For a long time the slaughter raged unchecked, and the river-bed was choked with heaps of slain. A few, who escaped from the river, were pursued and cut down by the Syracusan horse. Nicias had held out until the last moment; but when he perceived that all was lost, his men being powerless either to fight or fly, he made his way to Gylippus, and implored him to stop the useless carnage. "I surrender myself," he said, "to you and the Spartans. Do with me as you please, but put an end to this butchery of defenceless men." Gylippus gave the necessary order, and the word was passed round to kill no more, but take captive those who survived. The order was obeyed, though slowly and with reluctance, and the work of capture began. But few of those taken in the river ever found their way into the public gaol, where Demosthenes was now lying, with the six thousand who had surrendered on the day before. For, as there had been no regular capitulation, large numbers of the prisoners were secretly conveyed away by the Syracusans, who afterwards sold them into slavery for their own profit. As for the three hundred who had broken out of camp on the previous night, they were presently brought in by a party of cavalry despatched in pursuit.
When the first transports of joy and triumph were over, an assembly was called to decide on the fate of the two Athenian generals, and of those state prisoners, some seven thousand in number, who were the sole visible remnant of two great armies. Then arose a strange conflict of motives. The first who put forward his claims was Gylippus, to whose genius and energy the victorious issue of the struggle was mainly due. As a reward for his services, he asked that Nicias and Demosthenes should be left to his disposal, for he wished to have the honour of carrying home with him these famous captains, one the greatest friend, the other the greatest enemy of Sparta. But the general voice of the assembly was strongly against him. Nothing but the blood of the two principal offenders could satisfy the vengeance of the Syracusans, and those who had intrigued with Nicias were anxious to put him out of the way, in fear lest he should betray them. Moreover the Corinthian allies of Syracuse, who for some reason had a special grudge against Nicias, demanded his immediate execution. In vain Hermocrates pleaded the cause of mercy, [Footnote: Plutarch, Nicias, c. 28.] and urged his fellow-citizens to make a generous use of their victory. Sentence of death was passed, and these two eminent Athenians, so different in character and achievement, were united in their end.
Far worse was the doom pronounced on the six thousand men of Demosthenes, and the thousand more who were brought to Syracuse after the massacre at the Assinarus. They were condemned to confinement in the stone quarries, deep pits surrounded by high walls of cliff, under the south-eastern edge of Epipolae. Penned together in these roofless dungeons, they were exposed to the fierce heat of the sun by day, and to the bitter cold of the autumn nights, and having scarcely room to move, they were unable to preserve common decency, or common cleanliness. Many died of their wounds, or of the diseases engendered by exposure, and their bodies were left unburied, a sight of horror and a source of infection to the survivors. To these frightful miseries were added a perpetual burning thirst, and the lingering torture of slow starvation, for each man received as his daily allowance a poor half pint of water, and a mere pittance of food, just enough to avoid breaking the letter of the conditions which Demosthenes had made for his troops. In this state they were left without relief for ten long weeks; then all except the Athenians themselves, and their allies from the Greek cities of Sicily and Italy, were taken out and sold as slaves.
EPILOGUE
Such was the end of the Sicilian Expedition, which ultimately decided the issue of the Peloponnesian War. Forsaking the wise counsels of their greatest statesman, and carried away by the mad sophistry of Alcibiades, the Athenians had committed themselves, heart and soul, to a wild game of hazard, in which they had little to win, and everything to lose. By this act of desperate folly they brought on themselves an overwhelming disaster, from which it was impossible for them wholly to recover. With wonderful vitality they rallied from the blow, and struggled on for nine years more, against the whole power of Peloponnesus, and their own revolted allies, backed by the influence and the gold of Persia. They gained great victories, and under prudent leaders they might still have been saved from the worst consequences of their defeat in Sicily. But at every favourable crisis they wantonly flung away the advantage they had gained, and abandoned themselves to blind guides, who led them further and further on the road to ruin.
The history of Thucydides ends abruptly in the twenty-first year of the war, and for an account of the closing scenes we have to go to the pages of Xenophon. It will be convenient, therefore, to bring our narrative to a close at the point which we have reached, for any attempt even to sketch the events of this confused and troubled period would carry us far beyond the limits of the present volume. And so for the present we take leave of the Athenians, in the hour of their decline. Their light is burning dim, and yet darker days are awaiting them in the future. But they are still great and illustrious, as the chief guardians of those spiritual treasures which are our choicest heritage from the past.