HENRY CABOT LODGE

THE BEST

of the

World's Classics

RESTRICTED TO PROSE

HENRY CABOT LODGE

Editor-in-Chief

FRANCIS W. HALSEY

Associate Editor

With an Introduction, Biographical and
Explanatory Notes, etc.

IN TEN VOLUMES

Vol. I

GREECE

FUNK & WAGNALLS COMPANY

NEW YORK AND LONDON

Copyright, 1909, by

FUNK & WAGNALLS COMPANY

The Best of the World's Classics

VOL. I

GREECE

484 b.c.—200 a.d.

INTRODUCTION

Ever since civilized man has had a literature he has apparently sought to make selections from it and thus put his favorite passages together in a compact and convenient form. Certain it is, at least, that to the Greeks, masters in all great arts, we owe this habit. They made such collections and named them, after their pleasant imaginative fashion, a gathering of flowers, or what we, borrowing their word, call an anthology. So to those austere souls who regard anthologies as a labor-saving contrivance for the benefit of persons who like a smattering of knowledge and are never really learned, we can at least plead in mitigation that we have high and ancient authority for the practise. In any event no amount of scholarly deprecation has been able to turn mankind or that portion of mankind which reads books from the agreeable habit of making volumes of selections and finding in them much pleasure, as well as improvement in taste and knowledge. With the spread of education and with the great increase of literature among all civilized nations, more especially since the invention of printing and its vast multiplication of books, the making of volumes of selections comprizing what is best in one's own or in many literatures is no longer a mere matter of taste or convenience as with the Greeks, but has become something little short of a necessity in this world of many workers, comparatively few scholars, and still fewer intelligent men of leisure. Anthologies have been multiplied like all other books, and in the main they have done much good and no harm. The man who thinks he is a scholar or highly educated because he is familiar with what is collected in a well-chosen anthology, of course, errs grievously. Such familiarity no more makes one a master of literature than a perusal of a dictionary makes the reader a master of style. But as the latter pursuit can hardly fail to enlarge a man's vocabulary, so the former adds to his knowledge, increases his stock of ideas, liberalizes his mind and opens to him new sources of enjoyment.

The Greek habit was to bring together selections of verse, passages of especial merit, epigrams and short poems. In the main their example has been followed. From their days down to the "Elegant Extracts in Verse" of our grandmothers and grandfathers, and thence on to our own time with its admirable "Golden Treasury" and "Oxford Handbook of Verse," there has been no end to the making of poetical anthologies and apparently no diminution in the public appetite for them. Poetry indeed lends itself to selection. Much of the best poetry of the world is contained in short poems, complete in themselves, and capable of transference bodily to a volume of selections. There are very few poets of whose quality and genius a fair idea can not be given by a few judicious selections. A large body of noble and beautiful poetry, of verse which is "a joy forever," can also be given in a very small compass. And the mechanical attribute of size, it must be remembered, is very important in making a successful anthology, for an essential quality of a volume of selections is that it should be easily portable, that it should be a book which can be slipt into the pocket and readily carried about in any wanderings whether near or remote. An anthology which is stored in one or more huge and heavy volumes is practically valueless except to those who have neither books nor access to a public library, or who think that a stately tome printed on calendered paper and "profusely illustrated" is an ornament to a center-table in a parlor rarely used except on solemn or official occasions.

I have mentioned these advantages of verse for the purposes of an anthology in order to show the difficulties which must be encountered in making a prose selection. Very little prose is in small parcels which can be transferred entire, and therefore with the very important attribute of completeness, to a volume of selections. From most of the great prose writers it is necessary to take extracts, and the chosen passage is broken off from what comes before and after. The fame of a great prose writer as a rule rests on a book, and really to know him the book must be read and not merely passages from it. Extracts give no very satisfactory idea of "Paradise Lost" or "The Divine Comedy," and the same is true of extracts from a history or a novel. It is possible by spreading prose selections through a series of small volumes to overcome the mechanical difficulty and thus make the selections in form what they ought above all things to be—companions and not books of reference or table decorations. But the spiritual or literary problem is not so easily overcome. What prose to take and where to take it are by no means easy questions to solve. Yet they are well worth solving, so far as patient effort can do it, for in this period of easy printing it is desirable to put in convenient form before those who read examples of the masters which will draw us back from the perishing chatter of the moment to the literature which is the highest work of civilization and which is at once noble and lasting.

Upon that theory this collection has been formed. It is an attempt to give examples from all periods and languages of Western civilization of what is best and most memorable in their prose literature. That the result is not a complete exhibition of the time and the literatures covered by the selections no one is better aware than the editors. Inexorable conditions of space make a certain degree of incompleteness inevitable when he who is gathering flowers traverses so vast a garden, and is obliged to confine the results of his labors within such narrow bounds. The editors are also fully conscious that, like all other similar collections, this one too will give rise to the familiar criticism and questionings as to why such a passage was omitted and such another inserted; why this writer was chosen and that other passed by. In literature we all have our favorites, and even the most catholic of us has also his dislikes if not his pet aversions. I will frankly confess that there are authors represented in these volumes whose writings I should avoid, just as there are certain towns and cities of the world to which, having once visited them, I would never willingly return, for the simple reason that I would not voluntarily subject myself to seeing or reading what I dislike or, which is worse, what bores and fatigues me. But no editor of an anthology must seek to impose upon others his own tastes and opinions. He must at the outset remember and never afterward forget that so far as possible his work must be free from the personal equation. He must recognize that some authors who may be mute or dull to him have a place in literature, past or present, sufficiently assured to entitle them to a place among selections which are intended above all things else to be representative.

To those who wonder why some favorite bit of their own was omitted while something else for which they do not care at all has found a place I can only say that the editors, having supprest their own personal preferences, have proceeded on certain general principles which seem to be essential in making any selection either of verse or prose which shall possess broader and more enduring qualities than that of being a mere exhibition of the editor's personal taste. To illustrate my meaning: Emerson's "Parnassus" is extremely interesting as an exposition of the tastes and preferences of a remarkable man of great and original genius. As an anthology it is a failure, for it is of awkward size, is ill arranged and contains selections made without system, and which in many cases baffle all attempts to explain their appearance. On the other hand, Mr. Palgrave, neither a very remarkable man nor a great and original genius, gave us in the first "Golden Treasury" a collection which has no interest whatever as reflecting the tastes of the editor, but which is quite perfect in its kind. Barring the disproportionate amount of Wordsworth which includes some of his worst things—and which, be it said in passing, was due to Mr. Palgrave's giving way at that point to his personal enthusiasm—the "Golden Treasury" in form, in scope, and in arrangement, as well as in almost unerring taste, is the best model of what an anthology should be which is to be found in any language.

Returning now to our questioner who misses some favorite and finds something else which he dislikes, the only answer, as I have just said, is that the collection is formed on certain general principles, as any similar collection of the sort must be. This series is called "The Best of the World's Classics," and "classics" is used not in the narrow and technical sense, but rather in that of Thoreau, who defined classics as "the noblest recorded thoughts of mankind." Therefore, the first principle of guidance in selection is to take examples of the great writings which have moved and influenced the thought of the world, and which have preeminently the quality of "high seriousness" as required by Aristotle. This test alone, however, would limit the selections too closely. Therefore the second principle of choice is to make selections from writers historically important either personally or by their writings. The third rule is to endeavor to give selections which shall be representative of the various literatures and the various periods through which, the collection ranges. Lastly, and this applies, of course, only to passages taken from the writers of England and the United States, the effort has been to give specimens of the masters of English prose, of that prose in its development and at its best, and to show, so far as may be, what can be accomplished with that great instrument, and what a fine style really is as exhibited in the best models. Everything contained in these volumes is there in obedience to one at least of these principles, many in obedience to more than one, some in conformity to all four.

No one will become a scholar or a master of any of the great literatures here represented by reading this collection. Literature and scholarship are not to be had so cheaply as that. Yet is there much profit to be had from these little volumes. They contain many passages which merit Dr. Johnson's fine saying about books: "That they help us to enjoy life or teach us to endure it." To the man of letters, to the man of wide reading, they will at least serve to recall, when far from libraries and books, those authors who have been the delight and the instructors of a lifetime. They will bring at least the pleasures of memory and that keener pleasure which arises when we meet a poem or a passage of prose which we know as an old and well-loved friend, remote from home, upon some alien page.

To that larger public whose lives are not spent among books and libraries, and for whose delectation such a collection as this is primarily intended, these volumes rightly read at odd times, in idle moments, in out-of-the-way places, on the ship or the train, offer much. They will bring the reader in contact with many of the greatest intellects of all time. They contain some of the noblest thoughts that have passed through the minds of our weak and erring race. There is no man who will not be the better, for the moment at least, by reading what Cicero says about old age, Seneca about death, and Socrates about love, to go no further for examples than to

"The glory that was Greece,
And the grandeur that was Rome."

Moreover, the bowing acquaintance which can be formed here may easily offer attractions which will lead to a close and intimate friendship, with all that the word implies in the case of a great author or a great book. It seems to me, for example, as if no one who read here the too brief extracts from Erasmus or from Cervantes, to take at random two writers widely separated in thought, could fail to pursue the acquaintance thus begun, so potent are the sympathetic charm, the wit, the wisdom and the humor of both these great men. There is, at least, variety in these little volumes, and while many things in them may not appeal to us, they may to our neighbors. That which "is dumb to us may speak to him."

Again, let it be noticed that there is much more than the "high seriousness" which is the test of the greatest prose as of the finest poetry. Humor and pathos, tragedy and comedy, all find their place and glimpses of the pageant of human history flit through the pages. It would seem as if it were impossible to read extracts from Thucydides and Tacitus and Gibbon and not long to go to their histories and learn all that could be said by such men about the life of man upon earth, about Athens and Rome and the rise and fall of empires. Selections are unsatisfying and the better they are the more unsatisfying they become. But this is in reality their great merit. They have much beauty in themselves, they awaken pleasant memories, they revive old delights, but, above all, if rightly read they open the gates to the illimitable gardens whence all the flowers which have here been gathered may be found blooming in radiance, unplucked and unbroken and rooted in their native soil.

The most important part of the collection is that which gives selections from those writers whose native tongue is English. No translation even of prose can ever quite reproduce its original, and as a rule can not hope to equal it. There are many translations, notably the Elizabethan, which are extremely fine in themselves and memorable examples of English prose. Still they are not the original writings. Something escapes in the translation into another tongue, an impalpable something which can not be held or transmitted. The Bible stands alone, a great literary monument of the noblest and most beautiful English, which has formed English speech and become a part of the language as it is of the thought and emotion of the people who read "King James'" version in all parts of the globe. Yet we know that the version which the people, so fortunate in its possession, wisely and absolutely decline to give up in exchange for any revision is neither an accurate nor a faithful reproduction of its original. Therefore, putting aside the English Bible as wholly by itself, it may be safely said that the soul of a language and the beauties of style which it is capable of exhibiting can only be found and studied in the productions of writers who not only think in the language in which they write, but to whom that speech is native, the inalienable birthright and heritage of their race or country. In such writers we get not only the thought, the humor, or the pathos, all that can be transferred in a translation, but also the pleasure to the ear akin to music, the sense of form, the artistic gratification which form brings, all those attributes which are possible in the highest degree to those only to whom the language is native.

For these reasons, as will be readily understood, in making selections from those writers whose native tongue is English, specimens have been given of all periods from the earliest time and occasionally of authors who would not otherwise find a place in such a collection, for the purpose of tracing in outline the development of English prose and the formation of an English style which, like all true and great styles, is peculiar to the language and can not be reproduced in any other. This is not the place, nor would it be feasible within any reasonable limits to narrate the history of English prose. But in these selections it is possible to follow its gradual advance from the first rude and crude attempts through the splendid irregularities of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries to the establishment of a standard of style in the eighteenth and thence onward to the modifications and changes in that standard which extend to our own time.

The purpose of this collection is not didactic. If it were it would be a school-book and not an anthology in the Greek sense, where the first principle was to seek what was of literary value, artistic in expression, and noble in thought. Yet the mere bringing together of examples of prose from the writings of the great masters of style can not but teach a lesson never more needed than now.

I do not mean by this to suggest imitation of any writer. Nothing is more dangerous, especially when the style of the writer imitated is peculiar and strongly marked. That which is valuable and instructive is the opportunity given here for a study of fine English styles, and in this way to learn the capabilities of the language and the general principles which have governed the production of the best English prose. We have in the English language an unequaled richness of vocabulary far surpassing in extent that of any other tongue. It possesses a great literature and a body of poetry unrivaled in modern times. It is not only one of the strongest bonds of union in the United States, but it is the language in which our freedom was won and in which our history and our laws are written. It is our greatest heritage. To weaken, corrupt or deprave it would be a misfortune without parallel to our entire people. Yet we can not disguise from ourselves the fact that the fertility of the printing-press, the multiplication of cheap magazines, and the flood of printed words poured out daily in the newspapers all tend strongly in this direction. This is an era of haste and hurry stimulated by the great inventions which have changed human environment. Form and style in any art require time, and time seems the one thing we can neither spare nor wisely economize. Yet, in literature above all arts, to abandon form and style is inevitably destructive and entails misfortunes which can hardly be estimated, for loose, weak and vulgar writing is a sure precursor of loose, weak and vulgar thinking. If form of expression is cast aside, form in thought and in the presentation of thought is certain to follow. Against all this the fine English prose amply represented in these selections offers a silent and convincing protest to every one who will read it attentively.

We can begin with the splendid prose of the age of Elizabeth and of the seventeenth century. It is irregular and untamed, but exuberant and brilliant, rich both in texture and substance. We find it at its height in the strange beauties of Sir Thomas Browne, in the noble pages of Milton, stiff with golden embroidery, as Macaulay says, and in the touching and beautiful simplicity of Bunyan's childlike sentences. Thence we pass to the eighteenth century, when English prose was freed from its involutions and irregularities and brought to uniformity and to a standard. The age of Anne gave to English prose balance, precision and settled form. There have been periods of greater originality, but the eighteenth century at least lived up to Pope's doctrine, set forth in the familiar line:

"What oft was thought but ne'er so well exprest."

As there is no better period to turn to for instruction than the age of Anne, so, if we must choose a single writer there is no better master to be studied than Swift. There have been many great writers and many fine and beautiful styles since the days of the terrible Dean of St. Patrick's, from the imposing and finely balanced sentences of Gibbon to the subtle delicacy of Hawthorne and the careful finish of Robert Louis Stevenson. But in Swift better than in any one writer can we find the lessons which are so sorely needed now. He had in the highest degree force, clearness and concentration all combined with a marvelous simplicity. Swift's style may have lacked richness, but it never failed in taste. There is not a line of false fine-writing in all his books. Those are the qualities which are so needed now, simplicity and clearness and a scrupulous avoidance of that would-be fine writing which is not at all fine but merely vulgar and insincere.

The writing in our newspapers is where reform is particularly needed. There are great journals here and there which maintain throughout a careful standard of good and sober English. Most of them, unhappily, are filled in the news columns at least with a strange jargon found nowhere else, spoken by no one and never used in daily life by those who every night furnish it to the compositors. It is happily compounded in about equal parts of turgid fine writing, vulgar jauntiness and indiscriminate slang.

I can best show my meaning by example. A writer in a newspaper wished to state that a man who had once caused excitement by a book of temporary interest and who, after the days of his notoriety were over, lived a long and checkered career, had killed himself. This is the way he said it:

His life's work void of fruition and dissipated into emptiness, his fondest hopes and ambitions crumbled and scattered, shunned as a fanatic, and unable to longer wage life's battle, Hinton Rowan Helper, at one time United States consul general to Buenos Ayres, yesterday sought the darkest egress from his woes and disappointments—a suicide's death.

In an unpretentious lodging-house in Pennsylvania avenue, near the Capitol, the man who as much, if not more than any other agitator, is said to have blazed the way to the Civil War, the writer who stirred this nation to its core by his anti-slavery philippics, and the promoter with the most gigantic railroad enterprise projected in the history of the world, was found gript in the icy hand of death. The brain which gave birth to his historic writings had willed the stilling of the heart which for three-quarters of a century had palpitated quick and high with roseate hopes.

That passage, taken at hazard from a newspaper, is intended, I think, to be fine writing of an imposing and dramatic kind. Why could not the writer have written it, a little more carefully perhaps, but still in just the language which he would have used naturally in describing the event to his wife or friend? Simply stated, it would have been far more solemn and impressive than this turgid, insincere account with its large words, its forced note of tragedy and its split infinitive. Let me put beneath it another description of a death-bed:

The blood and spirits of Le Fevre, which were waxing cold and slow, and were retreating to their last citadel, the heart—rallied back,—the film forsook his eyes for a moment,—he looked up wishfully into my Uncle Toby's face,—then cast a look upon his boy,—and that ligament, fine as it was,—was never broken.

Nature instantly ebbed again,—the film returned to its place,—the pulse fluttered,—stopt,—went on,—throbbed,—stopt again,—moved,—stopt,—shall I go on? No.

This famous passage is neither unintentional sentiment nor unaffected pathos. The art is apparent even in the punctuation. The writer meant to be touching and pathetic and to awaken emotions of tenderness and pity and he succeeded. The description is all he meant it to be. The extract from the newspaper arouses no emotion, unless it be resentment at its form and leaves us cold and unmoved. The other is touching and pitiful. Observe the manner in which Sterne obtains his effect, the perfect simplicity and good taste of every word, the reserve, the gentleness, the utter absence of any straining for effect. The one description died the day it appeared. The other has held its place for a century and a half. Are not the qualities which produced such a result worth striving for?

Let me take another haphazard selection from a description of a young girl entitled as such to every one's kindness, courtesy and respect. In it occurs this sentence: "The college girl is grammatical in speech, but she has the jolliest, chummiest jargon of slang that ever rolled from under a pink tongue." That articulate sounds come from beneath the tongue is at least novel and few persons are fortunate enough to be able to talk with that portion of their mouths. But I have no desire to dwell either upon the anatomical peculiarities of the sentence or upon its abysmal vulgarity. It is supposed to be effective, it is what is appropriately called "breezy," it is a form of words which can be heard nowhere in the speech of men and women. Why should it be consigned to print? It is possible to describe a young girl attractively and effectively in much simpler fashion. Let me give an example, not a famous passage at all, from another writer:

She shocked no canon of taste; she was admirably in keeping with herself, and never jarred against surrounding circumstances. Her figure, to be sure—so small as to be almost childlike and so elastic that motion seemed as easy or easier to it than rest—would hardly have suited one's idea of a countess. Neither did her face—with brown ringlets on either side and a slightly piquant nose, and the wholesome bloom, and the clear shade of tan, and the half dozen freckles, friendly remembrancers of the April sun and breeze—precisely give us the right to call her beautiful. But there was both luster and depth in her eyes. She was very pretty; as graceful as a bird and graceful much in the same way; as pleasant about the house as a gleam of sunshine falling on the floor through a shadow of twinkling leaves, or as a ray of firelight that dances on the wall while evening is drawing nigh.

Contrast this with the newspaper sentence and the sensation is one of pain. Again I say, observe the method by which Hawthorne gets his effect, the simplicity of the language, the balance of the sentences, the reserve, the refinement, and the final imaginative touch in the charming comparison with which the passage ends.

To blame the hard working men who write for the day which is passing over them because they do not write like Sterne and Hawthorne would be as absurd as it would be unjust. But they ought to recognize the qualities of fine English prose, they ought to remember that they can improve their readers by giving them good, simple English, pure and undefiled, and they ought not to debauch the public taste by vulgar fine writing and even more vulgar light writing. In short, they ought to write for the public as they would talk to their wives and children and friends; a little more formally and carefully perhaps, but in the same simple and direct fashion.

For the prolific authors of the flood of stories, which every month bears on its broad bosom many tons of advertisements, no such allowance need be made. They are not compelled to furnish copy between daylight and dark. They need a course of study in English prose more than anyone else, and they would profit by the effort. As a class they seem to be like the young man in Du Maurier's picture, who, being asked if he had read Thackeray, replies, "No. I nevah read novels; I write them."

In this age of quickening movement and restless haste it is, above all things, important to struggle against the well-nigh universal inclination to abandon all efforts for form and style. They are the great preservers of what is best in literature, the salt which ought never to lose its savor. Those who use English in public speech and public writing have a serious responsibility too generally forgotten and disregarded. I would fain call attention to it altho no single man can hope to effect much by any plea he can make in behalf of the use of good English, whether written or spoken. Yet no one, I think, can read the great masterpieces of English prose and not have both lesson and responsibility brought home to him. He would be insensible, indeed, if he did not feel after such reading that he was a sharer in a noble heritage which it behooved him to guard and cherish. If this series serves no other purpose, it will exhibit to those who read it some of the splendors and the beauties of English prose. It will at least open the gates of literature and perhaps lead its readers to authors they have not known before, or recall the words of writers who have entered into their lives and thoughts and thus make them more mindful of the ineffable value to them and their children of the great language which is at once their birthright and their inheritance.

HENRY CABOT LODGE.

Washington, D. C., July 15, 1909.

CONTENTS

Vol. I—Greece

GREECE

484 b.c.—200 a.d.

HERODOTUS

Born in Asia Minor, probably in 484 b.c.; died in Italy, probably in 424; commonly called the "Father of History"; assisted in the expulsion of the tyrant Lygdamis from Halicarnassus; traveled in Persia, Egypt, and Greece; lived afterward in Samos and Athens, settling in Thurii, Italy, about 444 b.c.; his history of the Persian invasion of Greece, extending to 479 b.c., was first printed in Greek by Aldus Manutius in 1502, but a Latin version had appeared in 1474.[1]

I

SOLON'S WORDS OF WISDOM TO CRŒSUS[2]

When all these conquests had been added to the Lydian empire, and the prosperity of Sardis[3] was now at its height, there came thither, one after another, all the sages of Greece living at the time, and among them Solon, the Athenian. He was on his travels, having left Athens to be absent ten years, under the pretense of wishing to see the world, but really to avoid being forced to repeal any of the laws which at the request of the Athenians he had made for them. Without his sanction the Athenians could not repeal them, as they had bound themselves under a heavy curse to be governed for ten years by the laws which should be imposed on them by Solon.

On this account, as well as to see the world, Solon set out upon his travels, in the course of which he went to Egypt to the court of Amasis,[4] and also paid a visit to Crœsus at Sardis. Crœsus received him as his guest, and lodged him in the royal palace. On the third or fourth day after, he bade his servants conduct Solon over his treasuries and show him all their greatness and magnificence. When he had seen them all, and so far as time allowed inspected them, Crœsus addrest this question to him: "Stranger of Athens, we have heard much of thy wisdom and of thy travels through many lands, from love of knowledge and a wish to see the world. I am curious therefore to inquire of thee, whom of all the men that thou hast seen thou deemest the most happy?"

This he asked because he thought himself the happiest of mortals; but Solon answered him without flattery, according to his true sentiments, "Tellus of Athens, sire." Full of astonishment at what he had heard Crœsus demanded sharply, "And wherefore dost thou deem Tellus happiest?" To this the other replied: "First, because his country was flourishing in his days, and he himself had sons both beautiful and good, and he lived to see children born to each of them, and these children all grew up; and further, because after a life spent in what our people look upon as comfort, his end was surpassingly glorious. In a battle between the Athenians and their neighbors near Eleusis, he came to the assistance of his countrymen, routed the foe, and died upon the field most gallantly. The Athenians gave him a public funeral on the spot where he fell, and paid him the highest honors."

Thus did Solon admonish Crœsus by the example of Tellus, enumerating the manifold particulars of his happiness. When he had ended, Crœsus inquired a second time, who after Tellus seemed to him the happiest, expecting that at any rate he would be given the second place. "Cleobis and Bito," Solon answered: "they were of Argive race; their fortune was enough for their wants, and they were besides endowed with so much bodily strength that they had both gained prizes at the games. Also, this tale is told of them: There was a great festival in honor of the goddess Juno at Argos, to which their mother must needs be taken in a car. Now, the oxen did not come home from the field in time; so the youths, fearful of being too late, put the yoke on their own necks, and themselves drew the car in which their mother rode. Five and forty furlongs did they draw her, and stopt before the temple. This deed of theirs was witnessed by the whole assembly of worshipers, and then their life closed in the best possible way. Herein, too, God showed forth most evidently how much better a thing for man death is than life. For the Argive men stood thick around the car and extolled the vast strength of the youths; and the Argive women extolled the mother who was blest with such a pair of sons; and the mother herself, overjoyed at the deed and at the praises it had won, standing straight before the image, besought the goddess to bestow on Cleobis and Bito, the sons who had so mightily honored her, the highest blessing to which mortals can attain. Her prayer ended, they offered sacrifice and partook of the holy banquet, after which the two youths fell asleep in the temple. They never woke again, but so passed from the earth. The Argives, looking on them as among the best of men, caused statues of them to be made, which they gave to the shrine at Delphi."

When Solon had thus assigned these youths the second place Crœsus broke in angrily, "What, stranger of Athens! is my happiness then so utterly set at naught by thee that thou dost not even put me on a level with private men?"

"O Crœsus," replied the other, "thou askedst a question concerning the condition of man, of one who knows that the Power above us is full of jealousy, and fond of troubling our lot. A long life gives one to witness much, and experience much oneself, that one would not choose. Seventy years I regard as the limit of the life of man. In these seventy years are contained, without reckoning intercalary months, twenty-five thousand and two hundred days. Add an intercalary month to every other year, that the seasons may come round at the right time, and there will be, besides the seventy years, thirty-five such months, making an addition of one thousand and fifty days. The whole number of the days contained in the seventy years will thus be twenty-six thousand two hundred and fifty, whereof not one but will produce events unlike the rest. Hence man is wholly accident.

"For thyself, O Crœsus, I see that thou art wonderfully rich, and art the lord of many nations; but with respect to that whereon thou questionest me, I have no answer to give, until I hear that thou hast closed thy life happily. For assuredly he who possesses great store of riches is no nearer happiness than he who has what suffices for his daily needs, unless it so hap that luck attend upon him, and so he continue in the enjoyment of all his good things to the end of life. For many of the wealthiest men have been unfavored of fortune, and many whose means were moderate have had excellent luck. Men of the former class excel those of the latter but in two respects; these last excel the former in many. The wealthy man is better able to content his desires, and to bear up against a sudden buffet of calamity. The other has less ability to withstand these evils (from which, however, his good luck keeps him clear), but he enjoys all these following blessings: he is whole of limb, a stranger to disease, free from misfortune, happy in his children, and comely to look upon.

"If in addition to all this he ends his life well, he is of a truth the man of whom thou art in search, the man who may rightly be termed happy. Call him, however, until he die, not happy but fortunate. Scarcely indeed can any man unite all these advantages: as there is no country which contains within it all that it needs, but each while it possesses some things lacks others, and the best country is that which contains the most, so no single human being is complete in every respect—something is always lacking. He who unites the greatest number of advantages, and retaining them to the day of his death, then dies peaceably—that man alone, sire, is in my judgment entitled to bear the name of 'happy.' But in every matter it behooves us to mark well the end: for oftentimes God gives men a gleam of happiness, and then plunges them into ruin."

Such was the speech which Solon addrest to Crœsus, a speech which brought him neither largess nor honor. The king with much indifference saw Solon depart, since the former thought that a man must be an arrant fool who made no account of present good, but bade men always wait and mark the end.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Herodotus, at a certain period in his life, came under the influence of Pericles and his contemporaries, but it is clear from his writings that he received from Attic thought and style little definite inspiration. J. P. Mahaffy has likened him to Goldsmith in his aloofness from his environment. Often ridiculed by his friends for simplicity, Goldsmith far exceeded his clever critics in directness and pathos, and thus gained a place in literature which contemporaries never dreamed would be his. The narrative of Herodotus, adds Mahaffy, gives us more information about the state of the ancient nations and their culture than all other Greek historians put together. His purpose, as Herodotus himself declares, was to narrate the great conflict between the Greeks and barbarians, in order that the causes might be known and glorious deeds might not perish. Readers are imprest by the perfect ease and mastery with which a great variety of subjects are dealt with, his story "advancing with epic grandeur to its close." Mahaffy pronounces Herodotus an Ionic story-writer, who never became an Attic one—the chief master of Ionic, as Thucydides was of Attic prose.

[2] From Book I of the "History." Translated by George Rawlinson. Crœsus reigned from 560 b.c. to 546. The visit of Solon was made some time before 559.

[3] The capital of Lydia, in Asia Minor, and a flourishing city in the time of Crœsus. It was several times destroyed, the last time by Tamerlane. Its site is now a village.

[4] Amasis came to the Egyptian throne in 569 b.c., and reigned 44 years.

II

BABYLON AND ITS CAPTURE BY CYRUS[5]

(538 b.c.)

Assyria contains many large cities; but of these Babylon, to which, after the destruction of Nineveh, the seat of government was removed, is by far the most renowned and the most strongly fortified. Babylon is situated in an extensive plain. Each side of the city, which forms a square, measures one hundred and twenty stadia (about fourteen miles), making the entire circuit of the city four hundred and eighty stadia—such is the magnitude of this city Babylon! and in magnificence also it surpassed every city of which we have any knowledge. It is surrounded by a trench, deep, wide, and full of water. Within this is a wall, the width of which is fifty royal cubits, and its height two hundred cubits.[6] The royal cubit exceeds the common measure by three fingers' breadth.

It is proper I should say in what manner the earth removed from the trench was disposed of, and how the wall was constructed. The earth, as fast as it was removed from the trench, was converted into bricks and baked in furnaces: when thus prepared, melted bitumen was used instead of mortar; and between every thirtieth course of bricks there was inserted a layer of reeds. The sides of the trench were first lined with brickwork, and then the wall raised in the manner described. On the upper edges of the wall, and opposite to one another, were constructed turrets; between these turrets a space was left wide enough for a chariot and four horses to pass and turn. In the walls were one hundred gates, all of brass, with posts and upper lintels of the same. Eight days' journey from Babylon is a city named Is, near which runs a small river of the same name, discharging itself into the Euphrates; this river brings down with its waters clots of bitumen in large quantities. From this source was derived the bitumen used in cementing the walls of Babylon.

Such are the fortifications of Babylon. The city is divided into two portions by the river Euphrates, which runs through the midst of it. This river rises in Armenia, and throughout its course is wide, deep, and swift; it empties itself into the Red sea.[7] Each of the city walls is extended to the river, where it makes an angle, and, with a coating of burnt bricks, lines the sides of the river. The city is filled with houses of three or four stories, forming streets in straight lines, and running parallel with one another, the cross streets opening upon the river through as many smaller brazen gates, placed in the breastwork of the river walls. Within the principal wall just mentioned is a second, not much inferior to the first in strength, tho less in width.

In the center of each portion of the city is an enclosed space—the one occupied by the royal palace, a building of vast extent and great strength; in the other stands the temple of Jupiter Belus, with its brazen gates, remaining in my time: it is a square structure; each side measures two stadia. Within the enclosure is erected a solid tower, measuring a stadium both in width and depth; upon this tower is raised another, and then another, and another, making eight in all. The ascent is by a path which is formed on the outside of the towers; midway in the ascent is a resting-place, furnished with easy chairs, in which those who ascend repose themselves. On the summit of the topmost tower stands a large temple; and in this temple is a great couch, handsomely fitted up; and near it stands a golden table: no statue whatever is erected in the temple, nor does any man ever pass the night there; but a woman only, chosen from the people by the god, as the Chaldeans, who are the priests of the temple affirm. The same persons say—tho I give no credit to the story—that the god himself comes to the temple and reposes on the bed, in like manner as at Thebes in Egypt, where also, in the temple of Jupiter, a woman passes the night. A similar custom is observed at Pataris, in Lycia, where there is at times an oracle, on which occasions the priestess is shut up by night in the temple.

Within the precincts of the temple at Babylon there is a smaller sacred edifice on the ground, containing an immense golden statue of Jupiter in a sitting posture: around the statue are large tables, which, with the steps and throne, are all of gold, and, as the Chaldeans affirm, contain eight hundred talents of gold. Without this edifice is a golden altar; there is also another altar of great size, on which are offered full-grown animals: upon the golden altar it is not lawful to offer sacrifices except sucklings. Once in every year, when the festival of this god is celebrated, the Chaldeans burn upon the greater altar a thousand talents of frankincense. There was also, not long since, in this sacred enclosure a statue of solid gold, twelve cubits in height; at least so the Chaldeans affirm: I did not myself see it. This figure Darius Hystaspes would fain have taken, but dared not execute his wishes; however, his son Xerxes not only took it, but put to death the priests who endeavored to prevent its removal. Such was the magnificence of this temple, which contained also many private offerings.

Of this Babylon there were several monarchs—as I shall mention in my history of the Assyrians—who adorned the city and its temples. Among these, two young women must be mentioned. The former, named Semiramis,[8] reigned five generations before the latter. This queen raised an embankment worthy of admiration through the plain to confine the river, which heretofore often spread over the level like a lake. The latter of these two queens, named Nitocris,[9] excelled the former in intelligence: she left monuments, some of which I must describe. Seeing the Medes already possest of extensive empire, and restlessly extending their power, by taking city after city, among which was Nineveh, she resolved in good time to secure herself against them in the best manner possible. In the first place, therefore, as the river Euphrates ran in a straight course through the city, she formed excavations at a distance above it, by which means its course became so tortuous that it three times passed a certain town of Assyria, called Ardericca; travelers from our sea,[10] in descending the Euphrates toward Babylon, three times arrive at that town in the course of three days. She also raised both banks of the river to an amazing height and thickness. At some distance above Babylon, and near the river, she dug a reservoir in the marsh, of such depth as to drain it. The width of this excavation was such as to make its circuit four hundred and twenty stadia. The earth removed from it was taken to raise the banks of the river; this done, she brought stones, with which the sides of the lake were lined. Both these works—the diverting of the river and the reservoir—were formed with the intention of rendering the current less rapid by its many windings, which broke its force, and at the same time made the navigation more circuitous; so that those who descended toward Babylon by water might have to make a long circuit around the lake. These works were effective on that side which was exposed to the inroads of the Medes, and where the distance between her dominions and theirs was the least; for she wished to cut off all communication with them, and to keep them in ignorance of her movements.

Thus did this princess raise from the depths a fortification, within which she was included. The city being divided into two portions by the river in former times, whoever wished to pass from one to the other was obliged to take a boat, which manifestly was a great inconvenience. This defect she supplied. When she had dug the lake in the marsh, she availed herself of the occasion to construct another monument also, by which her fame will be perpetuated. She caused stones of great magnitude to be hewn, and when they were ready, the lake being empty, she turned the waters of the Euphrates into it; which, as it filled, left the old channel dry. Then she lined both sides of the river and the descent from the gates with burnt bricks, in like manner as the city walls; and with the stones already mentioned she constructed, as near the middle of the city as possible, a bridge, binding the stones together with iron and lead. During the day, planks of wood were extended from pier to pier, so as to form a pathway; these were withdrawn at night, to prevent the people from passing over to plunder one another. This bridge was, as we have said, formed by withdrawing the water of the Euphrates into the artificial lake; when completed, the river was restored to its ancient channel; the propriety of this mode of proceeding then become apparent, by means of which the citizens obtained the accommodation of a bridge.

The same queen also executed the following machination: she constructed for herself a tomb, aloft upon a gate in one of the most frequented ways of the city; upon the sepulcher she engraved this inscription: "If any one of my successors, the kings of Babylon, shall lack money, let him open the sepulcher, and take what treasures he pleases. But let him beware of opening it from any other cause than necessity; for in such a case it shall not turn to his advantage." This sepulcher remained undisturbed till Darius ascended the throne. To this king it seemed a grievance both that this gate should remain useless, and that the wealth deposited in it, and which invited research, should not be appropriated. The gate was not used, because no one could pass through it without having a dead body over his head. He therefore opened the tomb, in which he found—of treasures indeed nothing, but the corpse, and an inscription to this effect: "If thou hadst not been insatiably eager for riches, and greedy of filthy lucre, thou wouldst not have opened the depository of the dead." So much for this queen and the reports that have been handed down concerning her.

It was against the son of this woman that Cyrus made war; he was named (like his father) Labynetus, and reigned over the Assyrians. When the Great King[11] goes out to battle, he is attended by ample provisions and cattle drawn from the home stock; and even water from the Choaspian spring at Susa,[12] of which alone the king drinks, is carried about for his use; for he can taste no other stream. This Choaspian water, after having been boiled, is put into vases of silver, which are transported in four-wheeled wagons drawn by mules, following him wherever he goes.

Cyrus advancing toward Babylon arrived at the river Gyndes, which, rising in the Matienian hills and running through the country of the Dardanians (or Darnians), empties itself into the Tigris; and this river, passing by the city Opis, discharges its waters into the Red Sea.[13] When Cyrus attempted to pass this river Gyndes, which could only be done by boats, one of the white horses called sacred, full of mettle, plunged into the stream and endeavored to reach the opposite bank; but, being submerged in the current, it was carried away. Cyrus, enraged at the river for this injury, threatened to reduce it so low that in future women should ford it with ease, not wetting their knees. Having uttered this threat, he delayed the progress of his army toward Babylon, and, dividing his forces into two bodies, measured out one hundred and eighty channels to be cut from both banks of the river, thus diverting the Gyndes on all sides. He enjoined upon his army the work of digging these trenches, and by their numbers they completed it; but the whole summer was spent there in the labor.

Cyrus having in this manner punished the river Gyndes, by distributing its waters into three hundred and sixty trenches, as soon as the next spring appeared, advanced toward Babylon. The Babylonians, coming out in battle-array, waited his approach; when he drew nigh to the city they engaged him, but, being defeated, retired within the walls. Some time before, well knowing the restless intentions of Cyrus, and seeing him attack one nation after another, they had brought into the city an abundance of corn for many years. They therefore disregarded the siege. But Cyrus, beset with difficulties, saw a long time pass away without his making any progress toward the accomplishment of his object.

At length, either at the suggestion of some one else or from a thought of his own, he resorted to the following means: He disposed the whole of his army, by placing one part above the city, where the river enters it, and another part below, where it makes its exit, commanding them as soon as they should perceive the river to be sufficiently shallow to enter by that way. This order being given, he himself went off with the inferior troops of the army. Arriving at the lake, he did what had been done before by the queen of Babylon in the marsh; for, by making a trench from the river to the empty reservoir, he diverted the water from the ancient channel, till it so far subsided as to become fordable.

As soon as this happened, the Persians who had been appointed for this purpose entered Babylon by the bed of the river, the water of which was little more than knee-deep. If the Babylonians had been before apprized of the intentions of Cyrus, or if they had learned at the moment what he was doing, they would not have suffered the Persians to enter the city, nor would the Babylonians have perished so shamefully; for if they had closed all the gates by the river's side, and ascended the walls which ran along it, they might have taken the Persians as in a net. But the Persians came upon their opponents quite unexpectedly; and from the great extent of the city—as it has been affirmed by some of the inhabitants—those who dwelt in the outskirts of the city were made prisoners before the people in the center of Babylon knew that the place was taken. But, as it happened, they were celebrating a festival, and were dancing and feasting when they learned what had happened. Thus was Babylon the first time taken.

FOOTNOTES:

[5] From Book I of the "History." Translated by Isaac Taylor. Cyrus, after capturing Babylon, did not destroy it; it was Darius Hystaspes who razed its walls and towers. Darius Hystaspes was the father of that Darius who succeeded to the Persian throne after the failure of male heirs to Cyrus. Xerxes carried further the work of destruction at Babylon. Its permanent decay was accelerated still more by the founding, in its neighborhood, of Seleucia in 300 b.c. In the time of Pliny it had become a dismal and silent place.

[6] Equivalents in English feet for these measurements have been estimated as eighty-five feet for the width and three hundred and thirty-five feet for the height.

[7] Now called the Persian Gulf.

[8] Semiramis is regarded by modern antiquarians as a fabulous personage. By some of them she has been identified with the goddess Astarte.

[9] Antiquarians have great doubts as to the identity of this queen. By some she is thought to have been the wife of Nebuchadnezzar, who began to reign in 604 b.c., and the mother or grandmother of Belshazzar, the last of the kings of Babylon.

[10] That is, from the sea which encircled Greece.

[11] Herodotus means by this the King of Persia.

[12] Susa was the capital of Susiana, a country lying at the head of the Persian Gulf.

[13] Here again for Red Sea we must read Persian Gulf.

III

THE PYRAMID OF CHEOPS[14]

Till the death of Rhampsinitus, the priests said, Egypt was excellently governed, and flourished greatly; but after him Cheops succeeded to the throne, and plunged into all manner of wickedness. He closed the temples and forbade the Egyptians to offer sacrifice, compelling them instead to labor, one and all, in his service. Some were required to drag blocks of stone down to the Nile from the quarries in the Arabian range of hills; others received the blocks after they had been conveyed in boats across the river, and drew them to the range of hills called the Libyan. A hundred thousand men labored constantly, and were relieved every three months by a fresh lot. It took ten years' oppression of the people to make the causeway for the conveyance of the stones, a work not much inferior, in my judgment, to the pyramid itself. This causeway is five furlongs in length, ten fathoms wide, and in height, at the highest part, eight fathoms. It is built of polished stone, and is covered with carvings of animals. To make it took ten years, as I said—or rather to make the causeway, the works on the mound where the pyramid stands, and the underground chambers, which Cheops intended as vaults for his own use; these last were built on a sort of island, surrounded by water introduced from the Nile by a canal. The pyramid itself was twenty years in building. It is a square, eight hundred feet each way, and the height the game, built entirely of polished stone, fitted together with the utmost care. The stones of which it is composed are none of them less than thirty feet in length.

The pyramid was built in steps, battlement-wise, as it is called, or, according to others, altar-wise. After laying the stones for the base, they raised the remaining stones to their places by means of machines formed of short wooden planks. The first machine raised them from the ground to the top of the first step. On this there was another machine, which received the stone upon its arrival, and conveyed it to the second step, whence a third machine advanced it still higher. Either they had as many machines as there were steps in the pyramid or possibly they had but a single machine, which, being easily moved, was transferred from tier to tier as the stone rose—both accounts are given, and therefore I mention both. The upper portion of the pyramid was finished first, then the middle, and finally the part which was lowest and nearest the ground. There is an inscription in Egyptian characters on the pyramid which records the quantity of radishes, onions, and garlic consumed by the laborers who constructed it; and I perfectly well remember that the interpreter who read the writing to me said that the money expended in this way was 1,600 talents of silver. If this then is a true record, what a vast sum must have been spent on the iron tools used in the work, and on the feeding and clothing of the laborers, considering the length of time the work lasted, which has already been stated, and the additional time—no small space, I imagine—which must have been occupied by the quarrying of the stones, their conveyance, and the formation of the underground apartments!

FOOTNOTES:

[14] From Book II of the "History." Translated by George Rawlinson. The Pyramid of Cheops was built about 3,500 b.c. Cheops, according to Herodotus, reigned fifty years.

IV

THE STORY OF PERIANDER'S SON[15]

After Periander had put to death his wife Melissa, it chanced that on his first affliction a second followed of a different kind. His wife had borne him two sons, and one of them had now reached the age of seventeen, the other of eighteen years, when their mother's father, Procles, tyrant of Epidaurus,[16] asked them to his court. They went, and Procles treated them with much kindness, as was natural, considering they were his own daughter's children. At length, when the time for parting came, Procles as he was sending them on their way said, "Know you now, my children, who it was that caused your mother's death?" The elder son took no account of this speech, but the younger, whose name was Lycophron, was sorely troubled at it—so much so that when he got back to Corinth, looking upon his father as his mother's murderer, he would neither speak to him nor answer when spoken to nor utter a word in reply to all his father's questionings. So Periander, at last growing furious at such behavior, banished his son from his house.

The younger son gone, he turned to the elder and asked him what it was that their grandfather had said to them. Then the son related in how kind and friendly a fashion the grandfather had received them; but, not having taken any notice of the speech which Procles had uttered at parting, he quite forgot to mention it. Periander insisted that it was not possible this should be all—their grandfather must have given them some hint or other—and he went on pressing his son till at last he remembered the parting speech and told it. Periander, after he had turned the whole matter over in his thoughts and felt unwilling to give way at all, sent a messenger to the persons who had opened their houses to his outcast son and forbade them to harbor him. Then the boy, when he had been driven from one friend, sought refuge with another, but was forced from shelter to shelter by the threats of his father, who menaced all those that took him in, and commanded them to shut their doors against him. Still, as fast as he was forced to leave one house he went to another, and was received by the inmates; for his acquaintances, altho in no small alarm, yet gave him shelter, as he was Periander's son.

At last Periander made proclamation that whoever harbored his son, or even spoke to him, should forfeit a certain sum of money to Apollo. On hearing this no one any longer liked to take him in, or even to hold converse with him, and he himself did not think it right to seek to do what was forbidden; so, abiding by his resolve, he made his lodging in the public porticoes. When four days had passed in this way, Periander, seeing how wretched his son was, that he neither washed nor took any food, felt moved with compassion toward him; wherefore, foregoing his anger, he approached the lad, and said, "Which is better, oh, my son, to fare as now thou farest or to receive my crown and all the good things that I possess, on the one condition of submitting thyself to thy father? See, now, tho my own child, and lord of this wealthy Corinth, thou hast brought thyself to a beggar's life, because thou must resist and treat with anger him whom it least behooves thee to oppose. If there has been a calamity, and thou bearest me ill will on that account, bethink thee that I too feel it, and am the greater sufferer, inasmuch as it was by me that the deed was done. For thyself, now that thou knowest how much better a thing it is to be envied than pitied, and how dangerous it is to indulge anger against parents and superiors, come back with me to thy home." With such words as these did Periander chide his son; but the latter made no reply except to remind his father that he was indebted to the god in the penalty for coming and holding converse with him. Then Periander knew there was no cure for the youth's malady, nor means of overcoming it; so he prepared a ship and sent him away out of his sight to Corcyra,[17] which island at that time belonged to him. As for Procles, Periander, regarding him as the true author of all his present troubles, went to war with him as soon as his son was gone, and not only made himself master of his kingdom, Epidaurus, but also took Procles himself, and carried him into captivity.

As time went on, and Periander came to be old, he found himself no longer equal to the oversight and management of affairs. Seeing therefore in his elder son no manner of ability, but knowing him to be dull and blockish, he sent to Corcyra and recalled Lycophron to take the kingdom. Lycophron, however, did not even deign to ask the bearer of this message a question. But Periander's heart was set upon the youth, so he sent again to him, this time by his own daughter, the sister of Lycophron, who would, he thought, have more power to persuade him than any other person. Then the daughter, when she had reached Corcyra, spoke thus with her brother: "Dost thou wish the kingdom, brother, to pass into strange hands, and our father's wealth to be made a prey rather than thyself return to enjoy it? Come back home with me, and cease to punish thyself. It is scant gain, this obstinacy. Why seek to cure evil by evil? Mercy, remember, is by many set above justice. Many, also while pushing their mother's claims have forfeited their father's fortune. Power is a slippery thing—it has many suitors; and he is old and stricken in years—let not thy own inheritance go to another."

Thus did the sister, who had been tutored by Periander what to say, urge all the arguments most likely to have weight with her brother. He, however, made answer that so long as he knew his father to be still alive, he would never go back to Corinth. When the sister brought Periander this reply, he sent to his son a third time by a herald, and said he would come himself to Corcyra, and let his son take his place at Corinth, as heir to his kingdom. To these terms Lycophron agreed; and Periander was making ready to pass into Corcyra and his son to return to Corinth, when the Corcyreans, being informed of what was taking place, to keep Periander away, put the young man to death. For this reason it was that Periander took vengeance on the Corcyreans.

FOOTNOTES:

[15] From Book III of the "History." Translated by George Rawlinson. Periander was tyrant of Corinth, succeeding to power about 625 b.c. He is believed to have reigned forty years.

[16] A city on the coast of Argolis, one of the states of southern Greece.

[17] Now known as Corfu, an island lying off the western coast of Greece, adjacent to Epirus.

THUCYDIDES

Born in Athens about 471 b.c.; died about 401; celebrated as a historian; claimed blood relationship with Miltiades and Cimon; possest an ample fortune; in 424 commanded an expedition against Brasidas, but failing in it went into exile, returning to Athens twenty years later; did not live to finish his "History of the Peloponnesian War," the narrative ending seven years before the war closed; the Greek text first printed by Aldus at Venice in 1502.[18]

I

THE ATHENIANS AND SPARTANS CONTRASTED[19]

Such were the causes of ill feeling which at this time existed between the Athenians and Peloponnesians;[20] the Corinthians complaining that the Athenians were blockading their colony of Potidæa, which was occupied by a Corinthian and Peloponnesian garrison; the Athenians rejoining that the Peloponnesians had excited to revolt a state which was an ally and tributary of theirs, and that they had now openly joined the Potidæans, and were fighting on their side. The Peloponnesian war, however, had not yet broken out; the peace still continued; for thus far the Corinthians had acted alone.

But now, seeing Potidæa[21] besieged, they bestirred themselves in earnest. Corinthian troops were shut up within the walls, and they were afraid of losing the town; so without delay they invited the allies to meet at Sparta. There they inveighed against the Athenians, whom they affirmed to have broken the treaty and to have wronged the Peloponnesians.... The Megarians alleged, among other grounds of complaint, that they were excluded from all harbors within the Athenian dominion and from the Athenian market, contrary to the treaty. The Corinthians waited until the other allies had stirred up the Lacedæmonians; at length they came forward, and, last of all, spoke as follows:

"The spirit of trust, Lacedæmonians, which animates your own political and social life makes you distrust others who, like ourselves, have something unpleasant to say, and this temper of mind, tho favorable to moderation, too often leaves you in ignorance of what is going on outside your own country. Time after time we have warned you of the mischief which the Athenians would do to us, but instead of taking our words to heart, you chose to suspect that we spoke only from interested motives. And this is the reason why you have brought the allies to Sparta, too late, not before but after the injury has been inflicted, and when they are smarting under the sense of it. Which of them all has a better right to speak than ourselves, who have the heaviest accusations to make, outraged as we are by the Athenians, and neglected by you? If the crimes which they are committing against Hellas were being done in a corner, then you might be ignorant, and we should have to inform you of them; but now, what need of many words? Some of us, as you see, have been already enslaved; they are at this moment intriguing against others, notably against allies of ours; and long ago they had made all their preparations in expectation of war. Else why did they seduce from her allegiance Corcyra, which they still hold in defiance of us, and why are they blockading Potidæa, the latter a most advantageous post for the command of the Thracian peninsula, the former a great naval power which might have assisted the Peloponnesians?

"And the blame of all this rests on you; for you originally allowed them to fortify their city after the Persian war, and afterward to build their Long Walls;[22] and to this hour you have gone on defrauding of liberty their unfortunate subjects, and are now beginning to take it away from your own allies. For the true enslaver of a people is he who can put an end to their slavery, but has no care about it; and all the more, if he be reputed the champion of liberty in Hellas. And so we have met at last, but with what difficulty! and even now we have no definite object. By this time we ought to have been considering, not whether we are wronged, but how we are to be revenged. The aggressor is not now threatening, but advancing; he has made up his mind, while we are resolved about nothing. And we know too well how by slow degrees and with stealthy steps the Athenians encroach upon their neighbors. While they think that you are too dull to observe them, they are more careful; but, when they know that you wilfully overlook their aggressions, they will strike you and not spare. Of all Hellenes, Lacedæmonians, you are the only people who never do anything; on the approach of an enemy, you are content to defend yourselves against him, not by acts, but by intentions, and seek to overthrow him, not in the infancy but in the fulness of his strength. How came you to be considered safe? That reputation of yours was never justified by facts. We all know that the Persian made his way from the ends of the earth against Peloponnesus before you encountered him in a worthy manner; and now you are blind to the doings of the Athenians, who are not at a distance, as he was, but close at hand. Instead of attacking your enemy, you wait to be attacked, and take the chances of a struggle which has been deferred until his power is doubled. And you know that the barbarian miscarried chiefly through his own errors, and that we have oftener been delivered from these very Athenians by blunders of their own than by any aid from you. Some have already been ruined by the hopes which you inspired in them; for so entirely did they trust you that they took no precautions themselves. These things we say in no accusing or hostile spirit—let that be understood—but by way of expostulation. For men expostulate with erring friends; they bring accusations against enemies who have done them a wrong.

"And surely we have a right to find fault with our neighbors if any one ever had. There are important interests at stake to which, as far as we can see, you are insensible. And you have never considered what manner of men are these Athenians with whom you will have to fight, and how utterly unlike yourselves. They are revolutionary, equally quick in the conception and in the execution of every new plan; while you are conservative—careful only to keep what you have, originating nothing, and not acting even when action is most necessary. They are bold beyond their strength; they run risks which prudence would condemn; and in the midst of misfortune they are full of hope. Whereas it is your nature, tho strong, to act feebly; when your plans are most prudent, to distrust them; and when calamities come upon you, to think that you will never be delivered from them. They are impetuous, and you are dilatory; they are always abroad, and you are always at home. For they hope to gain something by leaving their homes; but you are afraid that any new enterprise may imperil what you have already. When conquerors, they pursue their victory to the utmost; when defeated, they fall back the least. Their bodies they devote to their country as tho they belonged to other men; their true self is in their mind, which is most truly their own when employed in her service. When they do not carry out an intention which they have formed, they seem to have sustained a personal bereavement; when an enterprise succeeds, they have gained a mere instalment of what is to come; but if they fail, they at once conceive new hopes and so fill up the void. With them alone to hope is to have, for they lose not a moment in the execution of an idea. This is the lifelong task, full of danger and toil, which they are always imposing upon themselves. None enjoy their good things less, because they are always seeking for more. To do their duty is their only holiday, and they deem the quiet of inaction to be as disagreeable as the most tiresome business. If a man should say to them, in a word, that they were born neither to have peace themselves nor to allow peace to other men, he would simply speak the truth.

"In the face of such an enemy, Lacedæmonians, you persist in doing nothing. You do not see that peace is best secured by those who use their strength justly, but whose attitude shows that they have no intention of submitting to wrong. Justice with you seems to consist in giving no annoyance to others and in defending yourselves only against positive injury. But this policy would hardly be successful, even if your neighbors were like yourselves; and in the present case, as we pointed out just now, your ways compared with theirs are old-fashioned. And, as in the arts, so also in politics, the new must always prevail over the old. In settled times the traditions of government should be observed; but when circumstances are changing and men are compelled to meet them, much originality is required.

"The Athenians have had a wider experience, and therefore the administration of their state has improved faster than yours. But here let your procrastination end; send an army at once into Attica and assist your allies, especially the Potidæans, to whom your word is pledged. Do not allow friends and kindred to fall into the hands of their worst enemies, or drive us in despair to seek the alliance of others; in taking such a course we should be doing wrong either before the gods who are witnesses of our oaths or before men whose eyes are upon us. For the true breakers of treaties are not only those who, when forsaken, turn to others, but those who forsake allies whom they have sworn to defend. We will remain your friends if you choose to bestir yourselves; for we should be guilty of an impiety if we deserted you without cause; and we shall not easily find allies equally congenial to us. Take heed then; you have inherited from your fathers the leadership of Peloponnesus; see that her greatness suffers no diminution at your hands."

Thus spake the Corinthians. Now there happened to be staying at Lacedæmon an Athenian embassy which had come on other business, and when the envoys heard what the Corinthians had said, they felt bound to go before the Lacedæmonian assembly, not with the views of answering the accusations brought against them by the cities, but they wanted to put before the Lacedæmonians the whole question, and make them understand that they should take time to deliberate and not be rash. They desired also to set forth the greatness of their city, reminding the elder men of what they knew, and informing the younger of what lay beyond their experience. They thought that their words would sway the Lacedæmonians in the direction of peace. So they came and said that, if they might be allowed, they too would like to address the people. The Lacedæmonians invited them to come forward, and they spoke as follows:

"We were not sent here to argue with your allies, but on a special mission; observing, however, that no small outcry has arisen against us, we have come forward, not to answer the accusations which they bring (for you are not judges before whom either we or they have to plead), but to prevent you from lending too ready an ear to their bad advice and so deciding wrongly about a very serious question. We propose also, in reply to the wider charges which are raised against us, to show that what we have acquired we hold rightfully.

"Of the ancient deeds handed down by tradition and which no eye of any one who hears us ever saw, why should we speak? But of the Persian war, and other events which you yourselves remember, speak we must, altho we have brought them forward so often that the repetition of them is disagreeable to us. When we faced those perils we did so for the common benefit; in the solid good you shared, and of the glory, whatever good there may be in that, we would not be wholly deprived. Our words are not designed to deprecate hostility, but to set forth in evidence the character of the city with which, unless you are very careful, you will soon be involved in war. We tell you that we, first and alone, dared to engage with the barbarian at Marathon,[23] and that, when he came again, being too weak to defend ourselves by land, we and our whole people embarked on shipboard and shared with the other Hellenes in the victory of Salamis.[24] Thereby he was prevented from sailing to the Peloponnesus and ravaging city after city; for against so mighty a fleet how could you have helped one another? He himself is the best witness of our words; for when he was once defeated at sea, he felt that his power was gone and quickly retreated with the greater part of his army.

"The event proved undeniably that the fate of Hellas depended on her navy. And the three chief elements of success were contributed by us; namely, the greatest number of ships, the ablest general, the most devoted patriotism. The ships in all numbered four hundred, and of these, our own contingent amounted to nearly two-thirds. To the influence of Themistocles, our general, it was chiefly due that we fought in the strait, which was confessedly our salvation; and for this service you yourselves honored him above any stranger who ever visited you. Thirdly, we displayed the most extraordinary courage and devotion; there was no one to help us by land; for up to our frontier those who lay in the enemy's path were already slaves; so we determined to leave our city and sacrifice our homes. Even in that extremity we did not choose to desert the cause of the allies who still resisted, and by dispersing ourselves to become useless to them; but we embarked and fought, taking no offense at your failure to assist us sooner. We maintain then that we rendered you a service at least as great as you rendered us. The cities from which you came to help us were still inhabited and you might hope to return to them; your concern was for yourselves and not for us; at any rate, you remained at a distance while we had anything to lose. But we went forth from a city which was no more, and fought for one of which there was small hope; and yet we saved ourselves, and bore our part in saving you. If, in order to preserve our land, like other states, we had gone over to the Persians at first, or afterward had not ventured to embark because our ruin was already complete, it would have been useless for you with your weak navy to fight at sea, but everything would have gone quietly just as the Persian desired.

"Considering, Lacedæmonians, the energy and sagacity which we then displayed, do we deserve to be so bitterly hated by the other Hellenes merely because we have an empire? That empire was not acquired by force; but you would not stay and make an end of the barbarian, and the allies came of their own accord and asked us to be their leaders. The subsequent development of our power was originally forced upon us by circumstances; fear was our first motive; afterward ambition, and then interest stept in. And when we had incurred the hatred of most of our allies, when some of them had already revolted and been subjugated, and you were no longer the friends to us which you once had been, but suspicious and ill-disposed, how could we without great risk relax our hold? For the cities as fast as they fell away from us would have gone over to you. And no man is to be reproached who seizes every possible advantage when the danger is so great.

"At all events, Lacedæmonians, we may retort that you, in the exercise of your supremacy, manage the cities of Peloponnesus to suit your own views, and that if you, and not we, had persevered in the command of the allies long enough to be hated, you would have been quite as intolerable to them as we are, and would have been compelled, for the sake of your own safety, to rule with a strong hand. An empire was offered to us: can you wonder that, acting as human nature always will, we accepted it, and refused to give it up again, constrained by three all powerful motives, ambition, fear, interest? We are not the first who have aspired to rule; the world has ever held that the weaker must be kept down by the stronger. And we think that we are worthy of power; and there was a time when you thought so too; but now when you mean expediency you talk about justice. Did justice ever deter any one from taking by force whatever he could? Men who indulge the natural ambition of empire deserve credit if they are in any degree more careful of justice than they need be. How moderate we are would speedily appear if others took our place; indeed, our very moderation, which should be our glory, has been unjustly converted into a reproach.

"For because in our suits with our allies, regulated by treaty, we do not even stand upon our rights, but have instituted the practise of deciding them at Athens and by Athenian law, we are supposed to be litigious. None of our opponents observes why others, who exercise dominion elsewhere and are less moderate than we are in their dealings with their subjects, escape this reproach. Why is it? Because men who practise violence have no longer any need of law. But we are in the habit of meeting our allies on terms of equality, and, therefore, if through some legal decision of ours, or exercise of our imperial power, contrary to their own ideas of right, they suffer ever so little, they are not grateful for our moderation in leaving them so much, but are far more offended at their trifling loss than if we had from the first plundered them in the face of day, laying aside all thought of law. For then they would themselves have admitted that the weaker must give way to the stronger. Mankind resents injustice more than violence, because the one seems to be an unfair advantage taken by an equal, the other is the irresistible force of a superior. They were patient under the yoke of the Persian, who inflicted on them far more grievous wrongs; but now our dominion is odious in their eyes. And no wonder: the ruler of the day is always detested by his subjects. And should your empire supplant ours, may not you lose the good-will which you owe to the fear of us? Lose it you certainly will, if you mean again to exhibit the temper of which you gave a specimen when, for a short time, you led the confederacy against the Persian. For the institutions under which you live are incompatible with those of foreign states; and further, when any of you goes abroad, he respects neither these nor any other Hellenic laws.

"Do not then be hasty in deciding a question which is serious; and do not, by listening to the misrepresentations and complaints of others, bring trouble upon yourselves. Realize, while there is time, the inscrutable nature of war; and how when protracted it generally ends in becoming a mere matter of chance, over which neither of us can have any control, the event being equally unknown and equally hazardous to both. The misfortune is that in their hurry to go to war, men begin with blows, and when a reverse comes upon them, then have recourse to words. But neither you nor we have as yet committed this mistake; and therefore while both of us can still choose the prudent part, we tell you not to break the peace or violate your oaths. Let our differences be determined by arbitration, according to the treaty. If you refuse, we call to witness the gods by whom you have sworn that you are the authors of the war; and we will do our best to strike in return."

When the Lacedæmonians had heard the charges brought by the allies against the Athenians, and their rejoinder, they ordered everybody but themselves to withdraw, and deliberated alone. The majority were agreed that there was now a clear case against the Athenians, and that they must fight at once.[25]

FOOTNOTES:

[18] Jowett says Thucydides "stands absolutely alone among historians, not only of Hellas, but of the world, in his impartiality and love of truth." Macaulay's enthusiasm for him is well known. Mahaffy says his work was intended to be a military history, compiled from original documents and from personal observations made by himself and other eye-witnesses. "There can not be the smallest doubt," adds Mahaffy, "that, in the hands of Thucydides, the art of writing history made an extraordinary stride and attained a perfection which no subsequent Hellenic, and few modern writers have attained." He is praised for the "lofty dignity" which he imparts to every subject. His temper is so solemn and severe as to be "strangely un-Attic." Among his great and enduring merits is the fact that he has "taught us to know more of Greek interpolitical life than all other Greek writers put together." No historian has been greater than he, not only in dignity of language, but in calmness of judgment, in intellectual force, and in breadth and acuteness of observation.

[19] From Book I of the "History of the Peloponnesian War." Translated by Benjamin Jowett.

[20] The Peloponnesians were the people of the peninsula which forms the southern part of Greece, and which is now known as Morea. In ancient times this territory was called the Peloponnesus. Its people comprized the inhabitants of several political domains called Achaia, Sicyonia, Corinthia, Argolis, Arcadia, Laconia, Messenia, and Elis. Laconia was otherwise, and quite anciently, known as Lacedæmon, its capital being the city of Sparta.

[21] Potidæa, the modern Pinaka, had revolted from Athens in 432 b.c., but did not capitulate until the end of the second year of the Peloponnesian war. It was a rich and flourishing town, originally Dorian, but colonized later from Corinth. During one of the Eastern invasions of Greece, it fell into Persian hands.

[22] These walls connected Athens with its port, the Piræus, and were each about five miles long. They ran parallel and were separated from each other by about 500 feet of space. This intervening land was used for a carriage road, on either side of which were houses. Thus was formed a continuous walled street from Athens to the sea, so that communication in case of war was made secure.

[23] The battle of Marathon was fought in September, 490. It ended the attempts of Darius to subdue Greece.

[24] The battle of Salamis took place in September, 480, and was fought in waters lying between the Piræus and the island of Salamis. Themistocles commanded the Greeks. The Persian ships were practically annihilated. Byron's lines on this battle, in his poem "The Isles of Greece," will be recalled.

II

THE PLAGUE AT ATHENS[26]

(430—425 b.c.)

They [the enemy] had not been there [in Attica] many days when the plague broke out at Athens for the first time. A similar disorder is said to have previously smitten many places, particularly Lemnos;[27] but there is no record of such a pestilence occurring elsewhere, or of so great a destruction of human life. For a while physicians, in ignorance of the nature of the disease, sought to apply remedies; but it was in vain, and they themselves were among the first victims, because they oftenest came into contact with it. No human art was of any avail, and as to supplications in temples, inquiries of oracles, and the like, they were utterly useless, and at last men were overpowered by the calamity and gave up all remedies.

The disease is said to have begun south of Egypt in Ethiopia; thence it descended into Egypt and Libya, and after spreading over the greater part of the Persian empire, suddenly fell upon Athens. It first attacked the inhabitants of the Piræus, and it was supposed that the Peloponnesians had poisoned the cisterns, no conduits having as yet been made there. It afterward reached the upper city, and then the mortality became far greater. As to its probable origin or the causes which might or could have produced such a disturbance of nature, every man, whether a physician or not, will give his own opinion. But I shall describe its actual course, and the symptoms by which any one who knows them beforehand may recognize the disorder should it ever reappear. For I was myself attacked, and witnessed the sufferings of others.

The season was admitted to have been remarkably free from ordinary sickness; and if anybody was already ill of any other disease, it was absorbed in this. Many who were in perfect health, all in a moment, and without any apparent reason, were seized with violent heats in the head and with redness and inflammation of the eyes. Internally the throat and the tongue were quickly suffused with blood, and the breath became unnatural and fetid. There followed sneezing and hoarseness; in a short time the disorder, accompanied by a violent cough, reached the chest; then fastening lower down, it would move the stomach and bring on all the vomits of bile to which physicians have ever given names; and they were very distressing. An ineffectual retching producing violent convulsions attacked most of the sufferers; some as soon as the previous symptoms had abated, others not until long afterward. The body externally was not so very hot to the touch, nor yet pale; it was of a livid color inclining to red, and breaking out in pustules and ulcers. But the internal fever was intense; the sufferers could not bear to have on them even the finest linen garment; they insisted on being naked, and there was nothing which they longed for more eagerly than to throw themselves into cold water. And many of those who had no one to look after them actually plunged into the cisterns, for they were tormented by unceasing thirst, which was not in the least assuaged whether they drank little or much. They could not sleep; a restlessness which was intolerable never left them.

While the disease was at its height the body, instead of wasting away, held out amid these sufferings in a marvelous manner, and either they died on the seventh or ninth day, not of weakness, for their strength was not exhausted, but of internal fever, which was the end of most; or, if they survived, then the disease descended into the bowels and there produced violent ulcerations; severe diarrhea at the same time set in, and at a later stage caused exhaustion, which finally with few exceptions carried them off. For the disorder, which had originally settled in the head, passed gradually through the whole body, and, if a person got over the worst, would often seize the extremities and leave its mark, attacking the privy parts and the fingers and the toes; and some escaped with the loss of these, some with the loss of their eyes. Some, again, had no sooner recovered than they were seized with a forgetfulness of all things and knew neither themselves nor their friends.

The malady took a form not to be described, and the fury with which it fastened upon each sufferer was too much for human nature to endure. There was one circumstance in particular which distinguished it from ordinary diseases. The birds and animals, which feed on human flesh, altho so many bodies were lying unburied, either never went near them or died if they touched them. This was proved by a remarkable disappearance of the birds of prey, which were not to be seen either about the bodies or anywhere else; while in the case of the dogs the fact was even more obvious, because they live with man.

Such was the general nature of the disease; I omit many strange peculiarities which characterized individual cases. None of the ordinary sicknesses attacked any one while it lasted, or, if they did, they ended in the plague. Some of the sufferers died from want of care, others equally who were receiving the greatest attention. No single remedy could be deemed a specific; for that which did good to one did harm to another. No constitution was of itself strong enough to resist or weak enough to escape the attacks; the disease carried off all alike and defied every mode of treatment. Most appalling was the despondency which seized upon any one who felt himself sickening; for he instantly abandoned his mind to despair and, instead of holding out, absolutely threw away his chance of life. Appalling too was the rapidity with which men caught the infection, dying like sheep if they attended on one another, and this was the principal cause of mortality. When they were afraid to visit one another, the sufferers died in their solitude, so that many houses were empty because there had been no one left to take care of the sick; or if they ventured they perished, especially those who aspired to heroism. For they went to see their friends without thought of themselves and were ashamed to leave them, even at a time when the very relatives of the dying were at last growing weary and ceased to make lamentations, overwhelmed by the vastness of the calamity. But whatever instances there may have been of such devotion, more often the sick and the dying were tended by the pitying care of those who had recovered, because they knew the course of the disease and were themselves free from apprehension. For no one was ever attacked a second time, or not with a fatal result. All men congratulated them; and they themselves, in the excess of their joy at the moment, had an innocent fancy that they could not die of any other sickness.

The crowding of the people out of the country into the city aggravated the misery, and the newly arrived suffered most. For, having no houses of their own, but inhabiting, in the height of summer, stifling huts, the mortality among them was dreadful, and they perished in wild disorder. The dead lay as they had died, one upon another, while others hardly alive wallowed in the streets and crawled about every fountain craving for water. The temples in which they lodged were full of the corpses of those who had died in them; for the violence of the calamity was such that men, not knowing where to turn, grew reckless of all law, human and divine. The customs which had hitherto been observed at funerals were universally violated, and they buried their dead each one as best he could. Many, having no proper appliances, because the deaths in their household had been so frequent, made no scruple of using the burial-place of others. When one man had raised a funeral pile, others would come, and throwing on their dead first, set fire to it; or when some other corpse was already burning, before they could be stopt would throw their own dead upon it and depart.

There were other and worse forms of lawlessness which the plague introduced at Athens. Men who had hitherto concealed their indulgence in pleasure now grew bolder. For, seeing the sudden change—how the rich died in a moment, and those who had nothing immediately inherited their property—they reflected that life and riches were alike transitory, and they resolved to enjoy themselves while they could, and to think only of pleasure. Who would be willing to sacrifice himself to the law of honor when he knew not whether he would ever live to be held in honor? The pleasure of the moment and any sort of thing which conduced to it took the place both of honor and of expediency. No fear of God or law of man deterred a criminal. Those who saw all perishing alike thought that the worship or neglect of the gods made no difference. For offenses against human law no punishment was to be feared; no one would live long enough to be called to account. Already a far heavier sentence had been passed and was hanging over a man's head; before that feeling, why should he not take a little pleasure?

Such was the grievous calamity which now afflicted the Athenians; within the walls their people were dying, and without, their country was being ravaged. In their troubles they naturally called to mind a verse which the elder men among them declared to have been current long ago:

"A Dorian war will come and a plague with it."

FOOTNOTES:

[25] The Peloponnesian war broke out in 431 b.c., and lasted until 404. Its result was the abasement of Athens and the elevation of Sparta to supreme power in Greece. When it began, Athens with her allies included all the coast cities of Asia Minor as far south as Lycia, the cities bordering on the Thracian and Chalcidian shores, and nearly all the islands of the Ægean Sea. Sparta at the same time was leader in a confederacy of independent states, among which were nearly all the Peloponnesian states, besides some of those in northern Greece, those of Magna Græcia and Sicily. Athens was strong in her navy, which comprized 300 galleys, while the Spartan strength lay in her land forces. The treasury of Athens was full, that of Sparta weak. After the war, the walls of Athens were demolished and she was deprived of her foreign possessions. The government set over her was an oligarchy of thirty persons, known in history as the thirty tyrants. These men soon made their harsh rule so intolerable that within sixteen months after Athens surrendered to Sparta they were deposed and democratic rule was restored to the Athenians.

[26] From Book II of the "History of the Peloponnesian War." Translated by Benjamin Jowett.

[27] One of the larger islands of the Ægean Sea, its area being about one hundred and eighty square miles.

III

THE SAILING OF THE ATHENIAN FLEET FOR SICILY[28]

(413 b.c.)

About the middle of summer the expedition started for Sicily. Orders had been previously given to most of the allies, to the corn-ships, the smaller craft, and generally to the vessels in attendance on the armament that they should muster at Corcyra, whence the whole fleet was to strike across the Ionian Gulf to the promontory of Iapygia.[29] Early in the morning of the day appointed for their departure, the Athenians and such of their allies as had already joined them went down to the Piræus and began to man the ships. The entire population of Athens accompanied them, citizens and strangers alike. The citizens came to take farewell, one of an acquaintance another of a kinsman, another of a son; the crowd as they passed along were full of hope and full of tears; hope of conquering Sicily, tears because they doubted whether they would ever see their friends again, when they thought of the long voyage on which they were sending them. At the moment of parting, the danger was nearer; and terrors which had never occurred to them when they were voting the expedition now entered into their souls. Nevertheless their spirits revived at the sight of the armament in all its strength and of the abundant provision which they had made. The strangers and the rest of the multitude came out of curiosity, desiring to witness an enterprise of which the greatness exceeded belief.

No armament so magnificent or costly had ever been sent out by any single Hellenic power, tho in mere number of ships and hoplites that which sailed to Epidaurus under Pericles and afterward under Hagnon to Potidæa was not inferior. For that expedition consisted of a hundred Athenian and fifty Chian and Lesbian triremes, conveying four thousand hoplites, all Athenian citizens, three hundred cavalry, and a multitude of allied troops. Still the voyage was short and the equipments were poor, whereas this expedition was intended to be long absent, and was thoroughly provided both for sea and land service, wherever its presence might be required.

On the fleet the greatest pains and expense had been lavished by the trierarchs and the state. The public treasury gave a drachma a day to each sailor, and furnished empty hulls for sixty swift sailing vessels, and for forty transports carrying hoplites. All these were manned with the best crews which could be obtained. The trierarchs, besides the pay given by the state, added somewhat more out of their own means to the wages of the upper ranks of rowers and of the petty officers. The figureheads and other fittings provided by the trierarchs were of the most costly description. Every one strove to the utmost that his own ship might excel both in beauty and swiftness. The infantry had been well selected and the lists carefully made up. There was the keenest rivalry among the soldiers in the matter of arms and personal equipment.

And while at home the Athenians were thus competing with one another in the performance of their several duties, to the rest of Hellas the expedition seemed to be a grand display of their power and greatness, rather than a preparation for war. If any one had reckoned up the whole expenditure (1) of the state, (2) of individual soldiers and others, including in the first not only what the city had already laid out, but what was entrusted to the generals, and in the second what either at the time or afterward private persons spent upon their outfit, or the trierarchs upon their ships, the provision for the long voyage which every one may be supposed to have carried with him over and above his public pay, and what soldiers or traders may have taken for purposes of exchange, he would have found that altogether an immense sum amounting to many talents was withdrawn from the city. Men were quite amazed at the boldness of the scheme and the magnificence of the spectacle, which were everywhere spoken of, no less than at the great disproportion of the force when compared with that of the enemy against whom it was intended. Never had a greater expedition been sent to a foreign land; never was there an enterprise in which the hope of future success seemed to be better justified by actual power.

When the ships were manned and everything required for the voyage had been placed on board, silence was proclaimed by the sound of the trumpet, and all with one voice before setting sail offered up the customary prayers; these were recited, not in each ship, but by a single herald, the whole fleet accompanying him. On every deck both officers and men, mingling wine in bowls, made libations from vessels of gold and silver. The multitude of citizens and other well-wishers who were looking on from the land joined in the prayer. The crews raised the pæan, and when the libations were completed, put to sea. After sailing out for some distance in single file, the ships raced with one another as far as Ægina;[30] thence they hastened onward to Corcyra, where the allies who formed the rest of the army were assembling.

Meanwhile reports of the expedition were coming in to Syracuse from many quarters, but for a long time nobody gave credit to them. At length an assembly was held. Even then different opinions were exprest, some affirming and others denying that the expedition was coming. At last Hermocrates,[31] the son of Hermon, believing that he had certain information, came forward, and warned the Syracusans....

Great was the contention which his words aroused among the Syracusan people, some asserting that the Athenians would never come, and that he was not speaking truth, others asking, "And if they should come, what harm could they do to us nearly so great as we could do to them?" while others were quite contemptuous, and made a jest of the whole matter. A few only believed Hermocrates and realized the danger. At last Athenagoras, the popular leader, who had at that time the greatest influence with the multitude, came forward and spoke....

The Athenians and their allies were by this time collected at Corcyra. There the generals began by holding a final review of the ships, and disposed them in the order in which they were to anchor at their stations. The fleet was divided into three squadrons, and one of them assigned by lot to each of the three generals, in order to avoid any difficulties which might occur, if they sailed together, in finding water, anchorage, and provisions where they touched; they thought also that the presence of a general in each division would promote good order and discipline throughout the fleet. They then sent before them to Italy and Sicily three ships, which had orders to find out what cities in those regions would receive them, and to meet them again on their way, that they might know before they put in.

At length the great armament proceeded to cross from Corcyra to Sicily. It consisted of a hundred and thirty-four triremes in all, besides two Rhodian vessels of fifty oars. Of these a hundred were Athenian, sixty being swift vessels, and the remaining forty transports; the rest of the fleet was furnished by the Chians and other allies. The hoplites numbered in all five thousand one hundred, of whom fifteen hundred were Athenians taken from the roll, and seven hundred who served as marines were of the fourth and lowest class of Athenian citizens. The remainder of the hoplites were furnished by the allies, mostly by the subject states; but five hundred came from Argos, besides two hundred and fifty Mantinean and other mercenaries. The archers were in all four hundred and eighty, of whom eighty were Cretans. There were seven hundred Rhodian slingers, a hundred and twenty light-armed Megarians who were exiles, and one horse transport which conveyed thirty horsemen and horses.

Such were the forces with which the first expedition crossed the sea. For the transport of provisions thirty merchant-ships, which also conveyed bakers, masons, carpenters, and tools such as are required in sieges, were included in the armament. It was likewise attended by a hundred small vessels; these as well as the merchant-vessels, were prest into the service. Other merchant-vessels and lesser craft in great numbers followed of their own accord for purposes of trade. The whole fleet now struck across the Ionian Sea from Corcyra. They arrived at the promontory of Iapygia and at Tarentum,[32] each ship taking its own course, and passed along the coast of Italy. The Italian cities did not admit them within their walls, or open a market to them, but allowed them water and anchorage; Tarentum and Locri[33] refused even these. At length they reached Rhegium,[34] the extreme point of Italy, where the fleet reunited. As they were not received within the walls, they encamped outside the city, at the temple of Artemis; there they were provided by the inhabitants with a market, and drawing up their ships on shore they took a rest. They held a conference with the Rhegians, and prest them, being Chalcidians themselves, to aid their Chalcidian kinsmen the Leontines. But the Rhegians replied that they would be neutral, and would only act in accordance with the decision of all the Italian Greeks. The Athenian commanders now began to consider how they could best commence operations in Sicily. Meanwhile they were expecting the ships which had gone on and were to meet them from Egesta;[35] for they wished to know whether the Egestæans really had the money of which the messengers had brought information to Athens.

FOOTNOTES:

[28] From Book VI of "The History of the Peloponnesian War." Translated by Benjamin Jowett. At the time of the sailing of this fleet the war had been in progress sixteen years. Syracuse, a Greek colony, founded from Corinth, had now become an ally of Sparta against Athens.

[29] Iapygia lies in what is now Apulia, southern Italy. It is the extreme southern point of the "heel" of the "boot."

[30] An island in the Saronic Gulf, lying immediately south of Attica; in an artistic and historical sense, one of the most celebrated of Greek islands.

[31] One of the three generals of Syracuse entrusted with the defense of the city. His character was "one of the brightest and purest" in the history of that place, says a writer in Smith's "Dictionary." His daughter married the tyrant Dionysius.

[32] The modern Taranto, in southern Italy, in the gulf of that name.

[33] The city of Locri lay near Gerace, a town in the extremity of the "toe" of the "boot." It was allied with Syracuse in the fourth century.

[34] The modern Reggio, which lies opposite Messina, and which, like Messina, was destroyed in the earthquake of 1908.

[35] Also written Segesta, a city in northwestern Sicily, six miles from the coast and about twenty-five miles west of Palermo. The modern city of Aleamo stands near its site. Segesta traced its foundation to fugitives from Troy. Among its notable ruins is a Greek temple in the Doric order, which is one of the finest that have survived to our time.

IV

COMPLETION OF THE ATHENIAN DEFEAT AT SYRACUSE[36]

(413 b.c.)

The Syracusans and the allies naturally thought that the struggle would be brought to a glorious end if, after having defeated the Athenian fleet, they took captive the whole of their great armament, and did not allow them to escape either by sea or land. So they at once began to close the mouth of the Great Harbor, which was about a mile wide, by means of triremes, merchant-vessels, and small boats, placed broadside, which they moored there. They made every preparation also for a naval engagement, should the Athenians be willing to hazard another; and all their thoughts were on a grand scale.

The Athenians, seeing the closing of the harbor and inferring the intentions of the enemy, proceeded to hold a council. The generals and officers met and considered the difficulties of their position. The most pressing was the want of food. For they had already sent to Catana,[37] when they intended to depart, and stopt the supplies; and they could get no more unless they recovered the command of the sea. They resolved therefore to quit their lines on the higher ground and to cut off by a cross-wall a space close to their ships, no greater than was absolutely required for their baggage and for their sick; after leaving a guard there, they meant to put on board every other man, and to launch all their ships, whether fit for service or not; they would then fight a decisive battle, and, if they conquered, go to Catana; but if not, they would burn their ships, and retreat by land in good order, taking the nearest way to some friendly country, barbarian or Hellenic.

This design they proceeded to execute, and, withdrawing quietly from the upper walls, manned their whole fleet, compelling every man of any age at all suitable for service to embark. The entire number of the ships which they manned was about a hundred and ten. They put on board numerous archers and javelin-men, Acarnanians,[38] and other foreigners, and made such preparations for action as the nature of the plan imposed upon them by their necessities allowed. When all was nearly ready, Nicias,[39] perceiving that the soldiers were deprest by their severe defeat at sea, which was no new experience to them, while at the same time the want of provisions made them impatient to risk a battle with the least possible delay, called his men together and before they engaged exhorted them....

Nicias gave orders to man the ships. Gylippus[40] and the Syracusans could see clearly enough from the preparations which the Athenians were making that they were going to fight. But they had also previous notice, and had been told of the iron grapnels; and they took precautions against this as against all the other devices of the Athenians. They covered the prows of their vessels with hides, extending a good way along the upper part of their sides, so that the grapnels might slip and find no hold. When all was ready, Gylippus and the other generals exhorted their men....

When Gylippus and the other Syracusan generals had, like Nicias, encouraged their troops, perceiving the Athenians to be manning their ships, they presently did the same. Nicias, overwhelmed by the situation, and seeing how great and how near the peril was (for the ships were on the very point of rowing out), feeling too, as men do on the eve of a great struggle, that all which he had done was nothing, and that he had not said half enough, again addrest the trierarchs, and calling each of them by his father's name, and his own name, and the name of his tribe, he entreated those who had made any reputation for themselves not to be false to it, and those whose ancestors were eminent not to tarnish their hereditary fame. He reminded them that they were the inhabitants of the freest country in the world, and how in Athens there was no interference with the daily life of any man. He spoke to them of their wives and children and their fathers' gods, as men will at such a time; for then they do not care whether their common-place phrases seem to be out of date or not, but loudly reiterate the old appeals, believing that they may be of some service at the awful moment. When he thought that he had exhorted them, not enough, but as much as the scanty time allowed, he retired, and led the land-forces to the shore, extending the line as far as he could, so that they might be of the greatest use in encouraging the combatants on board ship. Demosthenes,[41] Menander, and Euthydemus, who had gone on board the Athenian fleet to take command, now quitted their own station, and proceeded straight to the closed mouth of the harbor, intending to force their way to the open sea where a passage was still left.

The Syracusans and their allies had already put out with nearly the same number of ships as before. A detachment of them guarded the entrance of the harbor; the remainder were disposed all round it in such a manner that they might fall on the Athenians from every side at once, and that their land-forces might at the same time be able to cooperate whenever the ships retreated to the shore. Sicanus and Agatharchus commanded the Syracusan fleet, each of them a wing; Pythen and the Corinthians occupied the center.

When the Athenians approached the closed mouth of the harbor, the violence of their onset overpowered the ships which were stationed there; they then attempted to loosen the fastenings. Whereupon from all sides the Syracusans and their allies came bearing down upon them, and the conflict was no longer confined to the entrance, but extended throughout the harbor. No previous engagement had been so fierce and obstinate. Great was the eagerness with which the rowers on both sides rushed upon their enemies whenever the word of command was given; and keen was the contest between the pilots as they maneuvered one against another. The marines too were full of anxiety that, when ship struck ship, the service on deck should not fall short of the rest; every one in the place assigned to him was eager to be foremost among his fellows. Many vessels meeting—and never did so many fight in so small a space, for the two fleets together amounted to nearly two hundred—they were seldom able to strike in the regular manner, because they had no opportunity of first retiring or breaking the line; they generally fouled one another as ship dashed against ship in the hurry of flight or pursuit. All the time that another vessel was bearing down, the men on deck poured showers of javelins and arrows and stones upon the enemy; and when the two closed, the marines fought hand to hand, and endeavored to board. In many places, owing to the want of room, they who had struck another found that they were struck themselves; often two or even more vessels were unavoidably entangled about one, and the pilots had to make plans of attack and defense, not against one adversary only, but against several coming from different sides.

The crash of so many ships dashing against one another took away the wits of the sailors, and made it impossible to hear the boatswains, whose voices in both fleets rose high, as they gave directions to the rowers, or cheered them on in the excitement of the struggle. On the Athenians' side they were shouting to their men that they must force a passage and seize the opportunity now or never of returning in safety to their native land. To the Syracusans and their allies was represented the glory of preventing the escape of their enemies, and of a victory by which every man would exalt the honor of his own city. The commanders, too, when they saw any ship backing water without necessity, would call the captain by his name, and ask, of the Athenians, whether they were retreating because they expected to be more at home upon the land of their bitterest foes than upon that sea which had been their own so long; on the Syracusan side, whether, when they knew perfectly well that the Athenians were only eager to find some means of flight, they would themselves fly from the fugitives.

While the naval engagement hung in the balance, the two armies on shore had great trial and conflict of soul. The Sicilian soldier was animated by the hope of increasing the glory which he had already won, while the invader was tormented by the fear that his fortunes might sink lower still. The last chance of the Athenians lay in their ships, and their anxiety was dreadful. The fortune of the battle varied; and it was not possible that the spectators on the shore should all receive the same impression of it. Being quite close and having different points of view, they would some of them see their own ships victorious; their courage would then revive, and they would earnestly call upon the gods not to take from them their hope of deliverance. But others, who saw their ships worsted, cried and shrieked aloud, and were by the sight alone more utterly unnerved than the defeated combatants themselves. Others again who had fixt their gaze on some part of the struggle which was undecided, were in a state of excitement still more terrible; they kept swaying their bodies to and fro in an agony of hope and fear as the stubborn conflict went on and on; for at every instant they were all but saved or all but lost. And while the strife hung in the balance, you might hear in the Athenian army at once lamentation, shouting, cries of victory or defeat, and all the various sounds which are wrung from a great host in extremity of danger. Not less agonizing were the feelings of those on board.

At length the Syracusans and their allies, after a protracted struggle, put the Athenians to flight, and triumphantly bearing down upon them, and encouraging one another with loud cries and exhortations, drove them to the land. Then that part of the navy which had not been taken in the deep water fell back in confusion to the shore, and the crews rushed out of the ships into the camp. And the land-forces, no longer now divided in feeling, but uttering one universal groan of intolerable anguish ran, some of them to save the ships, others to defend what remained of the wall; but the greater number began to look to themselves and to their own safety. Never had there been a greater panic in an Athenian army than at that moment. They now suffered what they had done to others at Pylos. For at Pylos[42] the Lacedæmonians, when they saw their ships destroyed, knew that their friends who had crossed over into the island of Sphacteria[43] were lost with them. And so now the Athenians, after the rout of their fleet, knew that they had no hope of saving themselves by land unless events took some extraordinary turn.

Thus, after a fierce battle and great destruction of ships and men on both sides, the Syracusans and their allies gained the victory. They gathered up the wrecks and bodies of the dead, and sailing back to the city, erected a trophy. The Athenians, overwhelmed by their misery, never so much as thought of recovering their wrecks or of asking leave to collect their dead. Their intention was to retreat that very night....

On the third day after the sea-fight, when Nicias and Demosthenes thought that their preparations were complete, the army began to move. They were in a dreadful condition; not only was there the great fact that they had lost their whole fleet, and instead of their expected triumph had brought the utmost peril upon Athens as well as upon themselves, but also the sights which presented themselves as they quitted the camp were painful to every eye and mind. The dead were unburied, and when any one saw the body of a friend lying on the ground he was smitten with sorrow and dread, while the sick or wounded who still survived but had to be left were even a greater trial to the living, and more to be pitied than those who were gone. Their prayers and lamentations drove their companions to distraction; they would beg that they might be taken with them, and call by name any friend or relative whom they saw passing; they would hang upon their departing comrades and follow as far as they could, and when their limbs and strength failed them and they dropt behind, many were the imprecations and cries which they uttered. So that the whole army was in tears, and such was their despair that they could hardly make up their minds to stir altho they were leaving an enemy's country, having suffered calamities too great for tears already, and dreading miseries yet greater in the unknown future.

There was also a general feeling of shame and self-reproach—indeed they seemed, not like an army, but like a fugitive population of a city captured after a siege, and of a great city too. For the whole multitude who were marching together numbered not less than forty thousand. Each of them took with him anything he could carry which was likely to be of use. Even the heavy-armed and cavalry, contrary to their practise when under arms, conveyed about their persons their own food, some because they had no attendants, others because they could not trust them; for they had long been deserting, and most of them had gone off all at once. Nor was the food which they carried sufficient, for the supplies of the camp had failed. Their disgrace and the universality of the misery, altho there might be some consolation in the very community of suffering, was nevertheless at that moment hard to bear, especially when they remembered from what pomp and splendor they had fallen into their present low estate. Never had a Hellenic army experienced such a reverse. They had come intending to enslave others, and they were going away in fear that they would be themselves enslaved. Instead of the prayers and hymns with which they had put to sea, they were now departing amid appeals to heaven of another sort. They were no longer sailors but landsmen, depending, not upon their fleet but upon their infantry. Yet in face of the great danger which still threatened them all these things appeared endurable....

When daylight broke and the Syracusans and their allies saw that the Athenians had departed, most of them thought that Gylippus had let them go on purpose, and were very angry with him. They easily found the line of their retreat, and quickly following came up with them about the time of the midday meal. The troops of Demosthenes were last; they were marching slowly and in disorder, not having recovered from the panic of the previous night, when they were overtaken by the Syracusans, who immediately fell upon them and fought. Separated as they were from the others, they were easily hemmed in by the Syracusan cavalry and driven into a narrow space. The division of Nicias was as much as six miles in advance, for he marched faster, thinking that their safety depended at such a time, not in remaining and fighting, if they could avoid it, but in retreating as quickly as they could, and resisting only when they were positively compelled.

Demosthenes, on the other hand, who had been more incessantly harassed throughout the retreat, because marching last, was first attacked by the enemy; now, when he saw the Syracusans pursuing him, instead of pressing onward, had ranged his army in order of battle. Thus lingering he was surrounded, and he and the Athenians under his command were in the greatest danger and confusion. For they were crusht into a walled enclosure, having a road on both sides and planted thickly with olive-trees, and missiles were hurled at them from all points. The Syracusans naturally preferred this mode of attack to a regular engagement. For to risk themselves against desperate men would have been only playing into the hands of the Athenians. Moreover, every one was sparing of his life; their good fortune was already assured, and they did not wish to fall in the hour of victory. Even by this irregular mode of fighting they thought that they could overpower and capture the Athenians.

And so when they had gone on all day assailing them with missiles from every quarter, and saw that they were quite worn out with their wounds and all their other sufferings, Gylippus and the Syracusans made a proclamation, first of all to the islanders, that any of them who pleased might come over to them and have their freedom. But only a few cities accepted the offer. At length an agreement was made for the entire force under Demosthenes. Their arms were to be surrendered but no one was to suffer death, either from violence or from imprisonment, or from want of the bare means of life. So they all surrendered, being in number six thousand, and gave up what money they had. This they threw into the hollows of shields and filled four. The captives were at once taken to the city. On the same day Nicias and his division reached the river Erineus, which he crossed, and halted his army on a rising ground.

On the following day, he was overtaken by the Syracusans, who told him that Demosthenes had surrendered, and bade him do the same. He, not believing them, procured a truce while he sent a horseman to go and see. Upon the return of the horseman bringing assurance of the fact, he sent a herald to Gylippus and the Syracusans, saying that he would agree, on behalf of the Athenian state, to pay the expenses which the Syracusans had incurred in the war, on condition that they should let his army go; until the money was paid he would give Athenian citizens as hostages, a man for a talent. Gylippus and the Syracusans would not accept these proposals, but attacked and surrounded this division of the army as well as the other, and hurled missiles at them from every side until the evening. They too were grievously in want of food and necessaries. Nevertheless they meant to wait for the dead of the night and then to proceed. They were just resuming their arms, when the Syracusans discovered them and raised the pæan. The Athenians, perceiving that they were detected, laid down their arms again, with the exception of about three hundred men who broke through the enemy's guard, and made their escape in the darkness as best they could.

When the day dawned Nicias led forward his army, and the Syracusans and the allies again assailed them on every side, hurling javelins and other missiles at them. The Athenians hurried on to the river Assinarus. They hoped to gain a little relief if they forded the river, for the mass of horsemen and other troops overwhelmed and crusht them; and they were worn out by fatigue and thirst. But no sooner did they reach the water than they lost all order and rushed in; every man was trying to cross first, and, the enemy pressing upon them at the same time, the passage of the river became hopeless. Being compelled to keep close together they fell one upon another, and trampled each other under foot; some at once perished, pierced by their own spears; others got entangled in the baggage and were carried down the stream. The Syracusans stood upon the further bank of the river, which was steep, and hurled missiles from above on the Athenians, who were huddled together in the deep bed of the stream and for the most part were drinking greedily. The Peloponnesians came down the bank and slaughtered them, falling chiefly upon those who were in the river. Whereupon the water at once became foul but was drunk all the same, altho muddy and dyed with blood, and the crowd fought for it.

At last, when the dead bodies were lying in heaps upon one another in the water and the army was utterly undone, some perishing in the river, and any one who escaped being cut off by the cavalry, Nicias surrendered to Gylippus, in whom he had more confidence than in the Syracusans. He entreated him and the Lacedæmonians to do what they pleased with himself, but not to go on killing the men. So Gylippus gave the word to make prisoners. Thereupon the survivors, not including, however, a large number whom the soldiers concealed, were brought in alive. As for the three hundred who had broken through the guard in the night, the Syracusans sent in pursuit and seized them. The total of the public prisoners when collected was not great; for many were appropriated by the soldiers, and the whole of Sicily was full of them, they not having capitulated like the troops under Demosthenes. A large number also perished; the slaughter at the river being very great, quite as great as any which took place in the Sicilian war; and not a few had fallen in the frequent attacks which were made upon the Athenians during the march. Still many escaped, some at the time, others ran away after an interval of slavery, and all these found refuge at Catana.

The Syracusans and their allies collected their forces and returned with the spoil, and as many prisoners as they could take with them, into the city. The captive Athenians and allies they deposited in the quarries, which they thought would be the safest place of confinement. Nicias and Demosthenes they put to the sword, altho against the will of Gylippus. For Gylippus thought that to carry home with him to Lacedæmon the generals of the enemy, over and above all his other successes, would be a brilliant triumph. One of them, Demosthenes, happened to be the greatest foe, and the other the greatest friend of the Lacedæmonians, both in the same matter of Pylos and Sphacteria....

Those who were imprisoned in the quarries were at the beginning of their captivity harshly treated by the Syracusans. There were great numbers of them, and they were crowded in a deep and narrow place. At first the sun by day was scorching and suffocating, for they had no roof over their heads, while the autumn nights were cold, and the extremes of temperature engendered violent disorders. Being cramped for room, they had to do everything on the same spot. The corpses of those who had died from their wounds, exposure to the weather, and the like lay heaped one upon another. The smells were intolerable; and the prisoners were at the same time afflicted by hunger and thirst. During eight months they were allowed only about half a pint of water and a pint of food a day.[44] Every kind of misery which could befall man in such a place befell them. This was the condition of all the captives for about ten weeks. At length the Syracusans sold them, with the exception of the Athenians and of any Sicilian or Italian Greeks who had sided with them in the war. The whole number of the public prisoners is not accurately known, but they were not less than seven thousand.

Of all the Hellenic actions which took place in this war, or indeed of all Hellenic actions which are on record, this was the greatest—the most glorious to the victors, the most ruinous to the vanquished; for they were utterly and at all points defeated, and their sufferings were prodigious. Fleet and army perished from the face of the earth; nothing was saved, and of the many who went forth few returned home.

Thus ended the Sicilian expedition.

FOOTNOTES:

[36] From Book VII of the "History of the Peloponnesian War," translated by Benjamin Jowett. "The noblest piece of tragedy in all written history," says John Morley of this book. Gray, the poet, in one of his letters, inquired, "Is it, or is it not, the finest thing you ever read in your life?" Macaulay, in a letter once wrote: "I do assure you that there is no prose composition in the world that I place so high as the Seventh book of Thucydides. Tacitus was a great man, but he was not up to the Sicilian expedition." Praise is given to this chapter by Mahaffy for "the sustained splendor of the narrative." Grote had profound admiration for the famous picture contained in the selection here given. He refers to its "condensed and burning phrases" as imparting an impression which modern historians have sought in vain to convey.

[37] The modern Catania, on the east coast of Sicily.

[38] The people of Acarnania, a province of Greece, lying on the Ionian Sea south of the Ambracian Gulf.

[39] Commander of the Athenians.

[40] The Spartan general who had been sent to Syracuse by advice of Alcibiades after he went over to the enemy.

[41] Next under Nicias in command of the expedition. He died twenty-nine years before the birth of the orator of the same name.

[42] Here occurred one of the most memorable events in the Peloponnesian war, the defense of Pylos under Demosthenes.

[43] This island lies immediately south of Pylos. It is long and narrow and guards the Bay of Navarino, the largest harbor in Greece, which was the scene of a famous battle between the English, French, Turkish, and Russian fleets in 1827.

[44] This allowance of food was only about one-half the amount usually given to a slave.

XENOPHON

Born in Athens about 430 b.c.; died after 357; celebrated as historian and essayist, being a disciple of Socrates; joined the expedition of Cyrus the Younger in 401, and after the battle of Cunaxa became the chief leader of ten thousand Greeks in their march to the Black Sea, the story being chronicled in his famous "Anabasis"; fought on the Spartan side in the battle of Coronea; banished from Athens, he settled at Scillus in Eleia; spent his last years in Corinth; among his writings besides the "Anabasis" are the "Hellenica," "Cycropædia," "Memorabilia of Socrates," and essays on hunting and horsemanship.

I

THE CHARACTER OF CYRUS THE YOUNGER[45]

Thus then died Cyrus, a man who, of all the Persians since Cyrus the Elder, was the most princely and most worthy of empire, as is agreed by all who appear to have had personal knowledge of him. In the first place, while he was yet with his brother and the other youths, he was a boy, and when he was receiving his education thought to surpass them all in everything. For without exception the sons of the Persian nobles are educated at the gates of the king;[46] where they may learn many a lesson of virtuous conduct, but can see or hear nothing disgraceful. In this place the boys see some honored by the king, and others disgraced, and hear of them; so that in their very childhood they learn to govern and to obey.

Here Cyrus, first of all, showed himself most remarkable for modesty among those of his own age, and for paying more ready obedience to his elders than even those who were inferior to him in station; and next he was noted for his fondness for horses, and for managing them in a superior manner. They found him, too, very desirous of learning and most assiduous in practising the warlike exercises of archery and hurling the javelin. When it suited his age, he grew extremely fond of the chase, and of braving dangers in encounters with wild beasts. On one occasion he did not shrink from a she bear that attacked him; however, in grappling with her, he was dragged from his horse, and received some wounds, the scars of which were visible on his body, but at last killed her. The person who first came to his assistance he made a happy man in the eyes of many.

When he was sent down by his father, as satrap of Lydia and Great Phrygia and Cappadocia, and was also appointed commander of all the troops whose duty it is to muster in the plain of Castolus, he soon showed that if he made a league or compact with any one, or gave a promise, he deemed it of the utmost importance not to break his word. Accordingly, the states that were committed to his charge, as well as individuals, had the greatest confidence in him; and if any one had been his enemy, he felt secure that if Cyrus entered into a treaty with him, he should suffer no infraction of the stipulations. When, therefore, he waged war against Tissaphernes,[47] all the cities, of their own accord, chose to adhere to Cyrus in preference to Tissaphernes, except the Milesians; but they feared Cyrus, because he would not abandon the cause of the exiles; for he both showed by his deeds, and declared in words, that he would never desert them, since he had once become a friend to them, not even tho they should grow still fewer in number, and be in a worse condition than they were.

Whenever any one did Cyrus a kindness or an injury, he showed himself anxious to go beyond him in those respects; and some used to mention a wish of his, that he "desired to live long enough to outdo both those who had done him good, and those who had done him ill, in the requital that he should make." Accordingly, to him alone of the men of our days were so great a number of people desirous of committing the disposal of their property, their cities, and their own person.

Yet no one could with truth say this of him, that he suffered the criminal or unjust to deride his authority; for he of all men inflicted punishment most unsparingly; and there were often to be seen, along the most frequented roads, men deprived of their feet, or hands, or eyes; so that in Cyrus' dominions it was possible for any one, Greek or barbarian, who did no wrong, to travel without fear whithersoever he pleased, and having with him whatever might suit his convenience.

To those who showed ability for war, it is acknowledged that he paid distinguished honor. His first war was with the Pisidians and Mysians; and, marching in person into these countries, he made those whom he saw voluntarily hazarding their lives in his service governors over the territory that he subdued, and distinguished them with rewards in other ways, so that the brave appeared to be the most fortunate of men, while the cowardly were deemed fit only to be their slaves. There were, therefore, great numbers of persons who voluntarily exposed themselves to danger wherever they thought that Cyrus would become aware of their exertions.

With regard to justice, if any appeared to him inclined to display that virtue, he made a point of making such men richer than those who sought to profit by injustice. Accordingly, while in many other respects his affairs were administered judiciously, he likewise possest an army worthy of the name. For it was not for money that generals and captains came from foreign lands to enter into his service, but because they were persuaded that to serve Cyrus well would be more profitable than any amount of monthly pay. Besides, if any one executed his orders in a superior manner, he never suffered his diligence to go unrewarded; consequently, in every undertaking, the best-qualified officers were said to be ready to assist him.

If he noticed any one that was a skilful manager, with strict regard to justice, stocking the land of which he had the direction, and securing income from it, he would never take anything from such a person, but was ever ready to give him something in addition; so that men labored with cheerfulness, acquired property with confidence, and made no concealment from Cyrus of what each possest; for he did not appear to envy those who amassed riches openly, but to endeavor to bring into use the wealth of those who concealed it.

Whatever friends he made, and felt to be well disposed to him, and considered to be capable of assisting him in anything that he might wish to accomplish, he is acknowledged by all to have been most successful in attaching them to him. For, on the very same account on which he thought that he himself had need of friends—namely, that he might have cooperators in his undertakings—did he endeavor to prove an efficient assistant to his friends in whatever he perceived any of them desirous of effecting.

He received, for many reasons, more presents than perhaps any other single individual; and these he outdid every one else in distributing among his friends, having a view to the character of each, and to what he perceived each most needed. Whatever presents any one sent him of articles of personal ornament, whether for warlike accouterment or merely for dress, concerning these, they said, he used to remark that he could not decorate his own person with them all, but that he thought friends well equipped were the greatest ornament a man could have. That he should outdo his friends, indeed, in conferring great benefits is not at all wonderful, since he was so much more able; but that he should surpass his friends in kind attentions and an anxious desire to oblige, appears to me far more worthy of admiration. Frequently, when he had wine served him of a peculiarly fine flavor, he would send half-emptied flagons of it to some of his friends, with a message to this effect, "Cyrus has not for some time met with pleasanter wine than this; and he has therefore sent some of it to you, and begs you will drink it to-day, with those whom you love best." He would often, too, send geese partly eaten and the halves of loaves, and other such things, desiring the bearer to say, in presenting them, "Cyrus has been delighted with these, and therefore wishes you also to taste of them."

Wherever provender was scarce, but he himself, from having many attendants, and from the care which he took, was able to procure some, he would send it about, and desire his friends to give that provender to the horses that carried them, so that hungry steeds might not carry his friends. Whenever he rode out and many were likely to see him, he would call to him his friends, and hold earnest conversation with them, that he might show whom he held in honor; so that, from what I have heard, I should think that no one was ever beloved by a greater number of persons, either Greeks or barbarians. Of this fact the following is a proof: that no one deserted to the king from Cyrus, tho only a subject (except that Orontes[48] attempted to do so; but he soon found the person whom he believed faithful to him more a friend to Cyrus than to himself), while many came over to Cyrus from the king, after they had become enemies to each other, and these, too, men who were greatly beloved by the king; for they felt persuaded that if they proved themselves brave soldiers under Cyrus, they would obtain from him more adequate rewards for their services than from the king.

What occurred also at the time of his death is a great proof as well that he himself was a man of merit as that he could accurately distinguish such as were trustworthy, well disposed, and constant to their attachment. For when he was killed, all his friends and the partakers of his table who were with him fell fighting in his defense except Ariæus, who had been posted in command of the cavalry on the left; and, when he learned that Cyrus had fallen in the battle, he took to flight, with all the troops which he had under his command.

FOOTNOTES:

[45] From the "Anabasis." Translated by J. S. Watson. Cyrus the Younger, son of Darius Nothus, with the help of 10,000 Greeks, sought to conquer his brother Artaxerxes, but was defeated and killed in the battle of Cunaxa in 401 b.c. The elder Cyrus, called the "Great," founder of the Persian Empire, died in 529 b.c. It is the retreat of the 10,000 Greeks that Xenophon chronicles in the "Anabasis."

[46] By this is meant at the palace of the king, tho not literally within the palace. Among the ancient Persians, as to-day among the Turks at Constantinople, the king's palace was called "the Porte."

[47] A Persian satrap who took part in the battle of Cunaxa. He became chief ruler of Western Asia, but was overthrown by the Greeks in 395 and put to death.

[48] A Persian of royal blood, one of the officers of Cyrus the Younger, several times in revolt against him, and finally condemned.

II

THE GREEK ARMY IN THE SNOWS OF ARMENIA[49]

(400 b.c.)

The next day it was thought necessary to march away as fast as possible, before the enemy's force should be reassembled, and get possession of the pass. Collecting their baggage at once, therefore, they set forward through a deep snow, taking with them several guides; and, having the same day passed the height on which Tiribazus had intended to attack them, they encamped. Hence they proceeded three days' journey, through a desert tract of country, a distance of fifteen parasangs, to the river Euphrates, and passed it without being wet higher than the middle. The sources of the river were said not to be far off.

Hence they advanced three days' march, through much snow and a level plain, a distance of fifteen parasangs; the third day's march was extremely troublesome, as the north wind blew full in their faces, completely parching up everything and benumbing the men. One of the augurs, in consequence, advised that they should sacrifice to the wind; and a sacrifice was accordingly offered, when the vehemence of the wind appeared to every one manifestly to abate. The depth of the snow was a fathom; so that many of the baggage-cattle and slaves perished, with about thirty of the soldiers. They continued to burn fires through the whole night, for there was plenty of wood at the place of encampment. But those who came up late could get no wood; those therefore who had arrived before, and had kindled fires, would not admit the late comers to the fire unless they gave them a share of the corn or other provisions that they had brought. Thus they shared with one another what they respectively had. In the places where the fires were made, as the snow melted, there were formed large pits that reached to the ground; and here there was accordingly opportunity to measure the depth of the snow.

Hence they marched through snow the whole of the following day, and many of the men contracted the bulimia. Xenophon, who commanded in the rear, finding in his way such of the men as had fallen down with it, knew not what disease it was. But as one of those acquainted with it told him that they were evidently affected with bulimia, and that they would get up if they had something to eat, he went round among the baggage, and, wherever he saw anything eatable, he gave it out, and sent such as were able to run to distribute it among those diseased, who, as soon as they had eaten, rose up and continued their march. As they proceeded, Cheirisophus[50] came, just as it grew dark, to a village, and found a spring in front of the rampart, some women and girls belonging to the place fetching water. The women asked them who they were; and the interpreter answered, in the Persian language, that they were people going from the king to the satrap. They replied that he was not there, but about a parasang off.

However, as it was late, they went with the water-carriers within the rampart to the head man of the village; and here Cheirisophus, and as many of the troops as could come up, encamped; but of the rest, such as were unable to get to the end of the journey spent the night on the way without food or fire; and some of the soldiers lost their lives on that occasion. Some of the enemy too, who had collected themselves into a body, pursued our rear, and seized any of the baggage-cattle that were unable to proceed, fighting with one another for the possession of them. Such of the soldiers, also, as had lost their sight from the effects of the snow, or had had their toes mortified by the cold, were left behind. It was found to be a relief to the eyes against the snow if the soldiers kept something black before them on the march, and to the feet, if they kept constantly in motion, and allowed themselves no rest, and if they took off their shoes in the night; but as to such as slept with their shoes on, the straps worked into their feet, and the soles were frozen about them; for when their old shoes had failed them, shoes of raw hides had been made by the men themselves from the newly skinned oxen.

From such unavoidable sufferings, some of the soldiers were left behind, who, seeing a piece of ground of a black appearance, from the snow having disappeared there, conjectured that it must have melted; and it had, in fact, melted in the spot from the effect of a fountain, which was sending up a vapor in a woody hollow close at hand. Turning aside thither, they sat down and refused to proceed farther. Xenophon, who was with the rear-guard, as soon as he heard this, tried to prevail on them by every art and means not to be left behind, telling them, at the same time, that the enemy were collected and pursuing them in great numbers. At last he grew angry; and they told him to kill them, as they were quite unable to go forward. He then thought it the best course to strike terror, if possible, into the enemy that were behind, lest they should fall upon the exhausted soldiers. It was now dark, and the enemy were advancing with a great noise, quarreling about the booty that they had taken, when such of the rear-guard as were not disabled started up, and rushed toward them, while the tired men, shouting as loud as they could, clashed their spears against their shields. The enemy, struck with alarm, threw themselves into the hollow amid the snow, and no one of them afterward made himself heard from any quarter.

Xenophon, and those with him, telling the sick men that a party would come to their relief next day, proceeded on their march, but before they had gone four stadia they found other soldiers resting by the way in the snow, and covered up with it, no guard being stationed over them. They roused them up, but they said that the head of the army was not moving forward. Xenophon, going past them, and sending on some of the ablest of the peltasts, ordered them to ascertain what it was that hindered their progress. They brought word that the whole army was in that manner taking rest. Xenophon and his men, therefore, stationing such a guard as they could, took up quarters there without fire or supper. When it was near day, he sent the youngest of his men to the sick, telling them to rouse them and oblige them to proceed.

At this juncture Cheirisophus sent some of his people from the villages to see how the rear were faring. The young men were rejoiced to see them, and gave them the sick to conduct to the camp, while they themselves went forward, and, before they had gone twenty stadia, found themselves at the village in which Cheirisophus was quartered. When they came together, it was thought safe enough to lodge the troops up and down in the villages. Cheirisophus accordingly remained where he was, and the other officers, appropriating by lot the several villages that they had in sight, went to their respective quarters with their men.

Here Polycrates, an Athenian captain, requested leave of absence, and, taking with him the most active of his men, and hastening to the village which Xenophon had been allotted, surprized all the villagers and their head man in their houses, together with seventeen colts that were bred as a tribute for the king, and the head man's daughter, who had been but nine days married; her husband was gone out to hunt hares, and was not found in any of the villages. Their houses were under ground, the entrance like the mouth of a well, but spacious below; there were passages dug into them for the cattle, but the people descended by ladders. In the houses were goats, sheep, cows, and fowls, with their young; all the cattle were kept on fodder within the walls.[51] There were also wheat, barley, leguminous vegetables, and barley-wine, in large bowls; the grains of barley floated in it even with the brims of the vessels, and reeds also lay in it, some larger and some smaller, without joints; and these, when any one was thirsty, he was to take in his mouth and suck. The liquor is very strong, unless one mixed water with it, and a very pleasant drink to those accustomed to it.

FOOTNOTES:

[49] From the "Anabasis." Translated by J. S. Watson. The "Anabasis" has made Xenophon perhaps the most prominent figure of ancient classical literature, largely because every schoolboy who studies Greek knows at least this book. It stands in that sense to Greek literature as Cæsar's "Commentaries" stands to Latin. The book has further value, not only as authentic history, but for the curious details it gives of the manners and customs of savage tribes living along the shores of the Euxine, and of those which prevailed at the Persian court and elsewhere in the Persian state.

[50] A Spartan general who, at the instance of Xenophon, had been appointed to lead the van of the retreating Greek army.

[51] W. T. Ainsworth, who has made a geographical commentary on Xenophon's "Anabasis," says: "This description of a village on the Armenian uplands applies itself to many that I visited." Houses on exposed elevations he found to be still semisubterranean. Whatever might be the kind of cottage used, domestic animals "participated with the family in the warmth and protection thereof."

III

THE BATTLE OF LEUCTRA[52]

(371 b.c.)

For the battle everything was adverse on the side of the Lacedæmonians, while to the enemy everything was rendered favorable by fortune. It was after dinner that the last council of war was held by Cleombrotus; and, as the officers had drunk a little at noon, it was said that the wine in some degree inspired them. And as, when both sides were fully armed, and it was now evident that a battle would take place, the people who had provisions for sale, with some of the baggage-carriers and others who were unwilling to fight, were proceeding first of all to quit the camp of the Bœotians, the mercenaries under Hiero the Phocian peltasts, and the Heraclean and Phliasian cavalry, making a circuit, fell upon them as they were going off, turned them back, and pursued them to the Bœotian camp; so that they made the army of the Bœotians larger and more numerous than before.

Besides, as there was a plain between the armies, the Lacedæmonians drew up their cavalry before their main body and the Thebans drew up theirs over against them; but the cavalry of the Thebans had been exercised in wars with the Orchomenians and Thespians, while that of the Lacedæmonians was at that time in a very inefficient condition; for the richest men maintained the horses, and, when notice of an expedition was given, the men appointed came to ride them, and each taking his horse, and whatever arms were given him, proceeded at once to the field; and thus the weakest and least spirited of all the men were mounted on horseback. Such was the cavalry on either side. Of the foot, it was said that the Lacedæmonians advanced with each enomoty drawn up three deep, this arrangement making them not more than twelve deep in all. The Theban infantry, in close array, were not less than fifty deep, considering that if they could defeat the body of the enemy posted around the king, the rest of the army would be an easy conquest.

As soon as Cleombrotus began to lead forward against the enemy, and even before the troops about him were aware that he was putting them in motion, the cavalry had already engaged, and those of the Lacedæmonians were at once defeated, who, as they fled, fell in among their own heavy-armed infantry, on which the troops of the Thebans were also pressing. But that the troops round Cleombrotus had at first the advantage in the contest, any one may be convinced by certain proof; for they would not have been able to take him and carry him off alive unless those who fought in front of him had been at that time victorious. When, however, Deimon the polemarch, Sphodrias, one of the attendants at the royal tent, and Cleonymus, his son, were killed, and the horse-guard, those who are called supporters of the polemarch, and the rest, being overpowered by the mass of the enemy, were forced to fall back, the Lacedæmonians on the left, seeing the right wing thus repulsed, also gave way; yet, tho many were killed, and they were quite defeated, they were able, when they had repassed the trench which was in front of the camp, to form themselves under arms in the place from which they had set out. Their camp was nevertheless not on level ground, but rather somewhat on an acclivity.

Some of the Lacedæmonians, at the time, who thought their disaster an insupportable disgrace, exclaimed that they ought to prevent the enemy from erecting a trophy, and endeavor to recover the dead, not by making a truce, but by fighting another battle. However, the polemarchs, seeing that of the Lacedæmonians in all nearly a thousand had lost their lives; and that of the Spartans, who were in the field to the number of about seven hundred, about four hundred had fallen; and observing, also, that all the auxiliaries were too dispirited to renew the combat, and some of them not even concerned at what had happened, called a council of the chief officers, and deliberated what course they ought to pursue; and as all were of opinion that "they ought to fetch off the dead by truce," they accordingly despatched a herald to treat respecting a truce. The Thebans soon afterward erected a trophy, and gave up the dead under truce.

After these occurrences, the messenger who was sent with the news of the calamity to Lacedæmon arrived there on the last day of the gymnopædiæ and after the chorus of men had made their entry. The ephors, when they heard of the calamity, were greatly concerned, as, I think, they naturally must have been; yet they did not order that chorus to withdraw, but allowed them to finish the entertainment. They then sent the names of the dead to their several relatives, and gave notice to the women to make no lamentations, but to bear their affliction in silence. The day after, a person might have seen those whose relatives had died appearing in public with looks of cheerfulness and joy; however, of those whose relatives were said to be alive, he would have seen but few, and those going about with gloomy and dejected countenances.