History of the Peloponnesian War

and therefore they persuaded the allies, and put him to death. For this cause then, or something very like this, he was executed; having least of all the Greeks in my time 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 every thing in the same place;

and the dead, moreover, were piled up one on 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 [*]( 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—See Arnold's note) cotyle 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;