‘In eyes was each one hollow and obscure,
Pallid in face, and oh! so meagre grown,
That from their bones the skin took form.
‘I don’t believe that to such utter rind
Erisichthon by famine was dried up,
When he had greatest dread of it.’
So ended the great Athenian war. It had been a duel between the two great states, not a war of the Peloponnesos. The Peloponnesos, with the exception of Laconia and one or two allies, had little to do with it. The Argives had been for Athens rather than against her,—or, at least, they had been for Alkibiades, except for a short time at Miletos, when he beat them, and they soon resumed their allegiance to him. This is a strange instance of individual character attracting, not another person or party merely, but a whole state.
With the ending of the war we could wish to end this tale, but it must follow its hero for a little space. With the war ended the Athenian Republic. The people were not what they had been. Their light had flared up too brightly, and was going out. Aischylos had gone some time before; Euripides, despairing of his country, had abandoned it, and died a year before the closing scene; Sophokles died in this year of calamities. Only the comic genius survived for a time, to laugh at the follies of the dying grandeur. The greater artists of Athens were gone, her statesmen were departed. When the Paralos brought the news of the loss at Aigos Potamoi, the groans of those who first heard of it at the Peiræus were echoed by the guards all up the road which led to Athens, along which we lately saw a procession pass in triumph. Byzantion soon fell. Lesbos, Chalkedon, Sestos submitted. The rest of the dependencies of Athens turned away from her. All the Athenians whom Lysandros found in any of them he ordered back to Athens, with what object we shall soon behold. Having quickly undone the long and painful work of Alkibiades, he arrived by the end of October with his fleet before the port of Athens, and blockaded it. Agis and Pausanias, the kings of Sparta, with their allies, besieged it by land. Boiotians, Megarians, all her old enemies, were let loose upon her.
Month after month the siege went on. All supplies of food by land and water were cut off. The people from the numerous towns connected with Athens had been driven into the city, to add to the number of the starving. The citizens, with all this added host, were reduced to the last pinch before they would show any sign of yielding. At length they consented to send deputies; but the conditions proposed on either side were such that neither party would consider them.
The famine came on with steady steps. The people said they would die of hunger rather than accept humiliating terms. The Assembly passed a law, with heavy penalties, that none should speak of peace. This was at the closing of that fatal year.