defence, leaving the troops of one tribe to guard them: and of these some even during the heat of the day took refuge in the city, while others went to sleep in their tents and none kept a careful watch. Of such improvidence the Athenian generals quickly took advantage. By their orders 300 picked hoplites with a certain proportion of light-armed troops assailed the intersecting wall, while one-half of the Athenian army advanced to the wall of the city, the other half to the stockaded gate which probably opened from the Temenos of Phoibos. The palisade of the intersecting wall was soon taken by the 300 hoplites, and the defenders, abandoning their post, sought refuge within the new city wall. So quickly were they followed by the enemy that many of these forced their way in along with the fugitives but were beaten back with some loss by the Syracusans within. Still the enterprise was thoroughly successful. The intersecting wall was destroyed, and the materials of the palisade were used by the Athenians in their work of circumvallation. Destruction of the second Syracusan counter- Death of The Athenian generals were now resolved that the Syracusans should not have the opportunity of throwing out fresh counterworks running like the last to the cliffs of Epipolai and thus defying the enemy to turn them. The cliffs were themselves fortified, and the Athenians thus started with an immense advantage in their further task of carrying their southward wall to the great harbour. But while this work was going on, the Syracusans were busy in preparing a fresh stockade, defended by a deep trench, from the new wall of the city across the low and marshy ground which stretched to the banks of the Anapos; and by the time that the walls on the cliffs were finished, the Athenians found themselves opposed by a fresh obstacle in their progress to the sea. Lamachos determined to make himself master of this counterwork at once. The fleet was ordered to sail round from Thapsos into the great harbour; and an attack on the trench and stockade at daybreak was rewarded by the capture of almost the whole of it. The Athenians had to make their way across the marshy ground by making a sort of causeway with planks and boards: and thus the rest of the counterwork was not taken until later on in the day. The real purpose of Lamachos was now accomplished. The Syracusans had not only been driven from their counterwork, but had been defeated in open battle. Their right wing had fled to the city; the left wing was in retreat for the river; and it would have been to the advantage of the Athenians if these had been allowed to cross and so been cut off from re-entering Syracuse. But at this point the three hundred picked hoplites who had done their task so well at the first counterwork brought about a disaster which carried the whole Athenian army many steps nearer to its ruin. Hurrying towards the bridge in order to cut off the fugitives, they were attacked by a body of Syracusan horse and thrown back on the Athenian right wing in such disorder as to disturb the ranks of the tribe with which they came into contact. Lamachos saw the danger, and hurried to their aid from the left wing with the Argive allies and a small force of archers. In his haste he advanced with a few companions and crossing a trench was for a moment separated from his followers. In an instant he was struck down and killed. Five or six died with him, and their bodies were carried off by the enemy. But the main body of the Athenian army had now come up, and the Syracusans were again compelled to retreat. Meanwhile those of them who had fled from the stockade to the city, encouraged by the repulse of the three hundred and the disorder of the Athenian right wing, issued again from the walls; and while they remained in sufficient numbers to retain the enemy on the former battle-ground, a detachment was sent to take the great central fortification from which the Athenian siege walls had started. They had hoped to find it empty, and they succeeded in taking and destroying the redoubt of one thousand feet in length raised for the protection of the builders; but when they advanced beyond it, they found themselves suddenly facing a wall of flame. Nikias was lying sick within the fort, and as soon as he knew that the enemy was approaching, he ordered his attendants to set on fire all the woodwork within their reach. The assailants at once retreated; the day had, indeed, again turned against them. The Athenian army, startled by the sudden outburst of flame round the fortress, was hurrying up from the lower ground; and at the same moment the magnificent Athenian fleet seen sweeping round into the great harbour which it was destined never to leave. was Prospects of the Athenians and Syracusans. Once more Nikias had everything in his favour, and prompt action would have been as certainly followed by success now as when his army first landed near the Olympieior. Some weeks were yet to pass before Gylippos could attempt to enter Syracuse; and the one thing of vital moment was that the city should be completely invested before that attempt should be made. A single wall carried from the great harbour to the central fort and thence to the sea at the northern extremity of Achradina would have amply sufficed for this purpose. But instead of urging on this work with the utmost speed, Nikias wasted time in building the southward wall double from the first, while much of the ground which should have been guarded by the eastward wall was left open. The Syracusans were therefore able still to bring in supplies by the road which passed C C under the rock of Euryelos; but even thus their prospects were sufficiently gloomy. They were, in fact, beginning to feel the miseries of a state of siege, and their irritation was vented first upon their generals whom they suspected either of gross neglect of duty or of wilful treachery. Hermokrates and his colleagues were deprived of their command, and Herakleides, Eukles, and Tellias put in their place. Even this measure of success was fully enough to lull Nikias into a feeling of fatal security: and the temptation to abandon himself to an inactivity which a painful internal disease made doubly agreeable was at this time for other reasons yet stronger. From the first a party in Syracuse had been at work to make him master of the city; and later in the siege, when the Athenians had begun to feel that their chances of success were becoming very small, these partisans induced him to linger on when retreat had become a matter of urgent need. By these men he was now told that the utter dejection of the Syracusans foreboded their almost immediate surrender; and the near prospect of this unconditional submission probably made him turn a deaf ear to the proposals which were actually made to him for a settlement of the quarrel.2 Voyage of Three or four months at least had passed away since the synod at Sparta in which Alkibiades propounded his infamous treachery, before Gylippos found himself able to advance beyond Leukas. At length with two Lakonian and two Corinthian vessels he crossed over to Taras, and thence went on to Thourioi in the vain hope that the Thourians would be glad to aid him for the sake of his father Kleandridas, who had long sojourned among them. Far from giving him any help, they sent to Nikias a message telling him that a Spartan general was making his way to Sicily more in the guise of a pirate or a privateer than as the leader of a force which should command respect. The contempt implied in the phrase soothed the vanity of Nikias, who showed his sense of his own superiority by failing to send, until it was too late, so much as a single ship to watch the movements of his enemy and to prevent his landing in Sicily.3 Gylippos had already passed through the straits of Messênê on his way to Himera, before the four triremes dispatched by Nikias on learning that Gylippos was already in Lokroi reached Rhegion. But even when Gylippos had set out on his march from Himera with a force of nearly 3,000 men, Nikias still remained as unconcerned within his lines as though the approach of a general bringing with him the influence of the Spartan name were a thing wholly beneath his notice. He had now only to block the roads by which 1 Thục. vii. 49 and 86. 2 Ib. vi. 103. 5 Ib. vi. 104. he had himself seized Epipolai, and Gylippos must have fallen back to devise some other means for succouring Syracuse. cuse. The time demanded indeed all the energy and the caution of which an Athenian army was capable. An assembly had already been summoned in Syracuse to discuss definitely the Entry of Gylippos terms for capitulation, when the Corinthian Gongylos Go by rain a single ship made his way into the city and told them that the aid of which they had despaired was almost at their doors. All thoughts of submission were at once cast to the winds, and they made ready forthwith to march out with all their forces to bring Gylippos into the town. Nikias was doing all that he could to make his way smooth before him. The materials for the new wall to the east of the central fort were lying for the most part ready for the builders: but the workmen were busy on the few furlongs which still remained unfinished at the end of the southern wall where for the present there was no danger whatever, and Gylippos entered Syracuse almost as a conqueror. The Athenians were at once made to feel that the parts of the actors had been changed. The Spartan general offered them a truce for five days, if they would spend this time in leaving not merely Syracuse but Sicily. The terms were treated with contemptuous silence; but the very fact of their being offered was not less significant than the refusal of Nikias to accept battle when Gylippos led the Syracusans into the open space before his lines. The next day was marked by the loss of the fortress of Labdalon, which seemed to have gone from the mind of Nikias because it was out of his sight, and by the seizure of an Athenian trireme in the harbour.1 Event followed event with astonishing speed. A night attack made by Gylippos on a weak part of the southern blockading wall was frustrated by the vigilance of the besiegers, who were now fast taking the place of the besieged; and the Athenian watches were in this portion of their work henceforth disposed with something like effectual care. But these precautions were of little avail or none; and Nikias resolved, while there was yet time, to fortify the promontory of Plemmyrion which with Ortygia, from which it is one mile distant, formed the entrance to the port. Here he stationed his large transport and merchant vessels with the swiftest of his triremes, while the stores for the army generally were deposited in three forts erected on the cape; and undoubtedly, as commanding the entrance to the bay, the post had great advantages. Convoys could enter the harbour without risk, and the Athenian fleet could intercept any vessels seeking entrance on the enemy's side: but as a set-off to these benefits, Plemmyrion had no water, and the 1 Thục. vii 3. Third counterwork of the Syracu sans. Syracusan horsemen, having full command of the country, harassed or destroyed the foraging parties which were compelled to seek supplies from long distances. More fatal than all was the admission, implied by this change of position, that the Athenians were rather defending themselves than attacking. Henceforth their seeming victories were to do them no good: their slightest failures or blunders were to do them infinite harm, and the former were indeed few and far between. No attempt had been made to stop Gylippos before he reached the Epizephyrian Lokroi; but twenty triremes were now sent to intercept the approaching Corinthian fleet under Erasinides. In a few days the enemy's ships reached Syracuse without having even come into contact with the Athenian squadron. A faint gleam of hope seemed to light up the prospect for the besiegers, when Gylippos, having led out his army to battle many times without being attacked, determined himself to become the assailant. The ground which he had chosen for the action near the new counterwork was too much cramped and broken up with walls to allow free action to his horsemen and archers; and he was punished by a defeat in which the Corinthian Gongylos was slain. Of this defeat he took the whole blame on himself. He would take care on the next day that they should fight under no such physical disadvantages, and the thought was not to be borne that Dorians from Peloponnesos should be unable to drive out the jumbled crowd of an Ionian army. In this second battle, the Syracusan horsemen did their work with fatal success. The Athenian left wing was immediately broken, and the whole army driven back to their lines,-not an attempt being made by their cavalry to avert or to lessen the disaster. Nikias had fought only to hinder the progress of the counterwork which had all but reached his wall. In the night which followed the fight, the point of intersection was passed, and all hope of blockading Syracuse except by storming the counter-wall faded finally away. But Nikias still had it in his power to guard the entrances to the slopes of Epipolai, and thus to keep the ground open for the work which the new force to be presently summoned from Athens must inevitably have to do. It would have been better even to abandon the whole line of siege works and concentrate the army on the high ground which overlooked the city, thus maintaining full communication with the interior of the island, and trusting to the effect of main force for dislodging the enemy, so soon as the new army from Athens should arrive. But there was no need to do even thus much. If an adequate detachment had occupied this ground now, Demosthenes would have encountered no opposition until he reached the third Syracusan counterwork. But Nikias again let the opportunity slip: and the |