XXVII. Nikias made heroic efforts by cheerful looks, encouraging speeches, and personal appeals to his followers, to show himself superior to fortune. Throughout the retreat, although for eight days in succession he was constantly harassed by the attacks of the enemy, he nevertheless kept the division under his command unbroken and undefeated, until the other part of the army under Demosthenes was forced to surrender, being completely surrounded in an enclosed olive-ground, the property of Polyzelus, brother of the despot Gelon. Demosthenes himself drew his sword and stabbed himself, but not mortally, for the Syracusans quickly interposed and forced him to desist. When the Syracusans told Nikias of this disaster, and allowed him to send horsemen to convince him of its truth, he proposed terms to Gylippus, which were that the Athenians should be allowed to leave Sicily, on condition of the repayment of the whole expenses of the war, for which he offered to give hostages. These terms were refused, and the enemy with insulting cries and threats proceeded to shoot with missiles of all kinds at the Athenians, who were now completely without food or drink. Yet Nikias prevailed upon them to hold out during that night, and on the following day he led them, still under fire from the enemy, across the plain leading to the river Asinarus. There some were forced into the stream by the enemy, while others cast themselves in to quench their thirst. A most dreadful slaughter now took place, the Athenians being wild with thirst, and the Syracusans killing them as they drank, until Nikias surrendered himself to Gylippus, saying, "I beseech you, now that you are victorious, to show some mercy, not to me, but to the Athenian troops. Consider how changeful is the fortune of war, and how gently the Athenians dealt with your men in their hour of victory."
Gylippus was visibly affected by the words, and by the sight of Nikias; for he knew how well the Spartan prisoners had been treated by him, when the peace was made with Athens; moreover, he thought that it would be a great honour to him if he could carry home the enemy's commander-in-chief as a prisoner. He received Nikias with kindness, and gave orders to take the rest of the Athenians alive. It was long, however, before these orders were understood and obeyed, so that more Athenians were slain than survived, although many were spared by the Syracusans in order that they might be sold for slaves.
The prisoners were now assembled together, and their arms and armour hung upon the trees by the river side, as a trophy of the victory. The victors next crowned themselves with garlands, decorated their horses, cut off the manes and tails of the captured horses, and marched back into their own city, having by their courage and skill won the most complete victory ever gained by one Greek state over another.
XXVIII. At a public assembly of the Syracusans and their allies which was shortly afterwards held, the orator Eurykles proposed that the day on which Nikias was taken should be kept as a festival for ever, upon which no work should be done, and sacrifice should be offered to the gods, and that the feast should be called the Asinaria, from the name of the river where the victory was won. The day was the twenty-sixth of the Dorian month Karneius, which the Athenians call Metageitnion (September 21st). Furthermore, he proposed that the Athenian slaves and allies should be sold, that the Athenians themselves, with what native Sicilians had joined them, should be confined in the stone quarries within the city of Syracuse, and that their generals should be put to death.
These propositions wore accepted by the Syracusans, who treated Hermokrates with contempt when he urged that to be merciful in victory would be more honourable to them than the victory itself. Gylippus too, when he begged that he might carry the Athenian generals alive to Sparta, was shamefully insulted by the excited Syracusans, who had long disliked the irritating Spartan airs of superiority natural to Gylippus, and now, flushed with victory, no longer cared to conceal their feelings. Timæus tells us that they accused him of avarice and peculation, a hereditary vice, it appears, in his family since his father Kleandrides was banished from Sparta for taking bribes, while he himself afterwards stole thirty of the hundred talents which Lysander sent home to Sparta, and hid them under the roof of his house, but was informed against, and exiled in disgrace. This will be found described at greater length in the Life of Lysander.
In his account of the death of Nikias and Demosthenes, Timæus does not exactly follow the narrative of Thucydides and Philistus, as he informs us that while the assembly was still sitting, Hermokrates sent to their prison to inform them that they were condemned to death, and to afford them the means of dying by their own hands, while the other historians state that the Syracusans put them to death.[4] Be this as it may, their dead bodies were exposed before the gates of Syracuse as a spectacle for the citizens. I have heard also that at the present day a shield is shown in one of the temples at Syracuse, which is said to be that of Nikias, and which is beautifully adorned with woven coverings of purple and gold.
XXIX. Of the Athenians, the most part perished in the stone quarries of disease and insufficient food, for they received only a pint of barley-meal and half-a-pint of water each day. Not a few, however, were sold into slavery, being stolen for that purpose by Syracusans, or having escaped disguised as slaves. The rest were at length branded upon their foreheads with the figure of a horse, and sold into slavery. Yet even in this extremity their well-bred and dignified behaviour came to their aid; for they soon either obtained their freedom, or gained the confidence and respect of their masters. Some gained their freedom by their knowledge of Euripides. It appears that the dramas of Euripides were especially popular in Sicily, but that only a few fragments of his works had hitherto reached the Greek cities in that island. We are told that many of these captives on their return to Athens affectionately embraced Euripides, and told him how some of them had been sold into slavery, but had been set free after they had taught their masters as much of his poetry as they could remember, while others, when wandering about the country as fugitives after the battle, had obtained food and drink by reciting passages from his plays. We need not then wonder at the tale of the people of Kaunus, who, when a ship pursued by pirates was making for their harbour at first refused to admit it, but afterwards enquired whether any on board knew the plays of Euripides; and on hearing that they did, allowed them to enter the harbour and save themselves.
XXX. At Athens the news of the catastrophe was at first disbelieved, because of the unsatisfactory way in which it reached the city. A stranger, it is said, disembarked at Peiræus, went into a barber's shop, and began to converse about what had happened as upon a theme which must be uppermost in every man's mind. The astonished barber, hearing for the first time such fearful tidings, ran up to Athens to communicate it to the archons, and to the public in the market-place. All were shocked and astonished at hearing this, and the archons immediately convoked the public assembly, and brought the barber before it. When he was asked to explain from whom he had heard this intelligence, as he could give no satisfactory account, he was regarded as a disturber of the public tranquillity by fabricating idle tales, and was even put to the torture. Soon, however, men arrived who confirmed his tale, and described all the details of the catastrophe as far as they had witnessed them. Then at last the countrymen of Nikias believed, after his death, what he had so often foretold to them during his life.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 1: In North Africa, the modern oasis of Siwah.]
[Footnote 2: Plemmyrium on one side, and the city of Syracuse on the other, command the entrance of the gulf known as the Great Harbour, inside of which lay the Athenian fleet and camp.]
[Footnote 3: Grote.]
[Footnote 4: Grote, Part II. ch. lx, points out that there is no real contradiction between the statement cited from Timæus, and the accounts gives of the transaction by Thucydides and Philistus.]
LIFE OF CRASSUS.
I. Marcus Crassus[5] was the son of a father who had been censor, and enjoyed a triumph; but he was brought up with his two brothers in a small house. His brothers were married in the lifetime of their parents, and all had a common table, which seems to have been the chief reason that Crassus was a temperate and moderate man in his way of living. Upon the death of one of his brothers, Crassus married the widow,[6] and she became the mother of his children; for in these matters also he lived as regular a life as any Roman. However, as he grew older, he was charged with criminal intercourse with Licinia,[7] one of the Vestal Virgins, who was brought to trial; the prosecutor was one Plotinus. Licinia had a pleasant estate in the suburbs, which Crassus wished to get at a small price, and with this view he was continually about the woman and paying his court to her, which brought on him the suspicion of a criminal intercourse; but he was acquitted by the judices, being indebted in some degree to his love of money for his acquittal from the charge of debauching the vestal. But he never remitted his attentions to Licinia till he got possession of the property.