History of the Peloponnesian War

At length, when the dead[*](Thucydides is silent as to the number of the slain. Diodorus (xviii. 19) puts the loss at the river at 18,000 and the captured at 7000; but it is evident that he includes the army of Demosthenes.) now lay in heaps one upon the other in the river, and the army had perished utterly, part in the river, and part—if any got safely across—at the hands of the cavalry, Nicias surrendered himself to Gylippus, having more confidence in him than in the Syracusans; and he bade him and the Lacedaemonians do with himself whatever they pleased, but to stop slaughtering the rest of the soldiers. Whereupon Gylippus at last gave orders to make prisoners;

and those of the survivors who had not been secretly appropriated by the Syracusan soldiers—and these were many— were brought in a body to Syracuse alive. They also sent men in pursuit of the three hundred, who had got through the guards the night before, and captured them.

Now that part of the army which was collected into the common stock was not large,[*](Not more than 1000; for the total number of the captives was about 7000 (7.87.4), and of these 6000 had belonged to the division of Demosthenes (7.82.3). But the full magnitude of the catastrophe is seen in the fact that eight days before the final surrender the Athenian army numbered 40,000.) but that which was secretly taken by the soldiers was large, and all Sicily was filled with them, inasmuch as they had not been taken by capitulation, as had the force under Demosthenes.

Besides, no small number had been killed; for the slaughter at the river had been very great—in fact, not inferior to any in this Sicilian war. And in the other frequent encounters which occurred on the march not a few had lost their lives. Notwithstanding all this, many escaped, some at the time, others afterwards, having become slaves and then making their escape; and the refuge for these was Catana.