previous next

Cleon, learning that Brasidas and his army were tarrying at the city of Amphipolis, broke camp and marched against him. And when Brasidas heard of the approach of the enemy, he formed his army in battle-order and went out to meet the Athenians. A fierce battle ensued, in which both armies engaged brilliantly, and at first the fight was evenly balanced, but later, as the leaders on both sides strove to decide the battle through their own efforts, it was the lot of many important men to be slain, the generals injecting themselves into the battle and bringing into it a rivalry for victory that could not be surpassed. [2] Brasidas, after fighting with the greatest distinction and slaying a very large number, ended his life heroically; and when Cleon also, after displaying like valour, fell in the battle, both armies were thrown into confusion because they had no leaders, but in the end the Lacedaemonians were victorious and set up a trophy. The Athenians got back their dead under a truce, gave them burial, and sailed away to Athens. [3] And when certain men from the scene of the battle arrived at Lacedaemon and brought the news of Brasidas' victory as well as of his death, the mother of Brasidas, on learning of the course of the battle, inquired what sort of a man Brasidas had shown himself to be in the conflict. And when she was told that of all the Lacedaemonians he was the best, the mother of the dead man said, "My son Brasidas was a brave man, and yet he was inferior to many others." [4] When this reply passed throughout the city, the ephors accorded the woman public honours, because she placed the fair name of her country above the fame of her son. [5]

After the battle we have described the Athenians decided to make a truce of fifty years with the Lacedaemonians, upon the following terms: The prisoners with both sides were to be released and each side should give back the cities which had been taken in the course of the war. [6] Thus the Peloponnesian War, which had continued up to that time for ten years, came to an end in the manner we have described.

Diodorus Siculus. Diodorus of Sicily in Twelve Volumes with an English Translation by C. H. Oldfather. Vol. 4-8. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press; London: William Heinemann, Ltd. 1989.

The Annenberg CPB/Project provided support for entering this text.

Purchase a copy of this text (not necessarily the same edition) from Amazon.com

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.

An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.

load focus Greek (1989)
hide Places (automatically extracted)

View a map of the most frequently mentioned places in this document.

Sort places alphabetically, as they appear on the page, by frequency
Click on a place to search for it in this document.
Lacedaemon (Greece) (1)
Athens (Greece) (1)
Amphipolis (Greece) (1)

Download Pleiades ancient places geospacial dataset for this text.

hide Display Preferences
Greek Display:
Arabic Display:
View by Default:
Browse Bar: