on which they might become his subjects. But the Scythians, who were already apprized by their neighbours of the king's approach, made answer to the deputies, that the prince of so rich a people had been foolish in commencing a war with a poor one (for war was more to be dreaded by himself at home), as the result of the contest waa uncertain, prizes of victory there were none, and the ill consequences of defeat were apparent; and that the Scythians, |20 therefore, would not wait till he came to them, since there was so much more to be desired in the hands of the enemy, but would proceed of their own accord to seek the spoil." Nor were their deeds slower than their words; and the king, hearing that they were advancing with such speed, took to flight,36 and leaving behind him his army and all his military stores, returned in consternation to his own kingdom. The morasses prevented the Scythians from invading Egypt; in their retreat from which they subdued Asia, and made it tributary, imposing, however, only a moderate tribute, rather as a token of their power over it, than as a recompence for their victory. After spending fifteen years in the réduction of Asia, they were called home by the importunity of their wives, who sent them word that "unless their husbands returned, they would seek issue from their neighbours, and not suffer the race of the Scythians to fail of posterity through the fault of their women." Asia was tributary to them for fifteen hundred years; and it was Ninus, king of Assyria, that put a stop to the payment of the tribute.
IV. Among the Scythians, in the meantime, two youths 37 of royal extraction, Ylinos and Scolopitus, being driven from their country by a faction of the nobility, took with them a numerous band of young men, and found a settlement on the coast of Cappaclocia, near the river Thermodon, occupying the Themiscyrian plains that border on it. Here, making it their practice for several years to rob their neighbours, they were at last, by a combination of the surrounding people, cut to pieces in an ambuscade. Their wives, when they found that to exile was added the loss of their husbands, took arms themselves, and maintained their position, repelling the attacks of their enemies at first, and afterwards assailing them in return. They relinquished all thoughts of marrying with their neighbours, saying that it would be slavery, not matrimony. Venturing to set an example unimitated through all generations, they established their government without the aid of men, and |21 soon maintained their power in defiance of them. And that none of their females might seem more fortunate than others, they put to death all the men who had remained at home. They also took revenge for their husbands that were killed in war, by a great slaughter of their neighbours.
Having thus secured peace by means of their arms, they proceeded, in order that their race might not fail, to form connexions with the men of the adjacent nations. If any male children were born, they put them to death. The girls they bred up to the same mode of life with themselves, not consigning them to idleness, or working in wool, but training them to arms, the management of horses, and hunting; burning their right breasts in infancy, that their use of the bow might not be obstructed by them; and hence they were called Amazons.38 They had two queens, Marpesia and Lampedo, who, dividing their forces into two bodies (after they were grown famous for their power), conducted their wars, and defended their borders separately and by turns. And that a reason for their success might not be wanting, they spread a report that they were the daughters of Mars.
After subduing the greater part of Europe, they possessed themselves also of some cities in Asia. + Having then founded Ephesus and several other towns there, they sent a detachment of their army home, laden with a vast quantity of spoil. The rest, who remained to secure their power in Asia, were cut to pieces, together with their queen Marpesia, by a combination of the barbarous tribes. Orithya, the daughter oi Marpesia, succeeded to the government in her room, and has attracted extraordinary admiration, not only for her eminent skill in war, but for having preserved her virginity to the end of her life. So much was added by her valour and conduct to the fame and glory of the Amazons, that the king, for whom Hercules was bound to perform twelve labours, ordered him, as if it were a thing impossible, to bring him the arms of the queen of the Amazons. Hercules, accordingly, having proceeded thither with nine ships of war, the principal young men of Greece accompanying him, attacked the Amazons unawares. Two sisters at this time held the government, Antiope and Orithya; but Orithya was engaged in a war |22 abroad. When Hercules, therefore, landed on the coast of the Amazons, there was but a small number of them there with their queen Antiope, free from all apprehension of hostilities. Hence it happened that a few only, roused by the sudden alarm, took up arms, and these afforded an easy conquest to the enemy. Many were slain, and many taken prisoners; among the latter were two sisters of Antiope, Menalippe being taken by Hercules, and Hippolyte by Theseus. Theseus, having received his prisoner as his share of the spoil, took her to wife, and had by her his son Hippolytus. Hercules, after his victory, restored his captive Menalippe to her sister, receiving the arms of the queen as a recompence; and having thus executed what was imposed on him, he returned to the king.
But Orithya, when she found that war had been maae upon her sister, and that the assailant was a chief of the Athenians, exhorted her followers to revenge the affront, saying that the "coast of the Pontus, and Asia, had been conquered in vain, if they were still exposed, not merely to the wars, but to the marauding invasions, of the Greeks." She then solicited aid from Sagillus, king of Scythia; representing to him "their Scythian descent, the loss of their husbands, their obligation to take arms, and their reasons for making war;" adding, "that they had proved by their valour, that the Scythians must be thought to have women not less spirited than their men." Sagillus, alive to the glory of his nation, sent his son Panasagoras, with a numerous body of cavalry, to their aid. But some disagreement having occurred before the battle, they were deserted by their auxiliaries, and worsted in the conflict by the Athenians. They had, however, the camp of their allies as a place of refuge, under whose protection, they returned to their kingdom unmolested by other nations.
After Orithya, Penthesilea occupied the throne, of whose valour there were seen great proofs among the bravest heroes in the Trojan war, when she led an auxiliary force thither against the Greeks. But Penthesilea being at last killed, and her army destroyed, a few only of the Amazons, who had remained at home in their own country, established a power that continued (defending itself with difficulty against its neighbours), to the time of Alexander the Great. Their queen Minithya, or Thalestris, after obtaining from Alexander |23 the enjoyment of his society for thirteen days, in order to have issue by him, returned into her kingdom, and soon after died, together with the whole name of the Amazons.
V. The Scythians, in their Asiatic expedition, having been absent from their wives and children eight years, were met on their return home by a war raised by their slaves. For their wives, weary of waiting so long for their husbands, and thinking that they were not detained by war, but had perished in the field, married their slaves that had been left at home to take care of the cattle; who, taking up arms, repelled their masters, returning with victory, from the borders of their country, as if they had been strangers. Success against them being uncertain, the Scythians were advised to change their method of attack, remembering that they were not to fight with soldiers, but with slaves, who were to be conquered, not by means of arms, but of magisterial authority; that whips, not weapons, were to be used in the field; and that, swords being laid aside, rods and scourges, and other instruments of terror to slaves, were to be provided. This suggestion being approved, and all being equipped as was prescribed, the Scythians, as soon as they drew near the enemy, held out scourges towards them unexpectedly, and struck them such terror, that they conquered with the dread of stripes those whom they could not conquer with the sword, and who took to flight, not as defeated enemies, but as fugitive slaves. As many as could be taken, paid the penalty for their rebellion on the cross. The women too, conscious of their ill conduct, put an end to their lives partly by the sword and partly by hanging.
After this occurrence, there was peace among the Scythians till the time of king Jancyrus, on whom Darius, king of Persia, as was said above, made war, because he could not obtain his daughter in marriage. Darius, having entered Scythia with seven hundred thousand armed men, and the enemy allowing him no opportunity of fighting, dreading lest, if the bridge over the Ister were broken down, his retreat should be cut off, hurried back in alarm, with the loss of eighty thousand men; which loss, however, out of so vast a, number, was scarcely accounted a disaster. Darius afterwards subdued Asia and Macedonia, and defeated the Ionians in a fight at sea. Then, learning that the Athenians had given |24 aid to the Ionians against him, he turned all his warlike fury upon them.
VI. Since we have now come to the wars of the Athenians, which were carried on, not only beyond expectation as to what could be done, but even beyond belief as to what was done, the efforts of that people having been successful beyond their hopes, the origin of their city must be briefly set forth; for they did not, like other nations, rise to eminence from a mean commencement, but are the only people that can boast, not only of their rise, but also of their birth. It was not a concourse of foreigners, or a rabble of people collected from different parts, that raised their city, but men who were born on the same ground which they inhabit; and the country which is their place of abode, was also their birthplace. It was they who first taught 39 the art of working iri wool, and the use of oil and wine. They also showed men, who had previously fed on acorns, how to plough and sow. Literature and eloquence, it is certain, and the state of civil discipline which we enjoy, had Athens as their temple. Before Deucalion's time, they had a king named Cecrops, whom, as all antiquity is full of fables, they represented tc have been of both sexes, because he was the first to join male and female in marriage. To him succeeded Cranaus, whose daughter Atthis gave name to the country. After him reigned Amphictyon, who first consecrated the city to Minerva, and gave it the name of Athens. In his days, a deluge swept away the greater part of the inhabitants of Greece. Those only escaped, whom a refuge on the mountains protected, or who went off in ships to Deucalion, king of Thessaly, by whom, from this circumstance, the human race is said to have been restored. The crown then descended, in the course of succession, to Erectheus, in whose reign the sowing of corn was commenced by Triptolemus at Eleusis; in commemoration of which benefit the nights sacred to the mysteries of Ceres were appointed. Aegeus also, the father of Theseus, was king of Athens, from whom Medea divorcing herself, on account of the adult age of her step-son, returned to Colchis with her son Medus, whom she had had by Aegeus. After Aegeus reigned Theseus, and after Theseus his son |25 Demophoon, who afforded aid to the Greeks against the Trojans. Between the Athenians and Dorians there had been animosities of long standing, which the Dorians, intending to revenge in war, consulted the oracle about the event of the contest. The answer was, that the "Dorians would have the advantage, if they did not kill the king of the Athenians." When they came into the field, the Doric soldiers were charged above all things to take care not to attack the king. At that time the king of the Athenians was Codrus, who, learning the answer of the god and the directions of the enemy,-laid aside his royal dress, and entered the camp of the enemy in rags, with a bundle of sticks on his back. Here, among a crowd of people that stood in his way, he was killed by a soldier whom he had purposely wounded with a pruning knife. His body being recognized as that of the king, the Dorians went off without coming to battle; and thus the Athenians, through the bravery of a prince who submitted to death for the safety of his country, were relieved from war.
VII. After Codrus there was no king at Athens; a cirurn stance which is attributed to the respect paid to his memory. The government of the state was placed in the hands of magistrates elected annually. At this period the people had no laws, for the wills of their princes had always been received instead of laws. Solon, a man of eminent integrity, was in consequence chosen to found the state, as it were afresh, by the establishment of laws. This man acted with such judicious moderation between the commons and the senate (though whatever he proposed in favour of one class, seemed likely to displease the other), that he received equal thanks from both parties. Among many illustrious acts of Solon, the following is eminently worthy of record. A war had been carried on between the Athenians and Megarians, concerning their respective claims to the island of Salamis, almost to the utter destruction of both. After many defeats, it was made a capital offence at Athens to propose a law for the recovery of the island. Solon, anxious lest he should injure his country by keeping silence, or himself by expressing his opinion, pretended to be suddenly seized with madness, under cover of which he might not only say, but do, what was prohibited. In a strange garb, like an insane person, he rushed |26 forth into the public streets, where, having collected a crowd about him, he began, that he might the better conceal his design, to urge the people in verse (which he was unaccustomed to make), to do what was forbidden, and produced such an effect on the minds of all, that war was instantly decreed against the Megarians; and the enemy being defeated, the island became subject to the Athenians.
VIII. After a time, the Megarians, cherishing the remembrance of the war made upon them by the Athenians, and fearing that they might be said to have taken up arms to no purpose, went on board a fleet with a design to seize the Athenian matrons as they were celebrating the Eleusinian mysteries during the night. Their intention becoming known, Pisistratus, the Athenian general, placed a body of young men in ambush to receive them, directing the matrons, at the same time, to continue the celebration of the sacred rites with their usual cries and noise, even while the enemy were approaching, in order that they might not know that their coming was expected; and thus attacking the Megarians unawares, just as they were leaving their ships, he put them all to the sword. Immediately after, having taken some women with his men on board the fleet which he had seized, to appear like captured matrons of the Athenians, he set sail for Megara. The Megarians, seeing ships of their own build approaching, apparently with the desired prey on board, went out to the harbour to meet them. Pisistratus cut them to pieces, and almost succeeded in taking their city. Thus the Megarians, having their own stratagem turned against them, afforded their enemies a triumph.
But Pisistratus, as if he had conquered for himself and not for his country, possessed himself of the sovereign authority by a subtle contrivance. Having undergone a voluntary scourging in his own house, he ran out, with his body lacerated, into the open street, and, having summoned an assembly of the people, showed them his wounds, complaining of the cruelty of the great men of the city, from whom he pretended to have received this treatment. Tears were joined to his words, and the credulous mob was easily inflamed be a calumnious speech, in which he affirmed that he had incurred the hatred of the senate by showing his love for the common people. He thus obtained a guard for the protection |27 of his person, by the aid of which he got the sovereign power into his hands, and reigned thirty-three years.
IX. After his death Diocles,40 one of his sons, having offered violence to a maiden, was slain by her brother. His other son, whose name was Hippias, taking upon him the authority of his father, ordered the murderer of his brother to be apprehended; who, being forced by torture to name those that were privy to the murder, named all the intimate friends of the tyrant. These being put to death, and Hippias asking him "whether any of the guilty still survived," he replied, that "there was no one surviving whom he should more rejoice to see die than the tyrant himself." By which answer he proved himself superior to the tyrant, after having avenged, too, the violated honour of his sister.
The city being animated, through his spirited conduct, with a desire for liberty, Hippias was at last deprived of his power, and driven into exile. Setting out for Persia, he offered himself as a leader to Darius against his own country; Darius being then, as has been said before, ready to make war on the Athenians. The Athenians, hearing of Darius's approach, requested assistance from the Lacedaemonians, who were then in alliance with them. But finding that they delayed at home four days, in consequence of some religious scruple, they did not wait for their help, but, having mustered ten thousand of their own citizens, and a thousand auxiliaries from Plataeae, went out to battle in the plain of Marathon, against six hundred thousand of the enemy. Miltiades was both their general in the field, and the person who advised them not to wait for assistance, being possessed with such confidence of success, that he thought there was more trust to be placed in expedition than in their allies. Great, therefore, was their spirit as they proceeded to battle; so that, though there were a thousand paces between the two armies, they came full speed upon the enemy before their arrows were discharged. Nor did the result fall short of their daring; for such was the courage with which they fought, that you might have supposed there were men on one side and a herd of cattle on the other. The Persians, utterly defeated, fled to their ships, of which many were sunk and many taken. In this battle, the bravery of every individual was such, that it was difficult to determine |28 to whom the highest praise was due. Amongst others, however, the heroism of Themistocles, then a young man, was greatly distinguished; in whom, even then, appeared a genius indicative of his future eminence as a general. The merit of Cynaegirus, too, an Athenian soldier, has met with great commendation from historians; for, after having slain a great number in the battle, and having chased the fleeing enemy to their ships, he seized a crowded vessel with his right hand, and would not let it go till he had lost his hand; and even then, when his right hand was cut off, he took hold of the ship with his left, and having lost this hand also, he at last seized the ship with his teeth. So undaunted was his spirit, that neither being weary with killing so many, nor disheartened with the loss of his hands, he fought to the last maimed as he was, with his teeth, like a wild beast. The Persians lost two thousand men in the battle or by shipwreck. Hippias also, the Athenian tyrant, who was the promoter and encourager of the war, was killed on the occasion; the gods, the avengers of his country, inflicting on him the penalty of his perfidy.
X. Some time after, Darius, when he was going to renew the war, died in the midst of his preparations for it, leaving behind him several sons, some born before his accession to the crown, and others after it. Artemenes, the eldest of them, claimed the kingdom by the law of primogeniture, a law which he said that both order of birth and nature herself had prescribed to all nations. Xerxes, however, alleged, that the dispute was not so much about the order as the good fortune of their birth; for that "Artemenes was born first indeed to Darius, but while he was in a private station; that he himself was born to him first after he was king; and that, consequently, such of his brothers as were born before him might claim, the private estate which Darius then possessed, but could have no claim to the kingdom; he himself being the first-born whom his father, when king, had bred up to succeed him on the throne.41 In addition to this," he said, "Artemenes was sprung, not only from a father but from a mother in a private condition, and from a maternal grandfather of similar station; but he himself was both sprung from a |29 mother who was a queen, and had never known his father except as a king; he had also for his maternal grandfather king Cyrus, not the heir, but the founder of so great an empire; and even if their father had left both brothers with equal claims, yet he himself ought to have the advantage in right of his mother and grandfather." The settlement of the controversy they left, with mutual consent, to their uncle Artaphernes, as the fittest judge of their family differences; who, having heard their pleas in his own house, decided in favour of Xerxes. But the contest was conducted in so brotherly a way, that neither did he who gained the cause show any unseemly triumph, nor did he who lost it express dissatisfaction; and, during the very time of the contention, they sent presents to one another, and gave such entertainments, as showed not only mutual confidence, but pleasure in each other's society. The judgment, too, was pronounced without witnesses, and heard without a murmur. So much more contentedly did brothers then share the greatest kingdoms, than they now divide the smallest estates!
Xerxes then proceeded, during five years, with his preparations for the war against Greece, which his father had commenced. As soon as Demaratus, king of the Lacedaemonians, who was then an exile at the court of Xerxes, understood his intentions, he, feeling more regard for his country, notwithstanding his banishment, than for the king in return for his favours, sent full intelligence of the matter to the magistrates of the Lacedaemonians, that they might not be surprised by an unexpected attack; writing the account on wooden tablets, and hiding the writing with wax spread over it; taking care, however, not merely that writing without a cover might not give proof against him, but that too fresh wax might not betray the contrivance. These tablets he committed to a trusty slave, who was ordered to deliver them into the hands of the authorities at Sparta. When they were received, the object of them was long a matter of inquiry, because the magistrates could see nothing written on them, and yet could not imagine that they were sent to no purpose; and they thought the matter must be momentous in proportion to its mysteriousness. While the men were still engaged in conjecture, the sister of king Leonidas surmised the writer's intention. The wax being accordingly scraped off. the account of the |30 warlike preparations appeared. Xerxes had already armed seven hundred thousand men of his own kingdom, and three hundred thousand of his auxiliaries; so that there was some ground for the assertion that rivers were drunk up by his army, and that all Greece could scarcely contain it. He is also said to have had a fleet of twelve hundred ships. But for this vast army a general was wanting; for if you contemplate its king, you could not commend his capacity as a leader, however you might extol his wealth, of which there was such abundance in his realm, that, while rivers were drained by his forces, his treasury was still unexhausted. He was always seen foremost in flight, and hindmost in battle; he was a coward in danger, and when danger was away, a boaster; and, in fine, before he made trial of war, elated with confidence in his strength (as if he had been lord of nature itself), he levelled mountains, filled up valleys, covered some seas with bridges, and contracted others, for the convenience of navigation, into shorter channels.
XI. In proportion to the terror of his entrance into Greece, was the shame and dishonour of his retreat from it. Leonidas, king of the Spartans, having occupied the straits of Thermopylae with four thousand men, Xerxes, in contempt of so small a number, ordered such of the Persians as had lost relatives in the battle of Marathon, to commence an attack upon them; who, while they endeavoured to avenge their friends, were the first to be slaughtered, and a useless multitude taking their place, the havoc became still greater. For three days was the struggle maintained, to the grief and indignation of the Persians. On the fourth, it being told Leonidas that the summit of the mountain was occupied by twenty thousand of the enemy, he exhorted the allies "to retire, and reserve themselves to their country for better times;" saying, that "he himself would try his fortune with the Spartans; that he ought to care more for his country than for his life, and that others should be preserved for the defence of Greece." On hearing the king's resolution, the rest retired, the Lacedaemonians alone remaining.
At the beginning of the war, when the Spartans consulted the oracle at Delphi, they had received the answer, that "either the king or their city must fall." King Leonidas, accordingly, when he proceeded to battle, had so fixed the |31 resolution of his men, that they felt they must go to the field with minds prepared for death. He had posted himself in a narrow pass, too, that he might either conquer more gloriously with a few, or fall with less damage to his country. The allies being therefore sent away, he exhorted his Spartans "to remember that, however they struggled, they must expect to perish; to take care not to show more resolution to stay than to fight;" adding that, "they must not wait till they were surrounded by the enemy, but when night afforded them opportunity, must surprise them in security and at their ease; as conquerors could die nowhere more honourably than in the camp of the foe." There was no difficulty in stimulating men determined to die. They immediately seized their arms, and six hundred men rushed into the camp of five hundred thousand, making directly for the king's tent, and resolving either to die with him, or, if they should be overpowered, at least in his quarters. An alarm spread through the whole Persian army. The Spartans being unable to find the king, marched uncontrolled through the whole camp, killing and overthrowing all that stood in their way, like men who knew that they fought, not with the hope of victory, but to avenge their own deaths. The contest was protracted from the beginning of the night through the greater part of the following day. At last, not conquered, but exhausted with conquering, they fell amidst vast heaps of slaughtered enemies. Xerxes, having thus met with two defeats by land, resolved next to try his fortune by sea.
XII. Themistocles, the general of the Athenians, having discovered that the lonians, on whose account they had undertaken this war with the Persians, were come to the assistance of the king with a fleet, resolved to draw them over to his own side. Being unable to find any opportunity of speaking with them, he caused placards to be fixed, and inscriptions to be written, on the rocks where they were to land, to the following effect; "What madness possesses you, O Ionians? What evil are you going to do? Do you intend to make war on those who were formerly your founders, and lately your avengers? Did we build your cities that a people might arise from them to destroy ours? Was it not Darius's reason 42 for attacking us before, and is it not now that of |32 Xerxes, that we did not desert you when you rebelled against them? But pass over from your place of confinement 43 to our camp; or, if this course is unsafe, withdraw when the battle begins; keep back your vessels with your oars, and retire from the engagement." Before this encounter at sea, Xerxes had sent four thousand armed men to plunder the temple of Apollo, as if he had been at war, not with the Greeks only, but with the immortal gods; but the whole of this detachment was destroyed by a storm of rain and thunder, that he might be convinced how feeble human strength is against the powers of heaven. Afterwards he burnt Thespiae, Plataeae, and Athens, all abandoned by their inhabitants; venting his rage on the buildings by fire, since he could not destroy the people by the sword. For the Athenians, after the battle of Marathon, because Themistocles forewarned them that their victory would not be the termination of the war, but the cause of a greater one, had built two hundred ships; and when, at the approach of Xerxes, he consulted the oracle at Delphi, they were answered, that "they must provide for their safety with wooden walls." Themistocles, thinking that defence with shipping was meant, persuaded them all, that "the citizens, not the walls, constituted their country; that a city consisted, not of its buildings, but of its inhabitants; that it would be better for them, therefore, to trust their safety to their ships than to their city; and that the god was the adviser of this course." The counsel being approved, they committed their wives and children, with their most valuable property, to certain islands out of the way; 44 while the men went in arms on board the ships. Other cities also followed the example of the Athenians. But when the whole fleet of the allies was assembled, ready for an engagement, |33 and had posted itself in the narrow strait of Salamis, that it might not be overwhelmed by superior numbers, a dissension arose among the leading men of the different cities, who were disposed to relinquish the plan of a general war, and go off each to defend his own country. Themistocles, fearing that, the strength of his countrymen would be too much weakened by such desertion of their allies, sent intimation to Xerxes by a trusty slave, that "he might now easily make himself master of all Greece, when it was collected in one place; but that if the several states which were inclined to go away should once be dispersed, he would have to pursue each of them singly with far greater trouble." By this stratagem he induced the king to give the signal for battle. The Greeks, at the same time, taken by surprise by the enemy's attack, proceeded to oppose them with their united force. The king, meantime, remained on shore as a spectator of the combat, with part of the ships near him; while Artemisia, queen of Halicarnassus, who had come to the assistance of Xerxes, was fighting with the greatest gallantry among the foremost leaders; so that you might have seen womanish fear in a man,45 and manly boldness in a woman. While the result of the battle was still doubtful, the Ionians, according to the admonition of Themistocles, began gradually to withdraw from the contest; and their desertion broke the courage of the rest. The Persians, as they were considering in which direction they might flee, suffered a repulse, and were soon after utterly defeated, and put to flight. In the confusion, many ships were taken, and many sunk; but the greater number, fearing the king's cruelty not less than the enemy, went off to their respective homes.
XIII. While Xerxes was confounded at his disaster, and doubtful what course to pursue, Mardonius addressed him, advising him "to return home to his kingdom, lest fame, carrying the news of his defeat, and exaggerating every thing according to her custom, should occasion any sedition in his absence; and to leave with him three hundred thousand men-at-arms, chosen from the whole army, with which force he would either subdue Greece to the king's glory, or, if the result should prove unfavourable, would retire before the enemy without dishonour to him." Mardonius's suggestion being approved, |34 the force which he requested was given him, and the king prepared to return home with the rest of the army. The Greeks, hearing of his flight, formed a design to hreak down the bridge, which, as conqueror of the sea, he had made at Abydos; so that, his retreat being cut off, he might either be destroyed with his army, or might be forced, by the desperate state of his affairs, to sue for peace. But Themistocles, fearing that the enemy, if they were stopped, might take courage from despair, and open by their swords a passage not to he opened by other means, and observing that "there were * enemies enough left in Greece, and that the number ought not to be increased by preventing their escape," but finding that he was unable to move his countrymen by his admonitions, despatched the same slave as before to Xerxes, acquainting him of the intention of the Greeks to break down the bridge, and urging him to secure a passage by a speedy flight. Xerxes, alarmed at the message, left his army to be conducted by his generals, and hurried away himself, with a few attendants, to Abydos; where, having found the bridge broken down by the winter storms, he crossed in the utmost trepidation in a fishing-boat. It was a sight worth contemplation for judging of the condition of man,46 so wonderful for its vicissitudes, to see him shrinking down in a little boat, whom shortly before the whole ocean could scarcely contain; to behold him wanting servants to attend him, whose armies had burdened the earth with their numbers! Nor had the land-forces, which he had committed to his generals, a more fortunate retreat; for to their daily fatigue (and there is no rest to men in fear) was added the want of provisions. A famine of several days produced also a pestilential distemper; and so dire was the mortality, that the roads were filled with dead bodies; and birds and beasts of prey, allured by the attraction of food, followed close upon the army.
XIV. In Greece, in the meantime, Mardonius took Olynthus by storm. He also invited the Athenians to listen |35 to offers of peace, and of the king's friendship; promising to rebuild their city, which had been burnt, in greater splendour than before. But when he saw that they would not sell their liberty at any rate, he set fire to what they had begun to rebuild, and led off his army into Boeotia. Thither the army of the Greeks, which consisted of a hundred thousand men, followed him, and there a battle was fought. But the fortune of the king was not changed with the general; for Mardonius, being defeated, escaped, as it were from a shipwreck, with but a small number of followers. His camp, which was filled with the king's treasures, was taken; and hence it was, on the division of the Persian gold among them, that the charms of wealth first attracted the Greeks. By chance, on the same day on which the army of Mardonius was defeated, an engagement was fought by sea near the mountain Mycale, on the coast of Asia. Before the encounter began, and whilst the fleets stood opposite one another, a rumour spread through both parties, chat the Greeks had gained a victory, and that the army of Mardonius was utterly destroyed. It is said that so great was the speed of this report, that when the battle was fought in Baeotia in the morning, the news of the victory arrived in Asia by noon, passing over so much sea, and so large a space of ground, in so very short a time. When the war was over, and they proceeded to consider the respective merits of the cities that had been engaged in it, the bravery of the Athenians was praised above that of any other people. Among the leaders too, Themistocles, being pronounced the most meritorious by the judgment of the several states, added greatly to the glory of his country.
XV. The Athenians, then, being enriched by the spoils of war, as well as in glory, applied themselves to rebuild their city. Having enlarged the compass of their walls, they became an object of suspicion to the Lacedaemonians, naturally reflecting how great power a city, when fortified, might secure to a people for whom it had done so much when in a state of ruin. They therefore sent ambassadors to admonish them that "they should not build what might prove a stronghold for the enemy, and a place of shelter for them in a future war." Themistocles seeing that envy was entertained towards the rising hopes of his city, but not thinking it prudent to deal abruptly with the Spartans, made answer to the ambassadors, that "deputies |36 should be sent to Lacedsemon to confer with them about the matter." After thus dismissing the messengers, he exhorted his countrymen "to expedite the work." Allowing some time to elapse, he set out, with some others, as an embassy to Sparta; but sometimes pretending ill health on the road, sometimes complaining of the tardiness of his colleagues, without whom nothing could be properly done, and thus putting off from day to day, he endeavoured to gain time for his countrymen to finish the erection of their walls. In the meanwhile* word was brought to the Spartans that the work was advancing at Athens with great speed; and they accordingly sent ambassadors a second time to ascertain the truth. Themistocles then sent a letter by the hand of a slave, to the magistrates of the Athenians, desiring them "to take the ambassadors into custody, and keep them as hostages, lest any violent measures should be adopted against himself at Sparta." He then went to the public assembly of the Lacedaemonians, and told them that "Athens was now well fortified, and could sustain a war, if any should be made upon it, not only with arms, but with walls; and that their ambassadors were detained by way of hostages at Athens, in case they should on that account resolve on anything injurious towards himself." He then upbraided them severely "for seeking to increase their power, not by their own valour, but by weakening their allies." Being then permitted to depart, he was received by his countrymen as if he had triumphed over Sparta.
After this occurrence, the Spartans, that they might not impair their strength in idleness, and that they might take vengeance for the war which had been twice made upon Greece by the Persians, proceeded to lay waste the Persian territories. They chose Pausanias to be general of their army, and that of their allies, who, coveting, instead of the mere office of general, the entire sovereignty of Greece, treated with Xerxes for a marriage with his daughter, as a reward foi betraying his country, restoring him, at the same time, his prisoners, that the good feeling of the king might be secured by such an obligation. He wrote also to Xerxes, "to put to death whatever messengers he sent to him, lest the négociation should be betrayed by their babbling." But Aristides, the general of the Athenians, and his associate in the command, by traversing the attempts of his colleague, and taking prudent |37 precautions on the occasion, defeated his treasonable designs. Not long after, Pausanias was brought to trial and condemned. Xerxes, when he found that this perfidious scheme was discovered, made fresh preparations for war. The Greeks nominated as their general Cimon the Athenian, the son of Miltiades, under whose command the battle of Marathon was fought; a young man whose future greatness his manifestations of affection towards his father foretold. For he redeemed the body of his father (who had been thrown into prison on a charge of embezzling the public money, and had died there), taking his fetters on himself,47 that it might receive the rites of sepulture. Nor did he, in his conduct of the war, disappoint the opinion of those who chose him; for, not falling in merit below his father, he forced Xerxes, defeated both by land and sea, to retreat in trepidation to his own dominions.
Death of Xerxes; Artaxerxes; Artabanus, I.----Origin of the wars between the Athenians and Lacedaemonians; Lycurgus and the Spartan polity, II. III.----First and second wars between the Spartans and Messenians, IV., V.----Third war; commencement of the Peloponnesian war, VI. ---- Continuation of it, Pericles, VII.
I. XERXES, king of Persia, once the terror of the nations around him, became, after his unsuccessful conduct of the war against Greece, an object of contempt even to his own subjects. Artabanus, his chief officer, conceiving hopes of usurping the throne, as the king's authority was every day declining, entered one evening into the palace (which from his intimacy with Xerxes was always open to him), accompanied by his seven stout sons, and, having put the king to death, proceeded to remove by stratagem such of the king's sons as opposed his wishes. Entertaining little apprehension from Artaxerxes, who was but a boy, he pretended that the king had been slain by Darius, who was of full age, that he might have possession of the throne the sooner, and instigated Artaxerxes to revenge parricide by fratricide. When they came to Darius's house, |38 he was found asleep, and killed as if he merely counterfeited sleep.48 But seeing that one of the king's sons was still uninjured by his villany, and fearing a struggle for the throne on the part of the nobles, he took into his councils a certain Bacabasus, who, content that the government should remain in the present family, disclosed the whole matter to Artaxerxes, acquainting him "by what means his father had been killed, and how his brother had been murdered on a false suspicion of parricide; and, finally, how a plot was laid for himself." On this information, Artaxerxes, fearing the number of Artabanus's sons, gave orders for the troops to be ready under arms on the following day, as if he meant to ascertain their strength, and their respective efficiency for the field. Artabanus, accordingly, presenting himself under arms among the rest, the king, pretending that his corslet was too short for him, desired Artabanus to make an exchange with him, and, while he was disarming himself, and defenceless, ran him through with his sword, ordering his sons, at the same time, to be apprehended. Thus this excellent youth at once took revenge for his father's murder, and saved himself from the machinations of Artabanus.
II. During these transactions in Persia, all Greece, under the leadership of the Lacedaemonians and Athenians, was split into two parties, and turned their arms from foreign wars as it were against their own bowels. Of one people were formed two distinct bodies; and they who had so recently served in the same camp, were divided into two hostile armies. On the one side, the Lacedaemonians drew over to their faction the cities that had before been common auxiliaries to both. On the other side, the Athenians, renowned alike for their antiquity and their exploits, relied on their own strength. Thus the two most powerful people of Greece, made equal by the institutions of Solon and the laws of Lycurgus, rushed into war through envy of each other's power.
When Lycurgus had succeeded 49 Polydectes his brother, king of the Lacedaemonians, and might have secured the |39 kingdom for himself, he restored it, with the noblest integrity, to Charilaus, the posthumous son of Polydectes, as soon as he became of age; that all might see how much more the laws of integrity prevail with good men than all the charms of power. In the meantime, while the child was growing up, and he had the guardianship of him, he composed laws for the Spartans, who previously had had none. Nor was he more celebrated for the making of these laws, than for his exemplary conformity to them; for he imposed nothing by law upon others, of the observation of which he did not first give an example in his own conduct. He trained the people to be obedient to those in authority, and those in authority to be just in the exercise of their government. He enjoined frugality on all, thinking that the toils of war would be made more endurable by a constant observance of it. He ordered all purchases to be made, not with money, but by exchange of commodities. The use of gold and silver he prohibited, as being the origin of all evils.
III. He divided the administration of the government among the several orders; to the kings he gave the power of making war, to the magistrates the seats of justice in yearly succession; to the senate, the guardianship of the laws; to the people, the power of choosing the senate, or of creating what magistrates they pleased. The lands of the whole state he divided equally among all, that equality of possession might leave no one more powerful than another. He ordered all to take their meals in public, that no man might secretly indulge in splendour of luxury. He would not allow the young people to wear more than one dress in a year, nor any one to walk abroad in finer garments than another, or to fare more sumptuously, lest imitation of such practices should lead to general luxury. He ordered boys to be carried, not into the forum, but into the field, that they might spend their early years, not in effeminate employments, but in hard labour and exertion; not suffering them to put any thing under them to sleep upon, or to live on high seasoned food, and forbidding them to return into the city till they arrived at manhood. He caused virgins to be married without portions, that wives, not money, might be sought; and that husbands might govern their wives more strictly, being influenced by no regard to dowry. He ordained that the highest respect should be paid, not to the rich and powerful, but to the old, according to that |40 degrees of seniority; nor had old age, indeed, a more honourable habitation anywhere than at Sparta.
But seeing that such laws would at first be thought severe, as the state of manners had previously been relaxed, he represented that Apollo of Delphi was the author of them, and that he had brought them from thence at the command of the deity, in order that reverence for religion might overbalance the irksorneness of compliance with them. And to secure perpetuity to his laws, he bound the city by an oath "to make no change in them till he should return," pretending that he was going to ask the oracle at Delphi whether any thing seemed necessary to be added to his institutions, or changed in them But he went in reality to Crete, and continued there in voluntary exile; and, when he was dying, ordered his bones to be thrown into the sea, lest, if they were taken back to Lacedaemon, the Spartans might think themselves absolved from their oath respecting alteration in his laws.
IV. Under such a state of manners, the city acquired, in a short time, 50 such a degree of strength, that, on going to war with the Messenians for offering violence to some of their maidens at a solemn sacrifice of that people, they bound themselves under a severe oath not to return till they had taken Messene, promising themselves so much either from their strength or good fortune. This occurrence was the commencement of dissension in Greece, and the origin and cause of a civil war. But being detained in the siege of this city, contrary to their expectation, for ten years, and called on to return by the complaints of their wives after so long a widowhood, and being afraid that by persevering in the war they might hurt themselves more than the Messenians (for, in Messene, whatever men were lost in the war, were replaced by the fruitfulness of their women, while they themselves suffered constant losses in battle, and could have no offspring from their wives in the absence of their husbands), they in consequence selected, out of the soldiers that had come, after the military oath was first taken, 51 as recruits to the army, a |41 number of young men; whom they sent back to Sparta with permission to form promiscuous connexions with all the women of the city, thinking that conception would be more speedy if each of the females made the experiment with several men. Those who sprung from these unions were called Partheniae,52 as a reflection on their mothers' violated chastity; and, when they came to thirty years of age, being alarmed with the fear of want (for not one of them had a father to whose estate he could hope to succeed,) they chose a captain named Phalantus, the son of Aratus, by whose advice the Spartans had sent home the young men to propagate, that, as they had formerly had the father for the author of their birth, they might now have the son as the establisher of their hopes and fortunes. Without taking leave of their mothers, therefore, from whose adultery they thought that they derived dishonour, they set out to seek a place of settlement, and being tossed about a long time, and with various mischances, they at last arrived on the coast of Italy, where, after seizing the citadel of the Tarentines, and expelling the old inhabitants, they fixed their abode. But several years after, their leader Phalantus, being driven into exile by a popular tumult, went to Brundusium, whither the former inhabitants of Tarentum had retreated after they were expelled from their city. When he was at the point of death, he urged the exiles "to have his bones, and last relics, bruised to dust, and privately sprinkled in the forum of Tarentum; for that Apollo at Delphi had signified that by this means they might recover their city." They, thinking that he had revealed the destiny of his countrymen to avenge himself, complied with his directions; but the intention of the oracle was exactly the reverse; for it promised the Spartans, upon the performance of what he had said, not the loss, but the perpetual possession of the city. Thus by the subtlety of their exiled captain, and the agency, of their enemies, the possession of Tarentum was secured to the Partheniae for ever.
V. Meantime the Messenians, who could not be conquered by valour, were reduced by stratagem. For eighty years they bore the severe afflictions of slaves, as frequent stripes, and chains, and other evils of subjugation; and then, after so long an |42 endurance of suffering, they proceeded to resume hostilities, The Lacedaemonians, at the same time, ran to arms with the greater ardour and unanimity, because they seemed to be called upon to fight against their own slaves. While ill-treatment, therefore, on the one side, and indignation on the other, exasperated their feelings, the Lacedaemonians consulted the oracle at Delphi concerning the event of the war, and were directed to ask the Athenians for a leader to conduct it. The Athenians, learning the answer of the oracle, sent, to express their contempt of the Spartans a lame poet, named Tyrtaeus; who, being routed in three battles, reduced the Lacedaemonians to so desperate a condition, that, to recruit their army, they liberated a portion of their slaves, promising that they should marry the widows of those who were slain, and thus fill up, not merely the number of the lost citizens, but their offices. The kings of Sparta, however, lest, by contending against fortune, they should bring greater losses on their city, would have drawn off their army, had not Tyrtaeus interposed, and recited to the soldiers, in a public assembly, some verses of his own composition, in which he had comprised exhortations to courage, consolations for their losses, and counsels concerning the war. By this means he inspired the soldiers with such resolution, that, being no longer concerned for their lives, but merely for the rites of sepulture, they tied on their right arms tickets, inscribed with their names and those of their fathers, that if an unsuccessful battle should cut them off, and their features after a time become indistinct, they might be consigned to burial according to the indication of the inscriptions. When the kings saw the army thus animated, they took care that the state of it should be made known to the enemy; the report, however, raised in the Messenians no alarm, but a correspondent ardour. Both sides accordingly encountered with such fury, that there scarcely ever was a more bloody battle. But at last victory fell to the Lacedaemonians.
VI. Some time after, the Messenians renewed the war a third time, when the Lacedaemonians, among their other allies, called also upon the Athenians for assistance; but afterwards, conceiving some mistrust of them, they prevented them from joining in the war, pretending that they had no need for their services. The Athenians, not liking this |43 proceeding, removed the money, which had been contributed by the whole of Greece to defray the expense of the Persian war, from Del os to Athens, that, if the Lacedaemonians broke their faith as allies, it might not be an object of plunder to them. The Lacedaemonians, on the other hand, did not rest, for though they were engaged in the war with the Messenians, they set the people of the Peloponnesus to make war on the Athenians. The forces of the Athenians at home were at that time inconsiderable, as their fleet had been despatched into Egypt, so that, engaging in battle by sea, they were quickly worsted. Soon after, on the return of their fleet, being strengthened both by sea and land, they renewed the war; when the Lacedaemonians, leaving the Messenians at rest, turned their full force against the Athenians. Victory was long doubtful, and at last both parties gave over with equal loss. The Lacedaemonians being then recalled to the war with the Messenians, but not wishing to leave the Athenians in the meantime unmolested, bargained with the Thebans to restore them the supremacy of Boeotia, which they had lost in the time of the Persian war, if they would but take up arms against the Athenians. Such was the fury of the Spartans, that, though they were involved in two wars, they did not hesitate to occasion a third, if they might but raise up enemies against their enemies. The Athenians, therefore, to meet this storm of war, made choice of two eminent leaders, Pericles, a man of tried courage, and Sophocles, the writer of tragedies; who, dividing their forces, laid waste the lands of the Spartans, and brought many cities of Achaia53 under the power of the Athenians.
VII. The Lacedaemonians, being humbled by these losses, agreed upon a peace for thirty years. But their hostile feelings did not allow of so long a period of repose. Hence, laving broken the treaty before the fifteenth year was ended, they laid waste the territories of Attica in violation of their obligations towards the gods and towards men. And lest they should seem to have desired to plunder rather than to fight, they challenged the enemy to the field. But the Athenians, by the advice of their leader Pericles, deferred |44 revenge for the spoliation of their lands to a fitter time of exacting it, thinking it needless to hazard a battle, when they could avenge themselves on the enemy without risk. Some days afterwards, accordingly, they embarked in their fleet, and, while the Lacedaemonians expected nothing of the kind, laid waste all Sparta,54 carrying off much more than they had lost; so that, in a comparison of their respective sufferings, the retaliation was much greater than the injury at first received. This expedition of Pericles was considered as greatly to his honour; but his disregard of his private property was far more honourable. The enemy, while they wasted the lands of others, had left his uninjured; hoping, by this means, either to bring danger on him by rendering him unpopular, or dishonour by making him suspected of treachery. But Pericles, foreseeing what would happen, had both foretold it to the people, and, to escape the effects of popular odium, had made over his lands to the state as a gift; and thus obtained the greatest honour from that by which his ruin had been intended. Some days afterwards, an engagement took place by sea; and the Lacedaemonians, being worsted, fled. Nevertheless they did not cease from fierce attacks on one another, by sea or land, with various success. At last, exhausted with disasters on both sides, they made peace for fifty years, which however they maintained only for six; for they broke the treaty which they had concluded on their own account, under pretence of assisting their allies; as if they were less guilty of perjury by aiding their dependants, than by engaging in open hostilities themselves.
The war was in consequence transferred into Sicily; but before I relate its progress, it is proper to give some account of the situation of that island. |45
Sicily; Aetna; Scylla and Charybdis, I.----Ancient inhabitants of Sicily, II.----Dissension between Rhegium and Himera; the Athenians successful in Sicily at first, III.----The Syracusans seek aid from the Lacedaemonians; the progress of the war, IV.----Utter defeat of the Athenians, V.
I. IT is said that Sicily was formerly joined to Italy by a narrow pass,55 and was torn off, as it were, from the larger body, by the violence of the upper sea, 56 which impels itself in that direction with the whole force of its waters. The soil itself, too, is light and frangible, and so perforated with caverns and passages, that it is almost everywhere open to blasts of wind; and the very matter of it is naturally adapted for generating and nourishing fire, as it is said to be impregnated with sulphur and bitumen, a circumstance which is the cause that when air contends with fire in the subterraneous parts, the earth frequently, and in several places, sends forth flame, or vapour, or smoke. Hence it is that the fire of Mount Aetna has lasted through so many ages. And when a strong wind passes in through the openings of the cavities, heaps of sand are cast up.
The promontory of Italy on the side nearest to Sicily, is called Rhegium, 57 because things broken off are designated by that term in Greek. Nor is it strange that antiquity should have been full of fables concerning these parts, in which so many extraordinary things are found together. The sea, in the first place, is nowhere so impetuous, pouring on with a current not only rapid but furious, not only frightful to those who feel its effects, but to those who view it from a distance. So fierce is the conflict of the waves as they meet, that you may see some of them, put to flight as it were, sink down into the depths, and others, as if victorious, rising up to the skies. Sometimes, in one part, you may hear the roaring of the sea as it boils |46 up; and again, in another part, the groaning of it as it sinks into a whirlpool. Next are to be observed the adjacent and everlasting fires of Mount Aetna and the Aeolian islands, which burn as if their heat were nourished by the sea itself; nor indeed could such a quantity of fire have endured in such narrow bounds for so many ages unless it were supported by nourishment from the water.58 Hence fables produced Scylla and Charybdis; hence barkings were thought to have been heard; hence the appearances of monsters gained credit, as the sailors, frightened at the vast whirlpools of the subsiding waters, imagined that the waves, which the vortex of the absorbent gulf clashes together, actually barked. The same cause makes the fires of Mount Aetna perpetual; for the shock of the waters forces into the depths a portion of air hurried along with it, and then keeps it confined till, being diffused through the pores of the earth, it kindles the matter which nourishes the fire.
In addition, the proximity of Italy and Sicily is to be noticed, with the heights of their respective promontories, which are so similar, that, whatever wonder they raise in us in the present day, they excited proportionate terror in the ancients, who believed that whole ships were intercepted and destroyed by the promontories closing together and opening. Nor was this invented by the ancients to gratify the hearer with a fabulous wonder, but occasioned by the terror and consternation of those who passed by those parts; for such is the appearance of the coasts to any one beholding them from a distance, that you would take the passage between them for a bay in the sea, and not a strait; and, as you draw nearer, you would think that the promontories, which were before united, part asunder and separate.
II. At first Sicily had the name of Trinacria; 59 afterwards |47 it was called Sicania.60 It was originally the abode of the Cyclops; when they became extinct, Cocalus made himself ruler of the island. After his time the cities fell severally under the dominion of tyrants, of whom no country was more productive. One of them, Anaxilaus, strove to be as just as the others were cruel, and reaped no small advantage from his equity; for having left, at his death, some sons very young, and having committed the guardianship of them to Micythus, a slave of tried fidelity, so great was the respect paid to his memory among all his subjects, that they chose rather to submit to a slave than to abandon the king's children; and the noblemen of the state, forgetful of their dignity, suffered the authority of government to be exercised by a bondman. The Carthaginians, too, attempted to gain the sovereignty of Sicily, and fought against the tyrants for a long time with various success; but at length, after losing their general Hamilcar and his army, they remained quiet for some time in consequence of that defeat.
III. In the meantime, the people of Rhegium being troubled with dissension, and the city being divided by disputes into two factions, a body of veteran soldiers from Himera, who were invited by one of the parties to their assistance, having first expelled from the city those against whom they had been called, and then put to the sword those whom they had come to aid, took the government into their own hands, and made prisoners of the wives and children of their allies; venturing upon an atrocity to which that of no tyrant can be compared; so that it would have been better for the Rhegians to have been conquered than to conquer; 61 for whether they had become slaves to their conquerors by the laws of war, 62 or, withdrawing from their country, had been necessitated to live in exile, yet they would not have been butchered amidst their altars and household gods, and have left their country, with their wives and children, a prey to the most cruel of tyrants. |48
The people of Catana, also, finding themselves oppressed by the Syracusans, and distrusting their own power to withstand them, requested assistance from the Athenians, who, whether from desire of enlarging their dominions, so that they might master all Greece and Asia, or from apprehension of a fleet lately built by the Syracusans, and to prevent such a force from joining the Lacedaemonians, sent Lamponius, as general, with a naval armament into Sicily, that under pretence of assisting the people of Catana, they might endeavour to secure the sovereignty of the whole island. Having succeeded in their first attempts, and made havoc among the enemy on several occasions, they despatched another expedition to Sicily, with a greater fleet and more numerous army, under the command of Laches and Chariades. But the people of Catana, whether from fear of the Athenians, or from being weary of the war, made peace with the Syracusans, and sent back the Athenian force that had come to assist them.
IV. After a lapse of some time, however, as the articles of the peace were not observed by the Syracusans, they sent ambassadors a second time to Athens, who, arriving in a mean dress, with long hair and beards, and every sign of distress adapted to move pity, presented themselves in that wretched plight before the public assembly. To their entreaties were added tears; and the suppliants so moved the people to compassion, that the commanders who had withdrawn the auxiliary force from them received a sentence of condemnation.63 A powerful fleet was then appointed to aid them; Nicias, Alcibiades, and Lamachus were made captains; and Sicily was revisited with such a force as was a terror even to those to whose aid it was sent. In a short time, Alcibiades being recalled to answer certain charges made against him, Nicias and Lamachus fought two successful battles by land, and, drawing lines of circumvallation around Syracuse, cut off all supplies from the enemy by sea, keeping them closely blocked up in the city. The Syracusans, being greatly reduced by these measures, sought assistance from the Lacedaemonians, by whom Gylippus alone was sent; but he was a man equal to whole troops of |49 auxiliaries. He, having heard on his way of the declining state ot the war, and having collected some support partly from Greece and partly from Sicily, took possession of some posts suitable for carrying on the war. He was then conquered in two battles, but engaging in a third, he killed Lamachus, put the enemy to flight, and rescued his allies from the siege. But as the Athenians transferred their warlike efforts from the land to the sea, Gylippus sent for a fleet and army from Lacedaemon; upon intelligence of which the Athenians themselves, too, sent out Demosthenes and Eurymedon, in the room of their late leader, with a reinforcement to their troops. The Peloponnesians again, by a general resolution of their cities, sent powerful assistance to the Syracusans, and, as it the Greek war had been transported into Sicily, the contest was pursued on both sides with the utmost vigour.
V. In the first encounter at sea, the Athenians were worsted, and lost their camp, with all their money, both what was public and what belonged to private individuals. When, in addition to these disasters, they were also beaten in a battle on land, Demosthenes began to advise that "they should quit Sicily, while their condition, though bad, was not yet desperate; and that they should not persist in a war so inauspiciously commenced, as there were more considerable, and perhaps more unhappy wars, to be dreaded at home, for which it was expedient that they should reserve the present force of their city." But Nicias, whether from shame at his ill success, from fear of the resentment of his countrymen for the disappointment of their hopes, or from the impulse of destiny, contended for staying. The war by sea was therefore renewed, and their thoughts turned from reflections on their previous ill-fortune to the hopes of a successful struggle, but, through the unskilfulness of their leaders, who attacked the Syracusans when advantageously posted in a strait, they were easily overcome. Their general, Eurymedon, was the first to fall, fighting bravely in the front of the battle; and thirty ships which he commanded were burnt. Demosthenes and Nicias being also defeated, set their forces on shore, thinking that retreat would be safer by land. Gylippus seized a hundred and thirty ships which they had left, and then, pursuing them as they fled, took some of them prisoners, and put others to death. Demosthenes, after the loss of his troops |50 saved himself from captivity by voluntarily falling on his sword. But Nicias, not induced, even by the example of Demosthenes, to put himself out of the power of fortune, added to the loss of his army the disgrace of being made prisoner.
Alcibiades banished from Athens; joins the Lacedaemonians, I.----Changes sides, defeats the Lacedaemonians, and returns to Athens II.-IV.----Defeated by Lysander, and goes into voluntary exile, V ----Lysander defeats Conon, VI.----Athens surrenders to Lysander who appoints the thirty tyrants; death of Alcibiades, VII. VIII. ----Theramenes, one of the tyrants, killed; Thrasybulus overthrows the tyrants; his act of oblivion, IX. X.----Death of Darius; Expedition of Cyrus, and his death; Artaxerxes established on the throne, XI.
I. WHILST the Athenians, during two years, were carrying on the war in Sicily, with more eagerness than success, Alcibiades, the promoter and leader of it, was accused at Athens in his absence of having divulged the mysteries of Ceres, which were rendered sacred by nothing more than by their secrecy. Being recalled from the war to take his trial, and being unwilling, either from the consciousness of guilt or from the affront put upon him, to obey, he retired, without offering to defend himself, to Elis. From thence, having learned that he was not only condemned, but devoted to destruction with execrations in the religious ceremonies of all the priests, he betook himself to Lacedaemon, where he urged the king 64 of the Lacedaemonians to make war on the Athenians in the midst of their distress at the unfortunate result of the struggle in Sicily. This being done, all the powers of Greece conspired against the Athenians, as if to extinguish a common conflagration; such hatred had they brought upon themselves by their desire of too great power. Darius also, the king of Persia, not forgetting his father's and grandfather's hostility to that city, concluded an alliance with the Lacedaemonians through Tissaphernes, satrap of Lydia, and promised to defray all the expense of the war. Such at least was his pretext for meddling in the affairs of Greece, but in reality he |51 was afraid that the Lacedaemonians, if they conquered the Athenians, should turn their arms against himself. Who then can wonder that the flourishing state of Athens went to ruin, when the whole strength of the east conspired to overwhelm one city? Yet they did not fall with merely a faint struggle, or without bloodshed, but fighting to the last, and sometimes victorious, being rather worn out by changes of fortune than overcome by force of arms. At the commencement of the war, too, all their allies deserted them, according to common practice; for whatever way fortune leans, in the same direction does the favour of mankind turn.
II. Alcibiades also supported tne war raised against his country, not with the services of a common soldier, but with the abilities of a general. Having received a squadron of five ships, he sailed directly to Asia, and, by the authority of his name, prevailed on the cities tributary to the Athenians to revolt from them. They knew his eminence at home; nor did they think his influence weakened by his banishment, but looked on him rather as a leader taken from the Athenians,65 than added to the Lacedaemonians, and balanced the command which he had gained against that which he had lost. But among the Lacedaemonians the abilities of Alcibiades had gained him more envy than favour; and the chief men having formed a plot to kill him, as their rival in glory, Alcibiades, receiving intelligence of their design from the wife of Agis, with whom he had an intrigue, fled to Tissaphernes, the satrap of king Darius, with whom he quickly ingratiated himself by his affability and obligingness of manners. He was then in the flower of youth, and distinguished for personal graces, and not less for oratory, even among the Athenians. But he was better fitted to gain the affections of friends than to keep them; because the vices in his character were thrown into the shade by the splendour of his eloquence. He succeeded in persuading Tissaphernes not to furnish such supplies |52 of money for the Lacedaemonian fleet; "for the Ionians," he said, "should be called upon to pay their share, since it was for their deliverance, when they were paying tribute to the Lacedaemonians, that the war was undertaken. Neither, however," he added, "should the Lacedaemonians be too greatly assisted; for he should remember that he was preparing a way for the supremacy of others, not for his own; and that the war was only so far to be supported, that it might not be broken off for want of supplies, as the king of Persia, while the Greeks were distracted by dissensions, would be the arbiter of peace and war, and would vanquish with their own arms those whom he could not overcome with his own; but that, if the war were brought to a conclusion, he would immediately have to fight with the conquerors. That Greece, therefore, ought to be reduced by civil wars, so that it might have no opportunity to engage in foreign ones; that the strength of its two parties should be kept equal, the weaker being constantly supported; since the Spartans, who professed themselves the defenders of the liberty of Greece, would not remain quiet after their present elevation." Such arguments were very agreeable to Tissaphernes; and he accordingly furnished supplies to the Spartans but sparingly, and did not send the whole of the king's fleet to assist them, lest he should gain them a complete victory, or bring the other party under the necessity of abandoning the war.
III. Meanwhile Alcibiades boasted of this service to his countrymen; and when deputies from the Athenians came to him, he promised to secure them the king's friendship, if the government should be transferred from the hands of the people to those of the senate; in hopes, either that, if the citizens could agree, he should be chosen general unanimously, or that, if dissension arose between the two orders, he should be invited by one of the parties to their assistance. The Athenians, as a dangerous war hung over them, were more solicitous about their safety than their dignity.66 The government, accordingly, was transferred, with the consent of the |53 people, to the senate. But as the nobility, with the pride natural to their order, treated the common people cruelly, and each arrogated to himself the exorbitant power of tyranny, the banished Alcibiades was recalled by the army, and appointed to the command of the fleet. Upon this, he at once sent notice to Athens that, "he would instantly march to the city with his army, and recover the rights of the people from the four hundred, 67 unless they restored them of themselves." The aristocracy, alarmed at this denunciation, at first attempted to betray the city to the Lacedaemonians, but being unable to succeed, went into exile. Alcibiades, having delivered his country from this intestine evil, fitted out his fleet with the utmost care, and proceeded to carry forward the war with the Lacedaemonians.
IV. Mindarus and Pharnabazus, the leaders of the Lacedaemonians, 68 were already waiting at Sestos with their fleet drawn up. A battle being fought, the victory fell to the Athenians. In this engagement, the greater part of the army and almost all the enemy's officers, were killed, and eighty ships taken. Some days after, the Lacedaemonians, transferring the war from the sea to the land, were defeated a second time. Weakened by these disasters, they sued for peace, but were prevented from obtaining it by the efforts of those to whom the war brought private advantage. In the meantime, too, a war made upon Sicily by the Carthaginians called home the aid sent by the Syracusans, and the Lacedaemonians, in consequence, being wholly unsupported, Alcibiades ravaged the coast of Asia with his victorious fleet, fought several battles, and being every where victorious, recovered the cities which had revolted, took some others, and added them to the dominion of the Athenians. Having thus reestablished their ancient glory by sea, and united to it reputation in war by land, he returned to Athens to gratify the longing of his countrymen to behold him. In all these battles two hundred ships of the enemy, and a vast quantity of spoils, were taken.
Upon this triumphant return of the army, the whole multitude from Athens poured forth to meet them, and gazed with |54 admiration on all the soldiers, but especially on Alcibiades; on him the whole city turned their eyes with looks of wonder; they regarded him as sent down from heaven, and as victory in person; they extolled what he had done for his country, nor did they less admire what he had done against it in his exile, excusing his conduct as the result of anger and provocation. Such power indeed, strange to say, was there 69 in that one man, that he was the cause of a great state being subverted and again re-established; victory removed herself to the side on which he stood; and a wonderful change of fortune always attended him. They therefore heaped upon him not only all human, but divine honours; they made it an object of contention, whether the contumely with which they banished him, or the honour with which they recalled him, should be the greater. They, by whose execrations he had been devoted, carried their gods to meet and congratulate him; and him to whom they had lately refused all human aid, they now desired, if they could, to exalt to heaven; they made amends for indignities with praises, for confiscations with gifts, for imprecations with prayers. The unfortunate battle on the coast of Sicily 70 was no longer in their mouths, but their success in Greece; 71 the fleets which he had lost were no more mentioned, but those which he had taken; they did not speak of Syracuse, but of Ionia and the Hellespont. Thus Alcibiades was never received with moderate feelings on the part of his countrymen, either when they were offended, or when they were pleased with him.
V. During these occurrences at Athens, Lysander was appointed by the Lacedaemonians to the command of their fleet and army; and Darius, king of Persia, made, in the room of Tissaphernes, his son Cyrus governor of Ionia and Lydia; who, by his assistance and support, inspired the Lacedemonians with hopes of recovering their former position. Their strength being therefore recruited, the Spartans, when their approach was wholly unexpected, surprised Alcibiades, |55 who had gone with a hundred vessels to Asia, while he was laying waste the country, which was in excellent condition from a long continuance of peace, and while, unapprehensive of any attack, he had allowed his soldiers to disperse themselves under the attractions of plunder; and such was the havoc among the scattered troops, that the Athenians received more injury from that single onslaught, than they had caused the enemy in their previous battles with them. Such, too, was the desperation of the Athenians on the occasion, that they immediately deposed Alcibiades to make room for Conon, thinking that they had been defeated, not by the fortune of war, but by the treachery of their general, on whom their former injuries had had more influence than their recent favours, and that he had conquered in the former part of the war, only to show the enemy what a leader they had despised, and to make his countrymen pay so much the dearer for their previous victory; for his vigour of mind and laxity of morals made everything that was said of Alcibiades credible. Fearing therefore the rage of the people, he went again into voluntary exile.
VI. Conon, being put in the place of Alcibiades, and seeing to what sort of commander he had succeeded, fitted out his fleet with the utmost exertion; but troops were wanting to man the vessels, as the stoutest men had been cut off in the plundering of Asia. Old men, however, and boys under age, were furnished with arms, and the number of an army was completed, but without the strength. But soldiers of an age so unfit for war could not long protract the contest; they were everywhere cut to pieces, or taken prisoners as they fled; and so great was the loss in slain and captured, that not merely the power of the Athenians, but even their very name, seemed to be extinct. Their affairs being ruined and rendered desperate in the contest, they were reduced to such want of men, all of military age being lost, that they gave the freedom of the city to foreigners, liberty to slaves, and pardon to condemned malefactors. With an army raised from such a mixture of human beings, they who had lately been lords of Greece could scarcely preserve their liberty. Yet they resolved once more to try their fortune at sea; and such was their spirit, that though they had recently despaired of safety, they now did not despair even of victory. But it was not such a |56 soldiery that could support the Athenian name; it was not such troops with which they had been used to conquer; nor were there the requisite military accomplishments in those whom prisons, not camps, had confined. All were in consequence either taken prisoners or slain; and the general Conon alone surviving the battle, and dreading the resentment of his countrymen, went off with eight ships to Evagoras, king of Cyprus.
VII. The general of the Lacedaemonians, after managing his affairs so successfully, grew insolent towards his enemies in their evil fortune. He sent the ships which he had taken, laden with spoil, and decorated as in triumph, to Lacedaemon. He received at the same time voluntary tenders of submission. from cities which dread of the doubtful fortune of war had kept in allegiance to the Athenians. Nor did he leave anything in possession of the Athenians but their city itself.
When all this was understood at Athens, the inhabitants, leaving their houses, ran up and down the streets in a frantic manner, asking questions of one another, and inquiring for the author of the news. Neither did incapacity keep the children at home, nor infirmity the old men, nor the weakness of their sex the women: so deeply had the feeling of such calamity affected every age. They met together in the forum, where, through the whole night, they bewailed the public distress. Some wept for their lost brothers, or sons, or parents; somo for other relatives; others for friends dearer than relatives; all mingling their lamentations for their country with plaints for their private sufferings; sometimes regarding themselves, sometimes their city, as on the brink of ruin; and deeming the fate of those who survived more unhappy than that of the slain. Each represented to himself a siege, a famine, and an enemy overbearing and flushed with victory; sometimes contemplating in imagination the desolation and burning of the city, and sometimes the captivity and wretched slavery of all its inhabitants; and thinking the former destruction of Athens, which was attended only with 72 the ruin of their houses, while their children and parents were safe, much less calamitous than what was now to befall them; since there remained no fleet in which, as before, they might find a refuge, and no |57 army by whose valour they might be saved to erect a finer city.
VIII. While the city was thus wept over and almost brought to nothing, the enemy came upon it, pressed the inhabitants with a siege, and distressed them with famine. They knew that little remained of the provisions which they had laid up, and had taken care that no new ones should be imported. The Athenians, exhausted by their sufferings, from long endurance of famine, and daily losses of men, sued for peace; but it was long disputed between the Spartans and their allies whether it should be granted or not. Many gave their opinion that the very name of the Athenians should be blotted out, and the city destroyed by fire; but the Spartans refused "to pluck out one of the two eyes of Greece," and promised the Athenians peace, on condition ''that they should demolish the walls 73 extending down to the Piraeeus, and deliver up the ships which they had left; and that the state should receive from them thirty governors of their own citizens." The city being surrendered on these terms, the Lacedaemonians committed it to Lysander to model the government of it. This year was rendered remarkable, not only for the reduction of Athens, but for the death of Darius, king of Persia, and the banishment of Dionysius, tyrant of Sicily.
When the form of government at Athens was changed, the condition of the citizens was likewise altered. Thirty governors of the state were appointed, who became absolute tyrants; for, at the very first, they organized for themselves a guard of three thousand men, though, after so much slaughter, scarcely as many citizens survived; and as if this force was too small to overawe the city, they received also seven hundred men from the victorious army. They then began to put to death the citizens, intending to commence with Alcibiades, lest he should again seize the government under pretence of delivering the city; and hearing that he was gone to Artaxerxes king of Persia, they despatched men in haste to stop him on his way. By these deputies he was beset, and, as he could not be killed openly, was burnt alive in the apartment in which he slept.
IX. The tyrants, thus freed from the dread of an avenger, wasted the miserable remains of the city with the sword and |58 spoliation; and finding that their proceedings displeased Theramenes, one of their own body, they put him also to death to strike terror into the rest. In consequence a general dispersion of the citizens took place in all directions, and Greece was filled with Athenian fugitives. But the privilege of flight being also taken from them (for the cities were forbidden, by an edict of the Lacedaemonians, to receive the exiles), they all betook themselves to Argos and Thebes,74 where they had not only safe places of refuge, but also conceived hopes of repossessing themselves of their country. There was among the refugees a man named Thrasybulus, a person of great bravery and of noble extraction, who, thinking that something should be attempted, even at the utmost hazard, for their country and the common interest, called together the exiles, and took post at Phyle, a fort on the borders of Attica. Some of the cities, pitying the severity of their misfortunes, afforded them countenance; Ismenias, a leading man among the Thebans, though he could not assist them publicly, yet supported them with his private means; and Lycias, the Syracusan orator, 75 at that time an exile, sent five hundred soldiers, equipped at his own charge, to the aid of the common country of eloquence. A desperate battle ensued; but as those on the one side fought with their utmost efforts to regain their country, and those on the other, with less eagerness, in support of the power of others, the tyrants were overcome. After their defeat they fled back into the city, which, already exhausted by their slaughters, they despoiled also of its arms. Suspecting all the Athenians, too, of disaffection towards them, they ordered them to remove out of the city, and to take u