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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
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In Greece the Lesbians revolted from the Athenians; for they
harboured against them the complaint that, when they wished to merge all the cities of
Lesbos with the city of the Mytilenaeans,1 the
Athenians had prevented it.
[2]
Consequently, after dispatching
ambassadors to the Peloponnesians and concluding an alliance with them, they advised the
Spartans to make an attempt to seize the supremacy at sea, and toward this design they promised
to supply many triremes for the war.
[3]
The Lacedaemonians were
glad to accept this offer, but while they were busied with the building of the triremes, the
Athenians forestalled their completion by sending forthwith a force against Lesbos, having manned forty ships and chosen Cleinippides as
their commander, He gathered reinforcements from the allies and put in at Mytilene.
[4]
In a naval
battle which followed the Mytilenaeans were defeated and enclosed within a siege of their city.
Meanwhile the Lacedaemonians had voted to send aid to the Mytilenaeans and were making ready a
strong fleet, but the Athenians forestalled them by sending to Lesbos additional ships along with a thousand hoplites.
[5]
Their commander, Paches the son of Epiclerus, upon arriving at Mytilene, took over the force already there, threw a wall
about the city, and kept launching continuous assaults upon it not only by land but by sea as
well.
[6]
The Lacedaemonians sent
forty-five triremes to Mytilene under the command
of Alcidas, and they also invaded Attica together with
their allies; here they visited the districts of Attica which they had passed by before, ravaged the countryside, and then returned
home.
[7]
And the Mytilenaeans, who were distressed by lack of
food and the war and were also quarrelling among themselves, formally surrendered the city to
the besiegers.
[8]
While in Athens the people were deliberating on what action they should take against the
Mytilenaeans, Cleon, the leader of the populace and a man of cruel and violent nature, spurred
on the people, declaring that they should slay all the male Mytilenaeans from the youth upward
and sell into slavery the children and women.
[9]
In the end the
Athenians were won over and voted as Cleon had proposed, and messengers were dispatched to
Mytilene to make known to the general the
measures decreed by the popular assembly.
[10]
Even as Paches had
finished reading the decree a second decree arrived, the opposite of the first. Paches was glad
when he learned that the Athenians had changed their minds, and gathering the Mytilenaeans in
assembly he declared them free of the charges as well as of the greatest fears. The Athenians
pulled down the walls of Mytilene and portioned
out in allotments2 the entire island of Lesbos with the exception of the territory of the Methymnaeans.Such, then, was the end of the revolt of the Lesbians from the Athenians.
1 By this union of the island (sunoikismos) the separate governments of the different cities would have been dissolved and the inhabitants would all have become citizens of Mitylene, the capital and seat of rule; just as, traditionally under Theseus, the governments of the several cities of Attica were put down and Athens became the city-state of the entire area.
2 Among Athenian colonists. Thuc. 3.50.2 states that the Lesbians arranged to work the allotments as renters, paying the colonists a fixed rental.
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.
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