Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 11, 2025
From Peiraeus it spread upwards with rapid strides, and before long the whole space within the walls presented the appearance of a vast lazar- house. From the description of the symptoms we may conclude that this epidemic was similar to that dreadful scourge of mankind which has been almost conquered by modern science, the small-pox.
The Athenians were still possessed by their daring scheme of conquest, and they decreed that Alcibiades should keep his command, and sail at once to Sicily. At last the great day arrived, and in the first light of a mid-summer dawn, a vast multitude was seen pouring along the broad highway which led, between the Long Walls, from Athens to Peiraeus.
But if Athens was to hold and extend her position as the first naval power in Greece, it was above all things necessary that she should have a strong and fortified station for her fleets, her arsenals, and her dockyards. Nature had provided her with what she needed, in the peninsula of Peiraeus, which juts out into the Saronic Gulf, about five miles south-west of the inland town.
Indeed, if we intend to wait till the time comes when he admits that he is at war with us, we are surely the most innocent persons in the world. Why, even if he comes to Attica itself, to the very Peiraeus, he will never make such an admission, if we are to judge by his dealings with others.
But it was now too late, for the Athenians, as soon as the news was brought, had marched down with their whole military force to Peiraeus, and occupied every assailable point in the harbour, while at the same time every ship in the docks was launched and manned, and sent off in headlong haste to Salamis.
While the beaten crews of the Peloponnesian fleet were waiting to be paid off at Lechaeum, they suddenly received orders to take their oars and rowing-cushions, and proceed to Nisaea, the port of Megara. The plan was to embark them on forty vessels, which were lying in the dockyards, and make a night- attack on Peiraeus.
Dickson in the end obtained the consent of Mustapha to the deportation of the families, and sent the order to Candia, on which the Assurance went to Selinos and took on board three hundred and fifteen women and children and twenty-five wounded men, menaced by the approach of Mustapha's army, and carried them to Peiraeus.
But this was a mere excuse, and if they had chosen they might have sailed unopposed to Peiraeus, and inflicted terrible injury on Athens.
Being now more at leisure, the Athenians resolved, in the mere wantonness of power, that Melos should only be suffered to exist as a dependency of Athens, and thirty triremes sailed from the harbour of Peiraeus to carry out the arbitrary decree. On their arrival at Melos the Athenian admirals sent envoys into the town, to summon the inhabitants to surrender.
One of these was, that he called Aegina "the eyesore of the Peiraeus," and that "he saw war coming upon Athens from Peloponnesus."
Word Of The Day
Others Looking