344 HISTORY OF GREECE. and brought in by troops sent forth for the purpose.' Ti triumph of the Syracusans was in every way complete , the? hung the trees on the banks of the Asinarus with Athenian pap- oplies as trophy, and carried back their prisoners in joyous procession to the city. The number of prisoners thus made, is not positively specified by Thucydides, as in the case of the division of Demosthenes, which had capitulated and laid down their arms in a mass within the walls of the olive-ground. Of the captives from the division of Nikias, the larger proportion were seized by private individ- uals, and fraudulently secreted for their own profit ; the number obtained for the state being comparatively small, seemingly not more than one thousand. 2 The various Sicilian towns became soon full of these prisoners, sold as slaves for private account. Not less than forty thousand persons in the aggregate had started from the Athenian camp to commence the retreat, six days before. Of these probably many, either wounded or otherwise incompetent even when the march began, soon found themselves unable to keep up, and were left behind to peri?h. Each of the six days was a day of hard fighting and annoyance from an inde- fatigable crowd of light troops, with little, and at last seemingly nothing, to eat The number was thus successively thinned, by wounds, privations, and straggling, so that the six thousand taken with Demosthenes, and perhaps three thousand or four thousand captured with Nikias, formed the melancholy remnant. Of the stragglers during the march, however, we are glad to learn that many contrived to escape the Syracusan cavalry and get to Katana, where also those who afterwards ran away from their slavery under private masters, found a refuge. 3 These fugitive 1 ThuVyd. vii, 85 ; Plutarch, Nikias, c. 27.
- Thucydides states, roughly, and without pretending to exact means of
knowledge, that the total number of captives brought to Syracuse under public supervision, was not less than seven thousand &Ti<t>&Tiaav <5e m vu~avTtf, unptpsia fiev xaheTrbv efetTretf, 6//uf Jt- OVK iXuaaov^ inraKia- Xihiuv (vii, 87). As the number taken with Demosthenes was six thousand (vii, 82), this leaves one thousand as having been obtained from the division of Nikias. 3 Thucyd. vii, 85. 7ro/l/lo2 <5e o/iuf Kal 6;i$vyov, ol fj.lv KOI Trapavnua, ol 6e Kal dovfavaai'Ttf KC.I dtadtfip'taitovTt<; vorepiiv. The word napaiir<K
moans, durincr the retreat.
