Active warlike preparations thoughout Greece during the winter of 414–413 B.C.

The Syracusan war now no longer stands apart, as an event by itself, but becomes absorbed in the general war rekindling throughout Greece. Never was any winter so actively and extensively employed in military preparations, as the winter of 414–413 B.C., the months immediately preceding that which Thucydidês terms the nineteenth spring of the Peloponnesian war, but which other historians call the beginning of the Dekeleian war. While Eurymedon went with his ten triremes to Syracuse even in midwinter, Demosthenês exerted himself all the winter to get together the second armament for early spring. Twenty other Athenian triremes were farther sent round Peloponnesus to the station of Naupaktus—to prevent any Corinthian reinforcements from sailing out of the Corinthian Gulf. Against these latter, the Corinthians on their side prepared twenty-five fresh triremes, to serve as a convoy to the transports carrying their hoplites. In Corinth, Sikyon, and Bœotia, as well as at Lacedæmon, levies of hoplites were going on for the armament to Syracuse—at the same time that everything was getting ready for the occupation of Dekeleia. Lastly, Gylippus was engaged with not less activity in stirring up all Sicily to take a more decisive part in the coming year's struggle.

From Cape Tænarus in Laconia, at the earliest moment of spring, embarked a force of 600 Lacedæmonian hoplites (Helots and Neodamodes) under the Spartan Ekkritus—and 300 Bœotian hoplites under the Thebans Xenon and Nikon, with the Thespian Hegesandrus.

Miserable condition of Athens during the two preceding years.

The period intervening between the defeat of Ægospotami (October 405 b.c.), and the re-establishment of the democracy as sanctioned by the convention concluded with Pausanias (some time in the summer of 403 b.c.), presents two years of cruel and multifarious suffering to Athens. For seven years before, indeed, ever since the catastrophe at Syracuse, she had been struggling with hardships—contending against augmented hostile force while her own means were cut down in every way—crippled at home by the garrison of Dekeleia—stripped to a great degree both of her tribute and her foreign trade—and beset by the snares of her own oligarchs. In spite of circumstances so adverse, she had maintained the fight with a resolution not less surprising than admirable; yet not without sinking more and more towards impoverishment and exhaustion. The defeat towards impoverishment and exhaustion. The defeat of Ægospotami closed the war at once, and transferred her from her period of struggle to one of concluding agony. Nor is the last word by any means too strong for the reality. Of these two years, the first portion was marked by severe physical privation, passing by degrees into absolute famine, and accompanied by the intolerable sentiment of despair and helplessness against her enemies, after two generations of imperial grandeur—not without a strong chance of being finally consigned to ruin and individual slavery; while the last portion comprised all the tyranny, murders, robberies, and expulsions perpetrated by the Thirty, overthrown only by heroic efforts of patriotism on the part of the exiles—which a fortunate change of sentiment, on the part of Pausanias, and the leading members of the Peloponnesian confederacy, ultimately crowned with success.

IN EXPLANATION OF THE PLAN OF SYRACUSE AND THE OPERATIONS DURING THE ATHENIAN SIEGE

In the description given of this memorable event by Thucydidês, there is a good deal which is only briefly and imperfectly explained. He certainly has left us various difficulties, in the solution of which we cannot advance beyond conjecture more or less plausible: though there are some which appear to me to admit of a more satisfactory solution than has yet been offered.

Dr. Arnold, in an Appendix annexed to the third volume of his Thucydidês (p. 265 seq.), together with two Plans, has bestowed much pains on the elucidation of these difficulties: also Colonel Leake, in his valuable Remarks on the Topography of Syracuse (the perusal of which, prior to their appearance in the Transactions of the Royal Society of Literature, I owe to his politeness); Serra di Falco, in the fourth volume of his Antichità di Sicilia; and Saverio Cavallari (the architect employed in 1839, in the examination and excavation of the ground which furnished materials for the work of Serra di Falco) in a separate pamphlet—Zur Topographie von Syrakus—printed in the Göttinger Studien for 1845, and afterwards reprinted at Göttingen. With all the aid derived from these comments, I arrive at conclusions on some points different from all of them, which I shall now proceed shortly to state—keeping closely and exclusively to Thucydidês and the Athenian siege, and not professing to meddle with Syracuse as it stood afterwards.

THE years of the Roman emperors and the fractions of months and days are carefully noted by Dio and other historians. But yet even if the genuine numbers were always preserved, which is not to be expected, the sum of all the reigns would not express the exact amount of time; for sometimes the reigns are in part contemporary; as the last 4 months of Justin were also the first 4 months of Justinian; the last 10 days of Justin II were the first 10 of Tiberius II; the two last days of the same Tiberius were the first two of Mauricius. Galba Otho and Vitellius were in part contemporary with Nero and Vespasian. The elder Gordians Pupienus and Balbinus were included for the most part in the reign of Maximin. The last day of an emperor was sometimes counted again as the first of his successor; thus Aug. 19 A. D. 14 was both the last day of Augustus and the first of Tiberius. Sometimes a short interval occurred; as 10 days after the death of Jovian; 3 days at the least after the death of Trajan; a day between Caligula and Claudius, called by Suetonius two days (current) of liberty. Sometimes the life or reign of an emperor was reckoned exclusive of the day of his death; as the life of Caracalla by Dio, and the reign of Heraclius by Nicephorus.

But on the other hand the chronographers give erroneous accounts because they often omit fractions of years that they may obtain a more convenient measure of time.

Rally of Athens, during the year after the defeat at Syracuse. b.c. 412.

About a year elapsed between the catastrophe of the Athenians near Syracuse and the victory which they gained over the Milêsians, on landing near Milêtus (from September 413 b.c., to September 412 b.c.). After the first of those two events, the complete ruin of Athens had appeared both to her enemies and to herself, impending and irreparable. But so astonishing, so rapid, and so energetic, had been her rally, that at the time of the second, she was found again carrying on a tolerable struggle, though with impaired resources and on a purely defensive system, against enemies both bolder and more numerous than ever. Nor is there any reason to doubt that her foreign affairs might have gone on thus improving, had they not been endangered at thiscritical moment by the treason of a fraction of her own citizens—bringing her again to the brink of ruin, from which she was only rescued by the incompetence of her enemies.

Commencement of the conspiracy of the Four Hundred at Athens—Alkibiadês.

That treason took its first rise from the exile Alkibiadês. I have already recounted how this man, alike unprincipled and energetic, had thrown himself with his characteristic ardour into the service of Sparta, and had indicated to her the best means of aiding Syracuse, of inflicting positive injury upon Athens, and lastly, of provoking revolt among the Ionic allies of the latter.