If they glanced towards the Great Harbour, they
could see the victorious Syracusans towing off the shattered hull of
an Athenian trireme, the last sad remnant of two great armaments. If
they turned their thoughts towards Athens and home, they found no
comfort there; for their beloved city was beset with enemies, and in
themselves, beaten and broken as they were, lay her chief hope of
salvation. The past was all black with calamity, and the future loomed
terrible before them, threatening captivity and death; and the
present, in that last hour of parting, was full of such sights and
sounds of woe as might have stirred pity even in the breasts of their
enemies. Around them, the camp was strewn with the unburied corpses of
brothers, comrades and sons, and thousands more were tossing on the
waves, or flung up on the shores of the bay. And while the neglect of
that sacred duty pressed heavily on their conscience, still more
harrowing were the cries of the sick and wounded, who clung round
their knees, imploring to be taken with them, and when the army began
to move followed with tottering steps, until they sank down exhausted,
calling down the curse of heaven on the retreating host. Such was the
anguish of that moment, that it seemed as if the whole population of
some great city had been driven into exile, and was seeking a new home
in a distant soil.
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