After the Syracusan disaster all the Athenian army was taken captive.  The conquerors began by slaughtering all the generals and many of the soldiers.  The remainder were consigned to the quarries which served as prison.  They were left there crowded together for seventy days, exposed without protection to the burning sun of summer, and then to the chilly nights of autumn.  Many died from sickness, from cold and hunger—­for they were hardly fed at all; their corpses remained on the ground and infected the air.  At last the Syracusans drew out the survivors sold them into slavery.

Ordinarily when an army invaded a hostile state it levelled the houses, felled the trees, burned the crops and killed the laborers.  After battle it made short shrift of the wounded and killed prisoners in cold blood.  In a captured city everything belonged to the captor:  men, women, children were sold as slaves.  Such was at this time the right of war.  Thucydides sums up the case as follows:[80] “Business is regulated between men by the laws of justice when there is obligation on both sides; but the stronger does whatever is in his power, and the weaker yields.  The gods rule by a necessity of their nature because they are strongest; men do likewise.”

=Results of These Wars.=—­These wars did not result in uniting the Greeks into one body.  No city, Sparta more than Athens, was able to force the others to obey her.  They only exhausted themselves by fighting one another.  It was the king of Persia who profited by the strife.  Not only did the Greek cities not unite against him, but all in succession allied themselves with him against the other Greeks.  In the notorious Peace of Antalcidas (387) the Great King declared that all the Greek cities of Asia belonged to him, and Sparta recognized this claim.  Athens and Thebes did as much some years later.  An Athenian orator said, “It is the king of Persia who governs Greece; he needs only to establish governors in our cities.  Is it not he who directs everything among us?  Do we not summon the Great King as if we were his slaves?” The Greeks by their strife had lost the vantage that the Median war had gained for them.

FOOTNOTES: 

[71] Twelve Ionian colonies, twelve AEolian, four Dorian.

[72] Herod., i., 153.

[73] Herod., vii., 103, 104.

[74] 1,000 Plataeans came to the assistance of the Athenians.—­ED.

[75] Herodotus’s statements of the numbers in Xerxes’ army are incredible.—­ED.

[76] Herod., vii., 61-80.

[77] vii., 139.

[78] The chronology of these events is uncertain.—­ED.

[79] Called the Peace of Cimon, but it is very doubtful whether Cimon really concluded a treaty. [With more right may it be called the Peace of Callias, who was probably principal ambassador.—­ED.]

[80] In his chapters on the Mityleneans.

CHAPTER XIV