Page:History of Greece Vol VIII.djvu/212

190 HISTORY OF GREECE. ble that all this could have taken place, had there blown during this time an intolerable storm between Mitylene and Arginusse. If the weather was such as to allow of the safe transit of Ete- onikus and all his fleet from Mitylene to Chios, it was not such as to form a legitimate obstacle capable of deterring any generous Athenian seaman, still less a responsible officer, from saving his comrades exposed on the wrecks near Arginuste. Least of all was it such as ought to have hindered the attempt to save them, even if such attempt had proved unsuccessful. And here the gravity of the sin consists, in having remained inactive while the brave men on the wrecks were left to be drowned. All this reasoning, too, assumes the fleet to have been already brought back to its moorings at Arginusse, discussing only how much was practicable to effect after that moment, and leaving untouched the no less important question, why the drowning men were not picked up before the fleet went back. I have thought it right to go over these considerations, indis- pensable to the fair appreciation of this memorable event, in order that the reader may understand the feelings of the assem- bly and the public of Athens, when the generals stood before them, rebutting the accusations of Theramenes and recriminating in their turn against him. The assembly had before them the grave and deplorable fact, that several hundreds of brave sea- men had been suffered to drown on the wrecks, without the least effort to rescue them. In explanation of this fact, they had not only no justification, at once undisputed and satisfactory, but not even any straightforward, consistent, and uncontradicted state- ment of facts. There were discrepancies among the generals themselves, comparing their official with their unofficial, as well as with their present statements, and contradictions between them and Theramenes, each having denied the sufficiency of the storm as a vindication for the neglect imputed to the other. It was of Konon, that he went out of the harbor " as soon as the wind becamo calmer;" that it blew a strong wind, though in a direction favorable to cany the fleet of Eteonikus to Chios. Konon was under no particular motive to go out immediately: he could afford to wait until the wind be- came quite calm. The important fact is, that wind and weather were per- fectly compatible with, indeed even favorable to, the cscarc of thePelopon- nosian fleet from Mitylene to Chios.