movement, and the several changes of fortune that happened, they discovered the concern they had in the battle, their fears, their hopes, their grief, their joy, by different cries and different gestures; stretching out their hands sometimes towards the combatants to animate them, at other times towards heaven, to implore the succour and protection of the gods. At last, the Athenian fleet, after making a long and vigorous resistance, was put to flight, and driven against the shore. The Syracusans on the walls, seeing their countrymen victorious, conveyed the news to the whole city by a universal shout. The victors immediately sailed towards Syracuse, where they erected a trophy, while the Athenians were so much dejected, that they did not even request the dead bodies of their fellow soldiers to be delivered to them, in order to honour them with the rites of burial.

There now remained but two methods for them to choose; either to attempt the passage a second time, for which they had still ships and soldiers sufficient; or to abandon their fleet to the enemy, and retire by land. Demosthenes recommended the former plan; but the soldiers were so much intimidated by their late defeat, that they had not courage to undertake it. The second method was therefore adopted; and they accordingly prepared to set out in the night, the better to conceal their march from the enemy. Hermocrates, however, the Syracusan general, was extremely unwilling that so large a body of men (amounting to near forty thousand) should be suffered to depart, lest they should fortify themselves in some corner of the island, and renew the war. At the same time he knew it would be impossible to persuade the Syracusans to oppose their marching that evening, as they were then engaged in celebrating their late victory, and solemnizing the festival of Hercules. He therefore fell upon another expedient. He sent out a few horsemen, who were to pass for friends of the Athenians, and ordered them to tell Nicias not to retire till daylight, as the Syracusans lay in ambush for him, and had seized on all the passes.

Nicias was so weak as to believe this intelligence,

and accordingly delayed his departure not only that evening but the whole of the next day, in order that the soldiers might have more time to prepare for their march, and carry off whatever might be necessary for their subsistence. But this delay afterwards proved fatal to them for early next morning the enemy took possession of all the difficult avenues, fortified the banks of the rivers in those parts where they were fordable, broke down the bridges, and spread detachments of horse up and down the plain, so that there was not one place which the Athenians could pass without fighting.

They set out upon their march the third day after the battle, with a design to retire to Catana. Their army was divided into two bodies, both drawn up in the form of a phalanx, the first being commanded by Nicias, and the second by Demosthenes, with the baggage in the centre. In this manner they proceeded for several days, during which they were terribly harassed by the enemy, who hung upon their rear, and overwhelmed them with showers of darts and arrows, but never would stand a general engagement, when the Athenians wheeled about.

Finding, therefore, their numbers daily decrease, and being at the same time in extreme want of provisions, they altered their plan, and, instead of continuing their march to Catana, they directed their route towards Camerina and Gela. As this scheme was executed in the night, it was attended with so much confusion, that the rear guard, under Demosthenes, soon parted from the main body, and lost their way. Next day the Syracusans came up with them, and surrounded them in a narrow place; and though they defended themselves for some time with incredible bravery, yet finding it impossible to effect their escape, they were at last obliged to surrender prisoners of war, which they did upon condition that they should not be put to death, nor condemned to perpetual imprisonment. About six thousand men surrendered on these terms.

In the meantime, Nicias proceeded on his march, and crossing the river Erineus, encamped on a mountain,

where the enemy overtook him the next day, and summoned him to surrender, as Demosthenes had done. Nicias at first could not believe what they told him concerning Demosthenes, and therefore begged leave to send some horse to inquire into the truth; and when he found that matters really were so, he offered to defray all the expenses of the war, provided they would suffer him to quit the island with his forces. But this proposal was rejected by the enemy, who immediately renewed the attack; and though Nicias defended himself during the whole night, and even contiuued his march next day to the river Asinarus, yet he was quickly pursued thither by the Syracusans, who threw most of the Athenians into the stream; the rest having already thrown themselves into it in order to quench their burning thirst. Here the most terrible havock was committed; so that Nicias, finding all things desperate, was obliged to surrender upon this single condition, that Gylippus should discontinue the fight, and spare the lives of his men. The lives of the men, indeed, were spared; but Nicias and Demosthenes, after being scourged with rods, were cruelly put to death; a striking proof of the barbarity of the age. By this savage act, the Syracusans tarnished the glory they had acquired by the gallant defence of their city, and the signal victory they had won.

It must be owned, indeed, that Gylippus, and even many of the Syracusans themselves, did all they could to save the lives of the Athenian generals; but the great body of the people, egged on by their orators, and particularly by Diocles, one of their most popular leaders, could be satisfied with nothing less than the blood of these two illustrious men. The fate of Nicias is the more to be lamented, as no man was ever more remarkable for humanity and goodnature; and though he headed this expedition in obedience to the commands of his countrymen, yet he did every thing in his power to prevent them from undertaking it. Demosthenes too was a man of so respectable a character, that the famous orator of the same name, many years after valued himself on account of his being of the same family.

As to the prisoners, they were shut up in the dungeons of Syracuse, where many of them perished through want and bad treatment: and those that survived, being afterwards sold for slaves, recommended themselves so strongly to their masters by their modest, prudent, and ingenuous behaviour, that many of them soon obtained their liberty; and some of them even owed that favour to their being able to repeat the finest scenes of Euripides' tragedies, of which the Sicilians were passionately fond: so that when they returned to their own country they went and saluted the poet as their deliverer, and informed him of the great advantage they had derived from their being acquainted with his verses.

The Athenians were so little prepared to receive the news of this defeat, or rather, indeed, they were so confident of receiving news of a contrary nature, that they condemned to death the man that first brought the intelligence; but when they found that matters were really worse than fame had reported, they were at once overwhelmed with grief and despair. They had never indeed been reduced to so deplorable a condition as they were now, having neither horse, foot, money, ships, nor mariners: in a word, they sunk into the deepest despondency, and expected every moment, that the enemy, elate with so great a victory, and strengthened by the junction of the allies, would come and invade Athens both by sea and land with all the forces of Peloponnesus. Cicero therefore had reason to say, when speaking of the battles in the harbour of Syracuse, that it was there the troops of Athens, as well as their galleys, were ruined and sunk; and that in this harbour the power and glory of the Athenians were miserably shipwrecked.

The Athenians, however, did not suffer themselves to be wholly dejected, but assumed courage from despair. They raised money on every side for building new ships; they retrenched all superfluous expenses; and they established a council of old men, to examine every matter before it was brought into the assembly of the people. In a word, they took every step that could possibly tend to retrieve their ruined affairs, or at least prevent them from growing worse

than they were. But nothing could restore them to their former splendid condition; for from this time forward, the Athenians present us with a very different picture from what they have hitherto done. We are no longer to behold them making a figure in arts and arms; giving lessons on politeness, humanity, philosophy, and war, to all the nations around; and aiming at the erection of an empire, which, if once thoroughly established, would have bid defiance to all the neighbouring states. Instead of aspiring to the conquest of their neighbours, they are now content with defending their own territories at home: instead of directing the councils, and conducting the confederate armies of Greece, they now confine all their attention to their own private affairs; they in a manner become annihilated; they fade from the eye of the historian; and other nations, whose names have hitherto been scarcely mentioned, emerge from obscurity.

It was in this deplorable state of the Athenian affairs, that Alcibiades made proposals of returning home, provided the administration of the republic was put into the hands of the great and powerful, and not left to the populace, who had expelled him. In order to induce his countrymen to agree to these terms, he offered to procure them not only the favour of Tissaphernes, the king of Persia's lieutenant, with whom he had taken refuge, but even that of the king himself, upon condition they would abolish the democracy, or popular government; because the king, he said, would place more confidence in the engagements of the nobility, than in those of the giddy and capricious multitude. The chief man who opposed his return, was Phrynicus, one of the generals, who, in order to accomplish his purpose, sent word to Astyochus, the Lacedæmonian general, that Alcibiades was using his utmost endeavours to engage Tissaphernes in the Athenian interest. He offered, further, to betray to him the whole army and navy of the Athenians. But his treasonable practices being all detected by the good understanding between Alcibiades and Astyochus, he was stripped of his office, and afterwards stabbed in the marketplace. In the meantime the Athenians proceeded to complete