History of the Peloponnesian War

Thucydides

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

And the town being now strongly besieged, there being also within some that practised to have it given up, they yielded themselves to the discretion of the Athenians, who slew all the men of military age, made slaves of the women and children, and inhabited the place with a colony sent thither afterwards of five hundred men of their own.

[*](THE PRINCIPAL CONTENTSSicily described.The causes and pretences of the Sicilian war, with the consultation and preparation for the same.Alcibiades, one of the generals of the army, accused of defacing the images of Mercury, is suffered for that present to depart with the army.The Athenian army cometh to Rhegium; thence to Catana.From thence Alcibiades is sent for home to make answer to his accusations, and by the way escaping, goeth to Lacedaemon.Nicias encampeth near Syracuse, and having overcome the army of the Syracusians in battle, returneth to Catana.The Syracusians procure aids amongst the rest of the Sicilians.Alcibiades instigateth and instructeth the Lacedaemonians against his country.Nicias returneth from Catana to Syracuse, and encamping in Epipolae, besiegeth the city and beginneth to enclose them with a double wall, which was almost brought to perfection in the beginning of the eighteenth year of this war.)

The same winter the Athenians, with greater forces than they had before sent out with Laches and Eurymedon, resolved to go again into Sicily, and, if they could, wholly to subdue it, being for the most part ignorant both of the greatness of the island, and of the multitude of people, as well Greeks as barbarians, that inhabited the same, and that they undertook a war not much less than the war against the Peloponnesians.

For the compass of Sicily is little less than eight days' sail for a ship; and though so great, is yet divided with no more than twenty furlongs, sea measure, from the continent.

It was inhabited in old time thus, and these were the nations that held it: The most ancient inhabitants in a part thereof are said to have been the Cyclopes and Laestrigones, of whose stock and whence they came or to what place they removed I have nothing to say. Let that suffice which the poets have spoken and which every particular man hath learned of them.

After them, the first that appear to have dwelt therein are the Sicanians, as they say themselves, nay, before the other, as being the natural breed of the island. But the truth is, they were Iberians, and driven away by the Ligyans from the banks of Sicanus, a river on which they were seated in Iberia. And the island from them came to be called Sicania, which was before Trinacria. And these [two] inhabit yet in the western parts of Sicily.

After the taking of Illium, certain Trojans, escaping the hands of the Grecians, landed with small boats in Sicily; and having planted themselves on the borders of the Sicanians, both the nations in one were called Elymi; and their cities were Eryx and Egesta. Hard by these came and dwelled also certain Phoceans, who, coming from Troy, were by tempest carried first into Africa and thence into Sicily.