Eury'medon
（
Εὐρυμέδων), a son of Thucles, an Athenian general in the Peloponnesian war, held in its fifth year, B. C. 428, the command of sixty ships, which the Athenians, on hearing of the intestine troubles of Corcyra, and the movement of the Peloponnesian fleet under Alcidas and Brasidas to take advantage of them, hastily despatched to maintain their interest there.
This, it was found, had already been secured by Nicostratus with a small squadron from Naupactus. Eurymedon, however, took the chief command; and the seven days of his stay at Corcyra were marked by the wildest cruelties inflicted by the commons on their political opponents.
These were no doubt encouraged by the presence of so large an Athenian force: how far they were personally sanctioned, or how far they could have been checked by Eurymedon, can hardly be determined. (
Thuc. 3.80,
81,
85.)
In the following summer he was united with Hipponicus in command of the whole Athenian force by land and, co-operating with a fleet under Nicias, ravaged the district of Tanagra, and obtained sufficient success over some Thebans and Tanagraeans to justify a trophy. (
Thuc. 3.91.)
At the end of this campaign, he was appointed one of the commanders of the large reinforcements destined for Sicily, and early in B. C. 425 set sail with forty ships, accompanied by his colleague Sophocles, and by Demosthenes also, in a private capacity, though allowed to use the ships for any purpose he pleased on the coast of Peloponnesus. They were ordered to touch at Corcyra on their way, and information of the arrival there of a Peloponnesian squadron made the commanders so anxious to hasten thither, that it was against their will, and only by the accident of stormy weather, that Demosthenes contrived to execute his project of fortifying Pylos. [DEMOSTHENES.] This however, once completed, had the effect of recalling the enemy from Corcyra: their sixty ships passed unnoticed by Eurymedon and Sophocles, then in Zacynthus, and made their way to Pylos, whither on intelligence from Demosthenes, the Athenian squadron presently pursued them. Here they appear to have remained till the capture of the Spartans in the island; and after this, proceeded to Corcyra to execute their original commission of reducing the oligarchical exiles, by whose warfare from the hill Istone the city was suffering severely.
In this they succeeded: the exiles were driven from their fortifications, and surrendered on condition of being judged at Athens, and remaining, till removal thither, in Athenian custody; while, on the other hand, by any attempt to escape they should be considered to forfeit all terms. Into such an attempt they were treacherously inveigled by their countrymen, and handed over in consequence by the Athenian generals to a certain and cruel death at the hands of their betrayers.
This shameful proceeding was encouraged, so Thucydides expressly states, by the evident reluctance of Eurymedon and Sophocles to allow other hands than their own to present their prizes at Athens, while they should be away in Sicily. To Sicily they now proceeded; but their movements were presently put an end to by the general pacification effected under the influence of Hermocrates, to which the Athenian commanders themselves, with their allies, were induced to accede. For this, on their return to Athens, the people, ascribing the defeat of their ambitious schemes to corruption in their officers, condemned two of them to banishment, visiting Eurymedon, who perhaps had shown more reluctance than his colleagues, with the milder punishment of a fine. (
Thuc. 3.115,
4.2-
8,
13,
46-
48,
65.)
Eurymedon is not known to have held any other command till his appointment at the end of B. C. 414, in conjunction with Demosthenes, to the command of the second Syracusan armament.
He himself was sent at once, after the receipt of Nicias's letter, about mid-winter, with a supply of money and the news of the intended reinforcements: in the spring he returned to meet Demosthenes at Zacynthus. Their subsequent joint proceedings belong rather to the story of his more able colleague.
In the night attack on Epipolae he took a share, and united with Demosthenes in the subsequent representations to Nicias of the necessity for instant departure. His career was ended in the first of the two sea fights. His command was on the right wing, and while endeavouring by the extension of his line to outflank the enemy, he was, by the defeat of the Athenian centre, cut off and surrounded in the recess of the harbour, his ships captured, and himself slain. Diodorus, writing perhaps from Ephorus, relates, that Agatharchus was the Syracusan general opposed to him, and represents the defeat as having begun with Eurymedon's division, and thence extended to the centre. (
Thuc. 7.16,
31,
33,
42,
43,
49,
52;
Diod. 13.8,
11,
13; Plut.
Nicias, 20, 24.)
[
A.H.C]
