Thucydides on the fall of Amphipolis
Fall of Amphipolis (424/423): one of the most important operations during the Archidamian War (431-421 BCE). It put an end to a series of Athenian successes and made the Athenians more willing to contemplate an armistice. The Spartan and Athenian commanders were Brasidas and Thucydides.
After the capture of 292 Spartans at Sphacteria, it looked as if nothing that the Athenians did could ever go wrong. Their defeat at Delium was a sign that they were not invincible, but could be regarded as an incident. This was different when in the winter of 424/423, the Spartan general Brasidas captured Amphipolis.
This important city had only recently been founded by the Athenians and was of the greatest strategic importance. Not only did it control a bridge across the Strymon in the road between Macedonia and the Chalkidike in the west to Thrace in the east, but the river itself was also important because there were forests upstream that produced the wood that was necessary to build ships. Finally, there were silver and gold mines. For more than sixty years, the Athenians would try to recover Amphipolis, until they had to accept that the Macedonian king Philip II had added it to his kingdom for good.
The Athenian commander whose task it was to defend Amphipolis was Thucydides, who was exiled as a punishment, and would write the History of the Peloponnesian War that is our most important source for this period. In the following fragment, he describes his own failure, without explaining why he was not present at Amphipolis, even though he knew that the Spartan commander Brasidas was in the neighborhood.
The translation of History of the Peloponnesian War 4.102.1-108.7 was made by Richard Crawley.
The fall of Amphipolis |
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[4.102.1] The same winter Brasidas, with his allies in the Thracian places, marched against Amphipolis, the Athenian colony on the river Strymon. |
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[4.102.2] A settlement upon the spot on which the city now stands was before attempted by Aristagoras, the Milesian (when he fled from king Darius),note who was however dislodged by the Edonians; and thirty-two years later by the Athenians, who sent thither ten thousand settlers of their own citizens, and whoever else chose to go. These were cut off at Drabescus by the Thracians. |
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[4.102.3] Twenty-nine years after, the Athenians returned (Hagnon, son of Nicias, being sent out as leader of the colony) and drove out the Edonians, and founded a town on the spot, formerly called Ennea Hodoi or Nine Ways. |
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[4.102.4] The base from which they started was Eïon, their commercial seaport at the mouth of the river, not more than three miles from the present town, which Hagnon named Amphipolis, because the Strymon flows round it on two sides, and he built it so as to be conspicuous from the sea and land alike, running a long wall across from river to river, to complete the circumference. |
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