ght to wreak in the complete destruction of their
invaders. Never, however, was vengeance more complete and terrible. A
series of sea-fights followed, in which the Athenian galleys were
utterly destroyed or captured. The mariners and soldiers who escaped
death in disastrous engagements, and a vain attempt to force a retreat
into the interior of the island, became prisoners of war. Nicias and
Demosthenes were put to death in cold blood, and their men either
perished miserably in the Syracusan dungeons or were sold into slavery
to the very persons whom, in their pride of power, they had crossed the
seas to enslave.

All danger from Athens to the independent nations of the West was now
forever at an end. She, indeed, continued to struggle against her
combined enemies and revolted allies with unparalleled gallantry, and
many more years of varying warfare passed away before she surrendered to
their arms. But no success in subsequent contests could ever have
restored her to the preeminence in enterprise, resources, and maritime
skill which she had acquired before her fatal reverses in Sicily. Nor
among the rival Greek republics, whom her own rashness aided to crush
her, was there any capable of reorganizing her empire, or resuming her
schemes of conquest. The dominion of Western Europe was left for Rome
and Carthage to dispute two centuries later, in conflicts still more
terrible, and with even higher displays of military daring and genius
than Athens had witnessed either in her rise, her meridian, or her fall.

RETREAT OF THE TEN THOUSAND GREEKS

B.C. 401-399

XENOPHON

(The expedition of the Greeks, generally known as the "Retreat of the
Ten Thousand," was conducted by Xenophon, a Greek historian, essayist,
and military commander. Xenophon was a pupil of Socrates, of whom he
left a famous memoir. In B.C. 401 he accepted the invitation of his
friend Proxenus of Boeotia, a general of Greek mercenaries, to take
service under Cyrus the Younger, brother of Artaxerxes Mnemon, king of
Persia.

Cyrus had considered himself as deeply wronged by his elder brother, who
had thrown him into prison on the death of their father, Darius.
Escaping from prison, he formed a design to wrest the throne from
Artaxerxes. For this purpose he engaged the forces of Proxenus, and to
this army Xenophon attached himself. The rendezvous was Sardis, from
which the army marched east under the pretext of chastising the
revolting mountaineer