History of the Peloponnesian War

Thucydides

Thucydides. The English works of Thomas Hobbes of Malmesbury. Hobbes, Thomas. translator. London: John Bohn, 1843.

For though the Syracusans were masters by land, yet seeing they hindered them but with few galleys from the liberty of the sea, they made preparation, and were gathering together a fleet with intention to resist them.

And the Athenians furnished out forty galleys to send into Sicily, conceiving that the war there would the sooner be at an end and desiring withal to train their men in naval exercise.

Therefore Pythodorus, one of the commanders, they sent presently away with a few of those galleys, and intended to send Sophocles, the son of Sostratides, and Eurymedon, the son of Thucles, with the greatest number afterwards.

But Pythodorus, having now the command of Laches' fleet, sailed in the end of winter unto a certain garrison of the Locrians which Laches had formerly taken, and overthrown in a battle there by the Locrians, retired.

The same spring, there issued a great stream of fire out of the mountain Aetna, as it had also done in former times, and burned part of the territory of the Catanaeans, that dwell at the foot of Aetna, which is the highest mountain of all Sicily.

From the last time that the fire brake out before to this time, it is said to be fifty years. And it hath now broken out thrice in all since Sicily was inhabited by the Grecians.

These were the things that came to pass this winter. And so ended the sixth year of this war written by Thucydides.

[*](THE PRINCIPAL CONTENTSThe Athenians take and fortify Pylus in Messenia.The Lacedaemonians, to recover it, put over four hundred of their best men into the island Sphacteria, whom the Athenians, having overcome the Lacedaemonian fleet, do there besiege.The Athenians and Syracusans fight in the Strait of Messana.Cleon engageth himself rashly to take or kill the Lacedaemonians in Sphacteria within twenty days and by good fortune performeth it.The sedition ceaseth in Corcyra.Nicias invadeth Peloponnesus.The Sicilians, agreeing, take from the Athenians their pretence of sailing upon that coast with their fleet.The Athenians take Nisaea, but fail of Megara.The overthrow of the Athenians at Delium.The cities on the confines of Thrace, upon the coming of Brasidas, revolt to the Lacedaemonians.Truce for a year.And this in three years more of the same war.)

The spring following, when corn began to be in the ear, ten galleys of Syracuse and as many of Locris went to Messana in Sicily, called in by the citizens themselves, and took it; and Messana revolted from the Athenians.

This was done by the practice chiefly of the Syracusans, that saw the place to be commodious for invasion of Sicily, and feared lest the Athenians, some time or other hereafter making it the seat of their war, might come with greater forces into Sicily and invade them from thence; but partly also of the Locrians, as being in hostility with the Rhegians and desirous to make war upon them on both sides.

The Locrians had now also entered the lands of the Rhegians with their whole power, both because they would hinder them from assisting the Messanians and because they were solicited thereunto by the banished men of Rhegium that were with them. For they of Rhegium had been long in sedition and were unable for the present to give them battle, for which cause they the rather also now invaded them.

And after they had wasted the country, the Locrians withdrew their land-forces; but their galleys lay still at the guard of Messana, and more were setting forth, to lie in the same harbour, to make the war on that side.

About the same time of the spring, and before corn was at full growth, the Peloponnesians and their confederates, under the conduct of Agis, the son of Archidamus, king of the Lacedaemonians, invaded Attica, and there lay and wasted the country about.