Those who were imprisoned in the quarries were at the beginning of their captivity harshly treated by the Syracusans. There were great numbers of them, and they were crowded in a deep and narrow place. At first the sun by day was scorching and suffocating, for they had no roof over their heads, while the autumn nights were cold, and the extremes of temperature engendered violent disorders. Being cramped for room, they had to do everything on the same spot. The corpses of those who had died from their wounds, exposure to the weather, and the like lay heaped one upon another. The smells were intolerable; and the prisoners were at the same time afflicted by hunger and thirst. During eight months they were allowed only about half a pint of water and a pint of food a day.[44] Every kind of misery which could befall man in such a place befell them. This was the condition of all the captives for about ten weeks. At length the Syracusans sold them, with the exception of the Athenians and of any Sicilian or Italian Greeks who had sided with them in the war. The whole number of the public prisoners is not accurately known, but they were not less than seven thousand. Of all the Hellenic actions which took place in this war, or indeed of all Hellenic actions which are on record, this was the greatest--the most glorious to the victors, the most ruinous to the vanquished; for they were utterly and at all points defeated, and their sufferings were prodigious. Fleet and army perished from the face of the earth; nothing was saved, and of the many who went forth few returned home. Thus ended the Sicilian expedition. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 36: From Book VII of the "History of the Peloponnesian War," translated by Benjamin Jowett. "The noblest piece of tragedy in all written history," says John Morley of this book. Gray, the poet, in one of his letters, inquired, "Is it, or is it not, the finest thing you ever read in your life?" Macaulay, in a letter once wrote: "I do assure you that there is no prose composition in the world that I place so high as the Seventh book of Thucydides. Tacitus was a great man, but he was not up to the Sicilian expedition." Praise is given to this chapter by Mahaffy for "the sustained splendor of the narrative." Grote had profound admiration for the famous picture contained in the selection here given. He refers to its "condensed and burning phrases" as imparting an impression which modern historians have sought in vain to convey.] [Footnote 37: The modern Catania, on the east coast of Sicily.] [Footnote 38: The people of Acarnania, a province of Greece, lying on the Ionian Sea south of the Ambracian Gulf.] [Footnote 39: Commander of the Athenians.] [Footnote 40: The Spartan general who had been sent to Syracuse by advice of Alcibiades after he went over to the enemy.] [Footnote 41: Next under Nicias in command of the expedition. He died twenty-nine years before the birth of the orator of the same name.]