Brasidas and his men sallied forth by two different gates at the same time. One was the first gate in the Long Wall, which would be the first gate in order, to a person coming from the southward. The other was the gate upon the palisade (αἱ ἐπὶ τὸ σταύρωμα πύλαι), that is, the gate in the Long Wall which opened from the town upon the palisade. The persons who sallied out by this gate would get out to attack the enemy by the gate in the palisade itself.
The gate in the Long Wall which opened from the town upon the palisade, would be that by which Brasidas himself with his army entered Amphipolis from Mount Kerdylium. It probably stood open at this moment when he directed the sally forth: that which had to be opened at the moment, was the gate in the palisade, together with the first gate in the Long Wall.
The last words cited in Thucydidês—ᾗπερ νῦν κατὰ τὸ καρτερώτατον τοῦ χωρίου ἰόντι τὸ τροπαῖον ἕστηκε—are not intelligible without better knowledge of the topography than we possess. What Thucydidês means by “the strongest point in the place,” we cannot tell. We only understand that the trophy was erected in the road by which a person went up to that point. We must recollect that the expressions of Thucydidês here refer to the ground as it stood sometime afterwards, not as it stood at the time of the battle between Kleon and Brasidas.
[745] It is almost painful to read the account given by Diodorus (xii, 73, 74) of the battle of Amphipolis, when one’s mind is full of the distinct and admirable narrative of Thucydidês, only defective by being too brief. It is difficult to believe that Diodorus is describing the same event; so totally different are all the circumstances, except that the Lacedæmonians at last gain the victory. To say, with Wesseling in his note, “Hæc non usquequaque conveniunt Thucydideis,” is prodigiously below the truth.
[746] Thucyd. v, 11. Aristotle, a native of Stageirus near to Amphipolis, cites the sacrifices rendered to Brasidas as an instance of institutions established by special and local enactment (Ethic. Nikomach. v, 7).
In reference to the aversion now entertained by the Amphipolitans to the continued worship of Agnon as their œkist, compare the discourse addressed by the Platæans to the Lacedæmonians, pleading for mercy. The Thebans, if they became possessors of the Platæid, would not continue the sacrifices to the gods who had granted victory at the great battle of Platæa, nor funereal mementos to the slain (Thucyd. iii, 58).
[747] Thucyd. v, 7. Καὶ ἐχρήσατο τῷ τρόπῳ ᾧπερ καὶ ἐς τὴν Πύλον εὐτυχήσας ἐπίστευσέ τι φρονεῖν· ἐς μάχην μὲν γὰρ οὐδὲ ἤλπισέν οἱ ἐπεξιέναι οὐδένα, κατὰ θέαν δὲ μᾶλλον ἔφη ἀναβαίνειν τοῦ χωρίου, καὶ τὴν μείζω παρασκευὴν περιέμενεν, etc.
[748] Thucyd. v, 10. Οἰόμενος φθήσεσθαι ἀπελθὼν, etc.
[749] Contrast the brave death of the Lacedæmonian general Anaxibius, when he found himself out-generalled and surprised by the Athenian Iphikratês (Xenoph. Hellen. iv, 8, 38).
[750] Amphipolis was actually thus attacked by the Athenians eight years afterwards, by ships on the Strymon, Thucyd. vii, 9. Εὐετίων στρατηγὸς Ἀθηναίων, μετὰ Περδίκκου στρατεύσας ἐπ᾽ Ἀμφίπολιν Θρᾳξὶ πολλοῖς, τὴν μὲν πόλιν οὐχ εἷλεν, ἐς δὲ τὸν Στρύμονα περικομίσας τριήρεις ἐκ τοῦ ποταμοῦ ἐπολιόρκει, ὁρμώμενος ἐξ Ἱμεραίου. (In the eighteenth year of the war.) But the fortifications of the place seem to have been materially altered during the interval. Instead of one long wall, with three sides open to the river, it seems to have acquired a curved wall, only open to the river on a comparatively narrow space near to the lake; while this curved wall joined the bridge southerly by means of a parallel pair of long walls with road between.