Page:Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology (1870) - Volume 2.djvu/331

Rh GYLIPPUS. the line was marked out, and stones were lying along it ready for the builders, and in parts the wall itself rose, half-completed, above the ground. (Thuc. vi. 93, 104, vii. 1—2.) Gylippus passed through the island collecting reinforcements on his way, and giving the Syra- cnsans warning of his approach, was met by their Avhole force at the rear of the city, where the broad back of Epipolae slopes upward from its walls to the point of Labdalum. Mounting this at Euryelus, he came unexpectedly on the Athenian works with his forces formed in order of battle. The Athenians were somewhat confounded ; but tfiey also drew up for the engagement. Gylippus commenced his communications with them by sending a herald with an offer to allow them to leave Sicily as they had come within five days' time, a message which was of course scornfully dismissed. But in spite of this assumption, pro- bably politic, of a lofty tone, he found his Syra- cusan forces so deficient in discipline, and so unfit for action, that he moved off into a more open position ; and finding himself unmolested, with- drew altogether, and passed the night in the suburb Temenites. On the morrow he reappeared in full force before the enemy's works, and under this feint detached a force, which succeeded in capturing the fort of Labdalum, and put the whole garrison to the sword. (Thuc. vii. 2, 3.) For some days thenceforward he occupied his men in raising a cross-wall, intended to interfere with the line of circumvallation. This the Athe- nians had now brought still nearer to completion : a night enterprise, made with a view of surprising a weak part of it, had been detected and baffled ; but Nicias, in despair, it would seem, of doing any good on the land side, was now employing a great part of his force in the fortification of Plemyrium, a point which commanded the entrance of the port. At length Gylippus, conceiving his men to be sufficiently trained, ventured an attack ; but his cavalry, entangled amongst stones and masonry, were kept out of action ; the enemy maintained the superiority of its infantry, and raised a trophy. Gylippus, however, by openly professing the fault to have been his own selection of unsuitable ground, inspired them with courage for a fresh attempt. By a wiser choice, and by posting his horse and his dartmen on the enemy's flank, he now won the Syracusans their first victory. The counterwork was quickly completed ; the circum- vallation effectually destroyed ; Epipolae cleared of the enemy ; the city on one side delivered from siege. Gylippus, having achieved so much, ven- tured to leave his post, and go about the island in search of auxiliaries. (Thuc. vii. 4 — 7.) His return in the spring of b. c. 413 was fol- lowed by a naval engagement, with the confidence required for which he and Hermocrates combined their efforts to inspire the people. On the night preceding the day appointed, he himself led out the whole land force, and with early dawn assaulted and carried successively the three forts of Ple- myrium, most important as the dep6t of the Athe- nian stores and treasure, a success, therefore, more than atoning for the doubtful victory obtained by the enemy's fleet (Thuc. vii. 22, 23). The second naval fight, and first naval victory, of the Syra- cusans, the arrival and defeat on Epipolae of the second Athenian armament, offer, in our accounts of them, no individual features for the biography of GYLIPPUS. 817 Gylippus. Nor yet does much appear in his sub- sequent successful mission through the island in quest of reinforcements, nor in the first great naval victory over the new armament, — a glory scarcely tarnished by the slight repulse which he in person experienced from the enemy's Tyrsenian aux- iliaries (Thuc. vii. 46, 50, 53). Before the last and decisive sea-fight, Thucydides gives us an ad- dress from his mouth which urges the obvious topics. The command of the ships was taken by other officers. In the operations succeeding the victory he doubtless took part. He commanded in the pre-occupation of the Athenian route ; when they in their despair left this their first course, and made a night march to the south, the clamours of the multitude accused him of a wish to allow their escape : he joined in the proclamation which called on the islanders serving in the Athenian host to come over ; with him Demosthenes arranged his terms of surrender ; to him Nicias, on hearing of his colleague's capitulation, made overtures for permission to carry his own division safe to Athens ; and to him, on the banks of the Asina- rus, Nicias gave himself up at discretion ; to the captive general's entreaty that, whatever should be his own fate, the present butchery might be ended, Gylippus acceded by ordering quarter to be given. Against his wishes, the people, whom he had res- cued, put to death the captive generals, — wishes, indeed, which it is likely were prompted in the main by the desire named by Thucydides, of the glory of conveying to Sparta such a trophy of his deeds ; yet into whose composition may also have entered some feelings of a generous commiseration for calamities so wholly unprecedented. (Thuc. vii. 65—69, 70, 74, 79, 81—86.) Gylippus brought over his troops in the following summer. Sixteen ships had remained to the end ; of these one was lost in an engagement with twenty- seven Athenian galleys, which were lying in wait for them near Leucas ; the rest, in a shattered condition, made their way to Corinth. (Thuc. viii. 13.) To this, the plain story of the great contempo- rary historian, inferior authorities add but little. Timaeus, in Plutarch {Nic. 19), informs us that the Syracusans made no account of Gylippus ; thinking him, when they had come to know his character, to be mean and covetous ; and at the first deriding him for the long hair and small upper garment of the Spartan fashion. Yet, says Plu- tarch, the same author states elsewhere that so soon as Gylippus was seen, as though at the sight of an owl, birds enough flocked up for the war. (The sight of an owl is said to have the effect of drawing birds together, and the fact appears to have passed into a proverb.) And this, he adds, is the truer account of the two ; the whole achievement is ascribed to Gylippus, not by Thucydides only, but also by Philistus, a native of Syracuse, and eye- witness of the whole. Plutarch also speaks of the party at Syracuse, who were inclined to surrender, as especially offended by his overbearing Spartan ways ; and to such a feeling, he says, when suc- cess was secure, the whole people began to give way, openly insulting him when he made his peti- tion to be allowed to take Nicias and Demosthenes alive to Sparta. (Mc.21,28.) Diodorus (xii. 28), no doubt in perfect independence of all authorities, puts in his mouth a long strain of rhetoric, urging the people to a vindictive, unrelenting course, in