Читать книгу Outlines of Universal History, Designed as a Text-book and for Private Reading - George Park Fisher - Страница 53

THE SICILIAN EXPEDITION.—From this time, Alcibiades, a relative of Pericles, but lacking his sobriety and disinterested spirit, plays an active part. Beautiful in person, rich, a graceful and effective orator, but restless and ambitious, he quickly acquired great influence. Three years after the peace of Nicias, he persuaded Athens to join a league of disaffected Peloponnesian allies of Sparta; but in the battle of Mantinea (418 B.C.) the Spartans regained their supremacy. It was at the suggestion of Alcibiades that the Athenians undertook the great Sicilian Expedition, which resulted in the worst disasters they ever suffered. This expedition was aimed at the Dorian city of Syracuse, and the hope was that all Sicily might be conquered. It consisted of about forty thousand men, besides the sailors. The commanders were Alcibiades, Nicias, and Lamachus. Alcibiades was recalled to answer a charge of sacrilege. At Thurii he managed to escape and went over to the side of Sparta. Gylippus went with a small Spartan fleet to aid Syracuse. The Athenians were repulsed in their attack on the city. Although re-inforced by land and naval forces under a gallant and worthy general, Demosthenes, they fought under great disadvantages, so that their fleet was destroyed in the Syracusan harbor. Their retreating forces on land were cut to pieces or captured. Nicias and Demosthenes died either at the hands of the executioner or by a self-inflicted death.

NAVAL CONTESTS.—No such calamity had ever overtaken a Grecian army. The news of it brought anguish into almost every family in Athens. The Spartans had fortified the village of Decelea in Attica, and sought on the sea, with Persian help, to annihilate the Athenian navy. The allies of Athens, Chios, Miletus, etc., revolted. The oligarchs at Athens overthrew the democratic constitution, and placed the Government in the hands of a Council of Four Hundred. The popular assembly was limited to five thousand members, and was never called together. The object was to make peace with Sparta. But the army before Samos, of which Thrasybulus, a patriotic man, was the leader, refused to accept this change of government. Alcibiades, who had left the Spartans out of anger on account of their treatment of him, was recalled, and assumed command. The oligarchical rule was overturned in four months after its establishment, and the democracy restored—the assembly being still limited, however, to five thousand citizens. Three brilliant naval victories, the last at Cyzicus (410 B.C.), were won over the Spartans by Alcibiades who came back to Athens in triumph (408 B.C.). Lysander was the commander of the Spartan fleet on the coast of Asia Minor, and (407 B.C.) gained a victory over the Athenian ships during a temporary absence of Alcibiades. Alcibiades was not reëlected general. He now withdrew, and, three years later, died. The new Spartan admiral, Callicratidas, surrounded the Athenian fleet under Conon at Mitylene. By very strenuous exertions of the Athenians, a new fleet was dispatched to the help of Conon; and in the battle of Arginusæ (406 B.C.), the Peloponnesians were completely vanquished. The public spirit of Athens and the resources of a free people were never more impressively shown than in the prodigious efforts made by the Athenians to rise from the effect of the crushing disaster which befell the Sicilian expedition on which their hopes were centered. But these exertions only availed to furnish to coming generations an example of the heroic energy and love of country which are possible under free government.