Destruction in Sicily

By summer 413 BC, the Athenian expeditionary force has been in Sicily for two years. It controls no significant territory. It has failed to take Syracuse. Sparta has sent a general named Gylippus, who has reorganized the Syracusan defense and fortified the harbor with a chain of stakes. The Athenians have lost their camp at Epipolae. A second Athenian armada under Demosthenes has arrived and attempted a night assault that turned into a rout. Demosthenes recommends immediate withdrawal. Nicias hesitates. Then, on the night scheduled for retreat, there is a lunar eclipse.

Thucydides' account of the final weeks is a catalogue of compounding decision failures, each one traceable to a specific human characteristic rather than to chance. Nicias, whose religious anxiety Thucydides has carefully established through the narrative, consults his soothsayers about the eclipse. They advise waiting twenty-seven days. He waits. The Syracusans, who do not share this theological schedule, use the interval to block the harbor mouth with their ships and position infantry on the shore roads.

When the Athenians finally attempt to break out by sea, they fight a naval engagement in a confined harbor — precisely the conditions that eliminate their advantage in seamanship and ship handling. Athenian triremes were designed for open-water ramming and speed; Syracusan ships have been modified with reinforced prows for close-quarters fighting. The result is not a battle but a slaughter. The Athenian fleet is destroyed. The survivors beach their ships and burn them, removing the last option of a sea escape.

Demosthenes and Nicias lead two separate land columns in retreat. Demosthenes' column is encircled first, on the second day. Demosthenes negotiates surrender terms. Nicias's column, pressing on, is caught at the Assinarus River — soldiers breaking ranks to drink from a river already red with blood — and the formation dissolves. Nicias surrenders to Gylippus personally, asking that the soldiers be spared. Gylippus, who had promised quarter, is overruled by the Syracusan assembly. Both generals are executed. Approximately 7,000 prisoners are interned in the stone quarries outside Syracuse, where they are kept for months in conditions of heat, cold, starvation, and disease until most die. Those who survive are sold as slaves.

Thucydides records, without apparent irony, that many prisoners gained their freedom by reciting verses from Euripides — Athens' most celebrated living playwright. Syracuse admired the poetry of the culture it had just destroyed.