Greece -- History -- Peloponnesian War, 431-404 B.C.
the Chalcidian horse and the targeteers, dispersed among the hills, and
with difficulty made their way to Eion. The men who had taken up and
rescued Brasidas, brought him into the town with the breath still in
him: he lived to hear of the victory of his troops, and not long after
expired. The rest of the army returning with Clearidas from the pursuit
stripped the dead and set up a trophy.
After this all the allies attended in arms and buried Brasidas at the
public expense in the city, in front of what is now the marketplace,
and the Amphipolitans, having enclosed his tomb, ever afterwards
sacrifice to him as a hero and have given to him the honour of games
and annual offerings. They constituted him the founder of their colony,
and pulled down the Hagnonic erections, and obliterated everything that
could be interpreted as a memorial of his having founded the place; for
they considered that Brasidas had been their preserver, and courting as
they did the alliance of Lacedaemon for fear of Athens, in their
present hostile relations with the latter they could no longer with the
same advantage or satisfaction pay Hagnon his honours. They also gave
the Athenians back their dead. About six hundred of the latter had
fallen and only seven of the enemy, owing to there having been no
regular engagement, but the affair of accident and panic that I have
described. After taking up their dead the Athenians sailed off home,
while Clearidas and his troops remained to arrange matters at
Amphipolis.
About the same time three Lacedaemonians—Ramphias, Autocharidas, and
Epicydidas—led a reinforcement of nine hundred heavy infantry to the
towns in the direction of Thrace, and arriving at Heraclea in Trachis
reformed matters there as seemed good to them. While they delayed
there, this battle took place and so the summer ended.
With the beginning of the winter following, Ramphias and his companions
penetrated as far as Pierium in Thessaly; but as the Thessalians
opposed their further advance, and Brasidas whom they came to reinforce
was dead, they turned back home, thinking that the moment had gone by,
the Athenians being defeated and gone, and themselves not equal to the
execution of Brasidas’s designs. The main cause however of their return
was because they knew that when they set out Lacedaemonian opinion was
really in favour of peace.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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