might be taken with them, and call by name any friend or relation whom they saw passing; they would hang upon their departing comrades and follow as far as they could, and when their limbs and strength failed them and they dropped behind many were the imprecations and cries which they uttered. So that the whole army was in tears, and such was their despair that they could hardly make up their minds to stir, although they were leaving an enemy's country, having suffered calamities too great for tears already, and dreading miseries yet greater in the unknown future. There was also a general feeling of shame and self-reproach—indeed, they seemed, not like an army, but like the fugitive population of a city captured after a siege; and of a great city too. For the whole multitude who were marching together numbered not less than forty thousand. Each of them took with him any thing he could carry which was likely to be of use. Even the heavy-armed and cavalry, contrary to their practice when under arms, conveyed about their persons their own food, some because they had no attendants, others because they could not trust them; for they had long been deserting, and most of them had gone off all at once. Nor was the food which they carried sufficient; for the supplies of the camp had failed. Their disgrace and the universality of the misery, although there might be some consolation in the very community of suffering, was nevertheless at that moment hard to bear, especially when they remembered from what pomp and splendor they had fallen into their present low estate. Never had an Hellenic army experienced such a reverse. They had come intending to enslave others, and they were going away in fear lest they would be themselves enslaved. Instead of the prayers and hymns with which they had put to sea, they were now departing amid appeals to heaven of another sort. They were no longer sailors but landsmen, depending, not upon their fleet, but upon their infantry. Yet in face of the great danger which still threatened them all these things appeared endurable. Nicias exhorted the wretched troops with noble spirit. The key in which, according to Thucydides, this invalid general spoke to his men is given in the following two sentences at the close of his harangue : If you now escape your enemies, those of you who are not Athenians may see once more the home for which they long, while you Athenians will again rear aloft the fallen greatness of Athens. For men, and not walls or ships in which are no men, constitute a state. The last sentence foregoing reads like the original of a passage in a well-known English poem; but it is perhaps itself from an original in Greek poetry, older than Thucydides. The English poem to which we refer is Sir William Jones's Ode in Imitation of Alcæus. The imitative character of that poem associates it so naturally with the general subject of the present volume, that we may quote a few lines of it here, in parallel to Thucydides reporting Nicias: What constitutes a state? Not high-raised battlement or labored mound, Not cities proud with spires and turrets crowned. No! men, high-minded men, These constitute a state. High heart did not avail. The retreating Athenian army suffered every hardship and melted rapidly away. Reaching a river under close pursuit, they hoped to secure a little respite. The respite they actually secured is thus described by Thucydides: Being compelled to keep close together they fell one upon another, and trampled each other under foot: some at once perished, pierced by their own spears; others got entangled in the baggage and were carried down the stream. The Syracusans stood upon the farther bank of the river, which was steep, and hurled missiles from above on the Athenians, who were huddled together in the deep bed of the stream and for the most part were drinking greedily. The Peloponnesians came down the bank and slaughtered them, falling chiefly upon those who were in the river. Whereupon the water at once became foul, but was drank all the same, although muddy and dyed with blood, and the crowd fought for it. At last, when the dead bodies were lying in heaps one upon another in the water, and the army was utterly undone, some perishing in the river, and any 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 Lacedæmonians to do what they pleased with himself, but not to go on killing the men. What they pleased to do with Nicias was to put him to death. "No one of the Hellenes in my time was less deserving of so miserable an end; for he lived in the practice of every virtue." So, with frugally expressed, but not frugal, praise Thucydides dismissed Nicias. The fate of the rank and file of the surrendered army was more lingering, but not less dreadful. Thucydides : The captive Athenians and allies they deposited in the quarries, which they thought would be the safest place of confinement. 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 still 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 every thing on the same spot. The corpses of those who died from their wounds, exposure to the weather, and the like, lay heaped one upon another. The smells were intolerable; and they 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. 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 Sicilians 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 the 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. And thus shall end our presentation of Thucydides. PHILOSOPHY. IV. PLATO WE go from history to philosophy. It is a marked transition. But the change, we trust, will be grateful to our readers. If to any among them this should not be the case, let such consider two things fitted to smooth the present transition, namely, first, that Thucydides was something of a philosopher in his history; and, secondly, that Plato may fairly be made something of an historian in his philosphy. For is not history, according to Carlyle, the essence of innumerable biographies? And Plato shall serve in great part as biographer of Socrates. Socrates is not more easily foremost among Greek philosophers, than is Plato foremost among Greek philosophical writers. This distinction, of philosopher and philosophical writer, it is necessary in the present case to make, for the reason that Socrates, as our readers will not need to be reminded, did his whole work in the intellectual world with use of tongue alone, never once publishing a written word. Foremost of Greek philosophical writers, we have not hesitated to pronounce Plato. But we think of Plato's illustrious disciple, Aristotle, and we are almost ready to say that were the terms of the question only a little changed-were we to decide, not which of the two was the greater philo sophical writer, but which was the greater philosophical genius, we should need to pause and to hesitate. While to Plato, however, philosophy was the one exclusive pursuit of his intellectual life, philosophy was simply one of various intellectual pursuits to Aristotle. Poet as well as philosopher-poet more than philosopher, some might be tempted to say was Plato. But he wrote his poetry in the form of philosophy. Aristotle, besides being a philosopher, was a kind of encyclopædist. He by no means, like Plato, gave his literary production always the one form of philosophy socalled. We should not, perhaps, go much amiss to say that Aristotle's chief motive, even in literature, was scientific and practical, while Plato's chief motive, even in philosophy, was literary and poetical. Plato is a voluminous writer. And he enjoys the fortune, singular among ancient classical authors, to survive in all his works. In fact he may in a sense be said to survive in more than all his works; for many works have come down to us bearing Plato's name, that Plato never wrote. The critics differ greatly among themselves on the question of the genuineness of various works attributed to the hand of Plato. We shall not trouble our readers with any details of the controversies that on this point have, from very early times down to the present, well-nigh literally raged among scholars. In a case in which authorities so eminent, and so evenly mated in eminence, as Grote and Jowett, arrive at conclusions so divergent, one may wisely make up one's mind to be content with something short of absolute certainty. Happily as to all those works ascribed to Plato, which we in any case should wish to lay before our readers, there is universal agreement. We need not even mention by title the productions, a long list, that editors of Plato's text usually print as belonging to their author. The titles, being most of them names of persons, are generally not at all significant of the nature of the |