Page:History of Greece Vol VII.djvu/326

308 303 HISTORY OF GUKKCK During this absence of Gylippus, the Athenian generals wer left to mourn the recent reverse, and to discuss the exigencies of their untoward position. The whole armament was now full of discouragement and weariness ; impatient to escape from a scene where fever daily thinned their numbers, and where they seemed destined to nothing but dishonor. Such painful evidences of increasing disorganization only made Demosthenes more stren- uous in enforcing the resolution which he had taken before the attack on Epipoloe. He had done his best to strike one decisive blow ; the chances of war had turned out against him, and inflicted a humiliating defeat ; he now therefore insisted on relinquishing the whole enterprise and returning home forthwith. The season was yet favorable for the voyage (it seems to have been the beginning of August), while the triremes recently brought, as yet unused, rendered them masters at sea for the present. It was idle, he added, to waste more time and money in staying to carry on war against Syracuse, which they could not now hope to subdue, especially when Athens had so much need of them all at home, against the garrison of Dekeleia. 1 This proposition, though espoused and seconded by Euryme- don, was peremptorily opposed by Nikias ; who contended, first, that their present distress and the unpromising chances for the future, though he admitted the full reality of both, ought not nevertheless to be publicly proclaimed. A formal resolution tc retire, passed in the presence of so many persons, would iricvica- bly become known to the enemy, and therefore could never be executed with silence and secrecy, 2 as such a resolution ought to slain was two thousand. Dioclorus gives it at t'.vo thousand five hundred (xiii, 11). Thucydides docs not state it at all. These frvo authors probably both copied from some common authority, not Thucydides ; perhaps Philistus. 1 Thucyd. vi, 47. ffpuyjiaTa dvai, T<J 6e 3,6yo owe IftovKtro avru aa&evfi ('nrooeiKviivai, oW epyaviJc abar tpTj^ofisvovf fieTu TTO?. Awv r^v uvaxupqoiv Totf TtoTic- filois fcarayye/.rouf yiyveadar Aafieiv -yap av, dirore {Jovhoivro, ro'iiro rroiovvref TTO/UCJ JJTTOV. It seems probable that some of the taxiarchs and trierarcii-3 were present at this deliberation, as we find in another case afterwards, c. GO. Possibly, Demosthenes might even desire that they should be presdiit, iis witnesses
 * Thucyd. vii, 48. 'O 6e Nt/aaf ivopifc fj.lv K.u.1 avrbf -Kovijp^. G$UV rd