XXVIII. At a public assembly of the Syracusans and their allies which was shortly afterwards held, the orator Eurykles proposed that the day on which Nikias was taken should be kept as a festival for ever, upon which no work should be done, and sacrifice should be offered to the gods, and that the feast should be called the Asinaria, from the name of the river where the victory was won. The day was the twenty-sixth of the Dorian month Karneius, which the Athenians call Metageitnion (September 21st). Furthermore, he proposed that the Athenian slaves and allies should be sold, that the Athenians themselves, with what native Sicilians had joined them, should be confined in the stone quarries within the city of Syracuse, and that their generals should be put to death.
These propositions wore accepted by the Syracusans, who treated Hermokrates with contempt when he urged that to be merciful in victory would be more honourable to them than the victory itself. Gylippus too, when he begged that he might carry the Athenian generals alive to Sparta, was shamefully insulted by the excited Syracusans, who had long disliked the irritating Spartan airs of superiority natural to Gylippus, and now, flushed with victory, no longer cared to conceal their feelings. Timæus tells us that they accused him of avarice and peculation, a hereditary vice, it appears, in his family since his father Kleandrides was banished from Sparta for taking bribes, while he himself afterwards stole thirty of the hundred talents which Lysander sent home to Sparta, and hid them under the roof of his house, but was informed against, and exiled in disgrace. This will be found described at greater length in the Life of Lysander.
In his account of the death of Nikias and Demosthenes, Timæus does not exactly follow the narrative of Thucydides and Philistus, as he informs us that while the assembly was still sitting, Hermokrates sent to their prison to inform them that they were condemned to death, and to afford them the means of dying by their own hands, while the other historians state that the Syracusans put them to death.[4] Be this as it may, their dead bodies were exposed before the gates of Syracuse as a spectacle for the citizens. I have heard also that at the present day a shield is shown in one of the temples at Syracuse, which is said to be that of Nikias, and which is beautifully adorned with woven coverings of purple and gold.
XXIX. Of the Athenians, the most part perished in the stone quarries of disease and insufficient food, for they received only a pint of barley-meal and half-a-pint of water each day. Not a few, however, were sold into slavery, being stolen for that purpose by Syracusans, or having escaped disguised as slaves. The rest were at length branded upon their foreheads with the figure of a horse, and sold into slavery. Yet even in this extremity their well-bred and dignified behaviour came to their aid; for they soon either obtained their freedom, or gained the confidence and respect of their masters. Some gained their freedom by their knowledge of Euripides. It appears that the dramas of Euripides were especially popular in Sicily, but that only a few fragments of his works had hitherto reached the Greek cities in that island. We are told that many of these captives on their return to Athens affectionately embraced Euripides, and told him how some of them had been sold into slavery, but had been set free after they had taught their masters as much of his poetry as they could remember, while others, when wandering about the country as fugitives after the battle, had obtained food and drink by reciting passages from his plays. We need not then wonder at the tale of the people of Kaunus, who, when a ship pursued by pirates was making for their harbour at first refused to admit it, but afterwards enquired whether any on board knew the plays of Euripides; and on hearing that they did, allowed them to enter the harbour and save themselves.
XXX. At Athens the news of the catastrophe was at first disbelieved, because of the unsatisfactory way in which it reached the city. A stranger, it is said, disembarked at Peiræus, went into a barber's shop, and began to converse about what had happened as upon a theme which must be uppermost in every man's mind. The astonished barber, hearing for the first time such fearful tidings, ran up to Athens to communicate it to the archons, and to the public in the market-place. All were shocked and astonished at hearing this, and the archons immediately convoked the public assembly, and brought the barber before it. When he was asked to explain from whom he had heard this intelligence, as he could give no satisfactory account, he was regarded as a disturber of the public tranquillity by fabricating idle tales, and was even put to the torture. Soon, however, men arrived who confirmed his tale, and described all the details of the catastrophe as far as they had witnessed them. Then at last the countrymen of Nikias believed, after his death, what he had so often foretold to them during his life.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] In North Africa, the modern oasis of Siwah.
[2] Plemmyrium on one side, and the city of Syracuse on the other, command the entrance of the gulf known as the Great Harbour, inside of which lay the Athenian fleet and camp.
[3] Grote.
[4] Grote, Part II. ch. lx, points out that there is no real contradiction between the statement cited from Timæus, and the accounts gives of the transaction by Thucydides and Philistus.