It was but a small affair, however, and the Athenians had no sooner begun to build their wall northwards from the central point, at the same time collecting stones, lumber, and other material along the projected line, than the Syracusans set to work to build a counter-work due west in order to intersect that of the Athenians. The Athenian fleet being still at Thapsus, the Athenians were obliged to bring up their provisions and materials from that place to Epipolae by land. The Athenians next succeeded in cutting off at least one of the aqueducts which supplied the city with water. Then, one day, when the Syracusans had completed their first counter-wall and had retired within their tents during the noonday heat, some having even returned to the city, the Athenians suddenly sent a strong picked force at full speed to seize the counter-wall, moving up the rest of their army in two divisions at the same time. The counter-wall appears to have been at first lightly constructed as a sort of stockade with stones heaped up against it, and the Athenian advance guard had no difficulty in taking possession of it and in tearing it down. The Athenians then carried off the material to their own lines and erected a trophy, which they did on every occasion when they had obtained the smallest advantage. Works and counter-works were now carried on with the greatest energy for some days, and when the Athenians considered that their works were sufficient they ordered their fleet to sail round from Thapsus into the great harbour, whither they themselves descended, crossing the swamp in the firmest part by laying planks upon the mud. And here again a short and bloody engagement was fought near the river Anapus, and the Syracusans succeeded in driving in the picked three hundred of the Athenian van, which produced something like a panic among the heavy-armed troops upon whom they fell back. Lamachus, seeing the danger, came up at full speed with a few archers and a body of Argives, crossed a ditch, and being followed only by a few men, was surrounded and killed, the Syracusans carrying off his body in triumph just as the main Athenian force came up.
Seeing from a distance that the Athenians had lost the bravest and most energetic of their officers, those of the Syracusans who had at first been driven back to the city took heart and came back to charge the Athenians once more, and destroyed •a thousand feet of a new outwork built by the enemy upon the heights of Epipolae. But within the lines Nicias himself lay ill, and he at once ordered his attendants to set fire to all the timber collected at that point so as to defend himself by a wall of flame, for he had no soldiers with him. So the Syracusans withdrew as the Athenians were bringing up reënforcements. At that moment the fleet from Thapsus entered the great harbour, and the whole Syracusan army immediately retired into the city.
Matters now looked very badly for the besieged. The Athenians continued their works unhindered, and built a double wall down to the harbour not far from the city gate. From all parts of Italy provisions began to arrive in great quantities, and the Sicelians, seeing that the invaders were getting the advantage, offered themselves as allies. The Syracusans had received no answer from Sparta, and supposing themselves deserted by their friends lost hope altogether, for they were completely cut off from the mainland by the circumvallation, and the Athenian fleet had destroyed their communications by sea. They began to discuss terms of capitulation, and to treat with Nicias, who held the sole command after the death of Lamachus. There was confusion within the city, they had lost confidence in their generals and chose others, they were entirely dependent upon Arethusa for their water, which therefore had to be carried •nearly three miles to supply the furthest extremity of Achradina, and its clear that before long there would be a scarcity of provisions.
But at the very moment when despair was settling upon the Syracusans help was at hand. The Spartans had despatched Gylippus to the aid of the beleaguered city, and he was already off the Italian coast. He was a man of brilliant resources and untiring energy, a most complete contrast in mind and character to the hesitating but obstinate Nicias who was soon to be his opponent. The latter had heard of his expedition and looked upon him with scorn, considering him to be rather than a pirate than a general, for he had only about fifteen ships and no great number of soldiers. But he possessed in abundance the military genius which was wholly lacking in Nicias, and nothing else was necessary to turn the fortunes of war.
After experiencing violent storms and being obliged to refit in Tarentum, instead of making directly for Syracuse, by which course he would probably have been obliged to fight the Athenians at sea, he sailed round by the north and picked up considerable auxiliary forces in Himera, Selinus, and Gela. Meanwhile Corinth had sent more ships, and the one which put to sea last of all, but was the fastest sailor, reached Syracuse first, just in time to prevent the Syracusans from capitulating. Gylippus appears to have left his ships either at Himera or at Gela. By forced marches and with less than three thousand men he arrived suddenly under the heights of Epipolae. The Syracusans meanwhile came out in force and effected a junction with the army of rescue. A better general than Nicias would have prevented the enemy from obtaining such an advantage, and it proved his ruin. The united forces now seized the heights, and the Athenians formed to give them battle. Gylippus sent forward a herald with a daring message to the Athenians. They might choose, he said, whether they would depart from Sicily within five days or remain where they were and fight to an issue. The Athenians returned no answer and sent the herald back with contempt. Nicias had chosen, and his choice had fallen upon his own destruction. Gylippus boldly seized the Athenian fort on the height and slew the garrison, and on the same day the Syracusan a captured one of the Athenian triremes. The Syracusans then set to work upon building an enormous wall, •over two miles in length, from the city right across Epipolae, thus effectually shutting off the Athenians from the sea on the north side.
Nicias now made that mistake which has been considered to be his greatest by military men. He wasted time and labour in fortifying the Plemmyrium, south of the great harbour, and he transferred thither the greater part of his stores, regardless of the scanty water supply in the newly occupied region. By this time also the other Corinthian vessels were known to be rapidly approaching, so that Nicias was obliged to send out twenty armed vessels to cruise in search of his assailants.
Gylippus experienced a slight reverse, for he attacked the Athenians in the narrow space between their works and his, where the Syracusan cavalry had no room to manoeuvre and was consequently useless. Once more the Syracusans were driven back with slaughter, and the Athenians erected another trophy. Undaunted by this check, however, Gylippus rallied his men with an energetic speech, continued the works actively, and waited for a more favourable opportunity. It was not long in coming. Gylippus succeeded in giving battle with both walls ended; the Syracusan cavalry charged the Athenian flank at furious speed, while the heavy infantry engaged the centre. The Athenians were completely routed, and during the night that followed the whole Syracusan force worked at the wall. In the morning it had reached the Athenian works and crossed them, and all hope of completely investing the city was lost.
Fortune now favoured the Syracusans in every way. The Corinthian vessels eluded the flying squadron which Nicias had sent out to cruise for them, and entered the harbour unexpectedly, before the Athenians could get ships under way to oppose them. Reënforced by the arrival of these allies, the Syracusans completed their works, and began to get their own ships ready for sea and to exercise their crews. Gylippus then made a journey through Sicily to raise more troops and money from the friendly cities, and sent messages to Sparta and Corinth asking for further help, for the Athenians were sending to Athens to make a similar request.
Indeed, the letter written by Nicias and read aloud in Athens by the secretary of state is a confession of powerlessness, if not of defeat, and is, moreover, a singularly honest statement of the situation; for he frankly says therein that from being the besieger he was become the besieged, that his ships were leaky and could neither be beached nor hove down for caulking, in the face of the enemy’s fleet; that it was be
coming extremely difficult and dangerous to get supplies of food, either from Italy or the island, and that he himself was almost helpless from nephritis.
Both parties, Corinth and Sparta on the one hand, and Athens on the other, responded in the most liberal way to these appeals. The Athenians sent ten ships at once, and sixty later on under Demosthenes, with several thousand men; and Gylippus having raised large reënforcements in Sicily, the armies on both sides began to assume formidable proportions. At this time, Demosthenes not having yet arrived, Gylippus planned an engagement which, though only in part successful, ultimately decided the fortunes of the war. A part of the Syracusan fleet lay in the small harbour outside of Ortygia and north of it; the rest were anchored in the great harbour within a sort of defence made by driving huge piles into the bottom, leaving •about twenty feet projecting above water, with a narrow entrance. The leader determined upon a general battle, by land and sea; the two divisions of the Syracusan fleet were to sail round the opposite sides of Ortygia and effect a junction at the mouth of the harbour, where the Athenian ships would of course meet them, and, as Gylippus hoped, would be caught between them and easily destroyed. Meanwhile, he himself intended to march his army round the bay and storm the forts on Plemmyrium. It was clear that if both movements succeeded, the Athenians would be caught in the harbour like mice, with no possibility of escape.
The operation began under cover of the night, of course, and the engagement opened at daybreak. The Athenians, warned, perhaps, of their danger, succeeded in getting thirty-five ships out of the harbour in time to engage the outer Syracusan division in open water, while, with twenty-five more, the inner squadron of the Syracusans was kept at bay. The outer squadron forced its way through the Athenian ships, instead of driving them in, or sinking them, and was caught, as they should have been. The fighting continued in the harbour, and eleven of the Syracusans’ vessels were sunk and most of their crews killed. The remainder of the fleet withdrew inside the stockade of piles, badly damaged. The Athenians only lost three vessels. Nevertheless, the result of the day was a victory for Syracuse. Gylippus had carried out his plan on land without a check. He had seized Plemmyrium, with its three forts, its vast stores of grain and lumber, and the considerable treasure which was deposited there. He razed one of the forts to the ground and placed strong garrisons in the other two. The Syracusans now held every point, all round the bay, from the city to Plemmyrium, the Athenians were driven back to their old camp below the Olympieum, opposite the entrance of the harbour, and, being completely hemmed in by land, were obliged to fight their way in and out of the harbour in order to maintain communications and receive supplies. Their destruction was now clearly a question of time.
They exerted every energy to prevent the safe arrival of the Corinthian reënforcements, and made desperate attempts to destroy the ships anchored within the stockade. To this end they moved up to it one of their largest ships, a vessel of ten thousand talents’ burden, equal to about two hundred and fifty tons by our measurement, fitted with cranes and windlasses that were protected by armoured screens; and making fast ropes to the piles as far below water as possible, they hove them out and towed them away. There were divers among the Athenians who, for a reward, went down with saws and sawed some of the piles off at such a depth that the stumps could not injure the vessels; and the Syracusans had also purposely driven in stakes at certain places, below the surface, that the Athenian ships might run upon them, but these also the divers succeeded in sawing away. Now no man can work at sawing below water for more than thirty or forty seconds at a time without coming up for breath, so that the divers must have worked many hours, and perhaps a whole day, at cutting through a single pile. The Syracusans, however, were not slow to replace those which the Athenians removed or destroyed, and the latter gained no advantage in that way, while the difficulty of obtaining provisions increased daily, and the malarious fever caused by the Lysimeleian swamp in the summer months made ravages in the Athenian camp.
At this juncture the fleet commanded by Demosthenes appeared off Syracuse in magnificent array. Seventy-three galleys sailed down in even order, their signals streaming on the wind, their richly adorned and painted bows rising high above the blue water. From the decks gleamed the shields and helmets of five thousand heavy-armed men, and as they neared Ortygia, soldiers and seamen raised the song of war and the loud Grecian trumpets blared out triumphant notes.
Demosthenes intended to terrify the Syracusans by making all the display of military and naval power of which he could dispose, and the Syracusans almost lost heart again at the approach of a new host of enemies. As soon as Demosthenes had landed he proposed to Nicias to make a general attack by sea and land, and if his advice had been taken, a signal success might have been gained. But Nicias had grown timid and was broken down by illness, and Plutarch even says that he had an understanding with certain traitors in Syracuse, who advised him to wait patiently, as the inhabitants were weary of the war and of the exacting energy of Gylippus, and would soon begin to dispute among themselves. But Demosthenes inspired the Athenians with courage and at last succeeded in carrying his point. He determined to make a night attack upon Epipolae, and taking the guards by surprise he slew a great number and was hastening on, supposing that he had carried the position, when he suddenly came upon the Boeotian detachment, which was already under arms. Uttering their tremendous war-cry, they closed up with levelled spears and charged the Athenians with the force of a solid mass. The young moon was hastening to her setting, and shed an uncertain light. The wildest confusion fell upon the Athenians as they fled in disorder, or attacked each other, unable to distinguish their friends from their foes. The faint moonlight, reflected upon the gleaming shields of the Syracusans and upon their glittering arms, made them appear ten times more numerous, and as the victorious force preserved its compact order, shoulder to shoulder, every soldier knew that he had only foes before him and friends behind, every thrust went home and every blade was dyed in Athenian blood. Many, in their flight, fell from the low cliffs and were killed, a few lost themselves in the fields beyond Epipolae while attempting to escape, and as the dawn lightened, the Syracusan horse scoured the country and cut down every straggler. Between midnight and morning two thousand Athenians had perished.
Nicias had expected nothing better, but yet he would not hear of a general retreat, and Demosthenes, having failed in his first enterprise, attempted no further action for some time. At last, as fresh reënforcements strengthened the Syracusan army, Nicias reluctantly consented to withdraw and gave the order to embark the troops. But on that very night, the moon, being full, was totally eclipsed, and not only Nicias himself, but all the Greeks with him, were paralyzed with fear by what they considered a terrific portent. After consulting a diviner, Nicias declared that the army could not embark until the moon had completed another revolution. He was approaching his destruction, and even nature seemed to conspire with ill fortune to ruin him. In total inactivity he passed his time in sacrificing to the gods, while his diviner consulted the auguries presented by the victims. His ships lay idly at anchor, their seams opening under the blazing sun; his disheartened soldiers made no attempt to prevent the Syracusans from hemming them in; hundreds died of the malarial sickness spread by the pestilential swamp. The Syracusan fishermen and boatmen pulled out to the men-of‑war and jeered at them, offering them fight. A boy, Heraclides, the son of a great Syracusan house, ventured in a skiff close under an Athenian vessel that was unmoored, and reviled the captain amid the laughter of the other boys. Furious at being insulted by a child, the officer manned the oars and gave chase. Instantly ten Sicilian galleys, now always ready for fight, put out to save the lad, others followed, and a sharp engagement ensued in which the Syracusans did considerable damage to the Athenian vessels and slew a general and a number of men.
The Syracusans lost no time in completely blocking the entrance of the harbour, after this success, and Nicias was reluctantly driven to fight whe
re starvation and death by fever were the only alternatives. He embarked the best of his heavy infantry, and chosen detachments of archers and spearmen, manning a hundred and ten vessels, and he marshalled the rest of his army on the shore to await the event.
It was the end. The swift Syracusan ships pulled out in wide order, provided with their catapults, and with vast numbers of stones which could be discharged terrible effect at short range, and against which the Athenians had no missiles but darts and arrows. The Athenian fleet was so crowded together that the ships could barely advance, and were unable to execute any manoeuvre; the Syracusans, on the contrary, could charge, turn, and retire as they pleased; from the shore and from the city a hundred thousand spectators watched the struggle for life or death. Driven together upon each other, rammed and battered by their assailants, the Athenian ships sank one by one with the living and the dead together, and as the sun declined to the west what had been a battle became but a universal massacre; at evening the Athenian fleet was totally destroyed, and no alternative remained for the survivors ashore but to cut their way through the Syracusan lines in a hopeless attempt to escape by land. Gylippus would have fallen upon them in their camp without delay, but the Syracusans, in wild rejoicing at their great victory, could not be induced to postpone a universal feast. Hermocrates, however, whose counsels and ready wit had helped his countrymen throughout the war, sent a treacherous message to Nicias, warning him that every pass was held and every point of the works completely manned, and he was deceived and waited for the morning. Then indeed the Syracusans, having feasted and rested, went out and held the whole line during all that day and the following night. At last the Athenians, still forty thousand strong, began to move, going up from their camp with tears and loud lamentations, and leaving their sick and wounded behind them. They broke a passage through the lines indeed, but the whole Syracusan force was upon them, flanking them continually, following them, and slaying them like sheep as they struggled hopelessly and almost without food through the valley towards Floridia. Eight days the massacre lasted, until there was no hope, and the remnant of the greatest army of that age surrendered unconditionally to Spartan Gylippus. Some say that Demosthenes and Nicias killed themselves, and this is more likely, but others say that the Syracusans stoned them to death. Then the Syracusans dressed those tall trees that still grow by the river for miles, with the arms of their fallen foes, making blood-stained trophies all the way; and they plucked leaves and autumn flowers and made themselves garlands for their helmets and adorned their horses too; and thus marched back in a glorious triumph, driving their prisoners before them; for the war was over, and of all the vast armament that had come against Syracuse not one vessel was ever to return to Greece, and not one man had escaped to bear arms or to lift a hand against the victorious city, but all were dead or slaves. There was not even one to bring the frightful news to Athens, and it was late in the autumn when a travelling merchant carelessly told the story to a barber in the Piraeus, supposing that all Greece knew it. Thus ended the great Athenian expedition, and thus was Alcibiades revenged.
Complete Works of F Marion Crawford Page 1412