The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume I (of X) - Greece
History
The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume I (of X) - Greece
Literature -- Collections
At last, when the dead bodies were lying in heaps upon one another in
the water and the army was utterly undone, some perishing in the
river, and any one who escaped being cut off by the cavalry, Nicias
surrendered to Gylippus, in whom he had more confidence than in the
Syracusans. He entreated him and the Lacedaemonians to do what they
pleased with himself, but not to go on killing the men. So Gylippus
gave the word to make prisoners. Thereupon the survivors, not
including, however, a large number whom the soldiers concealed, were
brought in alive. As for the three hundred who had broken through the
guard in the night, the Syracusans sent in pursuit and seized them.
The total of the public prisoners when collected was not great; for
many were appropriated by the soldiers, and the whole of Sicily was
full of them, they not having capitulated like the troops under
Demosthenes. A large number also perished; the slaughter at the river
being very great, quite as great as any which took place in the
Sicilian war; and not a few had fallen in the frequent attacks which
were made upon the Athenians during the march. Still many escaped,
some at the time, others ran away after an interval of slavery, and
all these found refuge at Catana.
The Syracusans and their allies collected their forces and returned
with the spoil, and as many prisoners as they could take with them,
into the city. The captive Athenians and allies they deposited in the
quarries, which they thought would be the safest place of confinement.
Nicias and Demosthenes they put to the sword, altho against the will
of Gylippus. For Gylippus thought that to carry home with him to
Lacedaemon the generals of the enemy, over and above all his other
successes, would be a brilliant triumph. One of them, Demosthenes,
happened to be the greatest foe, and the other the greatest friend of
the Lacedaemonians, both in the same matter of Pylos and Sphacteria....
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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