garchs; and when at length they were persuaded to put off the games, it was too late. The Argives again became allies of Athens, and gave themselves to the task of connecting their city by long walls with the sea not less earnestly than the Athenians had undertaken like tasks in the days of Themistokles and Perikles. If this design could have been completed, Argos might have defied the attacks of any land force, as the Athenians could pour in from the sea any supplies needed for the people; but the oligarchical party was not wholly rooted out, and the Spartans received promises of aid from the faction within the city if they would once more put down the demos and destroy the unfinished long walls. These promises they were unable to fulfil: but when in the following winter Agis with his army departed baffled from Argos itself, he levelled the long walls to the ground. Failure of an Athenian expedition for the re The feebleness of Athenian policy is shown by the course which in the winter of this year the Athenians found themselves constrained to adopt towards the Makedonian Perdikkas. Nikias and his adherents, who now saw that Amphipolis, if it was ever to be recovered at all, must be recovered by force, urged an expedition for this purpose which was nevertheless to be made dependent on the co-operation of a chief whose only gifts to Athens had been confined to shiploads of lies. Perdikkas, of course, failed to keep his engagements, and the enterprise was abandoned. covery of Amphipolis. The massa cre of Melos. 416 B.C. But the policy of Athens was as misdirected as it was feeble. In a struggle such as that in which she was now engaged it was of the utmost importance that no enterprise should be undertaken in which success would not be fully worth the time, labour, and cost bestowed upon it; nor could any condemnation be too strong for the policy which would waste the strength of the city in schemes in which success could bring no profit, and would involve a lasting shame. Such a scheme was the expedition undertaken in the sixth year after the so-called peace of Nikias against the island of Melos, which, like the neighbouring island of Thera, had been colonised from Sparta. Thirty Athenian triremes with six from Chios and two from Lesbos, carrying about 2,700 hoplites, besides light-armed troops, sailed to the attack of a city, which, as a source of wealth or power to Athens, was utterly insignificant. The story of the expedition is soon told. The re.quest of the islanders to be allowed to remain, as they had been, neutral in the contest was peremptorily refused: and the demand of the Athenians that they should become allies of Athens was refused also. On receiving this decision the invaders applied themselves diligently to the task of the siege. The city of Melos was completely walled in, while the fleet blockaded it by sea. Plots for betraying the place to the Athenians were soon discovered; and the Melians determined to anticipate them by unconditional surrender. The islanders underwent the fate which the Mytilenaians had all but suffered and which the Skionaians had actually undergone. The grown men, including even those who had betrayed or wished to betray the place to the Athenians, were all slain, the women and children sold as slaves; and five hundred Athenians were brought into the island, not as Klerouchoi retaining their political rights at home but as colonists. On the brutal savagery of the ancient laws of war it is useless to say a word; but it must be noted that the case of Melos was utterly unlike that of either Mytilene or Skione. The Melians had done to the Athenians no specific wrong; nor have we, it would seem, any valid reason for supposing that they would have refused to contribute an equitable portion of their revenue to meet the expenditure of an empire from which they themselves derived now or had derived direct and important benefits. But this would not satisfy the Athenians. The Melians must become their subject allies, and, as such, must take part in the struggle against their mother city. This they naturally refused: and the strength which might have recovered Amphipolis was put forth to convince them of their folly. Nor can we doubt that an attempt to awaken them to this conviction had been made in words before the final appeal was made to force; and this attempt assumes in the narrative of Thucydides the form of a conference which forms one of the most singular, if not perplexing, portions of his history. It is true that both by Perikles and by Kleon the supremacy of Athens over her allies is represented as in some respects resembling a tyranny; but we have seen that this phrase denotes nothing more than that amount of centralisation which was indispensably necessary if the confederacy was to be maintained at all. It was perfectly competent to the Athenians to plead that the Melians had no right to enjoy the tranquil waters of a sea cleared of Persian cruisers and tribute-gatherers at a cost in which they took no share; but this would have been a reason for compelling them to join the confederacy in the days of Aristeides, not for straining the strength of Athens in reducing them now when a long war with Sparta had, at least for Spartan colonists, given a very different complexion to the case. Still it is to such arguments as these that Athenians would be tempted to resort for the materials of their indictment against the Melians. The open avowal that might makes right was one which would not e made by Greeks generally. Least of all would it be made by mians, whose sophists were, whether justly or unjustly, credited singular skill in making the worse appear the better reason. imper which glories in the exertion of naked brute force and delights to insult and defy the moral instincts of mankind is the growth of not every condition of society; and we should least of all look for it amongst a people who were always disposed to call ugly things by pretty names.1 But in the conference which precedes the Melian massacre we have a rude and wanton trampling on all seemliness of word or action, a haughty assertion of an independence which raises them above all law, an impudent boasting that iniquity to the weak can do the strong no harm, of which we have had as yet no example and no sign in Athenian history.2 Historical the Melian In its whole spirit and form this conference stands out in glaring inconsistency not only with the previous history of Athens but with the language whether of her own statesmen, of her subject allies, or of her open adversaries. It is still authority of more completely at variance with the principles and conference. methods ascribed with justice perhaps to some sophists, most unjustly to the sophists as a class. It gives the impression that the Athenians wished to be regarded as bidding a studied farewell to all honourable or even human motives and instincts, and as pledging themselves henceforth to a new mode of dealing with those who might be weaker than themselves. But if their earlier history does not prepare us for such an outburst, so neither is their philosophy here borne out by the history which follows it; and we are thus driven to ask whether any explanation of so perplexing a phenomenon be forthcoming. When we remember that the massacre at Melos was a political crime greater certainly and more atrocious than any of which the Athenians had yet been guilty, that it brought them no gain while it insured to Athens a bitter harvest of hatred and brought down upon her a terrible revenge, and that this wanton, inexcusable, and infatuated crime preceded only by a few months that ill-fated Sicilian expedition which was to seal her doom, we can have little doubt that the historian has for once dropped his function of recording facts rigidly as they occurred, and that he has left us in this so-called Melian conference an ethical picture like that which Herodotos has drawn of the Persian despot in his overweening arrogance and pride. From this time forwards the strength of Athens was to be turned aside to impracticable tasks in which even unqualified success could scarcely bring a gain proportionate to the outlay, and the affairs of the city were to be 'conducted in the gambling spirit which stakes a continually increasing sum in the hope of recovering past losses. The expedition to 1 τοὺς ̓Αθηναίους ἀεὶ τα πραότατα τῶν ὀνομάτων τοῖς ἁμαρτήμασι τιθεμένους. Plut. Alk. 16. 2 On this ground Dionysios, de Thuc. Jud. 39, regards this conver sation as fabricated by Thucydides in order to bring discredit upon his countrymen. 3 See p. 195. Melos marks the turning-point beyond which the policy of Perikles is lost to sight, and full play is given to the policy of Alkibiades. The ostracism of Hyperbolos. If in the massacre and inslavement of a people we see the Athenians in their most repulsive and loathsome aspect, the ostracism of the lamp maker Hyperbolos exhibits the ignoble use to which an instrument, fashioned for better purposes, may be at length applied. From Thucydides1 we learn only the fact that Hyperbolos was ostracized. By Plutarch 2 we are told that the challenge came from Nikias and his adherents to Alkibiades and his followers, but that before the time for voting came these two parties had changed their plans and formed a combination to bring about the banishment of the lamp-maker who is said to have taken the place of Kleon. The combination was, of course, successful; and Hyperbolos lived as an exile at Samos where some years later he fell a victim to the daggers of oligarchic conspirators. The historian adds that he was a pestilent man, exiled not on account of any fears of his political genius or influence but simply because his madness and violence reflected disgrace upon the city. Thucydides was well aware that ostracism was never devised to be a punishment for such men, and in all likelihood he meant his statement to be taken as an expression of this conviction. The mattter was regarded in the same light by the people, and ostracism was never again resorted to against an Athenian citizen. The general condition of Hellas at the time of the Melian expedition presents an astonishing picture of the complications which may arise from the conflicting interests of independent city communities. Formally the treaty of peace between Athens and Sparta was still in force: nor had these two cities renounced their private treaty of alliance made after the peace. The Spartans still had their own private agreement with the Boiotians, and the Boiotians their ten days' truce with the Athenians. At the request of the Argives the Messenians and Helots had been brought back from Kephallenia to Pylos; and while the Athenians were blockading Melos, the Pylian garrison made destructive inroads into the Lakonian territory. The Corinthians also had their own grounds of quarrel with the Athenians: but they had no formal covenants to restrain them from open strife. They had refused to accept the peace of Nikias, and they were free to act openly. The Spartans were not yet prepared to destroy the pillar which bore witness to their compact with Athens; but they determined to requite the ravages of the Messenians from Pylos by issuing licenses, or in modern phrase letters marque, to those who might be willing to retaliate as privateers the coasts of Attica or on the mercantile fleets of Athens. Position of the chief Hellenic states. 1 viii. 73. 2 Alk. 13. Nik. 11. 3 See p. 348. CHAPTER VII. THE PELOPONNESIAN WAR.-THE SICILIAN EXPEDITION. ference of the Athe- In the year which witnessed the disgraceful revolution at Korkyra, the rhetor Gorgias headed an embassy from the Sicilian Leontinoi to ask the aid of Athens against the Syra- First intercusans, who were at open war not only with them but with Naxos and Katana. In this strife Syracuse had the aid of all her Dorian neighbours except the men of Kamarina who threw their force into the opposite scale. On her side also appeared the troops of the Epizephyrian Lokrians, while the men of Rhegion took the side of Leontinoi.1 Whatever power the eloquence of Gorgias may have exercised over the Athenian assembly, no more constraining argument probably was adduced than the warning that if the Sicilian Dorians should be suffered to subdue their Ionian kinsfolk, the Spartans would assuredly receive from Sicily the succours on which the Corinthians especially had eagerly counted. The fact may be doubted; and had Perikles still been in his place in the assembly, he would in all likelihood have told his countrymen that they could find more effectual means of aiding the Ionians of Sicily than by diverting the strength of Athens to operations in that distant island. But neither was Perikles living, nor was his policy in reference to foreign conquests taken up by Kleon, although when vigorous efforts were needed for the recovery of revolted cities the line taken by the leather-seller was more spirited and creditable than that of the high-born Nikias and his followers. The Leontine envoys had thus little difficulty in obtaining the promise of help; but although three Athenian fleets appeared successively during the next two years in Sicilian waters, no decisive results were obtained on either side. Congress of Gela. The great success of Demosthenes at Sphakteria produced in the public opinion of Sicily a change not less marked than that which it brought about at Athens. If the Athenians were led by it not only to insist on harder terms from the Spartans but even to engage in schemes for regaining their short-lived supremacy in Boiotia, the Sicilian Greeks began to feel that their incessant quarrels and wars might leave the whole island at the mercy of a people who had shown a power of resistance and a fertility of resource far beyond any with which at the beginning of the war their enemies would have 1 Thục. iii. 86. 424 B.C. |