stay also the following day to give time to the soldiers to pack up as
well as they could the most useful articles, and, leaving everything
else behind, to start only with what was strictly necessary for
their personal subsistence. Meanwhile the Syracusans and Gylippus
marched out and blocked up the roads through the country by which
the Athenians were likely to pass, and kept guard at the fords of
the streams and rivers, posting themselves so as to receive them and
stop the army where they thought best; while their fleet sailed up
to the beach and towed off the ships of the Athenians. Some few were
burned by the Athenians themselves as they had intended; the rest
the Syracusans lashed on to their own at their leisure as they had
been thrown up on shore, without any one trying to stop them, and
conveyed to the town.
After this, Nicias and Demosthenes now thinking that enough had been
done in the way of preparation, the removal of the army took place
upon the second day after the sea-fight. It was a lamentable scene,
not merely from the single circumstance that they were retreating
after having lost all their ships, their great hopes gone, and
themselves and the state in peril; but also in leaving the camp
there were things most grievous for every eye and heart to
contemplate. The dead lay unburied, and each man as he recognized a
friend among them shuddered with grief and horror; while the living
whom they were leaving behind, wounded or sick, were to the living far
more shocking than the dead, and more to be pitied than those who
had perished. These fell to entreating and bewailing until their
friends knew not what to do, begging them to take them and loudly
calling to each individual comrade or relative whom they could see,
hanging upon the necks of their tent-fellows in the act of
departure, and following as far as they could, and, when their
bodily strength failed them, calling again and again upon heaven and
shrieking aloud as they were left behind. So that the whole army being
filled with tears and distracted after this fashion found it not
easy to go, even from an enemy's land, where they had already suffered
evils too great for tears and in the unknown future before them feared
to suffer more. Dejection and self-condemnation were also rife among
them. Indeed they could only be compared to a starved-out town, and
that no small one, escaping; the whole multitude upon the march
being not less than forty thousand men. All carried anything they
could which might be of use, and the heavy infantry and troopers,
contrary to their wont, while under arms carried their own victuals,
in some cases for want of servants, in others through not trusting
them; as they had long been deserting and now did so in greater
numbers than ever. Yet even thus they did not carry enough, as there
was no longer food in the camp. Moreover their disgrace generally, and
the universality of their sufferings, however to a certain extent
alleviated by being borne in company, were still felt at the moment
a heavy burden, especially when they contrasted the splendour and
glory of their setting out with the humiliation in which it had ended.
For this was by far the greatest reverse that ever befell an
Hellenic army. They had come to enslave others, and were departing
in fear of being enslaved themselves: they had sailed out with
prayer and paeans, and now started to go back with omens directly
contrary; travelling by land instead of by sea, and trusting not in
their fleet but in their heavy infantry. Nevertheless the greatness of
the danger still impending made all this appear tolerable.
Nicias seeing the army dejected and greatly altered, passed along
the ranks and encouraged and comforted them as far as was possible
under the circumstances, raising his voice still higher and higher
as he went from one company to another in his earnestness, and in
his anxiety that the benefit of his words might reach as many as
possible:
"Athenians and allies, even in our present position we must still
hope on, since men have ere now been saved from worse straits than
this; and you must not condemn yourselves too severely either