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1.
The next summer, just as the corn was getting
ripe, the Peloponnesians and their allies invaded Attica under the command
of Archidamus, son of Zeuxidamus, king of the Lacedaemonians,
[2]
and sat down and ravaged the land; the Athenian horse as usual attacking them, wherever it was practicable,
and preventing the mass of the light troops from advancing from their camp
and wasting the parts near the city.
[3]
After staying the time for which they had taken provisions, the invaders
retired and dispersed to their several cities.
2.
Immediately after the invasion of the
Peloponnesians all Lesbos, except Methymna, revolted from the Athenians.
The Lesbians had wished to revolt even before the war, but the
Lacedaemonians would not receive them; and yet now when they did revolt, they were compelled to do so sooner than
they had intended.
[2]
While they were waiting until the moles for their harbors and the ships and
walls that they had in building should be finished, and for the arrival of
archers and corn and other things that they were engaged in fetching from
the Pontus,
[3]
the Tenedians, with whom they were at enmity, and the Methymnians, and some
factious persons in Mitylene itself, who were Proxeni of Athens, informed
the Athenians that the Mitylenians were forcibly uniting the island under
their sovereignty, and that the preparations about which they were so
active, were all concerted with the Boeotians their kindred and the
Lacedaemonians with a view to a revolt, and that unless they were
immediately prevented, Athens would lose Lesbos.
3.
However, the Athenians, distressed by the
plague, and by the war that had recently broken out and was now raging,
thought it a serious matter to add Lesbos with its fleet and untouched
resources to the list of their enemies; and at first would not believe the charge, giving too much weight to their
wish that it might not be true.
But when an embassy which they sent had failed to persuade the Mitylenians
to give up the union and preparations complained of, they became alarmed,
and resolved to strike the first blow.
[2]
They accordingly suddenly sent off forty ships that had been got ready to
sail round Peloponnese, under the command of Cleippides, son of Deinias, and
two others;
[3]
word having been brought them of a festival in honor of the Malean Apollo
outside the town, which is kept by the whole people of Mitylene, and at
which, if haste were made, they might hope to take them by surprise.
If this plan succeeded, well and good; if not, they were to order the Mitylenians to deliver up their ships and to
pull down their walls, and if they did not obey, to declare war.
[4]
The ships accordingly set out; the ten triremes, forming the contingent of the Mitylenians present with
the fleet according to the terms of the alliance, being detained by the
Athenians, and their crews placed in custody.
[5]
However, the Mitylenians were informed of the expedition by a man who
crossed from Athens to Euboea, and going overland to Geraestus, sailed from
thence by a merchantman which he found on the point of putting to sea, and
so arrived at Mitylene the third day after leaving Athens.
The Mitylenians accordingly refrained from going out to the temple at
Malea, and moreover barricaded and kept guard round the half-finished parts
of their walls and harbors.
4.
When the Athenians sailed in not long after
and saw how things stood, the generals delivered their orders, and upon the
Mitylenians refusing to obey, commenced hostilities.
[2]
The Mitylenians, thus compelled to go to war without notice and unprepared,
at first sailed out with their fleet and made some show of fighting, a
little in front of the harbor; but being driven back by the Athenian ships, immediately offered to treat
with the commanders, wishing, if possible, to get the ships away for the
present upon any tolerable terms.
[3]
The Athenian commanders accepted their offers, being themselves fearful
that they might not be able to cope with the whole of Lesbos;
[4]
and an armistice having been concluded, the Mitylenians sent to Athens one
of the informers, already repentant of his conduct, and others with him, to
try to persuade the Athenians of the innocence of their intentions and to
get the fleet recalled.
[5]
In the meantime, having no great hope of a favorable answer from Athens,
they also sent off a trireme with envoys to Lacedaemon, unobserved by the
Athenian fleet which was anchored at Malea to the north of the town.
[6]
While these envoys, reaching Lacedaemon after
a difficult journey across the open sea, were negotiating for succors being
sent them,
5.
the ambassadors from Athens returned without having effected anything; and hostilities were at once begun by the Mitylenians and the rest of
Lesbos, with the exception of the Methymnians, who came to the aid of the
Athenians with the Imbrians and Lemnians and some few of the other allies.
[2]
The Mitylenians made a sortie with all their forces against the Athenian
camp; and a battle ensued, in which they gained some slight advantage, but
retired notwithstanding, not feeling sufficient confidence in themselves to
spend the night upon the field.
After this they kept quiet wishing to wait for the chance of reinforcements
arriving from Peloponnese before making a second venture, being encouraged
by the arrival of Meleas, a Laconian, and Hermaeondas, a Theban, who had
been sent off before the insurrection but had been unable to reach Lesbos
before the Athenian expedition, and who now stole in in a trireme after the
battle, and advised them to send another trireme and envoys back with them,
which the Mitylenians accordingly did.
6.
Meanwhile the Athenians, greatly encouraged
by the inaction of the Mitylenians, summoned allies to their aid, who came
in all the quicker from seeing so little vigor displayed by the Lesbians,
and bringing round their ships to a new station to the south of the town,
fortified two camps, one on each side of the city, and instituted a blockade
of both the harbors.
[2]
The sea was thus closed against the Mitylenians, who however commanded the
whole country, with the rest of the Lesbians who had now joined them; the Athenians only holding a limited area round their camps, and using
Malea more as the station for their ships and their market.
7.
While the war went on in this way at
Mitylene, the Athenians, about the same time in this summer, also sent
thirty ships to Peloponnese under Asopius, son of Phormio; the Acarnanians insisting that the commander sent should be some son or
relative of Phormio.
[2]
As the ships coasted along shore they ravaged the seaboard of Laconia;
[3]
after which Asopius sent most of the fleet home, and himself went on with
twelve vessels to Naupactus, and after-wards raising the whole Acarnanian
population made an expedition against Oeniadae, the fleet sailing along the
Achelous, while the army laid waste the country.
[4]
The inhabitants, however, showing no signs of submitting, he dismissed the
land forces and himself sailed to Leucas, and making a descent upon Nericus
was cut off during his retreat, and most of his troops with him, by the
people in those parts aided by some coast-guards;
[5]
after which the Athenians sailed away, recovering their dead from the
Leucadians under truce.
8.
Meanwhile the envoys of the Mitylenians sent
out in the first ship were told by the Lacedaemonians to come to Olympia, in
order that the rest of the allies might hear them and decide upon their
matter, and so they journeyed thither.
It was the Olympiad in which the Rhodian Dorieus gained his second victory,
[2]
and the envoys having been introduced to make their speech after the
festival, spoke as follows.
9.
‘Lacedaemonians and allies, the
rule established among the Hellenes is not unknown to us.
Those who revolt in war and forsake their former confederacy are favorably
regarded by those who receive them, in so far as they are of use to them,
but otherwise are thought less well of, through being considered traitors to
their former friends.
[2]
Nor is this an unfair way of judging, where the rebels and the power from
whom they secede are at one in policy and sympathy, and a match for each
other in resources and power, and where no reasonable ground exists for the
rebellion.
But with us and the Athenians this was not the case;
[3]
and no one need think the worse of us for revolting from them in danger,
after having been honored by them in time of peace.
10.
Justice and honesty will be the first topics
of our speech, especially as we are asking for alliance; because we know that there can never be any solid friendship between
individuals, or union between communities that is worth the name, unless the
parties be persuaded of each other's honesty, and be generally congenial the
one to the other; since from difference in feeling springs also difference in conduct.
[2]
Between ourselves and the Athenians alliance began, when you withdrew from
the Median war and they remained to finish the business.
[3]
But we did not become allies of the Athenians for the subjugation of the
Hellenes, but allies of the Hellenes for their liberation from the Mede;
[4]
and as long as the Athenians led us fairly we followed them loyally; but when we saw them relax their hostility to the Mede, to try to compass
the subjection of the allies, then our apprehensions began.
[5]
Unable, however, to unite and defend themselves, on account of the number
of confederates that had votes, all the allies were enslaved, except
ourselves and the Chians, who continued to send our contingents as
independent and nominally free.
[6]
Trust in Athens as a leader, however, we could no longer feel, judging by
the examples already given; it being unlikely that she would reduce our fellow-confederates, and not do
the same by us who were left, if ever she had the power.
11.
Had we all been still independent, we could
have had more faith in their not attempting any change; but the greater number being their subjects, while they were treating us as
equals, they would naturally chafe under this solitary instance of
independence as contrasted with the submission of the majority; particularly as they daily grew more powerful, and we more destitute.
[2]
Now the only sure basis of an alliance is for each party to be equally
afraid of the other: he who would like to encroach is then deterred by the
reflection that he will not have odds in his favour.
[3]
Again, if we were left independent, it was only because they thought they
saw their way to empire more clearly by specious language and by the paths
of policy than by those of force.
[4]
Not only were we useful as evidence that powers who had votes, like
themselves, would not, surely, join them in their expeditions, against their
will, without the party attacked being in the wrong; but the same system also enabled them to lead the stronger states against
the weaker first, and so to leave the former to the last, stripped of their
natural allies, and less capable of resistance.
[5]
But if they had begun with us, while all the states still had their
resources under their own control, and there was a center to rally round,
the work of subjugation would have been found less easy.
[
Thucydides. The Peloponnesian War. London, J. M. Dent; New York, E. P. Dutton. 1910.
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