Page:Thucydides, translated into English Vol 1.djvu/315

23,24] SAFE ARRIVAL AT ATHENS I99 through the space between the towers. As each man got to the other side he halted upon the edge of the ditch, whence they shot darts and arrows at any one who came along under the wall and attempted to impede their passage. When they had all passed over, those who had occupied the towers came down, the last of them not without great difficulty, and proceeded towards the ditch. By this time the three hundred were upon them ; they had lights, and the Plataeans, standing on the edge of the ditch, saw them all the better out of the darkness, and shot arrows and threw darts at them where their bodies were exposed ; they themselves were concealed by the darkness, while the enemy were dazed by their own lights. And so the Plataeans, down to the last man of them all, got safely over the ditch, though with great exertion and only after a hard struggle ; for the ice in it was not frozen hard enough to bear, but was half water, as is commonly the case when the wind is from the east and not from the north. And the snow which the east wind brought in the night had greatly swollen the water, so that they f^ could scarcely accomplish the passage It was the violence of the storm, however, which enabled them to escape at all. From the ditch the Plataeans, leaving on the right hand 24 the shrine of Androcrates, ran all jhey first go towards together along the road to Thebes. Thebes, ami then strike They made sure that no one would over the mountams to ever suspect them of having fled in ^^' the direction of their enemies. On their way they saw the Peloponnesians pursuing them with torches on the road which leads to Athens by Cithaeron and Dryoscephalae. For nearly a mile the Plataeans continued on the Theban road ; they then turned off and went by the way up the mountain leading to Erythrae and Hysiae, and so, getting to the hills, they escaped to Athens. Their number was » Taking bnepix^^y in the sense of ' superare ' : or, ' could hardly keep above the surface in crossing.'