Page:History of Greece Vol VI.djvu/205

 SECOND AND THIRD YEARS OF THE WAR. 183 Such revenge against Aristeus, the instigator of the revolt of Potidtea, relieved the Athenians from a dangerous enemy ; and that blockaded city was now left to its fate. About midwinter it capitulated, after a blockade of two years, and after going through the extreme of suffering from famine, to such a degree that some of those who died were even eaten by the survivors. In spite of such intolerable distress, the Athenian generals, Xen- ophon son of Euripides and his two colleagues, admitted them to favorable terms of capitulation, permitting the whole population and the Corinthian allies to retire freely, with a specified sum of money per head, as well as with one garment for each man and two for each woman, so that they found shelter among the Chalkidic townships in the neighborhood. These terms were singularly favorable, considering the desperate state of the city, which must very soon have surrendered at discretion : but the Darius. Xerxes dismissed them unhurt, so that the anger of Talthybius (the heroic progenitoi of the family of heralds at Sparta) remained still unsatisfied: it was on!} satisfied by the death of their two sons, new slain by the Athenians. 1 he fact that the two persons now slain were sons of those two (Sperthies and Bulis) who had previously gone to Susa to tender their lives, is spoken of as a " romantic and tragical coincidence." But there surely is very little to wonder at. The functions of herald at Sparta, were the privilege of a particular gens, or family : every herald, therefore, was ex ojficio the son of a herald. Now when the Lacedaemonians, at the beginning of this Peloponnesian war, were looking out for two mem- bers of the heraldic gens to send up to Susa, upon whom would they so naturally fix as upon the sons of those two men who had been to Susa before 1 These sons had doubtless heard their fathers talk a great deal about it, probably with interest and satisfaction, since they derived great glory from the unaccepted offer of their lises in atonement. There was a par- ticular reason why these two men should be taken, in preference to any other heralds, to fulfil this dangerous mission : and doubtless when they perished in it, the religious imagination of the Lacedaemonians would group all the series of events as consummation of the judgment inflicted by Tal- thybius in his anger (Herodot. vii, 135 <if "kh/ovai Aanetiatuovioi). It appears that Aneristus, the herald here slain, had distinguished him- self personally in that capture of fishermen on the coast of Peloponnesn? by the Lacedemonians, for which the Athenians were now retaliating (Herodot. vii, 137). Though this passage of Herodotus is not clear, yet the sense here put upon it is the natural one, and clearer (in my judg- ment) than that which 0. Miiller would propose instead of it (Dorians, u, p. 437).