XVI.

CHAP. attention of the Greeks. The Athenians, in return, sent their own herald to the Baotian camp, who Thucyd. represented, 'that the Athenians neither had pro'faned the temple nor would intentionally do so:

1. 4. c. 98.

c. 99.

·

that, by the common law of the Greeks, with the possession of territory the possession of temples always passed that the Boeotians themselves, who had acquired their present country by conquest, 'had taken possession of the temples of other peo'ple, which they had ever since held as their own : 'that if, in the necessity to which the Athenians were impelled by the unjust violence of the Boo'tians and their other enemies, to use extraordinary means for securing their country against invasion, they had disturbed the sacred fountain, they depended upon the indulgence of the god for the transgression, if it was one, where no offence was ' intended that on the contrary, the refusal of the 'Boeotians to restore the Athenian slain, was an impiety without excuse: finally, that the Athenians considered Delium as theirs by conquest, and 'would not evacuate it; but they nevertheless de'manded that their dead should be restored, ac'cording to the laws and customs of all the Greeks, 'transmitted from their forefathers.' The Boeotians appear to have felt the imputation of impiety and contravention of the institutions of their forefathers, for they endevored to obviate it by an evasion. They said, that, if Oropia, the district in which the battle was fought and Delium stood, was a Baotian territory, the Athenians ought to quit what was not theirs, and then their dead should be restored; but if it was an Athenian territory, to ask permission of others for anything to be done there was superfluous. With this the negotiation ended, and the Boeotians prepared immediately to besiege Delium.

III.

1.4. c.100.

We learn from the details of sieges remaining SECT. from Thucydides, that the Greeks of his age were not only very deficient in the art of attacking fortifications, but that their mechanics were defective, to a degree that we could not readily suppose of those who had carried the arts of masonry and sculpture so high. Fortunate for the people of the age, in the inefficacy of governments to give security to their subjects, that it was so, and that thus, those who could find subsistence within a fortification might generally withstand assault. The Bootians were far from thinking the army, with which they had defeated the whole strength of Attica, sufficient for the reduction of a fort of earth and wood, constructed in three days, and hopeless of relief. Two thousand Corinthians, a body of Me- Thucyd. garians, and part of the Peloponnesian garrison which had escaped from Nisæa, joined them after the battle. Still they thought themselves deficient in troops practised in the use of missile weapons, and they sent for some dartmen and slingers from the Malian bay. After all perhaps they would have been foiled, but for an engine invented for the occasion. A large tree, in the want of instruments for boring, was sawed in two, lengthways; and the parts, being excavated, were rejoined, so as to form a pipe, at one end of which, protected by iron plates, was suspended by chains a large cauldron, into which, from the end of the wooden pipe, a tube of iron projected. On the seventeenth day after the battle, the preparations were complete. The ma- Novem. chine, being raised on wheels, was moved to that part of the fort where vine-branches and wood appeared to have been most used in the construction. The cauldron was then filled with sulphur, pitch, and burning charcoal; large bellows were applied

XVI.

CHAP. to the opposite end of the cylinder; and a fire was thus raised that rendered it impossible for any living being to remain in the adjoining part of the fort. During the confusion thus created, the besiegers, chusing their moment for assault, carried the place. A considerable part of the garrison nevertheless found opportunity for flight, and saved themselves by getting aboard an Athenian squadron which lay off the neighboring coast: some however were killed, and, what was most important, about two hundred were made prisoners. Presently after, but while the event was yet unknown at Athens, a herald arriving to demand again the bodies of the slain in the late battle, obtained them without difficulty.

B. C. 424.

SECTION IV.

Transactions in Macedonia and

Thrace.

March of Brasidas into Thrace.

THESE transactions protracted the campain in Ol. 89. 1. Greece to a late season. Meanwhile Brasidas, havThucyd. ing put Megara into a state of security, returned to 1. 4. c. 78. Corinth, and while summer was not yet far ad

P. W. 8.

July.

vanced, had set forward on his difficult and hazard-
ous march toward Thrace. He had collected a
thousand heavy-armed Peloponnesians in addition
to his seven hundred Lacedæmonians.
As far as
the new Lacedæmonian colony of the Trachinian
Heracleia, he passed through friendly territories;
but there he arrived on the border of a country, not
indeed at declared enmity with Sparta, but allied to
Athens; and across the Thessalian plains, in defi-
ance of the Thessalian cavalry, with his small band,

IV.

which, including the light-armed and slaves, would SECT. scarcely exceed four thousand men, he could not attempt to force his way. The greatest part of Thessaly was nominally under democratical government, and the democratical party was zealous in the Athenian alliance; yet, in most of the towns, the interest of a few powerful men principally decided public measures. This facilitated negotiation, and Brasidas was not less able in negotiation than in arms. Employing sometimes the interest of the king of Macedonia, sometimes that of other allies, and never neglecting the moment of opportunity for gaining a step, he obtained free passage as far as the river Enipeus. There he found a body in arms, whose leaders declared their resolution to oppose his farther progress, and expressed, in reproaches to his Thessalian guides, their resentment at the permission and assistance so far given to an army of strangers passing through the country, unauthorized by the general consent of the Thessalian people. Fair words, discreetly used, nevertheless softened them; and, after no long treaty, Brasidas obtained unmolested passage. Through the remainder of Thessaly, dubiously disposed to him, but unpre- Thucyd. pared for immediate opposition, he made his way by forced marches till he reached Perrhæbia ; among whose people, subjects of the Thessalians, he had provided, by previous negotiation, for a favorable reception. The difficult passage over mount Olympus, which was next to be undertaken, made the friendship of the Perrhæbians particularly important. Under their guidance he arrived with his force intire at Dium, on the northern side of Olympus, where he was within the dominion of his ally the king of Macedonia.

1. 4. c. 79.

CHAP.
XVI.

Here the difficulties of his march ended, but difficulties of another kind arose. A common interest in opposing Athens had united the king of Macedonia with Lacedæmon, and with the allies of Lacedæmon in his neighborhood; but their interests were otherwise different, and their views, in some points, opposite. The principal object of Perdiccas was to subdue the province called Lyncus, or Lyncestis, among the mountains on the western frontier of Macedonia, and far from the Grecian colonies. This was a measure by no means calculated to promote the interest of Lacedæmon; which rather required that alliances should be extended on all sides, and that the confederacy should have no enemy but Athens. Eight years before, Perdiccas had been chosen, by the confederate Grecian army, to the secondary command of general of the cavalry, while a citizen of Corinth was appointed commander-inchief. He seems to have been then little pleased with such a compliment, and apparently it was his purpose now to preclude the means for a repetition of it. Joining his forces with those of Brasidas, he assumed command, and directed the march of the combined army toward Lyncestis.

The prince of Lyncestis, Arrhibæus, little able to withstand the forces of Macedonia and Lacedæmon, had sent to Brasidas to request his mediation with Perdiccas. The Spartan general therefore not immediately refusing to march, stopped however on the Lyncestian frontier; and representing that the apprehension of so great a force, ready to fall upon his country, would probably induce the Lyncestian prince to a reasonable accommodation, he declared that for the Lacedæmonians, he judged it neither expedient nor just to proceed hostilely, till the trial had been made. Accordingly a negotiation was opened, and shortly a treaty was concluded, by