purporting to come from friends within the city, to delay the start to the second night. This gave the enemy time to block the roads, and make preparation for harassing their march. Accordingly, on the next day both Demosthenes and Nicias, who were each commanding a column, were overtaken and compelled to surrender. In spite of the protest of Gylippus, both were put to the sword; while the captured Athenians were sold as slaves or confined in the quarries near Syracuse, where large numbers perished. In grateful contrast to this cruelty stories were told of some who gained the favour of their masters and ultimately their freedom by being able to recite passages from the plays of Euripides. Seldom had the destruction of so large and splendid a force been so complete. The disaster affected a very large part of Greece. Thucydides gives us the names of about thirty-eight states from which a certain number of citizens were serving in the Athenian force. They include towns or peoples of all parts of Hellas, Sicily, Italy, Ionia, the Aegean islands and Asiatic Greece.
The defeat of this great armament, therefore, must have caused mourning all over Greece, and a keen sense of the weakened prestige of Athens; which was farther hampered by the permanent occupation of Decelea, only about fifteen miles from the city, by a Peloponnesian force commanded by a Spartan king. Accordingly there was a widely-spread inclination to revolt among the subject allies. The Persian satraps in Asia Minor, Pharnabazus and Tissaphernes, saw their opportunity of reasserting their
