To this inconvenience, however, Brasidas submitted, in haste to begin his march into Chalkidikê, and his operations jointly with the Chalkidians, for seducing or subduing the subject-allies of Athens. His first operation was against Akanthus, on the isthmus of the peninsula of Athos, the territory of which he invaded a little before the vintage, probably about the middle of September; when the grapes were ripe, but still out, and the whole crop of course exposed to ruin at the hands of an enemy superior in force: so important was it to Brasidas to have escaped the necessity of wasting another month in conquering the Lynkestæ. There was within the town of Akanthus a party in concert with the Chalkidians, anxious to admit him, and to revolt openly from Athens. But the mass of the citizens were averse to this step: and it was only by dwelling on the terrible loss from exposure of the crop without, that the anti-Athenian party could persuade them even to grant the request of Brasidas to be admitted singly,[653] so as to explain his purposes formally before the public assembly, which would take its own decision afterwards. “For a Lacedæmonian (says Thucydidês) he was no mean speaker:” and if he is to have credit for that which we find written in Thucydidês, such an epithet would be less than his desert. Doubtless, however, the substance of the speech is genuine: and it is one of the most interesting in Grecian history; partly as a manifesto of professed Lacedæmonian policy, partly because it had a great practical effect in determining, on an occasion of paramount importance, a multitude which, though unfavorably inclined to him, was not beyond the reach of argument. I give the chief points of the speech, without binding myself to the words.

“Myself and my soldiers have been sent, Akanthians, to realize the purpose which we proclaimed on beginning the war; that we took arms to liberate Greece from the Athenians. Let no man blame us for having been long in coming, or for the mistake which we made at the outset in supposing that we should quickly put down the Athenians by operations against Attica, without exposing you to any risk. Enough, that we are now here on the first opportunity, resolved to put them down if you will lend us your aid. To find myself shut out of your town, nay, to find that I am not heartily welcomed, astonishes me. We, Lacedæmonians, undertook this long and perilous march, in the belief that we were coming to friends eagerly expecting us; and it would indeed be terrible if you should now disappoint us, and stand out against your own freedom as well as that of other Greeks. Your example, standing high as you do both for prudence and power, will fatally keep back other Greeks, and make them suspect that I am wanting either in power to protect them against Athens, or in honest purpose. Now, in regard to power, my own present army was one which the Athenians, though superior in number, were afraid to fight near Nisæa; nor are they at all likely to send an equal force hither against me by sea. And in regard to my purpose, it is not one of mischief, but of liberation, the Lacedæmonian authorities having pledged themselves to me by the most solemn oaths, that every city which joins me shall retain its autonomy. You have therefore the best assurance both as to my purposes and as to my power; still less need you apprehend that I am come with factious designs, to serve the views of any particular men among you, and to remodel your established constitution to the disadvantage either of the many or of the few. That would be worse than foreign subjugation, so that we Lacedæmonians should be taking all this trouble to earn hatred instead of gratitude. We should play the part of unworthy traitors, worse even than that high-handed oppression of which we accuse the Athenians: we should at once violate our oaths and sin against our strongest political interests. Perhaps you may say, that though you wish me well, you desire for your parts to be let alone, and to stand aloof from a dangerous struggle. You will tell me to carry my propositions elsewhere, to those who can safely embrace them, but not to thrust my alliance upon any people against their own will. If this should be your language, I shall first call your local gods and heroes to witness that I have come to you with a mission of good, and have employed persuasion in vain; I shall then proceed to ravage your territory and extort your consent, thinking myself justly entitled to do so, on two grounds. First, that the Lacedæmonians may not sustain actual damage from these good wishes which you profess towards me without actually joining,—damage in the shape of that tribute which you annually send to Athens. Next, that the Greeks generally may not be prevented by you from becoming free. It is only on the ground of common good, that we Lacedæmonians can justify ourselves for liberating any city against its own will; but as we are conscious of desiring only extinction of the empire of others, not acquisition of empire for ourselves, we should fail in our duty if we suffered you to obstruct that liberation which we are now carrying to all. Consider well my words, then: take to yourselves the glory of beginning the era of emancipation for Greece, save your own properties from damage, and attach an ever-honorable name to the community of Akanthus.”[654]

Nothing could be more plausible or judicious than this language of Brasidas to the Akanthians, nor had they any means of detecting the falsity of the assertion, which he afterwards repeated in other places besides,[655] that he had braved the forces of Athens at Nisæa with the same army as that now on the outside of the walls. Perhaps the simplicity of his speech and manner may even have lent strength to his assurances. As soon as he had retired, the subject was largely discussed in the assembly, with much difference of opinion among the speakers, and perfect freedom on both sides: and the decision, not called for until after a long debate, was determined partly by the fair promises of Brasidas, partly by the certain loss which the ruin of the vine-crop would entail. The votes of the citizens present being taken secretly, a majority resolved to accede to the propositions of Brasidas and revolt from Athens.[656] Exacting the renewal of his pledge and that of the Lacedæmonian authorities, for the preservation of full autonomy to every city which should join him, they received his army into the town. The neighboring city of Stageirus, a colony of Andros, as Akanthus also was, soon followed the example.[657]

There are few acts in history wherein Grecian political reason and morality appear to greater advantage than in this proceeding of the Akanthians. The habit of fair, free, and pacific discussion; the established respect to the vote of the majority; the care to protect individual independence of judgment by secret suffrage; the deliberate estimate of reasons on both sides by each individual citizen, all these main laws and conditions of healthy political action appear as a part of the confirmed character of the Akanthians. We shall not find Brasidas entering other towns in a way so creditable or so harmonious.

But there is another inference which the scene just described irresistibly suggests. It affords the clearest proof that the Akanthians had little to complain of as subject-allies of Athens, and that they would have continued in that capacity, if left to their own choice, without the fear of having their crop destroyed. Such is the pronounced feeling of the mass of the citizens: the party who desire otherwise are in a decided minority. It is only the combined effect of severe impending loss, and of tempting assurances held out by the worthiest representative whom Sparta ever sent out, which induces them to revolt from Athens: nor even then is the resolution taken without long opposition, and a large dissentient minority, in a case where secret suffrage insured free and genuine expression of preference from every individual. Now, it is impossible that the scene in Akanthus at this critical moment could have been of such a character, had the empire of Athens been practically odious and burdensome to the subject-allies, as it is commonly depicted. Had such been the fact; had the Akanthians felt that the imperial ascendency of Athens oppressed them with hardship or humiliation, from which their neighbors, the revolted Chalkidians in Olynthus and elsewhere, were exempt, they would have hailed the advent of Brasidas with that cordiality which he himself expected and was surprised not to find. The sense of present grievance, always acute and often excessive, would have stood out as their prominent impulse: nor would they have needed either intimidation or cajolery to induce them to throw open their gates to the liberator, who, in his speech within the town, finds no actual suffering to appeal to, but is obliged to gain over an audience evidently unwilling by alternate threats and promises.

As in Akanthus, so in most of the other Thracian subjects of Athens, the bulk of the citizens, though strongly solicited by the Chalkidians, manifest no spontaneous disposition to revolt from Athens. We shall find the party who introduce Brasidas to be a conspiring minority, who not only do not consult the majority beforehand, but act in such a manner as to leave no free option to the majority afterwards, whether they will ratify or reject: bring in a foreign force to overawe them and compromise them without their own consent in hostility against Athens. Now that which makes the events of Akanthus so important as an evidence, is, that the majority is not thus entrapped and compressed, but pronounces its judgment freely after ample discussion: the grounds of that judgment are clearly set forth to us, so as to show that hatred of Athens, if even it exists at all, is in no way a strong or determining feeling. Had there existed any such strong feeling among the subject-allies of Athens in the Chalkidic peninsula, there was no Athenian force now present to hinder them all from opening their gates to the liberator Brasidas by spontaneous majorities, as he himself, encouraged by the sanguine promises of the Chalkidians, evidently expected that they would do. But nothing of this kind happened.

That which I before remarked in recounting the revolt of Mitylênê, a privileged ally of Athens, is now confirmed in the revolt of Akanthus, a tributary and subject-ally. The circumstances of both prove that imperial Athens inspired no hatred, and occasioned no painful grievance, to the population of her subject-cities generally: the movements against her arose from party-minorities, of the same character as that Platæan party which introduced the Theban assailants into Platæa at the commencement of the Peloponnesian war. There are of course differences of sentiment between one town and another; but the conduct of the towns generally demonstrates that the Athenian empire was not felt by them to be a scheme of plunder and oppression, as Mr. Mitford and others would have us believe. It is indeed true that Athens managed her empire with reference to her own feelings and interests, and that her hold was rather upon the prudence than upon the affection of her allies, except in so far as those among them who were democratically governed sympathized with her democracy: it is also true that restrictions in any form on the autonomy of each separate city were offensive to the political instincts of the Greeks: moreover, Athens took less and less pains to disguise or soften the real character of her empire, as one resting simply on established fact and superior force. But this is a different thing from the endurance of practical hardship and oppression, which, had it been real, would have inspired strong positive hatred among the subject-allies, such as Brasidas expected to find universal in Thrace, but did not really find, in spite of the easy opening which his presence afforded.

The acquisition of Akanthus and Stageirus enabled Brasidas in no very long time to extend his conquests; to enter Argilus, and from thence to make the capital acquisition of Amphipolis.

Argilus was situated between Stageirus and the river Strymon, along the western bank of which river its territory extended. Along the eastern bank of the same river,—south of the lake which it forms under the name of Kerkinitis, and north of the town of Eion at its mouth, was situated the town and territory of Amphipolis, communicating with the lands of Argilus by the important bridge there situated. The Argilians were colonists from Andros, like Akanthus and Stageirus, and the adhesion of those two cities to Brasidas gave him opportunity to cultivate intelligences in Argilus, wherein there had existed a standing discontent against Athens, ever since the foundation of the neighboring city of Amphipolis.[658] The latter city had been established by the Athenian Agnon, at the head of a numerous body of colonists, on a spot belonging to the Edonian Thracians, called Ennea Hodoi, or Nine Ways, about five years prior to the commencement of the war (B.C. 437), after two previous attempts to colonize it,—one by Histiæus and Aristagoras, at the period of the Ionic revolt, and a second by the Athenians about 465 B.C., both of which lamentably failed. So valuable, however, was the site, from its vicinity to the gold and silver mines near Mount Pangæus and to large forests of ship-timber, as well as for command of the Strymon, and for commerce with the interior of Thrace and Macedonia, that the Athenians had sent a second expedition under Agnon, who founded the city and gave it the name of Amphipolis. The resident settlers there, however, were only in small proportion Athenian citizens; the rest of mixed origin, some of them Argilian, a considerable number Chalkidians. The Athenian general Euklês was governor in the town, though seemingly with no paid force under his command.

Among these mixed inhabitants a conspiracy was organized to betray the town to Brasidas, the inhabitants of Argilus as well as the Chalkidians each of them tampering with those of the same race who resided in Amphipolis; and the influence of Perdikkas, not inconsiderable, in consequence of the commerce of the place with Macedonia, was employed to increase the number of partisans. Of all the instigators, however, the most strenuous as well as the most useful were the inhabitants of Argilus. Amphipolis, together with the Athenians as its founders, had been odious to them from its commencement; and its foundation had doubtless abridged their commerce and importance as masters of the lower course of the Strymon. They had been long laying snares against the city, and the arrival of Brasidas now presented to them an unexpected chance of success. It was they who enabled him to accomplish the surprise, deferring proclamation of their own defection from Athens until they could make it subservient to his conquest of Amphipolis.

Starting with his army from Arnê in the Chalkidic peninsula, Brasidas arrived in the afternoon at Aulon and Bromiskus, near the channel whereby the lake Bolbê is connected with the sea: from hence, after his men had supped, he began his night-march to Amphipolis, on a cold and snowy night of November, or the beginning of December. He reached Argilus in the middle of the night, where the leaders at once admitted him, proclaiming their revolt from Athens. With their aid and guidance, he then hastened forward without delay to the bridge across the Strymon, which he reached before break of day.[659] It was guarded only by a feeble piquet,—the town of Amphipolis itself being situated on the hill at some little distance higher up the river;[660] so that Brasidas, preceded by the Argilian conspirators, surprised and overpowered the guard without difficulty. Thus master of this important communication, he crossed with his army forthwith into the territory of Amphipolis, where his arrival spread the utmost dismay and terror. The governor Euklês, the magistrates, and the citizens, were all found wholly unprepared: the lands belonging to the city were occupied by residents, with their families and property around them, calculating upon undisturbed security, as if there had been no enemy within reach. Such of these as were close to the city succeeded in running thither with their families, though leaving their property exposed,—but the more distant became in person as well as in property at the mercy of the invader. Even within the town, filled with the friends and relatives of these victims without, indescribable confusion reigned, of which the conspirators within tried to avail themselves in order to get the gates thrown open. And so complete was the disorganization, that if Brasidas had marched up without delay to the gates and assaulted the town, many persons supposed that he would have carried it at once. Such a risk, however, was too great even for his boldness, the rather as repulse would have been probably his ruin. Moreover, confiding in the assurances of the conspirators that the gates would be thrown open, he thought it safer to seize as many persons as he could from the out-citizens, as a means of working upon the sentiments of those within the walls; lastly, this process of seizure and plunder was probably more to the taste of his own soldiers, and could not well be hindered.

But he waited in vain for the opening of the gates. The conspirators in the city, in spite of the complete success of their surprise and the universal dismay around them, found themselves unable to carry the majority along with them. As in Akanthus, so in Amphipolis, those who really hated Athens and wished to revolt were only a party-minority; the greater number of citizens, at this critical moment, stood by Euklês and the few native Athenians around him in resolving upon defence, and in sending off an express to Thucydidês (the historian) at Thasos, the colleague of Euklês, as general in the region of Thrace, for immediate aid. This step, of course immediately communicated to Brasidas from within, determined him to make every effort for enticing the Amphipolitans to surrender before the reinforcement should arrive; the rather, as he was apprized that Thucydidês, being a large proprietor and worker of gold mines in the neighboring region, possessed extensive personal influence among the Thracian tribes, and would be able to bring them together for the relief of the place, in conjunction with his own Athenian squadron. He therefore sent in propositions for surrender on the most favorable terms, guaranteeing to every citizen who chose to remain, Amphipolitan or even Athenian, continued residence with undisturbed property and equal political rights, and granting to every one who chose to depart, five days for the purpose of carrying away his property.

Such easy conditions, when made known in the city, produced presently a sensible change of opinion among the citizens, proving acceptable both to Athenians and Amphipolitans, though on different grounds.[661] The properties of the citizens without, as well as many of their relatives, were all in the hands of Brasidas: no one counted upon the speedy arrival of reinforcement; and even if it did arrive, the city might be preserved, but the citizens without would still be either slain or made captive: a murderous battle would ensue, and perhaps, after all, Brasidas, assisted by the party within, might prove victorious. The Athenian citizens in Amphipolis, knowing themselves to be exposed to peculiar danger, were perfectly well pleased with his offer, as extricating them from a critical position and procuring for them the means of escape, with comparatively little loss; while the non-Athenian citizens, partakers in the same relief from peril, felt little reluctance in accepting a capitulation which preserved both their rights and their properties inviolate, and merely severed them from Athens, towards which city they felt, not hatred, but indifference. Above all, the friends and relatives of the citizens exposed in the out-region were strenuous in urging on the capitulation, so that the conspirators soon became bold enough to proclaim themselves openly, insisting upon the moderation of Brasidas and the prudence of admitting him. Euklês found that the tone of opinion, even among his own Athenians, was gradually turned against him, nor could he prevent the acceptance of the terms, and the admission of the enemy into the city, on that same day.

No such resolution would have been adopted, had the citizens been aware how near at hand Thucydidês and his forces were. The message despatched early in the morning from Amphipolis found him at Thasos with seven triremes; with which he instantly put to sea, so as to reach Eion at the mouth of the Strymon, within three miles of Amphipolis, on the same evening. He hoped to be in time for saving Amphipolis, but the place had surrendered a few hours before. He arrived, indeed, only just in time to preserve Eion; for parties in that town were already beginning to concert the admission of Brasidas, who would probably have entered it at daybreak the next morning. Thucydidês, putting the place in a condition of defence, successfully repelled an attack which Brasidas made both by land and by boats on the river. He at the same time received and provided for the Athenian citizens who were retiring from Amphipolis.[662]

The capture of this city, perhaps the most important of all the foreign possessions of Athens, and the opening of the bridge over the Strymon, by which even all her eastern allies became approachable by land, occasioned prodigious emotion throughout all the Grecian world. The dismay felt at Athens[663] was greater than had been ever before experienced: hope and joy prevailed among her enemies, and excitement and new aspirations became widely spread among her subject-allies. The bloody defeat at Delium, and the unexpected conquests of Brasidas, now again lowered the prestige of Athenian success, sixteen months after it had been so powerfully exalted by the capture of Sphakteria. The loss of reputation which Sparta had then incurred, was now compensated by a reaction against the unfounded terrors since conceived about the probable career of her enemy. It was not merely the loss of Amphipolis, serious as that was, which distressed the Athenians, but also their insecurity respecting the maintenance of their whole empire: they knew not which of their subject-allies might next revolt, in contemplation of aid from Brasidas, facilitated by the newly-acquired Strymonian bridge. And as the proceedings of that general counted in part to the credit of his country, it was believed that Sparta, now for the first time shaking off her languor,[664] had taken to herself the rapidity and enterprise once regarded as the exclusive characteristic of Athens. But besides all these chances of evil to the Athenians, there was another yet more threatening, the personal ascendency and position of Brasidas himself. It was not merely the boldness, the fertility of aggressive resource, the quick movements, the power of stimulating the minds of soldiers, which lent efficiency to that general; but also his incorruptible probity, his good faith, his moderation, his abstinence from party-cruelty or jobbing, and from all intermeddling with the internal constitutions of the different cities, in strict adherence to that manifesto whereby Sparta had proclaimed herself the liberator of Greece. Such talents and such official worth had never before been seen combined. Set off as they were by the full brilliancy of successes such as were deemed incredible before they actually occurred, they inspired a degree of confidence and turned a tide of opinion towards this eminent man which rendered him personally one of the first powers in Greece. Numerous solicitations were transmitted to him at Amphipolis from parties among the subject-allies of Athens, in their present temper of large hopes from him and diminished fear of the Athenians: the anti-Athenian party in each was impatient to revolt, the rest of the population less restrained by fear.[665]

Of those who indulged in these sanguine calculations, many had yet to learn by painful experience that Athens was still but little abated in power: but her inaction during this important autumn had been such as may well explain their mistake. It might have been anticipated that, on hearing the alarming news of the junction of Brasidas with the Chalkidians, and Perdikkas so close upon their dependent allies, they would forthwith have sent a competent force to Thrace, which, if despatched at that time, would probably have obviated all the subsequent disasters. So they would have acted at any other time, and perhaps even then, if Periklês had been alive. But the news arrived just at the period when Athens was engaged in the expedition against Bœotia, which ended very shortly in the ruinous defeat of Delium. Under the discouragement arising from the death of the stratêgus, Hippokratês, and one thousand citizens, the idea of a fresh expedition to Thrace would probably have been intolerable to Athenian hoplites: the hardships of a winter service in Thrace, as experienced a few years before in the blockade of Potidæa, would probably also aggravate their reluctance. In Grecian history, we must steadfastly keep in mind that we are reading about citizen soldiers, not about professional soldiers; and that the temper of the time, whether of confidence or dismay, modifies to an unspeakable degree all the calculations of military and political prudence. Even after the rapid successes of Brasidas, not merely at Akanthus and Stageirus, but even at Amphipolis, they sent only a few inadequate guards[666] to the points most threatened, thus leaving to their enterprising enemy the whole remaining winter for his operations, without hindrance. Without depreciating the merits of Brasidas, we may see that his extraordinary success was in great part owing to the no less extraordinary depression which at that time pervaded the Athenian public: a feeling encouraged by Nikias and other leading men of the same party, who were building upon it in order to get the Lacedæmonian proposals for peace accepted.

But while we thus notice the short-comings of Athens, in not sending timely forces against Brasidas, we must at the same time admit, that the most serious and irreparable loss which she sustained, that of Amphipolis, was the fault of her officers more than her own. Euklês, and the historian Thucydidês, the two joint Athenian commanders in Thrace, to whom she had confided the defence of that important town, had means amply sufficient to place it beyond all risk of capture, if they had employed the most ordinary vigilance and precaution beforehand. That Thucydidês became an exile immediately after this event, and remained so for twenty years, is certain from his own statement: and we hear, upon what in this case is quite sufficient authority, that the Athenians condemned him, probably Euklês also, to banishment, on the proposition of Kleon.[667]

In considering this sentence, historians[668] commonly treat Thucydidês as an innocent man, and find nothing to condemn except the calumnies of the demagogue along with the injustice of the people. But this view of the case cannot be sustained, when we bring together all the facts even as indicated by Thucydidês himself. At the moment when Brasidas surprised Amphipolis, Thucydidês was at Thasos; and the event is always discussed as if he was there by necessity or duty; as if Thasos was his special mission. Now we know from his own statement that his command was not special or confined to Thasos: he was sent as joint commander along with Euklês generally to Thrace, and especially to Amphipolis.[669] Both of them were jointly and severally responsible for the proper defence of Amphipolis, with the Athenian empire and interests in that quarter such nomination of two or more officers, coördinate and jointly responsible, being the usual habit of Athens, wherever the scale or the area of military operations was considerable, instead of naming one supreme responsible commander, with subordinate officers acting under him and responsible to him. If, then, Thucydidês “was stationed at Thasos,” to use the phrase of Dr. Thirlwall, this was because he chose to station himself there, in the exercise of his own discretion.

Accordingly, the question which we have to put is, not whether Thucydidês did all that could be done, after he received the alarming express at Thasos, which is the part of the case that he sets prominently before us, but whether he and Euklês jointly took the best general measures for the security of the Athenian empire in Thrace; especially for Amphipolis, the first jewel of her empire. They suffer Athens to be robbed of that jewel, and how? Had they a difficult position to defend? Were they overwhelmed by a superior force? Were they distracted by simultaneous revolts in different places, or assailed by enemies unknown or unforeseen? Not one of these grounds for acquittal can be pleaded. First, their position was of all others the most defensible: they had only to keep the bridge over the Strymon adequately watched and guarded, or to retain the Athenian squadron at Eion, and Amphipolis was safe. Either one or the other of these precautions would have sufficed; both together would have sufficed so amply, as probably to prevent the scheme of attack from being formed. Next, the force under Brasidas was in noway superior, not even adequate to the capture of the inferior place Eion, when properly guarded, much less to that of Amphipolis. Lastly, there were no simultaneous revolts to distract attention, nor unknown enemies to confound a well-laid scheme of defence. There was but one enemy, in one quarter, having one road by which to approach; an enemy of surpassing merit, indeed, and eminently dangerous to Athens, but without any chance of success except from the omissions of the Athenian officers.

Now Thucydidês and Euklês both knew that Brasidas had prevailed upon Akanthus and Stageirus to revolt, and that too in such a way as to extend his own personal influence materially: they knew that the population of Argilus was of Andrian origin,[670] like that of Akanthus and Stageirus, and therefore peculiarly likely to be tempted by the example of those two towns. Lastly, they knew, and Thucydidês himself tells us,[671] that this Argilian population—whose territory bordered on the Strymon and the western foot of the bridge, and who had many connections in Amphipolis—had been long disaffected to Athens, and especially to the Athenian possession of that city. Yet, having such foreknowledge, ample warning for the necessity of a vigilant defence, Thucydidês and Euklês withdraw, or omit, both the two precautions upon which the security of Amphipolis rested; precautions both of them obvious, either of them sufficient. The one leaves the bridge under a feeble guard,[672] and is caught so unprepared everywhere, that one might suppose Athens to be in profound peace; the other is found with his squadron, not at Eion, but at Thasos; an island out of all possible danger, either from Brasidas, who had no ships, or any other enemy. The arrival of Brasidas comes on both of them like a clap of thunder. Nothing more is required than this plain fact, under the circumstances, to prove their improvidence as commanders.

The presence of Thucydidês on the station of Thrace was important to Athens, partly because he possessed valuable family connections, mining property, and commanding influence among the continental population round Amphipolis.[673] This was one main reason why he was named; the Athenian people confiding partly in his private influence, over and above the public force under his command, and looking to him, even more than to his colleague Euklês, for the continued security of the town: instead of which they find that not even their own squadron under him is at hand near the vulnerable point, at the moment when the enemy comes. Of the two, perhaps, the conduct of Euklês admits of conceivable explanation more easily than that of Thucydidês. For it seems that Euklês had no paid force in Amphipolis; only the citizen hoplites, partly Athenian, partly of other lineage. Doubtless, these men found it irksome to keep guard through the winter on the Strymonian bridge: and Euklês might fancy that, by enforcing a large perpetual guard, he ran the risk of making Athens unpopular: moreover, strict constancy of watch, night after night, when no actual danger comes, with an unpaid citizen force, is not easy to maintain. This is an insufficient excuse, but it is better than anything which can be offered on behalf of Thucydidês; who had with him a paid Athenian force, and might just as well have kept it at Eion as at Thasos. We may be sure that the absence of Thucydidês with his fleet, at Thasos, was one essential condition in the plot laid by Brasidas with the Argilians.

To say, with Dr. Thirlwall, that “human prudence and activity could not have accomplished more than Thucydidês did, under the same circumstances,” is true as matter of fact, and creditable as far as it goes. But it is wholly inadmissible as a justification, and meets only one part of the case. An officer in command is responsible, not only for doing most “under the circumstances,” but also for the circumstances themselves, in so far as they are under his control; and nothing is more under his control than the position which he chooses to occupy. If the emperor Napoleon, or the duke of Wellington, had lost, by surprise of an enemy not very numerous, a post of supreme importance which they thought adequately protected, would they be satisfied to hear from a responsible officer in command: “Having no idea that the enemy would attempt any surprise, I thought that I might keep my force half a day’s journey off from the post exposed, at another post which it was physically impossible for the enemy to reach; but, the moment I was informed that the surprise had occurred, I hastened to the scene, did all that human prudence and activity could do to repel the enemy; and though I found that he had already mastered the capital post of all, yet I beat him back from a second post which he was on the point of mastering also?” Does any one imagine that these illustrious chiefs, smarting under the loss of an inestimable position which alters the whole prospects of a campaign, would be satisfied with such a report, and would dismiss the officer with praises for his vigor and bravery, “under the circumstances?” They would most assuredly reply, that he had done right in coming back, that his conduct after coming back had been that of a brave man, and that there was no impeachment on his courage. But they would at the same time add, that his want of judgment and foresight, in omitting to place the valuable position really exposed under sufficient guard beforehand, and leaving it thus open to the enemy, while he himself was absent in another place which was out of danger, and his easy faith that there would be no dangerous surprise, at a time when the character of the enemy’s officer, as well as the disaffection of the neighbors (Argilus), plainly indicated that there would be, if the least opening were afforded, that these were defects meriting serious reproof, and disqualifying him from any future command of trust and responsibility. Nor can we doubt that the whole feeling of the respective armies, who would have to pay with their best blood the unhappy miscalculation of this officer, would go along with such a sentence; without at all suspecting themselves to be guilty of injustice, or of “directing the irritation produced by the loss against an innocent object.”

The vehement leather-seller in the Pnyx, at Athens, when he brought forward what are called “his calumnies” against Thucydidês and Euklês, as having caused, through culpable omission, a fatal and irreparable loss to their country, might perhaps state his case with greater loudness and acrimony; but it may be doubted whether he would say anything more really galling than would be contained in the dignified rebuke of an esteemed modern general to a subordinate officer under similar circumstances. In my judgment, not only the accusation against these two officers—I assume Euklês to have been included—was called for on the fairest presumptive grounds, which would be sufficient as a justification of the leather-sell Kleon, but the positive verdict of guilty against them was fully merited. Whether the banishment inflicted was a greater penalty than the case warranted, I will not take upon me to pronounce. Every age has its own standard of feeling for measuring what is a proper intensity of punishment: penalties which our grandfathers thought right and meet, would in the present day appear intolerably rigorous. But when I consider the immense value of Amphipolis to Athens, combined with the conduct whereby it was lost, I cannot think that there was a single Athenian, or a single Greek, who would deem the penalty of banishment too severe.

It is painful to find such strong grounds of official censure against a man who, as an historian, has earned the lasting admiration of posterity,—my own, among the first and warmest. But in criticizing the conduct of Thucydidês the officer, we are bound in common justice to forget Thucydidês the historian. He was not known in the latter character, at the time when this sentence was passed: perhaps he never would have been so known, like the Neapolitan historian Colletta, if exile had not thrown him out of the active duties and hopes of a citizen. It may be doubted whether he ever went home from Eion to encounter the grief, wrath, and alarm, so strongly felt at Athens after the loss of Amphipolis. Condemned, either with or without appearance, he remained in banishment for twenty years;[674] nor did he return to Athens until after the conclusion of the Peloponnesian war. Of this long exile, much is said to have been spent on his property in Thrace: yet he also visited most parts of Greece, enemies of Athens as well as neutral states. However much we may deplore such a misfortune on his account, mankind in general have, and ever will have, the strongest reason to rejoice at it. To this compulsory leisure we owe the completion, or rather the near approach to completion, of his history: nor is it less certain that the opportunities which an exile enjoyed of personally consulting neutrals and enemies, contributed much to form that impartial, comprehensive, Pan-Hellenic spirit, which reigns generally throughout his immortal work.

Meanwhile, Brasidas, installed in Amphipolis about the beginning of December, 424 B.C., employed his increased power only the more vigorously against Athens. His first care was to reconstitute Amphipolis; a task wherein the Macedonian Perdikkas, whose intrigues had contributed to the capture, came and personally assisted. That city was going through a partial secession and renovation of inhabitants, and was now moreover cut off from the port of Eion and the mouth of the river, which remained in the hands of the Athenians. Many new arrangements must have been required, as well for its internal polity as for its external defence. Brasidas took measures for building ships of war, in the lake above the city, in order to force the lower part of the river:[675] but his most important step was to construct a palisade work,[676] connecting the walls of the city with the bridge. He thus made himself permanently master of the crossing of the Strymon, so as to shut the door by which he himself had entered, and at the same time to keep an easy communication with Argilus and the western bank of the Strymon. He also made some acquisitions on the eastern side of the river. Pittakus, prince of the neighboring Edonian-Thracian township of Myrkinus, had been recently assassinated by his wife Brauro, and by some personal enemies: he had probably been the ally of Athens, and his assassins now sought to strengthen themselves by courting the alliance of the new conqueror of Amphipolis. The Thasian continental colonies of Galêpsus and Œsymê also declared their adhesion to him.

While he sent to Lacedæmon, communicating his excellent position as well as his large hopes, he at the same time, without waiting for the answer, began acting for himself, with all the allies whom he could get together. He marched first against the peninsula called Aktê,—the narrow tongue of land which stretches out from the neighborhood of Akanthus to the mighty headland called Mount Athos,—near thirty miles long, and between four and five miles for the most part in breadth.[677] The long, rugged, woody ridge,—covering this peninsula so as to leave but narrow spaces for dwelling or cultivation, or feeding of cattle,—was at this time occupied by many distinct petty communities, some of them divided in race and language. Sanê, a colony from Andros, was situated in the interior gulf, called the Singitic gulf, between Athos and the Sithonian peninsula, near the Xerxeian canal: the rest of the Aktê was distributed among Bisaltians, Krestônians, and Edonians, all fractions of the Thracian name; Pelasgians, or Tyrrhenians, of the race which had once occupied Lemnos and Imbros, and some Chalkidians. Some of these little communities spoke habitually two languages. Thyssus, Kleône, Olophyxus, and others, all submitted on the arrival of Brasidas; but Sanê and Dion held out, nor could he bring them to terms even by ravaging their territory.

He next marched into the Sithonian peninsula, to attack Torônê, situated near the southern extremity of that peninsula, opposite to Cape Kanastræum, the extreme headland of the peninsula of Pallênê.[678]

Torônê was inhabited by a Chalkidic population, but had not partaken in the revolt of the neighboring Chalkidians against Athens. A small Athenian garrison had been sent there, probably since the recent dangers, and were now defending it, as well as repairing the town-wall in various parts where it had been so neglected as to crumble down. They occupied as a sort of distinct citadel the outlying cape called Lêkythus, joining by a narrow isthmus the hill on which the city stood, and forming a port wherein lay two Athenian triremes as guard-ships. A small party in Torônê, without privity[679] or even suspicion of the rest, entered into correspondence with Brasidas, and engaged to provide for him the means of entering and mastering the town. Accordingly, he advanced by a night-march to the temple of the Dioskuri, Kastor and Pollux, within about a quarter of a mile of the town-gates, which he reached a little before daybreak, sending forward one hundred peltasts to be still nearer, and to rush upon the gate at the instant when signal was made from within. His Torônæan partisans, some of whom were already concealed on the spot, awaiting his arrival, made their final arrangements with him, and then returned into the town, conducting with them seven determined men from his army, armed only with daggers, and having Lysistratus of Olynthus as their chief: twenty men had been originally named for this service, but the danger appeared so extreme, that only seven of them were bold enough to go. This forlorn hope, enabled to creep in, through a small aperture in the wall towards the sea, were conducted silently up to the topmost watch-tower on the city hill, where they surprised and slew the guards, and set open a neighboring postern gate, looking towards Cape Kanastræum, as well as the great gate leading towards the agora. They then brought in the peltasts from without, who, impatient with the delay, had gradually stolen closely under the walls: some of these peltasts kept possession of the great gate, others were led round to the postern at the top, while the fire-signal was forthwith lighted to invite Brasidas himself. He and his men hastened forward towards the city at their utmost speed and with loud shouts, a terror-striking notice of his presence to the unprepared citizens. Admission was easy through the open gates, but some also clambered up by means of beams or a sort of scaffolding, which was lying close to the wall as a help to the workmen repairing it. And while the assailants were thus active in every direction, Brasidas himself conducted a portion of them, to assure himself of the high and commanding parts of the city.

So completely were the Torônæans surprised and thunderstruck, that hardly any attempt was made to resist. Even the fifty Athenian hoplites who occupied the agora, being found still asleep, were partly slain, and partly compelled to seek refuge in the separately-garrisoned cape of Lêkythus, whither they were followed by a portion of the Torônæan population; some from attachment to Athens, others from sheer terror. To these fugitives Brasidas addressed a proclamation, inviting them to return, and promising them perfect security, for person, property, and political rights; while at the same time he sent a herald with a formal summons to the Athenians in Lêkythus, requiring them to quit the place as belonging to the Chalkidians, but permitting them to carry away their property. They refused to evacuate the place, but solicited a truce of one day for the purpose of burying their slain. Brasidas granted them two days, which were employed both by them and by him in preparations for the defence and attack of Lêkythus; each party fortifying the houses on or near the connecting isthmus.

In the mean time he convened a general assembly of the Torônæan population, whom he addressed in the same conciliating and equitable language as he had employed elsewhere. “He had not come to harm either the city, or any individual citizen. Those who had let him in, ought not to be regarded as bad men or traitors, for they had acted with a view to the benefit and the liberation of their city, not in order to enslave it, or to acquire profit for themselves. On the other hand, he did not think the worse of those who had gone over to Lêkythus, for their liking towards Athens: he wished them to come back freely; and he was sure that the more they knew the Lacedæmonians the better they would esteem them. He was prepared to forgive and forget previous hostility, but while he invited all of them to live for the future as cordial friends and fellow-citizens, he should also for the future hold each man responsible for his conduct, either as friend or as enemy.”

On the expiration of the two days’ truce, Brasidas attacked the Athenian garrison in Lêkythus, promising a recompense of thirty minæ to the soldier who should first force his way into it. Notwithstanding very poor means of defence, partly a wooden palisade, partly houses with battlements on the roof, this garrison repelled him for one whole day: on the next morning he brought up a machine, for the same purpose as that which the Bœotians had employed at Delium, to set fire to the woodwork. The Athenians on their side, seeing this fire-machine approaching, put up, on a building in front of their position, a wooden scaffolding, upon which many of them mounted, with casks of water and large stones to break it or to extinguish the flames. At last, the weight accumulated becoming greater than the scaffolding could support, it broke down with a prodigious noise; so that all the persons and things upon it rolled down in confusion. Some of these men were hurt, yet the injury was not in reality serious; had not the noise, the cries, and strangeness of the incident alarmed those behind, who could not see precisely what had occurred, to such a degree, that they believed the enemy to have already forced the defences. Many of them accordingly took to flight, and those who remained were insufficient to prolong the resistance successfully; so that Brasidas, perceiving the disorder and diminished number of the defenders, relinquished his fire-machine, and again renewed his attempt to carry the place by assault, which now fully succeeded. A considerable proportion of the Athenians and others in the fort escaped across the narrow gulf to the peninsula of Pallênê, by means of the two triremes and some merchant-vessels at hand: but every man found in it was put to death. Brasidas, thus master of the fort, and considering that he owed his success to the sudden rupture of the Athenian scaffolding, regarded this incident as a divine interposition, and presented the thirty minæ, which he had promised as a reward to the first man who broke in, to the goddess Athênê, for her temple at Lêkythus. He moreover consecrated to her the entire cape of Lêkythus; not only demolishing the defences, but also dismantling the private residences which it contained,[680] so that nothing remained except the temple, with its ministers and appurtenances.

What proportion of the Torônæans who had taken refuge at Lêkythus had been induced to return by the proclamation of Brasidas, alike generous and politic, we are not informed. His language and conduct were admirably calculated to set this little community again in harmonious movement, and to obliterate the memory of past feuds. And above all, it inspired a strong sentiment of attachment and gratitude towards himself personally; a sentiment which gained strength with every successive incident in which he was engaged, and which enabled him to exercise a greater ascendency than could ever be acquired by Sparta, and in some respects greater than had ever been possessed by Athens. It is this remarkable development of commanding individuality, animated throughout by straightforward public purposes, and binding together so many little communities who had few other feelings in common, which lends to the short career of this eminent man a romantic and even an heroic interest.

During the remainder of the winter Brasidas employed himself in setting in order the acquisitions already made, and in laying plans for farther conquests in the spring.[681] But the beginning of spring—or the close of the eighth year, and beginning of the ninth year of the war, as Thucydidês reckons—brought with it a new train of events, which will be recounted in the following chapter.