Page:History of Greece Vol VII.djvu/339

321 EXHORTATIONS OF NIKIAS. 21 not really citizens, you have been reputed and treated as such ; you have acquired our dialect, you have copied our habits, and have thus enjoyed the admiration, the imposing station, and the security, arising from our great empire. 1 Partaking as you do freely in the benefits of that empire, do not now betray it to these Sicilians and Corinthians whom you have so often beaten. For such of you as are Athenians, I again remind you that Athens has neither fresh triremes, nor fresh hoplites, to replace those now here. Unless you are now victorious, her enemies near home will find her defenceless ; and our countrymen there will become slaves to Sparta, as you will to Syracuse. Recollect, every man of you, that you now going aboard here are the all of Athens, her hoplites, her ships, her entire remaining city, and her splendid name. 2 Bear up then and conquer, every man with his best mettle, in this one last struggle, for Athens as well as yourselves, and on an occasion which will never return." If, in translating the despatch written home ten months before by Nikias to the people of Athens, we were compelled to remark, that the greater part of it was the bitterest condemnation of his 1 Thucyd. vii, 63. Tolf 6e vavraie vapaivu, KOI iv ro> airy ropalc uyav ine'iv-^v re TTJV rj ivtiv/LtEiatiai, wf uia earl 6iaauaaa'&ai, oi recjf 'A-&ijvaioi fJ.EVO I KCtl /J.1) OVTEfVflUV, Tl/f TE (pUVT/f Tq ETTlOTtJp'y KOt TUV TpOTTUV ry [tt[i.T]Gii dav[j.d&a& narti, TTJV 'EA/lada, nal rris ap^f T?jf f/fiETEpaf OVK I7(.aaaov Ka-il rd u<p%.Ei<r&ou, ef TE rd tyopEpbv Tolf inrriKooif nai rd pr) iro^i) irfaiov, [lETEixeTs, uars Koivuvot povoi Efav&Epuc jjfuv TTJ( ovTEf, diKaiuf aiiTTjv vvv fj.jj KaTdTTpodidoTe, etc. Dr. Arnold (together with Goller and Poppo), following the Scholiast, explain these words as having particular reference to the metics in tho Athenian naval service. But I cannot think this correct. All persons in that service who were freemen, but yet not citizens of Athens are here designated ; partly metics, doubtless, but partly also citizens of the islands and dependent allies, the ^evoi vavftaTai alluded to by the Corinthians and by Perikles at the beginning of the Peloponnesian war (Thucyd, i, 121- 143) as the UVTJTTJ dvvafiif jj.a7d.ov 7} OIKEIO of Athens. Without doubt there were numerous foreign seamen in the warlike navy of Athens, who derived great consideration as well as profit from the service, and often passed themselves off for Athenian citizens when they really were not so. Thucyd. vii, 64. "On ol ev ratf vavalv vp&v vvv ta6fj.voi, nai ns^ot rolf ' h&ifvaiott elal Kal fsf, i;a2 t) vrroTionrof irofae, xal rd fieja ovofta TUI -&T)VUV VOL. vii. 14* 21oc.