When the Syracusans and allies were assembled together, they took with them as many prisoners as they could, with the spoils, and returned to the city. All the rest of the Athenians and the allies that they had taken, they sent down into the quarries, thinking this the safest way of keeping them; but Nicias and Demosthenes they executed, against the wish of Gylippus. For he thought it would be a glorious distinction for him, in addition to all his other achievements, to take to the Lacedæmonians the generals who had commanded against them. And it so happened, that one of these, namely Demosthenes, was regarded by them as their most inveterate enemy, in consequence of what had occurred on the island and at Pylos; the other, for the same reasons, as most in their interest; for Nicias had exerted himself for the release of the Lacedæmonians taken from the island, by persuading the Athenians to make a treaty. On this account the Lacedæmonians had friendly feelings towards him; and indeed it was mainly for the same reasons that he reposed confidence in Gylippus, and surrendered himself to him. But certain of the Syracusans (as it was said) were afraid, some of them, since they had held communication with him, that if put to the torture, he might cause them trouble on that account in the midst of their success; others, and especially the Corinthians, lest he might bribe some, as he was rich, and effect his escape, and so they should again incur mischief through his agency; and therefore they persuaded the allies, and put him to death. For this cause then, or something very like it, he was executed, having least of all the Greeks deserved to meet with such a misfortune, on account of his devoted attention to the practice of every virtue.
As for those in the quarries, the Syracusans treated them with cruelty during the first period of their captivity. For as they were in a hollow place, and many in a small compass, the sun, as well as the suffocating closeness, distressed them at first, in consequence of their not being under cover; and then, on the contrary, the nights coming on autumnal and cold, soon worked in them an alteration from health to disease, by means of the change. Since, too, in consequence of their want of room, they did everything in the same place; and the dead, moreover, were piled up on one another—such as died from their wounds, and from the change they had experienced, and such like. There were, besides, intolerable stenches; while at the same time they were tormented with hunger and thirst, for during eight months they gave each of them daily only a cotyle[56] of water, and two of corn. And of all the other miseries which it was likely that men thrown into such a place would suffer, there was none that did not fall to their lot. For some seventy days they thus lived all together; then the rest of them were sold, except the Athenians, and whatever Siceliots or Italians had joined them in the expedition.
The total number of those who were taken, though it were difficult to speak with exactness, was still not less than seven thousand. “And this,” says Thucydides in conclusion, “was the greatest Grecian exploit of all that were performed in this war; nay, in my opinion, of all Grecian achievements that we have heard of also; and was at once most splendid for the conquerors, and most disastrous for the conquered. For being altogether vanquished at all points, and having suffered in no slight degree in any respect, they were destroyed (as the saying is) with utter destruction, both army, and navy, and everything; and only a few out of many returned home. Such were the events which occurred in Sicily.”[i]
FOOTNOTES
[55] [Adolph Holm rates it at thirty thousand men.]
[56] The cotyle was a little more than half an English pint; and the allowance of food here mentioned was only half of that commonly given to a slave.
The Groves of the Academy