Sicilian Expedition (415-413 BC): Athens' Disaster at Syracuse

The Sicilian Expedition was the great Athenian invasion of Sicily between 415 and 413 BC, aimed above all at the city of Syracuse. It was the largest overseas force any Greek city had yet sent out, and it ended in one of the worst military disasters of the ancient world: the whole fleet and army were destroyed. The defeat shifted the balance of the Peloponnesian War towards Sparta and is the dramatic centre of the historian Thucydides’ account of the war.

Background: Athens looks west

In 421 BC the Peace of Nicias had paused the first ten years of war between Athens and Sparta, but it settled little. Athens still controlled a maritime empire in the Aegean, and many citizens were eager for new ventures.

Sicily was rich in grain, timber and silver, and it was home to many Greek colonies. The strongest of them was Syracuse, a Dorian city founded by Corinth, Sparta’s ally (see Founding of Syracuse). Athens had already intervened in Sicily in 427-424 BC, without lasting success.

In 416 BC envoys arrived from Segesta (Egesta), a non-Greek city in western Sicily allied to Athens. Segesta was at war with its neighbour Selinus, which had Syracusan support, and it promised to pay for an Athenian fleet. Exiles from Leontini, a city taken over by Syracuse, also asked for help.

The debate in Athens

In the spring of 415 BC the Athenian assembly voted to send 60 ships under three generals: Nicias, Alcibiades and Lamachus. Thucydides reports a second debate in which Nicias, a cautious and wealthy politician, argued against the whole venture. He warned that Athens had enemies close to home and should not chase an empire far away.

Alcibiades, young, ambitious and brilliant, spoke for the expedition. Nicias then tried to discourage the assembly by insisting that a much larger force would be needed. The tactic backfired: enthusiasm grew and the assembly voted for an even bigger armament, giving the generals full powers.

Shortly before the fleet sailed, the Herms of Athens were mutilated in a single night. These were stone pillars bearing the head of the god Hermes that stood at doorways and crossroads. The outrage was seen as a bad omen and a sign of a plot against the democracy. Alcibiades was also accused of mocking the sacred Eleusinian Mysteries in private houses. He asked to be tried at once, but his enemies had the case postponed until after the fleet left.

The armada sets sail

The fleet left Piraeus in midsummer 415 BC and assembled at Corcyra (Corfu). According to Thucydides it numbered 134 triremes and two Rhodian fifty-oared ships, carrying 5,100 hoplites (heavy infantry), 480 archers, 700 Rhodian slingers, other light troops and just 30 horses. Supply ships and merchant vessels followed. With rowers included, the force probably exceeded 25,000 men.

When the Athenians reached Italy, the Greek cities there were cool towards them, and the money promised by Segesta turned out to be far less than claimed. The three generals disagreed on strategy. Lamachus wanted to attack Syracuse at once, before it could prepare. Nicias wanted a show of strength and a quick return home. Alcibiades proposed winning allies in Sicily first, and his plan was adopted.

Soon afterwards the state ship Salaminia arrived to bring Alcibiades home for trial. He slipped away at Thurii in southern Italy and fled to Sparta. In Athens he was condemned to death in his absence.

The siege of Syracuse

In late 415 BC the Athenians landed near Syracuse and won a battle near the temple of Olympian Zeus, but lacking cavalry they could not exploit it and withdrew for the winter. The Syracusans used the time well. Led by the statesman Hermocrates, they reorganised their command and extended their walls.

Meanwhile Alcibiades advised the Spartans to send a commander to Sicily and to build a permanent fort at Decelea in Attica. Sparta sent Gylippus, an experienced officer.

In the spring of 414 BC the Athenians seized the heights of Epipolae above the city and began building a wall to cut Syracuse off by land. The Syracusans built counter-walls, and in the fighting Lamachus was killed. Even so, by summer Syracuse was close to being surrounded and was discussing terms.

At this moment Gylippus arrived. He had landed in the north of the island at Himera, gathered troops and marched overland. He reached Syracuse before the Athenian wall was finished and built a counter-wall across Epipolae, which ended any chance of a complete blockade. Nicias, now ill with a kidney disease, moved his base to the headland of Plemmyrium at the mouth of the Great Harbour.

Reinforcements and defeat at sea

In the winter of 414/413 BC Nicias wrote to Athens, describing the danger and asking either to be recalled or to receive a second army. Athens chose to reinforce. In 413 BC Demosthenes and Eurymedon sailed with 73 triremes and about 5,000 hoplites, plus many light troops.

The situation had already worsened. Gylippus captured Plemmyrium and its stores. The Syracusans strengthened the bows of their ships for head-on ramming, a tactic that suited the cramped waters of the Great Harbour, and defeated the Athenians at sea. At home, Sparta had openly resumed the war and fortified Decelea in the spring of 413 BC, so that Athenian farms and the silver mines at Laurion were under constant threat.

Demosthenes arrived in the summer and tried a bold night attack on Epipolae. It began well but collapsed into confusion in the dark, with heavy losses. Demosthenes now urged an immediate withdrawal.

The eclipse, the retreat and the prisoners

Nicias hesitated, partly because he feared the Athenian assembly would punish generals who returned without success. When the decision to leave was finally taken, a total eclipse of the moon occurred on the night of 27 August 413 BC. Most of the soldiers took it as a warning, and Nicias, following the soothsayers, agreed to wait “thrice nine days” before moving.

The delay was fatal. The Syracusans blocked the harbour mouth with a line of ships chained together. In a last great sea battle in September 413 BC, the Athenians tried to break out and were beaten. Their crews refused to board the ships again.

The army, said by Thucydides to number at least 40,000 people including non-combatants, set out by land, leaving the wounded behind. Harassed constantly by Syracusan cavalry and javelin throwers, the two divisions became separated. The rearguard under Demosthenes was surrounded and surrendered, about 6,000 men. Nicias’ division reached the Assinarus river, where desperate, thirsty soldiers were cut down as they tried to drink and cross. Nicias then surrendered to Gylippus.

Against Gylippus’ wishes, the Syracusans put Nicias and Demosthenes to death. About 7,000 prisoners were held in the stone quarries of Syracuse, exposed to heat by day and cold by night, with little food or water. Many died. After about 70 days most survivors, other than Athenians and Greeks from Sicily and Italy, were sold as slaves.

Plutarch tells a later story that some Athenians won their freedom, or at least food and water, by reciting verses of Euripides, whose plays were loved in Sicily. It is an appealing anecdote rather than a proven fact.

Consequences

Thucydides judged it the greatest Greek action of the war, “most glorious to the victors, most calamitous to the conquered”. Athens had lost around 200 triremes across the two expeditions, along with many thousands of citizens, allies and skilled rowers. Its treasury was badly drained.

The results were felt quickly. Subject cities in Ionia began to revolt, Persia started to fund the Spartan fleet, and in 411 BC an oligarchic coup briefly overthrew the Athenian democracy. Athens still fought on for nearly a decade and won notable victories, but it never rebuilt the reserves lost in Sicily. The war ended with defeat at the Battle of Aegospotami and the surrender of Athens in 404 BC.

Syracuse emerged stronger and more confident. Within a decade it came under the tyrant Dionysius I, who made it the dominant power in the Greek west.

By the numbers

Timeline

• 416 BC, winter: Envoys from Segesta ask Athens for help against Selinus and Syracuse.
• 415 BC, spring: Athens votes for the expedition; the Herms are mutilated.
• 415 BC, midsummer: The fleet sails; Alcibiades is soon recalled and flees to Sparta.
• 414 BC, spring and summer: Athenians take Epipolae and begin walling in Syracuse; Lamachus is killed.
• 414 BC, late summer: Gylippus reaches Syracuse and blocks the Athenian wall.
• 413 BC, spring: Sparta fortifies Decelea in Attica.
• 413 BC, summer: Demosthenes arrives; the night attack on Epipolae fails.
• 413 BC, 27 August: A lunar eclipse delays the Athenian withdrawal.
• 413 BC, September: Final defeat in the Great Harbour, then the disastrous retreat and surrender.

Why it matters

The Sicilian Expedition shows how a democracy, carried away by ambition and divided leadership, could commit itself to a war far from home and lose almost everything. It turned the Peloponnesian War against Athens and gave Thucydides the tragic climax of his history, still read today as a classic study of overreach.