The Story of Greece and Rome for boys and girls
- Автор: Macgregor Mary
- Год: 1914
- Язык: английский
- Жанр: Зарубежная литература для детей
Электронная книга - «The Story of Greece and Rome for boys and girls». Краткое содержание книги:
The Story of Greece: Told to Boys and Girls от Mary Macgregor
The Story of Rome, From the Earliest Times to the Death of Augustus, Told to Boys and Girls от Mary Esther Miller MacGregor
Nicias was ill, and his illness made him more hopeless than perhaps he would otherwise have been. He wrote to the assembly to tell it that the Spartans had wrested from the Athenians all that they had gained, and that they were now themselves in danger of being besieged.
The fleet, he said, had been drawn up on the beach for months, and would have to be repaired before it was seaworthy. Even then it would be difficult to man the vessels, for many of the crew had died and many more were out of practice.
So faint of heart was the Athenian general that, at the end of his gloomy report, he urged that the whole enterprise should be given up, or if not, that at least a new fleet might be sent out without loss of time. For himself he begged that he might be recalled, as he was ill and unfit for his duties.
The assembly refused this last request, but it sent a new fleet to his help, commanded by Eurymedon and Demosthenes.
Meanwhile Gylippus was not idle. He attacked the Athenians both by land and sea. By land he was victorious, but at sea he was defeated.
Undaunted, he at once ordered that the bows of the Spartan vessels should be made heavier and shorter. When this had been done he again attacked the enemy’s fleet, and when the battle ended Gylippus held the entrance to the harbour.
The Athenians were now in great peril, for they were besieged both by land and sea. They could not leave the harbour unless they cut their way through the fleet of the victorious Syracusans, and this they had no courage to attempt.
But on the day after the battle which had seemed to seal their fate, hope awoke once more in the Athenian ranks, for the new fleet, under Eurymedon and Demosthenes, came in sight.
The new commanders at once determined that the hill above Syracuse must be retaken. So on a moonlight night the attempt was made. But although a band of Athenians gained the hill, took a fort and repulsed six hundred of the enemy, they were soon afterwards put to flight. Many of the soldiers flung away their shields, as they were driven down the hill, and fell over the cliffs. Others were pushed back upon their comrades who were still climbing upwards, so that soon the whole army was in confusion.
This disaster crushed the spirit of the Athenians. Many of the soldiers, too, had fever caused by the marshy ground on which their camp was pitched. Many more were ill or wounded.
Eurymedon and Demosthenes advised Nicias to order the whole army to sail away before the entrance to the Great Harbour was entirely blockaded, but to this he would not consent. It seemed that he was afraid to return to Athens to tell that the expedition had failed.
Demosthenes then urged Nicias at least to leave the harbour and sail to a point where their supplies could not be stopped by the enemy. This too, Nicias refused to do.
But soon after his refusal, large reinforcements reached the Spartans, and the general’s obstinacy gave way. He ordered the fleet to prepare to leave the harbour.
The men were glad to desert their unhealthy quarters and got ready in haste, but secretly, that the Syracusans might not suspect their plans.
All was ready, when, on 27th August 413 B.C., the night before the fleet was to sail, an eclipse of the moon took place.
Nicias was filled with superstitious fears. What might the eclipse not portend? He sent to the soothsayers, who said that the fleet must on no account leave the harbour for twenty-seven days. To disobey the oracle would be fatal, so Nicias believed, and he at once forbade the fleet to sail until the twenty-seven days had passed.
CHAPTER LXXV
THE ATHENIAN ARMY IS DESTROYED
The Athenians made their preparations to retreat as secretly as possible, but the Syracusans soon discovered their plans. When they heard that their departure was delayed for twenty-seven days, they determined to attack the Athenian fleet once more, and again they were successful.
On land the Athenians repulsed Gylippus, but they gained little by this success, for the Syracusans had made up their mind that the whole Athenian army should be destroyed.
So, as Demosthenes had foreseen, they barricaded the entrance to the Great Harbour, drawing their ships across it and lashing them together with chains.
Nicias saw that a battle must be fought, and he ordered a great number of the land troops to go on board the fleet. At all costs he must strengthen his navy.
The first thing the Athenians had to do was to break through the ships that were lashed together at the mouth of the harbour. But before the chains could be broken the enemy was upon them, surrounding them on every side. Despair gave the Athenians courage, and so desperately did they fight that for a time it seemed that they might yet escape.
Above the crash of vessels rose the cheers or groans of those who watched the battle from the shore.
Thucydides gives us a picture of the hopes and fears, the triumph and despair of those who fought as of those who watched. He says:
‘The fortune of the battle varied, and it was not possible that the spectators on the shore should all receive the same impression of it. Being quite close and having different points of view, they would some of them see their own ships victorious; their courage would then revive, and they would earnestly call upon the gods not to take from them their hope of deliverance. But others, who saw their ships worsted, cried and shrieked aloud, and were by the sight alone more utterly unnerved than the defeated combatants themselves.
‘Others again who had fixed their gaze on some part of the struggle which was undecided were in a state of excitement still more terrible; they kept swaying their bodies to and fro in an agony of hope and fear, as the stubborn conflict went on and on; for at every instant they were all but saved or all but lost. And while the strife hung in the balance, you might hear in the Athenian army at once lamentation, shouting, cries of victory or defeat, and all the various sounds which are wrung from a great host in extremity of danger.’
At length the Athenians were pushed back and yet further back, until the fleet was stranded on the shore. The soldiers who had been left on land now rushed forward and succeeded in saving sixty of their ships from the enemy.
Demosthenes urged the men to embark and try once again to cut their way out of the harbour, but they refused, so crushed were they by their defeat. To retreat by land was all that the Athenians could now try to do, yet in their hearts they knew that the retreat must end in slavery or in death.
The sick and the wounded were left behind. But those who were stricken with fever, caused by the marsh land on which they had been encamped, clung to their comrades, and scarce knowing what they did, begged that they might not be left behind. But their strength soon failed, and they sank down by the wayside to die.
Nicias, ill as he was, did all in his power to encourage and cheer his men. He himself led the van, Demosthenes brought up the rear.
After marching for several days, the Athenians were parched with thirst. When at length they reached a stream, it was to find the enemy awaiting them on the farther bank.
But their thirst was intolerable, and paying no heed to the foe, the soldiers rushed to the water. As they stooped to drink, the Syracusans fell upon them and put them to death.
Demosthenes and his men had fallen behind the rest of the army, and had already been forced to surrender. Nicias now saw that he, too, must submit to Gylippus.
Seven thousand prisoners were sent by the Spartans to work in stone quarries. These quarries were like dungeons, but they were open to the sky, and during the day the scorching sun beat down piteously on the miserable prisoners, while at night the cold was so intense that sleep was impossible.
Here they were kept for seventy days, with only enough food to keep them alive, and with scarcely any water to drink. Many of the men died, those who survived were sold as slaves.