Page:History of Greece Vol VI.djvu/203

 SECOND AND THIRD YfcARS OF THE WAR. 1#1 monians, even neutral Greeks as well as Athenians, were all put to death, and their bodies cast into clefts of the mountains. In regard to the neutrals, this capture was piratical, and the slaughter unwarrantably cruel, judged even by the received prac- tice of the Greeks, deficient as that was on the score of humanity : but to dismiss these neutral prisoners, or to sell them as slaves, would have given publicity to a piratical capture and provoked the neutral towns, so that the prisoners were probably slain as the best way of getting rid of them and thus suppressing evidence. 1 Some of these Peloponnesian privateers ranged as far as the southwestern coast of Asia Minor, where they found temporary shelter, and interrupted the trading-vessels from Phaselis and Phenicia to Athens ; to protect which, the Ather^ians despatched, in the course of the autumn, a squadron of six triremes under Melesander. He was farther directed to insure the collection of the ordinary tribute from Athenian subject-allies, and probably to raise such contributions as he could elsewhere. In the prosecu- tion of this latter duty, he undertook an expedition from the sea-coast against one of the Lykian towns in the interior, but his attack was repelled with loss, and he himself slain.2 An opportunity soon offered itself to the Athenians, of retal iating on Sparta for this cruel treatment of the maritime prison ers. In execution of the idea projected at the commencement of the war, the Lacedasmonians sent Aneristus and two others as envoys to Persia, for the purpose of soliciting from the Great King aids of money and troops against Athens ; the dissensions among the Greeks thus gradually paving the way for him to 1 Thucyd. ii. 67. Ot AaKeSaifiovtoi {nrqpZav, roiif IfiTtopovg ov<; eTia^ov 'Adjjvacuv Kal TCJV Zvfj.fi.uxuv ev o^Kuai nepl TielMirovvriaov TrMovraf UTTOK- reivavref Kal ef fyupayyas eopaliovTef. Ilavraf yap 6t/ /car' (ip^af TOV noM- uov oL aKedaifiovLoi, oacwf 'AujBoiev tv ry tfa/laow;, (if nofofiiovf 6iedetpov, fiat rot)f fiera 'A&7]vaiov t-vpTrofajLiovvTaf Kal roi)f firjde //e#' krepuv. The Lacedaemonian admiral Alkidas slew all the prisoners taken on board merchantmen off the coast of Ionia, in the ensuing year (Thucyd. iii, 82). Even this was considered extremely rigorous, and excited strong remonstrance ; yet the mariners slain were not neutrals, but belonged to the subject-allies of Athens : moreover, Alkidas was in his flight, and obliged t make choice between killing his prisoners ?" se ting them free. Thucyd. ii, 69.