University of Virginia Library

Virgilius.

Dante: Purgatorio, viii. Pr.

See, in Dr. Gillies's Ancient Greece, the narrative of the disastrous expedition of the Athenians against Sicily.

Nicias had little to expect from the humanity of a proud and victorious Spartan; but Demosthenes might naturally flatter himself with the hope of justice. He urged with energy, but urged in vain, the observance of the capitulation, which had been ratified with due forms, on the faith of which he had surrendered himself and the troops entrusted to his command. The public prisoners, conducted successively to Syracuse, and exceeding together the number of seven thousand, were treated with the same inhuman cruelty. They were universally condemned to labor in the mines and quarries of Sicily: their whole sustenance was bread and water: they suffered alternately the ardors of a scorching sun, and the chilling damps of autumn. For seventy days and nights they languished in this dreadful captivity, during which the diseases incident to their manner of life were rendered infectious by the stench of the dead bodies, which corrupted the purity of the surrounding air. At length, an eternal separation was made between those who should enjoy the happier lot of being sold as slaves into distant lands, and those who should for ever be confined to their terrible dungeons. The Athenians, with such Italians and Sicilians as had unnaturally embraced their cause, were reserved for the latter doom. Their generals Nicias and Demosthenes had not lived to behold this melancholy hour. Gylippus would have spared their lives, not from any motives of humanity or esteem, but that his joyous return to Sparta might have been graced by their presence. But the resentment of the Syracusans, the fears of the Corinthians, above all, the suspicious jealousy of those perfidious traitors who had maintained a secret correspondence with Nicias, which they dreaded lest the accidents of his future life might discover, loudly demanded the immediate execution of the captive generals. The Athenians of those times justly regretted the loss of Demosthenes, a gallant and enterprising commander; but posterity will for ever lament the fate of Nicias, the most pious, the most virtuous, and the most unfortunate man of the age in which he lived.

Amidst this dark and dreadful scene of cruelty and revenge, we must not omit to mention one singular example of humanity, which broke forth like a meteor in the gloom of a nocturnal tempest. The Syracusans, who could punish their helpless captives with such unrelenting severity, had often melted into tears at the affecting strains of Euripides, an Athenian poet, who had learned in the Socratic school to adorn the lessons of philosophy with the charms of fancy, and who was regarded by the taste of his contemporaries, as he still is by many competent and impartial judges, as the most tender and pathetic, the most philosophical and instructive, of all tragic writers. The pleasure, which the Syracusans had derived from his inimitable poetry, made them long to hear it rehearsed by the flexible voices and harmonious pronunciation of the Athenians, so unlike, and so superior, to the rudeness and asperity of their own Doric dialect. They desired their captives to repeat the plaintive scenes of their favorite bard. The captives obeyed, and affecting to represent the woes of ancient kings and heroes, they too faithfully expressed their own. Their taste and sensibility endeared them to the Syracusans, who released their bonds, received them with kindness into their families, and after treating them with all the honorable distinctions of ancient hospitality, restored them to their longing and afflicted country, as a small but precious wreck of the most formidable armament that had ever sailed from a Grecian harbour. At their return to Athens, they walked in solemn procession to the house of Euripides, whom they gratefully hailed as their deliverer from slavery and death: an acknowledgment, infinitely more honorable than all the crowns and splendor that ever surrounded the person, and even than all the altars and temples that ever adorned the memory, of a poet.

See the romance of The Three Brothers.

Odin was supposed to guard the monuments of the dead from sacrilege, by certain sacred and wandering fires which played around them. Northern Antiquities.