Page:Thucydides, translated into English Vol 2.djvu/341

 86,87] FATE OF THE PRISONERS 33;^ on some suspicion of their guilt he might be put to the torture and bring trouble on them in the hour of their prosperity. Others, and especially the Corinthians, feared that, being rich, he might by bribery escape and do them further mischief So the Syracusans gained the consent of the allies and had him executed. For these or the like reasons he suffered death. No one of the Hellenes in my time was less deserving of so miserable an end ; for he lived in the practice of ev^ery virtue. Those who were imprisoned in the quarries were at the 87 beginning of their captivity harshly Sufferings of the treated by the Syracusans. There prisoners from cold, were great numbers of them, and they «- '""'^f "'^ ^'"'"^' scanty allozvance of were crowded ni a deep and narrow y^^^ „„j ^^/^^_ j,,, place. At first the sun by day was tdtole number of them still scorching and suffocating, for they «^«"/*«'«' thousand. had no roof over their heads, while the autumn nights were cold, and the extremes of temperature engendered violent disorders. Being cramped for room they had to do every- thing on the same spot. The corpses of those who died from their wounds, exposure to heat and cold, and the like, lay heaped one upon another. The smells were intolerable ; and the}' were at the same time afflicted by hunger and thirst. During eight months they were allowed only about half a pint of water and a pint of food a day. Every kind of misery which could befall man in such a place befell them. This was the condition of all the cap- tives for about ten weeks. At length the Syracusans sold them, with the exception of the Athenians and of any Sicilian or Italian Greeks who had sided with them in the war. The whole number of the public prisoners is not accurately known, but they were not less than seven thousand. Of all the Hellenic actions which took place in this war, or indeed, as I think, of all Hellenic Thus ended the great- actions which are on record, this was est of all Hellenic the greatest— the most glorious to the "'^'"^"^-