in to quench their thirst.  A most dreadful slaughter now took place, the Athenians being wild with thirst, and the Syracusans killing them as they drank, until Nikias surrendered himself to Gylippus, saying, “I beseech you, now that you are victorious, to show some mercy, not to me, but to the Athenian troops.  Consider how changeful is the fortune of war, and how gently the Athenians dealt with your men in their hour of victory.”

Gylippus was visibly affected by the words, and by the sight of Nikias; for he knew how well the Spartan prisoners had been treated by him, when the peace was made with Athens; moreover, he thought that it would be a great honour to him if he could carry home the enemy’s commander-in-chief as a prisoner.  He received Nikias with kindness, and gave orders to take the rest of the Athenians alive.  It was long, however, before these orders were understood and obeyed, so that more Athenians were slain than survived, although many were spared by the Syracusans in order that they might be sold for slaves.

The prisoners were now assembled together, and their arms and armour hung upon the trees by the river side, as a trophy of the victory.  The victors next crowned themselves with garlands, decorated their horses, cut off the manes and tails of the captured horses, and marched back into their own city, having by their courage and skill won the most complete victory ever gained by one Greek state over another.

XXVIII.  At a public assembly of the Syracusans and their allies which was shortly afterwards held, the orator Eurykles proposed that the day on which Nikias was taken should be kept as a festival for ever, upon which no work should be done, and sacrifice should be offered to the gods, and that the feast should be called the Asinaria, from the name of the river where the victory was won.  The day was the twenty-sixth of the Dorian month Karneius, which the Athenians call Metageitnion (September 21st).  Furthermore, he proposed that the Athenian slaves and allies should be sold, that the Athenians themselves, with what native Sicilians had joined them, should be confined in the stone quarries within the city of Syracuse, and that their generals should be put to death.

These propositions wore accepted by the Syracusans, who treated Hermokrates with contempt when he urged that to be merciful in victory would be more honourable to them than the victory itself.  Gylippus too, when he begged that he might carry the Athenian generals alive to Sparta, was shamefully insulted by the excited Syracusans, who had long disliked the irritating Spartan airs of superiority natural to Gylippus, and now, flushed with victory, no longer cared to conceal their feelings.  Timaeus tells us that they accused him of avarice and peculation, a hereditary vice, it appears, in his family since his father Kleandrides was banished from Sparta for taking bribes, while he himself afterwards stole thirty of the hundred talents which Lysander sent home to Sparta, and hid them under the roof of his house, but was informed against, and exiled in disgrace.  This will be found described at greater length in the Life of Lysander.