Hide browse bar Your current position in the text is marked in blue. Click anywhere in the line to jump to another position:
book:
chapter:
Contents of the Twelfth Book of Diodorus
chapter 1chapter 2chapter 3chapter 4chapter 5chapter 6chapter 7chapter 8chapter 9chapter 10chapter 11chapter 12chapter 13chapter 14chapter 15chapter 16chapter 17chapter 18chapter 19chapter 20chapter 21chapter 22chapter 23chapter 24chapter 25chapter 26chapter 27chapter 28chapter 29chapter 30chapter 31chapter 32chapter 33chapter 34chapter 35chapter 36chapter 37chapter 38chapter 39chapter 40chapter 41chapter 42chapter 43chapter 44chapter 45chapter 46chapter 47chapter 48chapter 49chapter 50chapter 51chapter 52chapter 53chapter 54chapter 55chapter 56chapter 57chapter 58chapter 59chapter 60chapter 61chapter 62chapter 63chapter 64chapter 65chapter 66chapter 67chapter 68chapter 69chapter 70chapter 71chapter 72chapter 73chapter 74chapter 75chapter 76chapter 77chapter 78chapter 79chapter 80chapter 81chapter 82chapter 83chapter 84
This text is part of:
Search the Perseus Catalog for:
Demosthenes now led an expedition against Pylos,1 intending to fortify
this stronghold as a threat to the Peloponnesus; for
it is an exceptionally strong place, situated in Messenia and four hundred stades distant from Sparta. Since he had at the time both many ships and an adequate number of
soldiers, in twenty days he threw a wall about Pylos. The Lacedaemonians, when they learned that Pylos had been fortified, gathered together a large force, both infantry and
ships.
[2]
Consequently, when they set sail for Pylos, they not only had a fleet of forty-five fully equipped
triremes but also marched with an army of twelve thousand soldiers; for they considered it to
be a disgraceful thing that men who were not brave enough to defend Attica while it was being ravaged should fortify and hold a
fortress in the Peloponnesus.
[3]
Now these forces under the command of Thrasymedes pitched their camp in
the neighbourhood of Pylos. And since the troops
were seized by an eager desire to undergo any and every danger and to take Pylos by storm, the Lacedaemonians stationed the ships with
their prows facing the entrance to the harbour in order that they might use them for blocking
the enemy's attempt to enter, and assaulting the walls with the infantry in successive waves
and displaying all possible rivalry, they put up contests of amazing valour.
[4]
Also to the island called Sphacteria, which extends lengthwise to the harbour and protects it from the
winds, they transported the best troops of the Lacedaemonians and their allies. This they did
in their desire to forestall the Athenians in getting control of the island before them, since
its situation was especially advantageous to the prosecution of the siege.
[5]
And though they were engaged every day in the fighting before the
fortifications and were suffering wounds because of the superior height of the wall, they did
not relax the violence of their fighting; as a consequence, many of them were slain and not a
few were wounded as they pressed upon a position which had been fortified.
[6]
The Athenians, who had secured beforehand a place which was also a
natural stronghold and possessed large supplies of missiles and a great abundance of everything
else they might need, kept defending their position with spirit; for they hoped that, if they
were successful in their design, they could carry the whole war to the Peloponnesus and ravage, bit by bit, the territory of the enemy.
1 The reader may refer to the detailed account of the following campaign in Thuc. 4.3-23, 26-40. In the Bay of Navarino, on which Pylos lies, occurred the famous naval Battle of Navarino between the allied British, Russian, and French fleet and the Turkish. The victory of the allied fleet, 20th October 1827, decided the issue of the Greek war of independence.
Diodorus Siculus. Diodorus of Sicily in Twelve Volumes with an English Translation by C. H. Oldfather. Vol. 4-8. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press; London: William Heinemann, Ltd. 1989.
The Annenberg CPB/Project provided support for entering this text.
Purchase a copy of this text (not necessarily the same edition) from Amazon.com
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.
An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.
show
Browse Bar
hide
Places (automatically extracted)
View a map of the most frequently mentioned places in this document.
Sort places
alphabetically,
as they appear on the page,
by frequency
Click on a place to search for it in this document.
Pylos (Greece) (7)Click on a place to search for it in this document.
Peloponnesus (Greece) (3)
Navarino (Greece) (2)
Sphacteria (Greece) (1)
Messenia (Greece) (1)
Attica (Greece) (1)
Download Pleiades ancient places geospacial dataset for this text.
hide
Dates (automatically extracted)
Sort dates
alphabetically,
as they appear on the page,
by frequency
Click on a date to search for it in this document.
October, 1827 AD (1)Click on a date to search for it in this document.
hide
References (2 total)
- Cross-references to this page
(1):
- Smith's Bio, Demo'sthenes
- Cross-references in notes from this page
(1):
- Thucydides, Histories, 4.3
hide
Search
hideStable Identifiers
hide
Display Preferences