While Periklês thus decidedly forbade any general march out for battle, he sought to provide as much employment as possible for the compressed eagerness of the citizens. The cavalry were sent out, together with the Thessalian cavalry their allies, for the purpose of restraining the excursions of the enemy’s light troops, and protecting the lands near the city from plunder.[240] At the same time, he fitted out a powerful expedition, which sailed forth to ravage Peloponnesus, even while the invaders were yet in Attica.[241] Archidamus, after having remained engaged in the devastation of Acharnæ long enough to satisfy himself that the Athenians would not hazard a battle, turned away from Athens in a northwesterly direction towards the demes between Mount Brilêssus and Mount Parnês, on the road passing through Dekeleia. The army continued ravaging these districts until their provisions were exhausted, and then quitted Attica by the northwestern road near Orôpus, which brought them into Bœotia. The Oropians were not Athenians, but dependent upon Athens, and the district of Græa, a portion of their territory, was laid waste; after which, the army dispersed and retired back to their respective homes.[242] It would seem that they quitted Attica towards the end of July, having remained in the country between thirty and forty days.
Meanwhile, the Athenian expedition under Karkinus, Prôteas, and Sokratês, joined by fifty Korkyræan ships, and by some other allies, sailed round Peloponnesus, landing in various parts to inflict damage, and among other places, at Methônê (Modon) on the southwestern peninsula of the Lacedæmonian territory.[243] The place, neither strong nor well-garrisoned, would have been carried with little difficulty, had not Brasidas the son of Tellis,—a gallant Spartan now mentioned for the first time, but destined to great celebrity afterwards,—who happened to be on guard at a neighboring post, thrown himself into it with one hundred men by a rapid movement, before the dispersed Athenian troops could be brought together to prevent him. He infused such courage into the defenders of the place that every attack was repelled, and the Athenians were forced to reëmbark,—an act of prowess which procured for him the first public honors bestowed by the Spartans during this war. Sailing northward along the western coast of Peloponnesus, the Athenians landed again on the coast of Elis, a little south of the promontory called Cape Ichthys: they ravaged the territory for two days, defeating both the troops in the neighborhood and three hundred chosen men from the central Eleian territory. Strong winds on a harborless coast now induced the captains to sail with most of the troops round Cape Ichthys, in order to reach the harbor of Pheia on the northern side of it; while the Messenian hoplites, marching by land across the promontory, attacked Pheia and carried it by assault. When the fleet arrived, all were reëmbarked,—the full force of Elis being under march to attack them: they then sailed northward, landing on various other spots to commit devastation, until they reached Sollium, a Corinthian settlement on the coast of Akarnania. They captured this place, which they handed over to the inhabitants of the neighboring Akarnanian town of Palærus,—as well as Astakus, from whence they expelled the despot Euarchus, and enrolled the town as a member of the Athenian alliance. From hence they passed over to Kephallênia, which they were fortunate enough also to acquire as an ally of Athens without any compulsion,—with its four distinct towns, or districts, Palês, Kranii, Samê, and Pionê. These various operations took up near three months from about the beginning of July, so that they returned to Athens towards the close of September,[244]—the beginning of the winter half of the year, according to the distribution of Thucydidês.
Nor was this the only maritime expedition of the summer: thirty more triremes, under Kleopompus, were sent through the Euripus to the Lokrian coast opposite to the northern part of Eubœa. Some disembarkations were made, whereby the Lokrian towns of Thronium and Alopê were sacked, and farther devastation inflicted: while a permanent garrison was planted, and a fortified post erected, in the uninhabited island of Atalanta, opposite to the Lokrian coast, in order to restrain privateers from Opus and the other Lokrian towns in their excursions against Eubœa.[245] It was farther determined to expel the Æginetan inhabitants from Ægina, and to occupy the island with Athenian colonists. This step was partly rendered prudent by the important position of the island midway between Attica and Peloponnesus; but a concurrent motive, and probably the stronger motive, was the gratification of ancient antipathy and revenge against a people who had been among the foremost in provoking the war and in inflicting upon Athens so much suffering. The Æginetans with their wives and children were all put on shipboard and landed in Peloponnesus,—where the Spartans permitted them to occupy the maritime district and town of Thyrea, their last frontier towards Argos: some of them, however, found shelter in other parts of Greece. The island was made over to a detachment of Athenian kleruchs, or citizen proprietors, sent thither by lot.[246]
To the sufferings of the Æginetans, which we shall hereafter find still more deplorably aggravated, we have to add those of the Megarians. Both had been most zealous in kindling the war, but upon none did the distress of war fall so heavily. Both probably shared the premature confidence felt among the Peloponnesian confederacy, that Athens could never hold out more than a year or two,—and were thus induced to overlook their own undefended position against her. Towards the close of September, the full force of Athens, citizens and metics, marched into the Megarid under Periklês, and laid waste the greater part of the territory: while they were in it, the hundred ships which had been circumnavigating Peloponnesus, having arrived at Ægina on their return, went and joined their fellow-citizens in the Megarid, instead of going straight home. The junction of the two formed the largest Athenian force that had ever yet been seen together: there were ten thousand citizen hoplites, independent of three thousand others who were engaged in the siege of Potidæa, and three thousand metic hoplites,—besides a large number of light troops.[247] Against so large a force the Megarians could of course make no head, and their territory was all laid waste, even to the city walls. For several years of the war, the Athenians inflicted this destruction once, and often twice in the same year: a decree was proposed in the Athenian ekklesia by Charinus, though perhaps not carried, to the effect that the stratêgi every year should swear, as a portion of their oath of office,[248] that they would twice invade and ravage the Megarid. As the Athenians at the same time kept the port of Nisæa blocked up, by means of their superior naval force and of the neighboring coast of Salamis, the privations imposed on the Megarians became extreme and intolerable.[249] Not merely their corn and fruits, but even their garden vegetables near the city, were rooted up and destroyed, and their situation seems often to have been that of a besieged city hard pressed by famine. Even in the time of Pausanias, so many centuries afterwards, the miseries of the town during these years were remembered and communicated to him, being assigned as the reason why one of their most memorable statues had never been completed.[250]
To these various military operations of Athens during the course of this summer, some other measures of moment are to be added; and Thucydidês also notices an eclipse of the sun which modern astronomical calculations refer to the third of August: had this eclipse happened three months earlier, immediately before the entrance of the Peloponnesians into Attica, it might probably have been construed as an unfavorable omen, and caused the postponement of the scheme. Expecting a prolonged struggle, the Athenians now made arrangements for placing Attica in a permanent state of defence, both by sea and land; what these arrangements were, we are not told in detail, but one of them was sufficiently remarkable to be named particularly. They set apart one thousand talents out of the treasure in the acropolis as an inviolable reserve, not to be touched except on the single contingency of a hostile naval force about to assail the city, with no other means at hand to defend it. They further enacted, that if any citizen should propose, or any magistrate put the question, in the public assembly, to make any different application of this reserve, he should be punishable with death. Moreover, they resolved every year to keep back one hundred of their best triremes, and trierarchs to command and equip them, for the same special necessity.[251] It may be doubted whether this latter provision was placed under the same stringent sanction, or observed with the same rigor, as that concerning the money, which latter was not departed from until the twentieth year of the war, after all the disasters of the Sicilian expedition, and on the terrible news of the revolt of Chios. It was on that occasion that the Athenians first repealed the sentence of capital punishment against the proposer of this forbidden change, and next appropriated the money to meet the then imminent peril of the commonwealth.[252]
The resolution here taken about this sacred reserve, and the rigorous sentence interdicting contrary propositions, is pronounced by Mr. Mitford to be an evidence of the indelible barbarism of democratical government.[253] But we must recollect, first, that the sentence of capital punishment was one which could hardly by possibility come into execution; for no citizen would be so mad as to make the forbidden proposition, while this law was in force. Whoever desired to make it, would first begin by proposing to repeal the prohibitory law, whereby he would incur no danger, whether the assembly decided in the affirmative or negative; and if he obtained an affirmative decision, he would then, and then only, proceed to move the reappropriation of the fund. To speak the language of English parliamentary procedure, he would first move the suspension or abrogation of the standing order whereby the proposition was forbidden,—next, he would move the proposition itself: in fact, such was the mode actually pursued, when the thing at last came to be done.[254] But though the capital sentence could hardly come into effect, the proclamation of it in terrorem had a very distinct meaning. It expressed the deep and solemn conviction which the people entertained of the importance of their own resolution about the reserve,—it forewarned all assemblies and all citizens to come, of the danger of diverting it to any other purpose,—it surrounded the reserve with an artificial sanctity, which forced every man who aimed at the reappropriation to begin with a preliminary proposition, formidable on the very face of it, as removing a guarantee which previous assemblies had deemed of immense value, and opening the door to a contingency which they had looked upon as treasonable. The proclamation of a lighter punishment, or a simple prohibition without any definite sanction whatever, would neither have announced the same emphatic conviction, nor produced the same deterring effect. The assembly of 431 B.C. could not in any way enact laws which subsequent assemblies could not reverse; but it could so frame its enactments, in cases of peculiar solemnity, as to make its authority strongly felt upon the judgment of its successors, and to prevent them from entertaining motions for repeal, except under necessity at once urgent and obvious. Far from thinking that the law now passed at Athens displayed barbarism, either in the end or in the means, I consider it principally remarkable for its cautious and long-sighted view of the future,—qualities the exact reverse of barbarism,—and worthy of the general character of Periklês, who probably suggested it. Athens was just entering into a war which threatened to be of indefinite length, and was certain to be very costly. To prevent the people from exhausting all their accumulated fund, and to place them under a necessity of reserving something against extreme casualties, was an object of immense importance. Now the particular casualty, which Periklês, assuming him to be the proposer, named as the sole condition of touching this one thousand talents, might be considered as of all others the most improbable, in the year 431 B.C. So immense was then the superiority of the Athenian naval force, that to suppose it defeated, and a Peloponnesian fleet in full sail for Peiræus, was a possibility which it required a statesman of extraordinary caution to look forward to, and which it is truly wonderful that the people generally could have been induced to contemplate. Once tied up to this purpose, however, the fund lay ready for any other terrible emergency: and we shall find the actual employment of it incalculably beneficial to Athens, at a moment of the gravest peril, when she could hardly have protected herself without some such special resource. The people would scarcely have sanctioned so rigorous an economy, had it not been proposed to them at a period so early in the war that their available reserve was still much larger: but it will be forever to the credit of their foresight as well as constancy, that they should first have adopted such a precautionary measure, and afterwards adhered to it for nineteen years, under severe pressure for money, until at length a case arose which rendered farther abstinence really, and not constructively, impossible.
To display their force and take revenge by disembarking and ravaging parts of Peloponnesus, was doubtless of much importance to Athens during this first summer of the war: though it might seem that the force so employed was quite as much needed in the conquest of Potidæa, which still remained under blockade,—and of the neighboring Chalkidians in Thrace, still in revolt. It was during the course of this summer that a prospect opened to Athens of subduing these towns, through the assistance of Sitalkês, king of the Odrysian Thracians. That prince had married the sister of Nymphodôrus, a citizen of Abdêra; who engaged to render him, and his son Sadokus, allies of Athens. Sent for to Athens and appointed proxenus of Athens at Abdêra, which was one of the Athenian subject allies, Nymphodôrus made this alliance, and promised, in the name of Sitalkês, that a sufficient Thracian force should be sent to aid Athens in the reconquest of her revolted towns: the honor of Athenian citizenship was at the same time conferred upon Sadokus.[255] Nymphodôrus farther established a good understanding between Perdikkas of Macedonia and the Athenians, who were persuaded to restore to him Therma, which they had before taken from him. The Athenians had thus the promise of powerful aid against the Chalkidians and Potidæans: yet the latter still held out, with little prospect of immediate surrender. Moreover, the town of Astakus, in Akarnania, which the Athenians had captured during the summer, in the course of their expedition round Peloponnesus, was recovered during the autumn by the deposed despot Euarchus, assisted by forty Corinthian triremes and one thousand hoplites. This Corinthian armament, after restoring Euarchus, made some unsuccessful descents both upon other parts of Akarnania and upon the island of Kephallênia: in the latter, they were entrapped into an ambuscade, and obliged to return home with considerable loss.[256]
It was towards the close of this autumn also that Periklês, chosen by the people for the purpose, delivered the funeral oration at the public interment of those warriors who had fallen during the campaign. The ceremonies of this public token of respect have already been described in a former chapter, on occasion of the conquest of Samos: but that which imparted to the present scene an imperishable interest, was the discourse of the chosen statesman and orator; probably heard by Thucydidês himself, and in substance reproduced. A large crowd of citizens and foreigners, of both sexes and all ages, accompanied the funeral procession from Athens to the suburb called the outer Kerameikus, where Periklês, mounted upon a lofty stage prepared for the occasion, closed the ceremony with his address. The law of Athens not only provided this public funeral and commemorative discourse, but also assigned maintenance at the public expense to the children of the slain warriors until they attained military age: a practice which was acted on throughout the whole war, though we have only the description and discourse belonging to this single occasion.[257]
The eleven chapters of Thucydidês which comprise this funeral speech are among the most memorable relics of antiquity; considering that under the language and arrangement of the historian,—always impressive, though sometimes harsh and peculiar, like the workmanship of a powerful mind, misled by a bad or an unattainable model,—we possess the substance and thoughts of the illustrious statesman. A portion of it, of course, is and must be common-place, belonging to all discourses composed for a similar occasion. Yet this is true only of a comparatively small portion: much of it is peculiar, and every way worthy of Periklês,—comprehensive, rational, and full, not less of sense and substance than of earnest patriotism. It thus forms a strong contrast with the jejune, though elegant, rhetoric of other harangues, mostly[258] not composed for actual delivery; and deserves, in comparison with the funeral discourses remaining to us from Plato, and the Pseudo-Demosthenês, and even Lysias, the honorable distinction which Thucydidês claims for his own history,—an ever-living possession, and not a mere show-piece for the moment.
In the outset of his speech, Periklês distinguishes himself from those who had preceded him in the same function of public orator, by dissenting from the encomiums which it had been customary to bestow on the law enjoining these funeral harangues: he thinks that the publicity of the funeral itself, and the general demonstrations of respect and grief by the great body of citizens, tell more emphatically in token of gratitude to the brave dead, when the scene passes in silence, than when it is translated into the words of a speaker, who may easily offend, either by incompetency or by apparent feebleness, or perhaps even by unseasonable exaggeration. Nevertheless, the custom having been embodied in law, and elected as he has been by the citizens, he comes forward to discharge the duty imposed upon him in the best manner he can.[259]