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Hereabouts also, amid the miscellaneous fragments, the visitor should notice a colossal headless and heavily-draped figure, marked 111. This is the wreck of the great statue of Bacchus which surmounted a monument erected three hundred and twenty years before the Christian era, by Thrasyllus of Deceleia, to record the victory of a tribe at a great festival of Bacchus.
In our visit to Greece we spent a few days shooting woodcocks with a fellow-countryman, who possesses an Attic farm in the mountains, near Deceleia. His house was situated amidst fine woods of oak and pine; yet he informed us that the floors, doors, and windows, were all made of timber from Trieste, conveyed from Athens on the backs of mules.
He advised his hearers to aid Sicilian incapacity by sending a Spartan commander; above all, he counselled the occupation of Deceleia, a town in Attica just short of the border, through which the corn supply was conveyed to the capital; this would lead to the capture of the silver-mines at Laureium and to the decrease of the Athenian revenues.
Over and above the raging epidemic they had just gone over Attica and ascertained the devastations committed by the invaders throughout all the territory except the Marathonian Tetrapolis and Deceleia, districts spared, as we are told, through indulgence founded on an ancient legendary sympathy during their long stay of forty days.
That is treachery." "There is nothing else to be done." "There were once Thermopylae and Salamis." "But now there is Sparta, and the Spartans are in Deceleia. Our envoys have already sailed to the Persian King." "Then we may as well remove Athene's image from the Parthenon! Anytos! look at my back; for I shall be ashamed to show my face now when I walk."
Perhaps our type of this creed is not so full of the lust for domination and aggrandisement as was that of Athens; it may be suspected that we are virtuous mainly because we have all we need and are not likely to be tempted overmuch. But there is the other and more subtle danger. The enemies within the state betrayed Deceleia which safeguarded the food-supply.
Meanwhile, the truce between Athens and Sparta had been ended, and war again declared. Sparta occupied permanently a post of the Attic territory, Deceleia, with merciless effect. The Sicilian disaster moved the islanders, notably Chios, to revolt, by Spartan help, against Athens. She, however, renovated her navy with unexpected vigour.
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