Lions Led By Donkeys Podcast - Episode 420 - The Sicilian Expedition

Episode Date: June 29, 2026

USE CODE DONK50 TO GET 50% OFF YOUR FIRST MONTH ON PATREON UNTIL THE END OF JUNE http://www.patreon.com/lionsledbydonkeys GET JOE'S BOOK Ebook, Audiobook, and Paperbacks now available! https://www.amazon.com/Highlands-Burn-Foundling-Brigade-Saga-ebook/dp/B0GSG5CNXX/ Or you can buy the ebook and audiobook directly from us: https://www.llbdpodcast.com/products/ Get Nate's band's debut album here! https://secondhomesband.com/ Hoping to get one over on their Spartan enemies, Athens is tricked by some fancy furniture and sweet chains and invades Sicily. Before the operation can even start, one commander who is trying to stop the invasion frames another for the crime of sacrilege, leading him to defect to the Spartans and convince them to join the war to stop Athens. Somehow, that isn't even the strangest thing that happens over the next two years. SOURCES: Ellis, Walter M. Alcibiades. New York: Routledge, 1989 Kagan, Donald. The Peace of Nicias and the Sicilian Expedition. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, Thucydides. The Peloponnesian War. Translated by Richard Crawley. Strauss, Barry S., and Josiah Ober. The Anatomy of Error: Ancient Military Disasters and Their Lessons for Modern Strategists. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1990 Porter, Barry. Misplaced Aggression: The Athenian Defeat at Syracuse. Military Heritage. Vol. 9 No. 2.

Hey everyone, Joe here. For the entire month of June, new patrons can get 50% off the first month of the Legion of the Old Crow tier on our Patreon. So if you're a new listener, an old friend, or maybe someone who's just been curious about what kind of fun we're having over on Patreon, you can check out our entire bat catalog from the past eight years, all for the price of a crisp white monster. So for the whole month of June, use code Donk 50 on Patreon to get 50% off your first month. To the crack of rifles in the acrid stench of sorcery, a sun invasion sweeps through the highlands of the Confederation, and Syatt's peaceful village life breaks with the dawn. A sole survivor amidst the smoking ruins of all that he held dear. Syatt must make a choice, his pursuing revenge against the mercenaries that took everything from him, worth becoming one himself. As his escape pushes him into the

gruff and brace of the foundlings brigade, he must learn to tread a path between his need to understand why his people were targeted for destruction and the new responsibility of his soldier's life, even as each new encounter with the horrors of battle force him to confront the terrible cost of his oath. Before long, the shifting fog of war casts old certainties into a haze of doubt, while the stuff of legend seems clear as day, and Siat finds himself drawn into a much larger conflict that he could possibly imagine. My debut fantasy novel, The Highlands Burn, is now out on e-book, audiobook, and paperback. Much like our podcast, this book is a totally independent production, and I hope you'll give it a try. As always, you can find the links where you can get it in the show notes below.

Hello and welcome to the Lions at Buy Donkey's podcast, the only military history podcast in the entire known world. I'm Joe. With me is Tom. Tom. How are you doing, buddy? I'm doing good. I am fighting with the TFL right now, although they have blessed me in that. My line was one of two lines that only had minor delays. So I managed. to get to work and not have to cycle through Edgeware Road at like half eight in the morning and die on a line bike. Is that like a traffic heavy road? So it's essentially just like a straight road that cuts through like from up past Paddington if I remember correctly all the way down to like Marble Arch like Green Park.

So it's like one of the main thoroughfares for traffic going into central London and it gets pretty hairy. No bike lanes or anything? There's bike lanes, but with the amount of buses that are on that road. Ooh. Is it a bike lane if a car can just careen into it, though? That's my thing. I don't consider a bike lane.

Maybe this is me just being thoroughly Dutch-pilled at this point. I don't consider a bike lane just like a painted strip on the side of the car lane. So in the UK, as far as I remember, the only people who can use bus lane, lanes are buses, black cabs, and cyclists. So like, if you're an Uber driver, you can't use it. Okay. Okay. Well, that's something. Does it actually stop people from doing it though? Oh, yeah. Okay. For the most part, it does stop people. The only other problem would have been if I unicycled is that like the weather broke last night. So it was like torrential rain all night. And then there was a break for like an hour and now it's raining again. So I'm like, I probably would have gotten soaked on the way

to the office. So I am happy that the wonderful, wonderful tube system blessed me today, although I am fucked the other day. You know, it's funny because the line that you told me that's like, oh yeah, it's only minor delays, aren't I so lucky? Like, that was the line I've been taking for

the last week during my famous residency in London. Everybody has heard of this. It was late every single time that I used it. One time it was late by like 15 minutes, which I understand is really, really bad for London and

for Dunha is just like how our trams run so I was like whatever 15 minutes it's fine yeah it can be hit or missed Jubilee line's usually pretty good depending if someone has like set a fire out near my end of the line

you mean again yeah again again there's always suspicious fires happening someone set our local saints preys on fire recently as well When I was leaving the studio, I already complained about this to Tom, but I didn't talk about the show. I was leaving the studio in London. And I was having what I have dubbed my pile meal,

which is I buy a whole bunch of random shit from Sainsbury and eat at my hotel room like a goblin because I'm too lazy to go anywhere else. And I went in and all of the power was out to the refrigerators. So they just threw everything off the shelves. I like, well, I guess I've eaten fucking granola tonight because I want to go to bed yeah that does happen that's fine I didn't bring you here

to complain about Sainsbury Tom I brought you here talk about Agent Greece now for the the melting fridge of context which I suppose produces a different type of grease yeah exactly the greasy context

we all know it we love it and the dudes who you know who are obsessed by it really don't like to talk about how much dudes were fucking each other in it. Greece. For the episode today, we're going to dive into the Peloponnesian War, a struggle of dominance over the Greek city states between the Delian League, led by Athens, and the Peloponnesian League led by Sparta.

For example, we just did an episode on the Hundred Years' War. The Peloponnesian Wars has a lot in common with that. And by that, I mean, it's a series of wars lumped together into one neat package. There were stops and starts, treaties and inventive ways to break said treaties. By 415 BCE, the two power blocks had been murdering and enslaving each other on and off again for 17 years. There had been a peace treaty between Athens and Sparta in place for six years by that point, as the two powers were maybe coming to the conclusion that they didn't actually have

the ability to completely defeat the other, or more than likely, a way to hit pause while they replenish their strength, reorganized, and plan new ways to stab with another in the face. This brings us to the island of Sicily. Famously a part of Greece. Yeah, that's right. It still is to this day. I'm taking an obstinate stance in the Turkish or Greek argument,

and I'm saying, no, it's Italian. Cabab was invented by the Italians. Sicily was like everywhere else in the Greek world split up into city states with Syracuse being the most dominant of them. I don't know about you, Tom, but as the resident American on this show, the only thing that comes to mind when someone said Syracuse to me is New York. Because they're basketball team? That's all I got. I was thinking to like Earth Crisis because I'm pretty sure Earth Crisis are from Syracuse. I'll take your word for it.

Syracuse was aggressive, militaristic, and ethnically Dorian. like the vast majority of the Peloponnesian League. Yeah, they were all walking around with like, they were super lean, they had like a skull face, you know. Yeah, they were ethically Dorian Yates. Everyone's walking around like I think he's from Birmingham. He sounds like he's from Birmingham. Even if they were not a member of the Peloponnesian League themselves,

they worked with them quite frequently. They were trading partners for Athens enemies. And if the time came, it wouldn't be too hard for them to throw their lot in officially with the Pelopnesian League and become another avenue for the Spartans to attack and conquer from. Outside of Syracuse, however, the rest of the Sicilian states were kind of sort of more like Athens. They were ethnically Ionian and Athens had already been involved in Sicilian politics for years at this point. Also, another weird thing just to tell non-American listeners how weird America gets when it comes to naming convention, there is an Ionia Michigan. It's mostly prisons. Okay.

Because, you know, like all American prisons, they're huge. They employ like thousands of people and they like support the towns that are around them because this is a healthy way to run a society. That's the only thing I know Ionia, Michigan for is all. the prisons. I mean, if you'd have told me, like, there is two types of towns in America. There's, like, Lebanon, Aonia, like, Paris, Texas. And then there's, like, gunfuck. Yeah. Yeah. And, like, they all just have, like, prisons or, like, massive pig slaughter factories. Those are the two kinds of cities. Weirdly, I went to high school with a guy who moved down from Ionia. And, uh, the only thing that sticks out in my mind,

about him is that he was a jugolo. So, yeah. So we need to do an ethnographic geography of Michigan and the general upper peninsula and like percentage of juggalo's. Ione is definitely not the upper peninsula. Oh, I mean like

as a comparison between the two. Well, the other peninsula is like 10 guys. There's really not much of a study there. And nine of them are juggalo's. I mean, I think nine are woodworkers. Or work in minds. But I think for the sake of this episode, it's probably easiest to remember the Ionian

people of Greece as, you know, juggalo's because that's where my brain has taken me. That's why the Greeks were starting the long tradition of a carpenters who were juggalo's wearing like the juggalo paint. Maybe that's their war paint. On their shield, they just have a big juggalo face paint because that, you know, this is, this would be like the er juggalo. They haven't gotten to face paint yet. So they're kind of workshop and stuff and they're starting with painting a giant juggalo like a face on their shield on this juggalo or uh or with it. Yeah, the hatchet man is actually a a phalanx. A longstanding demagogue for the Greeks who eventually moved to Michigan in memory of the Peloponnesian war. Yeah, that's that's what originally settled it for sure.

The juggalo's are all returned guys, but returning specifically to the Peloponnesian war. Athens routinely intervene on behalf of their allies in order to counter Syracuse aggression. Though Athens always saw the Sicilian front, for a lack of a better term, as a side act. And over time, the fighting on Sicily ground to a stalemate, forcing the parties, minus Athens, to meet in the Congress of Jella to sign a peace treaty that promised to end the fighting and limit Sicilian affairs to Sicilians and not involved outsiders. Like historians often compare this to like a Greek city state version of the Monroe Doctrine. It all started with the small Greek city state of Leonty, which sounds like a Final Fantasy 8 themed martini in a way. I was going to a different way as a good friend of anna Wintour, Andre Leontini.

That's a joke you're not going to get, but the fans are going to love it. Allegedly. Leonty like the majority of Greek city states at the time was an oligarchy. ruled by a council of rich land-owning elites. And I know that sounds strange and foreign to all of us today, since that's obviously not how we run our societies anymore. It's a form of government built to implode once the rich guy start arguing with one another. Thankfully, another thing that we don't have to deal with anymore.

Yeah, unfortunately now our society is run by pedophiles, completely unlike ancient Greek society. A rich pedophile, something that... Rich land-owning beedos. Yeah, that's something that's completely forward to the Greeks. Mm-hmm. Elsewhere, Sugesta, another city-state, goes to war against Salinas in the west of Sicily. After Sugesta loses a battle, they quickly send word to Athens asking for help, saying that Syracuse was aiding their enemy.

The thing was, Syracuse wasn't involved at all, but they had made it such a habit to get involved that pretty much everybody believed it was something that they would do. But Athens wasn't exactly chomping at the bit to go to war. even if they wanted to kick down Syracuse in order to score points against Sparta. But Sugesta was about to hit them with a king of a sales pitch. Sugestian representatives told Athens that, hey, look, we don't lack money.

We lack strength. We'll pay for your entire military operation. And while doing this, they made sure to take their finest of everything with them. They wore their finest clothing. They wore their finest jewelry. They brought with them their finest jewelry. They brought with them their finest.

furniture. They're all wearing their finest quadruple XL basketball teas. Hell yeah. Like true juggalo's. I really like the idea that before they went into the Athenian assembly, they dragged in like a really good couch. The war camp, they set up like, you know, the

fencing around it and there's just one couch outside. But it's a nice couch. Like, unlike if you came to my apartment or something when I was the age of most people making military decisions back. That's like, this is my finest lawn chair because it's all I could afford inside. First month's rent and deposit got me fucked up. Yep. That is not a lie. The Athenian

assembly was convinced that holy shit, these guys are loaded and the various faction of Athenian democracy launched into a debate to figure out what to do. The pro-war faction was led by the infamous Alcibeides. El Sabatis came up in the Athenian political world. by just smashing the war drums against Sparta at every turn. He was always in favor of aggressive action against Athens' enemies, even when everyone else wanted peace. And this is why he becomes incredibly popular amongst the Athenian military. So when Sugesta brings this idea forward to the assembly,

Alcibades pitches the war as one that would bring riches to Athens. And if they won, they would be able to bring Syracuse to heal entirely and allow Athens to rule the city. However, in the assembly with him were the guys who had just negotiated the very fragile piece with Sparta, namely Nisius, who was arguing against throwing that all out of the window. He argued that why the hell should we throw a bunch of shit at Sicily when Sparta is right next door and certainly gearing up for a future war against Athens. They need to save their men and material for when that comes.

It quickly becomes clear that Nisius' well-thought-out arguments were not going to be good enough. The rest of the assembly was sold on the idea of what amounted to be a get-quick rich scheme and a fat loot box waiting for them on the island of Sicily. Worse still, at least for Nisius, was that Alcibades was incredibly popular amongst the soldiers, like I already point out. You can see why, being a soldier back then, your money is based on campaigning. Alcibiades always wants to go on the campaign and Sicily amounts to

Fat Stack Island It would make all of them incredibly rich And with victory comes societal upward momentum The Assembly approves the mission to Suggesta And in subsequent meetings The Assembly appointed three commanders For the expedition

One would be Alcibiades The leader of the pro war faction The next would be Nisius the guy who didn't want to do it in the first place. Always be wary of someone who refuses to do something until the bag is mentioned. And Nisius did not volunteer for this. He does not want to go. The whole idea behind it is because Nisius is, for a lack of better term, the anti-war faction.

He would be able to restrain Alcibeides' more aggressive personality traits. but still there was a third guy Lamechus who was kind of centrist on the whole thing he could go either way but he was an experienced soldier and the idea was he would be able to rein both of them

in to be something of a peacemaker this will not work I should point out it's very stupid this is like what happens if a sitcom comes up with a chain of command yeah like it makes sense because like everyone involved in this is like a very seasoned campaign

or at least a very good tactician. And it's like, who do we send to stop these two people who are both convinced they are very right? One of them who kind of doesn't want to be there in the first place from killing each other. It's the clerk's version of command. I'm not even supposed to be here today. Yeah, this is just in a weird, uh, fucked up world. Someone's definitely going to write enemies to lovers fanfic about this particular moment.

I'm 100% certain someone's already done that without even looking it up. I've never been more convinced of anything in my life. And it was probably written at the time. Yeah, this was the first slash fick chiseled into stone. It was clear that the expedition was going to go ahead. At least if Nisius continued to put his faith in the government. So he came up with another idea. What if we invoke the wrath of God?

Okay, now I am locked in. I'm going to make a couple of guesses. Okay, it's Peloponnesian War. invoke the wrath of God. It's either going to be like animal sacrifice, human sacrifice in the form of like, I don't know, a hundred soldiers dying or someone just getting like goats eat

from top to tip. I pivot something I respect even more. Fraud. The most noble of invoking the wrath of God. Exactly. Nisius pulled in his ally, Androcles, a man whose name sounds like something like a hormone replacement therapy drug.

Or alternatively is like a side character and like season two of entourage. Turtle, go get Androcles. I hate that I still remember any character's name from that show. Androcles then went and found his cut purses, like street agents, near duels. They sends them around Athens to destroy stone markers that represented the god hurt. Hermes, which were found all around Athens. The idea, of course, was to show that the expedition had received a bad omen from the gods and would need to be called off. Now, that didn't work.

So, they pivoted once again to Plan C. He used those same fake informants to testify that he had seen Alcibeides wrecking the stones, and he needed to be brought up on charges. Just frame them about, like, well, nobody seems to listen to the wrath of God, so let's just frame him for a crime. Alcibatis immediately claims innocence and demands his right to stand trial immediately accepting the death penalty if he did not prove he didn't do it.

That sounds like a bit over the top but it's obvious why he would make those demands. First, obviously the guy's innocent. But in the context of how Athenian court works, there's another reason why. If he didn't stand trial, except charges and stand trial before the expedition left, his political opponents would wait to bring charges against him while he was gone,

meaning he wouldn't be able to set up a defense for himself. And his main body of support was the army, and they would also be gone, meaning he'd have nobody to stand up for him in his stead. But his allies convinced him to leave on time, which was the next day, with the expedition, because if he returned to Athens a conquering hero, they would have no choice but to clear him of the charges. But if he stayed and was the guy responsible for tanking the entire expedition to Sicily, because he had stayed home to fight charges, it would crater his support with the military.

So it was in his best interest to go and fight this war. So he did. The expedition had begun to balloon to the point that any idea that Sugesta paying for had just been thrown straight out the window. The suggested ambassadors offered to pay for 60 ships, some slingers, light infantry, stuff like that. But as the debate worked with the assembly and the Athenians just kind of

ignored the original plea for help and turn it into a much larger war of domination across Sicily entirely. By the time the expedition left in 415 BCE, it had turned into not only one of the most expensive Athenian military

operations, but one of the most expensive Greek invasion forces ever recorded. That's a big feet. Whoops. This is a classic case of mission creep if I've ever found one. Yeah, in reality is like, you know, with the way a lot of sources around like the classical era and wars, it's like, oh yeah, they paid for all of this stuff, but it was massively inflated because Alcabades was just in like solid gold armor. Yeah, which is completely useless, but he's dripped out as

fuck. He's wearing his solid gold breastplate. He has his sickest sandals. He's just standing there like Homer. Look closer, nissus. 60 ships had turned into 100. Some slingers and light infantry had turned into hundreds of sailors and thousands of hoplites. They sailed out to a small western island and soon the three different commanders took three columns of ships and sailed around western Sicily looking for allies to help them fight against Syracuse. Meanwhile, Syracuse is pretty aware of what is happening and what Athens is planning.

After all, it's kind of hard to take months to debate about ship publicly and then get together thousands of dudes, hundreds of ships, and start running around asking people to fight you and other people not hear about what you're doing. Syracusean general, Hymocrates, had fought the Athenians nine years before, and he immediately told the government that,

Hey, we need to just start asking everyone around us to join us, including Sparta, to fight these guys, right? Syracuse may have picked up on the Athenian battle plans, but the same did not go the other way. Athens thought they were catching the Syracusians totally unaware. So when the Athenian fleet sent some scouts forward to check out where they planned on landing in the harbor of Syracuse, they found it not weird that absolutely nothing was waiting for them. They believe they'd caught the Syracusians so unaware that they would be invading Sicily and that no one would have any idea. So they just rock up to the harbor and start demanding surrender. Yeah, because like all true Sicilians, you know, the Athenians arrived in the afternoon and they were all asleep.

Yeah, I mean, understandable. I don't see any issue with that personally as an Armenian. They had a big lunch of like balsamic vinegar and bread and olives. like it's hot, you know, sometimes you just want to have a lie down at 3pm. There's nothing wrong with that. I believe everybody should have a good afternoon nap, you know. I mean, I support it greatly because as you've seen, I have a sofa like right behind my desk and the best thing ever is editing two podcasts, recording something.

And then at 3 p.m. is like, I'm going to go to sleep for half an hour. Yeah, I almost fell asleep on it. It's comfortable. Yeah. Instead, the Syracusians were already preparing for battle on land, being smart enough to know that they weren't really going to be able to stand toe to toe to at the Athenian fleet all by themselves. Then, while readying to attack, Alcibades got word that the Athenian Assembly had charged him with mocking a religious right. This is actually a step down from the original charge of sacrilege. Yeah.

However, it did mean he'd have to go back to Athens. to stand trial in the middle of an invasion. To be honest, this is kind of his own fault in being like so willing to stand trial the first time. Yeah, you should have just stabbed your opponent in the face. This is why dueling should be allowed in the political sphere. Or just ignore the summons letter like everyone else. Yeah, uh, well, I mean, a little bit different back then that it is today where like politicians are charged with the crime and the politician can just go, no-uh.

and they're just going to bring you in front of a crowd and like de-glove you from toe to head isn't that just skinning at that point I feel like skinning requires a cut somewhere de-gloving is through pressure and speed

being de-gloved by horses yep finally I found a use for horses so Athens sends a ship to go out and retrieve him and Alcibades meets with the guys on the ship he agrees that he and his personal ship will follow them back to Athens and so they turn around and start going.

Then the lead ship, the one sent out to get him, begins to pull away a little bit. So Alcibedi's ship quickly steers his ship towards Sparta, and he defects king shit. He's found guilty in absentia. He's sentenced to death. All of his property is taken by the state. But none of that matters because he is in Sparta,

and now Nisius and Lammachus are left in charge of an invasion that they didn't even want to do in the first place, while also putting the entire weight of the operation on their shoulders. Now, Nisius and Lemachus obviously don't want to be doing this, but due to the dynamics at play, they can't just pack it up and go back to Athens because they're in command. The responsibility for its success falls on them.

If they go back without achieving victory, they get all the blame. Also, it's a pretty decent travel distance between Athens and Sicily as well. Yeah, it's not exactly around the fucking corner. Yeah, the Italians hadn't invented cocaine speedboats yet. That's what you think.

They were still running an olive oil. It doesn't make you go nearly as fast. It just kind of makes you slippery. I'm skimming through the war like a dolphin covered in olive oil. Skipping across the water like a particularly smooth rock. So, Nisius delays the landing. He tries to find more allies

and he fails entirely in this. But knowing he kind of has no other choice, because if he pulls back to Athens, right, and says, look, the pro-war guy you put in charge, and I framed for a crime just fucked off to the enemy, I want nothing to do this. Like, best case scenario, he's going to be exiled. Worst case scenario, they kill him.

Yeah. So he has no choice, but to go on with the invasion, meaning that Nisius causes all of this in the first place. If he doesn't try to frame Elsa Bates for a crime, yeah, the invasion's going to go ahead anyway, but at least like the more competent commander is going to be left in charge. How fucking annoyed would you be? It's just El Cabe's winning again.

And like, just fully knowing this is all your own fault because you want to be the biggest cunt. Nobody is going to be more self-owned than Nisius is by the end of this. episode. Don't put it on the stone tablet that I'm mad. First, he tried to lure the Syracusians to the town of Katana in the north, which did work, and then landed his main force at Syracuse Harbor. Once ashore, his forces began digging in. The Syracusians turned round, marched back towards the harbor, and attempted to confront the Athenians. And in the battle that followed, the Syracusians get absolutely dusted.

The Athenians, despite how objectively stupid, the operation had been and the chaos of their own commander, defecting in the middle of an invasion is, they were professional, they're well-trained, and they're a well-disciplined army. I should say, so far. They were anchored into the band of the Anapas River, their flanks were protected.

It left the Syracusians, no choice but to charge directly into formations of dug-in hoplites, which ends about as badly as you could imagine. Yeah, I'm imagining like a lot of guys just like turned into like skewers like, you know, onions, tomatoes, piece of pork. Oh, man. Good sear on them. That's why you get that good Greek fire. That's why we can't make Greek fire anymore because they were, didn't use it for warfare.

They used it for creating like human kebab. Hell yeah. Once again, the Sicilians invented kebab. You said before the Italians invented kebab. Yeah, but Sicily's part of it. no. The Italians meant a kebab. That's fair. You went on a technicality. Well done, sir.

That's the best way to be right. Technically right. The thing is the entire invasion could have ended right here. If not for one glaring problem. The Athenians neglected to bring any cavalry. At least they brought

food. Well, oh, fuck off. Hold that thought for now. They did bring food. for the immediacy. I will give them credit there. So even though the Athenians drove the Syracusians from the field, they couldn't capitalize on it. The Syracusians were able to withdraw in good order and deploy their own cavalry to cover the retreat. Normally in the situation, you would deploy light cavalry to chase down the fleeing enemy.

Hoplites are not exactly good for this job, you know, because it's dudes on their Chevro legs. And then to make things even worse, Nisius orders his arms. army to pull up stakes, get back on their ship, and withdraw the whole fleet back towards Katana. The battle was fought for no reason. We've talked about a lot of like pointless battles and like this one is just so dumb because it's like this is completely a quongo of Nisius's own making. And it's going to get worse and worse and worse. Like everything comes back to him saying fuck Alcabides. I am, you know, breaking this statue, I'm going to make him look bad.

Here's the thing. He had a good point in the beginning that they shouldn't do this, and that was the last good point that he would ever have. Mm-hmm. He writes to Athens, requesting cavalry, but also more money for his men, and maybe to bribe some Sicilian allies into joining his cause. Meanwhile, Hymocrates, the Syracusian commander, used the now very real invasion to kind of sort of become a military dictator.

Mm-hmm. He pressured the government to give him more and more power, including a large-scale conscription order. He cut the number of generals from the army to streamline command and focus control mostly around himself. Now, there were two other generals who technically had the same power as he did, but in practice, they answered to him. And using that power, he immediately calls Sparta to attack Athens elsewhere to pull their manpower away. While the Syracusians went to work extending the city's defenses, Nisius, kind of did nothing. Okay.

He remains a katana, still trying to convince more Sicilians to work with him. And then did nothing for months until it was winter. And that brought all campaigning to a halt. And that's how everything goes until spring of 414 BCE. The Athenians did get some reinforcements, a couple hundred cavalry, and they dig into their positions, but they've just been sitting there for a very long time and doing nothing. Just straight chilling.

Yeah. And like obviously they're not going to do anything over winter, but they did nothing for months leading up to that point because Nisius is trying to find a way out of this. So correct me if I'm wrong at this point, even if you were like technically on campaign, if the campaign is like called off for the winter, are these people like getting paid? Uh, kind of. Maybe. They're making money, but the majority of the reason why the military loved Alcibeides is. is because their real paycheck comes from looting. And they haven't really been able to loot anything. But there is a small positive here, and that because they're in Sicily, they also can't really desert.

They can't go home. Yeah, you're kind of fucking stoked there. Stop desertion with this one weird trick. There are hot deserters in your area. With the thaw, the Athenians began building siege wall around Syracuse, taking the Epipoli plateau and building a fort there. That is where Nisia soon took up residence thanks to a terrible kidney infection that nearly

killed him. Oh, kidney stuff is not good. As someone who's had kidney stones, I could not imagine having fucked up kidneys in the 4-14s. Yeah, you can't like drink, I don't know, was it, cranberry juice or whatever it is that helps dissolve them? Yeah. Yeah, he doesn't have that. He's just chugging olive oil and hoping they slip right out. He's just crushing up spiders and snorting them. Give me another line of the daddy long legs. My dick hurts. Slowly the siege wall began to close in around Syracuse, while the Athenian fleet parked itself in the harbor. Meanwhile, Lamechus led the men without Nisius since he couldn't get out of bed, having them build a large wooden plank system across the nearby marshes so they could march an entire army over them in an attempt to surprise Syracusians.

But Lamacus didn't know is that he was watering directly into a trap. And so when he launched his surprise attack, he himself was the one that got surprised. He was ambushed and cut off by Syracusian cavalry. Trapped with cavalry on one side and a huge siege ditch on the other, he had nowhere to go. Lamachus was cut down and his body dragged off behind a horse. Oh, what a way to go. Now Athens is down to only one final commander. The Syracusians launch a counterattack along the siege wall, slowly retaking it from the Athenians. As Syracusian soldiers assaulted the Fort Radnissius lay in bed,

he was saved by a counterattack of his own, which drove the Syracusians back. And remember, this is taking place on a plateau, it meant a whole lot of dudes were just falling down cliff faces and dying. Eventually they recapture the siege walls and put everyone right back where they started, minus a general, of course, since Lammachus got kind of turned into a horse decoration. If this sounds like the Syracusians are winning, and it might, they didn't think so.

They still hadn't heard shit from Sparta, and despite their victories, like murdering Lamicus, it's not as though they had the manpower or cash to keep fighting Athens. To make matters worse for them, the Athenian friendship is magic side quest was really starting to work. Because things looked like it was turning towards the Athenian side, smaller city states, of course, throw in their lot with Athens, including several Etruscan city states and longtime enemies of Syracuse. So soon most of their war planning came down to arguing amongst themselves over what terms of surrender they'd be willing to accept

when Athens called for them again. And that's probably how this would have ended, if it wasn't, for Elspadies. Oh, God. Since he had run to Smyrd, Sparta, he rightfully became the pettiest bitch imaginable. He was dead set on getting

Sparta to join the war against Athens. When he arrived in Sparta, the Spartans were locked in a debate over if or how much aid they would send to Syracuse. And they were actually leaning towards sitting this one out. For a lot of the same reasons why

Athenians didn't want to get involved in the war. They were like, why get involved in this bullshit? Athens is going to invade us. We need to be prepared for. And Alcibades is always a guy known for his speaking skill. This is a guy that has his charisma stat max the fuck out. So he takes the floor and he argues that Sparta has no choice but to send forces to Syracuse because wouldn't you know it, Athens is planning an invasion of the Peloponnese

once they finish with Syracuse. As far as anybody can tell, this is not true at all. But the two sides have been fighting each other for so long, the Spartans had no real good reason to doubt him. Yeah, it's one of those things where they've been at war so long that over a protracted period of time, anything is possible because so much has happened. Yeah, like, you need a long time of peace in between killing each other before anybody gives anybody the benefit of the doubt.

Alcabades is like, I heard Athens has trained monkeys to use knives. Ah, yes, the tree ninjas. soon Sparta was throwing together relief mission consisting of 3,000 men and a few hundred cavalry, all commanded by the general Gallipus. Now, Galypus is an interesting choice for this mission. He was a Spartan general, but he was a man of low standing. His mother was a helit, a slave, meaning he was not considered a full Spartan. Instead, he was known as a Mothax, which roughly translates to stepbrother,

like as in stepbrother to Spartan society, because he was not a full Spartan. Though he did go through all the infamous Spartan bullshit, everyone has heard of like the Ogote. Um, his father had previously been executed for embezzlement. Help me, stepbrow. I've been stuck in this phalanx. And Gallipus himself had already been temporary exiled for accepting bribes from Athedians.

And this is the guy you are trusting. This whole family is full of fucking hustlers. Never thought I'd see all my dogs turn to snakes, bro. Imagine. Look, I'm not one of those guys that hands anything to Sparta, but as an ancient society, if there was one government I'm going to steal from and embezzle from, it's not them. You know they're going to kill you in the worst way possible when they catch you. It's a fucking police state.

You know, a fucking war fought by the Syracusians about, you know, that has devolved into like honor and treachery. This is just an earth crisis song. Like this is the most like dude who's into hardcore and his straight age and like, I don't know, works at 7-11 like writing songs about like the ultimate betrayal. Drawing a big X on my shield before I go to war. The ultimate straight-edge failings. So when Nisius heard that Gullippus was going to be the guy leading the Spartan army, he kind of breathed the sigh of relief. He didn't see there's anything to worry about.

If the Spartans actually meant business, he figured, they would send someone actually worth a shit. Yeah. I mean, at least, look, being self-aware is a great thing in certain measures. And I feel like he may be overestimating how much influence he has. in that he's not that good. Yeah, I think he's overestimating his own abilities here. I think the straight-edge Spartan's going to kill you.

Yeah, it's just like, well, we need to send a guy. Who is the most kind of expendable guy we have? Let's send the stepbrother, the son of the embezzler, the guy we already exiled. Nisius thought so little of Golippas and the fleet. And admittedly, Spartans are not. exactly known for their naval capability, but that didn't really mean anything, because he only sends four ships to stop Gallipus's invasion of northern Sicily. So of course, the Spartans land easily, and the Athenians do nothing to stop him. Yeah, see, Joe, I don't believe this because

I saw an incredible movie directed by Zach Snyder called 302. I always forget there was a second one. That very heavily features Spartans conducting naval warfare, and I, personally, personally, trust the historical accuracy of the works of Zach Snyder over your research. Yeah, that's fair. Release the Snyder cut of me punching you in the balls. Yeah, but you're punched me in the balls in like super slow-mo. Yep. And it's all in black and white for artistic reasons. You can see the individual hairs on your knuckles waving in the wind. As soon as the Spartans land, several Sicilian states side with Sparta and begin giving them men in supplies. Then they march south towards the Athenian siege wall, more specifically towards the northern tip of it,

which was incomplete, and was also where Nisius had decided for some reason to put his main supply and logistics hub. So the Spartans and their allies spooked in and captured all of their food, water, and loot that they had gathered so far. Ah, I see where this is going. I should point out that the Athenians still control the harbor, so they can bring in food, water, supplies, whatever, But having all of your shit by the port does not exactly mean it's with your army, which is why you need forward supply bases to move supplies inland from the port. So it's not for a lack of supplies. It's a lack of logistics that the Athenians are going to run into.

I'm hitting the big red logistics button. You fucked up. Nisius recognized that he needed to create a new inland supply hub. So he orders a fort to be built at Plymereum. I don't expect anybody to have an old Greek map lying around here of the island of Sicily, but just so you can take this picture and rotate it in your head. Joe, I think you are massively underestimating our audience. There is at least five people who already have their ancient Greek maps of Sicily open as we are speaking.

Respect, honestly. This fort is south of Syracuse, meaning there's no fresh water there, Which it should be noted is less than ideal if you're human. Then if that wasn't bad enough, the Syracusians rallied out and built a fort at Olympium to the north of the new Athenian supply hub. Using constant cavalry patrols, it meant that the supply hub that the Athenians built was now unreachable. I feel like we are about to walk into a situation where quite a lot of people are about to

create the same level of salinity inside their body as a tube of Pringles? They're working towards it. And to be fair, they are just as crunchy. Once you cannibalize one Athenian, you just can't stop. So did Nisius order a breakout, abandon his new fort and move the Southern forces back up with the rest of the army? Uh, no, he did not. Instead, he did what he did best. He did nothing. All while the Spartans and the Syracusians began to build their own wall around them. More and more Spartan allies sent soldiers to Sicily. More and more walls were built around the Athenians,

and soon there would be no way out. A lot of the times doing nothing is actually quite a good tactical choice because it's like, okay, let's see how this plays out. The other times it's you get completely routed by your enemy and then get like cut to pieces. And I feel like this is going to be a ladder situation. You probably shouldn't quiet quit the battlefield. I'm all for quitting your job without giving your boss notification because it's not your business.

But you shouldn't do that in the middle of a war zone because you'll still just die. I mean, as opposed to Alcabobides who did the earliest version of loud quitting. He was like, fuck you, I'm going to Sparta. But the Athenians weren't cut off. Not yet. They still had their fleet. Nisius could easily say, fuck this and hit the bricks. load everybody up and get out of there, but he doesn't.

Instead, he writes to Athens, requesting the assembly to recall him or send reinforcements. Now, this is a political move, and it's entirely self-serving. Like I pointed out earlier, he knows if he retreats on his own, he would face all the repercussions of the invasion's failure, up to and including death. But he also assumed Athens wouldn't send reinforcements. They would cut their losses, and the assembly would order his recall. well then the order for retreat would be on them not him and would get him out of any possible

blowback from fucking up yeah and two and a half thousand years later historians are analyzing the letter that he wrote and trying to parse you know the colloquial and like formal ancient Greek and they finally crack out and it just says shit's fucked shit's fucked can I come home please smiley face

Tunisius is surprise Athens sends a reinforcement forcements forcing him to commit to fighting further. He's like, shit, I should have never broken those fucking rocks. Oh, how mad would you be to be in this situation? You know, a terrible version of reaping and sewing. Yeah, reaping. Hell yeah. Sewing. Oh, fuck.

Sowing. Hell yeah. Oh, wait. Oh, no. No, no. This isn't going well. It's what those rare situations are both reaping and. sewing. It goes great. It's, it's the second cycle of that that really blows up at his face. Because he gets all he wants when he gets El Sabatis fired. Yeah, it is a very classical case of I fucked up and accidentally made myself important at work. Yeah, never do that. Never be the one anybody calls reliable. Yeah. That isn't the only thing that Athens did that would, in retrospect to be a very bad idea. Once they sent reinforcements, they also began attacking Sparta in the mainland, blowing up the peace treaty for good. Sparta, in turn, would start hitting back and

require Athens to keep a lot of their heavy cavalry back in Athens to protect themselves, while they sent thousands more men under two more generals to Sicily, splitting their forces. Gullippus pitched a two-prong attack to Mocrates. Their Syracusians would distract the Athenians at their supply base by setting 80 ships into the harbor. Meanwhile, Gallipus would attack over land. Part of this attack went terribly because when the Syracusian ships appeared, Nisius sent out his navy and crushed 11 of their ships and drove them off. But while this is happening, the Athenian soldiers, Nisius included, weren't paying attention to anything else. While the ships were fighting, they were literally standing on the shore and watching the two navies kill each other like a spectator sport,

which honestly, that would probably be the most entertaining thing they've seen in a very long time. Yeah, real Siskel and Ebert style situation, Mystery Science Theater 3,000, you're just sitting there with popcorn and robots. Yeah, like a doing in-depth film review, but for how the ships kept crashing into each other. I mean, we could create an app called Battleboxed where like people can, it would be great with history nerds. It's like, you know, oh, all. I like, what's your battle box top four battles in history? Yeah, I'm actually going to pitch that to, um, to investors and I'm weirdly going to have like a market cap of like five million dollars despite making no money.

That's how that works, right? No, you'll usually market a five billion because you don't want to underestimate how much battleboxed will be worth. Oh, right, right, right. I'm going to get like a series B for a hundred million dollars. I'm going to buy a solid gold jet ski. I'm going to buy the tungsten cube. Parry me with my cube.

So as everybody's gawking at the naval battle, the Spartans come charging in, and everybody's caught completely unprepared. Nisius had once again loses supply fort and be sent scrambling back towards the harbor that Athens still controlled. As word quickly spread of the victory over the Athenians, more and more Sicilians joined the Spartans.

Goliathus sent word back to Sparta, telling him to deploy the Navy and finally cut Nisius off from Athens because then the battle would be just over. It'd strangle them off. But until that happened, Pnecius would still have the harbor, meaning he still had an artery for reinforcements and resupply from sea. And for a little while, the Athenians held.

They fought off attempts over land and sea to push them out of the harbor, though as the battle wore on, men began to get sick, thanks to the fact that the harbor was butted up to Sicilian marshes and that spread malaria crazy style Yes, we got the swamp that kills you This is a real bingo card of an episode We got Spartan mosquitoes

Going through by Spartanago And of course there was another fuck up On the part of the Athenians During one of the battles at sea Which after three days of fighting at this point had become something of a routine. The Syracusians and the Athenians fought to a standstill. The Athenians, like they had done multiple times before,

pulled their ships back to the harbor, where men could then get lunch from some local food carts. Yes. As they pulled up to the food carts, the Syracusians pressed their attack while the Athenians were at a lunch break, sinking seven ships. Honestly, I think this is a real party fail.

At the end of the day, they're all Greeks and how dare you interrupt, you know, getting Geras for lunch. Violating the Holy Pact of the lunch break is the highest of crimes. Unfortunately, though, this was before the Columbia Exchange. So instead of French fries in the Geras, it's like turnip. Let me get them turnip fries. I like turnips. Maybe that would be good.

Maybe I'll try that and it won't be good because I'm not a very good cook. But then the Athenian rainforest. submits arrived, thousands of men and another 75 ships under the command of generals, Demos Thanez and Eurimidon. With Demosthanez being the senior of the two, virtually all of the heavy lifting would be left to him. And Nisia seemed fine with this. He like immediately steps aside and lets the man take command. This could be because he was desperate for someone else to figure this shit out or because he was now so sick he could hardly stand, you know, on account of being camped out in the malaria marsh.

Mm-hmm. Damos Thanez shrugged and said, fine, taking command of an attempt to end the battle once and for all. According to him, if they took the northern approaches to Syracuse and separated the Syracusians from their Spartan allies, they could then settle in and strangle the city because they still controlled the harbor. Was this attack ever going to work? Probably not.

didn't stop him. The first attack fails. Damothanez goes back to the drawing board, decides to conduct a second attack, this time at night. Now this might surprise some of our listeners, but organized large-scale attacks at night are a relatively new development in the annals of military history. The reasons for this to make a very long story short are both organizational and practical. Obviously, you can't see unless the moon is incredibly bright, which it wasn't. And if it is, it kind of negates the importance of a night attack, right? Like, if everybody can see, then you're not sneak attacking them. There's no good way to communicate at night without modern communication systems.

That hand and arm signals and flags aren't going to work. If you can't communicate with your thousands of men on where to go and what to do, well, shit tends to fly off the rails very quickly. Yeah, we have a general mantra on this show that it's never really a good idea to go camping in the woods with 10,000 year homies and doubly so doing it in the dark before the invention of the flashlight, any kind of radio system. It's real bad. I mean, like, famously, we just did a series on Iwo Jima, which included the first Marine Corps large-scale night attack during the Pacific War still went terribly for a lot of the same reasons.

And that is with, you know, however many years of technological advancement, the Athenians were fucked from the get-go. And this is all exactly what happens here. The Athenians get lost in the dark. Men get turned around. They bump into one another. And then, of course, through all of this chaos, they get spotted by the enemy. The most forward elements of the night attack get checked by Spartan hoplites.

So they turn around and run. Because they're the forward element, they turn around and run directly back into their own army. Nobody knows who is who or what is happening. So some people believe this forward element is actually the Spartans. People begin stabbing each other. Others start running away. The Spartans and the Syracusians continue their advance slowly, which only adds to the utter chaos rippling through the Athenian army. They break and they run.

But because it's dark and they're lost. They don't know where to run. Hundreds of them just plumbing off some nearby cliffs to their death. It is the most acmi-ass way to lose a battle. By the time it was all over. Damos Thanez's attempt to end the battle of Syracuse had actually turned into Athens' largest defeat of the campaign yet, leaving 2,500 men dead.

We shouldn't have trusted Donnie mayonnaise to lead the battle. Yeah, it's not good. He was like, wait, what do you mean men can't see in the dark? I thought it was only me. Yeah, they should have sent in Colonel Mustard instead. But he was dead with a candlestick. Accepting he had failed, Damos Thanez said that, you know what? It's probably time to pack it up and go home.

The Spartan invasion of Attica was just getting worse and worse. And as a much larger concern than this bullshit, Attica famously once again. bringing us back to New York? Mm-hmm. Not to mention all of the malaria that just about everybody was suffering from at this point was really eaten into the ranks

as malaria tends to do. But again, Nisius refuses for the same reason that he had before. So, he holds a vote over what to do next. With the generals who had shown up as reinforcements

voting to go home, but Nisius and his original cadre of officers who outnumbered the newcomers voting to stay. Yeah, I think if he hadn't, you know, weighted the votes towards one decision, I can't imagine asking the men who, like, have big malaria bubos all over their bodies to vote whether to stay on Death Island. Yeah, that's the fun part about Greek democracy is Joe Anopoulos, you know,

never gets asked for his opinion. because he doesn't own any land and has no rights. Mm-hmm. He's like, I would vote against the boobos. Shut up! And these are the values of Western democracy we must defend with our lives.

We must defend the boobos. The mosquitoes didn't get a vote either. I think they probably would have voted for them to stay as well. At any point, you vote on the same set of mosquitoes, you probably fucked up. Yeah, you should, rather than being of a landowning class, you should get more votes if you have more.

boobos. Yeah, it's boobo-based democracy. Boobocracy. Bobligarchy. No, it's boobligarchy. Boobligarchy. Fuck. Just because they had come to a little democratic vote to stay didn't mean they could figure out what to do next, though, because there's some serious infighting

going on between these two factions now. The Damos Thanez faction of generals broke down, said, okay, okay, if we're going to stay, we respect the vote. But we really need to get out of the fucking malaria a plague swamp. We need to pull up stakes. We need to go back north, get back to Katana maybe. Just please can we get away from the goddamn mosquitoes? No, what they needed was a guy like Tom Morello to play the liar for a public performance to rock the vote to get everyone engaged in the process of democracy. And then this is be like, yeah, but you don't own any

lines. Shut the fuck up. Sending Paris Hilton back in time with a voter die shirt. And one of the conscripts, like, yeah, but like most of us have accidentally chose dying, you know, on account of the boobos. Yeah, listen, you know, the ancient Greek world, a lot of, a lot like our world, a lot of people don't really know that. Helen of Troy launched all of those ships by saying, that's hot. That's right. Then, you know, after that didn't work as she became a DJ. That was also put to the vote. Should we leave the plague swamp?

Once again, this vote stays along faction lines, which meant that Nisius wanted to stay in the malaria hole. So there they sat getting sicker and sicker. This dude just has like a real kink for getting thousands of pricks in them, you know, in a single night. I love this shit. I love scratching every inch of me bloody. I love this. He's really just trying to court the mosquito vote. They're very underserved, you know.

body politic in the ancient Greek world. The Spartans and the Syracusians and their growing number of allies were also fine with this decision, and they were more than happy to let the Athenians sit in the swamp and die throughout the summer. After enduring this for months, and watching more and more reinforcements from Sparta and its allies roll onto the island, the morale of the Athenian soldiers and officers tanked to the point that Nisius was a little more than worried that everyone might just fucking kill him so they could go home.

Which, yes, I would have done that by now. So he decided, it's time to go. But these are Greeks of the day, you know, superstition wasn't superstition. It wasn't even religion. It was how the world was understood to work. Though, that being said, Nisius was concerned a little bit more pious than just about everybody else around him. So while everyone was packing up to leave in the middle of the night, a soothsayer approached

Nisius and said, hey, you can't leave just yet. If you do, you'll die. You got bad omens written all over you, kid. His exact words, as recorded are to wait until, quote, thrice nine days or a month before they could leave. So that way the bad omens isn't drag them down into the sea. And this is hardly the weirdest thing as soothsayers ever told someone to do on this podcast. But something made all of this worse.

Nisius is trying to leave that night because there's the lunar eclipse, meaning it would be so dark that they'd be able to sneak away. They wouldn't be able to see them. But now, as he was waiting, that cover would be gone. And instead of having the cover of Pitch Night, his enemies would just bring more and more men, but most importantly, more ships to Sicily instead. And by the end of August, the Spartans had made their move,

sinking a dozen Athenian ships in the harbor. And then they brought in more ships to trap the Athenians within. They'd chain their ships together and threw anchors, overboard or to create a seaborne wall. This left Nisius and his men in the harbor only one choice. We have to run the blockade. The weak, tired, panic, and demoralized Athenians piled into their ships and made a run for the one gap on the blockade that was being used so the Syracusians could move their own forces in and out. Now they did smash through it, breaking the chains in the process. But the second line of Syracusian ships held, and the ones they ran through simply swung

around and surrounded them. With the Athenians surrounded and all of the ships so close together, nobody could gain raming speed. Everyone crashed, hooks were thrown onto neighboring ships, and we get what naval combat generally looked like back then, which is dudes killing each other with hand-to-hand weapons just like they would on land, but now on the world's most fun, unstable surface. Yeah, I find naval skirmishing in like this period of history, like very fascinating, because like the boats essentially you have to get so close to each other that like you are either being boarded

or boarding someone else. Yeah, get me close enough so I could hit him with my spear. Yeah. After a few hours of this, any Athenian ship that could ran back to the Sicilian shore. The Syracusians went back to their ships and camps and began celebrating thinking everything was over

and they promptly got shit-faced. But despite everything that had happened, the Athenians were still in Sicily and their defeat was not final. Meanwhile, the Athenian camp broke down entirely. Nisius insisted they make another run out of the harbor, but at this point, the mid-Bruso terrified to get on the boats again, it was just not possible, leaving them trapped.

Damos Thanez came up with a different idea. We retreat north, overland, get to northern Sicily, which is closer to Italy, it'll be easier to cross. While this is happening, Goliis gets pissed, because he wants to march in and crush the Athenians immediately after this. but now all of his allies are drunk as hell and unable to do anything. He would need to stall the Athenians until his army sobered up, so he sends spies into their camp,

saying, whatever you do, do not go north. There are armies up there waiting for you. Now, that's not true. He was rushing men to get there, but they weren't in place yet. But the Athenians believed all of this. And while they argued on what to do next, the Syracusians sobered up and their fleet closed in and crushed, but remained of the Athenian fleet,

forcing the Athenian hand to, now they have no choice but to withdraw over land. Nisius and his now 20,000 men began their march west with the plan of cutting north to get to the town of Catana, which they'd be able to find refuge, they'd be able to find resupply, and maybe transportation. And they do this in September 13th. They leave the wounded and very sick behind,

and they don't even bother to bury their dead on their way out. The number of people they left behind, there's no solid figures on this. It goes very high and also very low. But I thought it could have been as many as 20,000. We're just left behind due to all the malaria. You belong to the swamp now. You have to learn how to drink blood and buzz around on people's ears now.

You are one of them. It's the Sicilian version of the Viking funeral. Your corpse just gets pushed into the swamp. You slowly sink into the marsh. But when they were left behind, the wounded knew what was going on. So as the army marches out, people drag themselves out of their tents and struggle and crawl and pull themselves forward trying to follow the army because they don't want to be left behind to be terminally Shrek. But they're all left until they're too weak to go any further, leaving behind a carpet of dead and dying Greeks across the road. I hate getting Shrek to a permanent end.

The ones considered strong enough to march made it only four miles before the attack started. hit and run attacks with bows and javelins and cavalry, whittled them down bit by bit as they walked. Once it became clear which way they were going, Spartans and Syracusians marched ahead and blocked it off. This would force them to change the route and change the route again and changed the route again, sending the run in circles, and this caused them to burn through their very limited food and water supply they could carry with them.

Six days into their treat, Damos Thanez's forward elements of the march were cut off while crossing an olive groves. Nisius either unwilling or unable to help just kept marching, leaving him to his fate. Demosthenes and his soldiers fought on for hours until it became clear that all was completely hopeless. He ordered his soldiers to surrender, and when his enemies closed in to accept his sword,

he tried to stab himself to death. Notice how I said tried, because he failed. He did succeed in stabbing himself multiple times, but he did not die. Well, he stabbed himself to death, Just not in an immediate sense. Well, you know, I will say he will die, but not that way. How embarrassing is that?

Yeah. Like, look, I tried to go out like a hero, but now I'm just, I failed even this. Fuck. Please don't put on my tombstone that I failed to kill myself. Nisius heard about the surrender the next day when the Spartans themselves delivered the news. Like, that dudes literally just walked up to the front of it. front lie like, yo, we got your friend. The dumb bitch didn't even kill himself.

They demand his surrender as well. Nisius apparently not seeing he was maybe not in the best position to negotiate, offered something else. Look, guys, what if you just let us go and Athens will pay you damages? Like, bro, this isn't an insurance claim. Yeah. The Syracusians literally laugh at him and then begin making it rain javelins. Nisius attempts to order a breakout across a nearby river, and you know end the show the second, I say, they attempted to do anything across the river during withdrawal. You know it's not going to work. Men are swept away by the waters. Others panic and fight one another. Others still are trampled. Some see the hopelessness of the situation and begin to frantically stab themselves in order to escape captivity and the almost certain enslavement that came with it.

And unlike their boss, a lot of these guys succeed. Mm-hmm. The Syracusians come across the scene and simply stand back and chucked javelins at them for a while. Then the Spartans show up and join in on the completely one-sided massacre. Finally, eight days after ordering the march on the swamp, Nisius offers his surrender. Of the 20,000 men he led out of the camp, only 6,000 remain. He and the other generals are dragged out back and hacked to pieces by the Saracusians. Syracusians. This is apparently to the objection of the Spartans who see that like because of their position, they should be allowed to survive.

And the Syracusian just say, sorry, I can't hear you of the sound of slaughtering generals. Also as well, they would have made probably useful hostages to be ransomed. Definitely. Yep. They weren't going home for free. The prisoners are then enslaved. They're kept into horrible conditions. Nobody has any. idea how much of these guys actually survive. It's thought at least hundreds die before they're even transport off the island. In short,

the generals got the best way out of the situation. The total destruction of the Sicilian expedition is catastrophic for Athens. The news of their defeat trickles back to Athens thanks to just some random guy. He shows up, having traveled the region,

and starts talking to someone in a bar about the Athenian army being wiped out. And the news is so unbelievable, he's charged with spreading false information and put on the rack. They hated him because he spoke to the truth. That's right. It was only after more people came into Athens telling similar stories that the Athenian government had to accept the horrible loss. And I assume, apologized for murdering that guy.

Militarily and politically, this swung things heavily in favor of Sparta. as smaller city states, much like smaller nation states today, threw their weight behind that guy who seemed like they might win and therefore caused the least amount of damage to themselves. Many Ionian states rose up against Athens and shit, even Persia began supporting the Spartans. Well, eventually.

While Athens and its allies lost tens of thousands of men, only really about 10,000 were the pinnacle, the trained Athenian hoplites that were really hard to replace, which is still a lot of people. But the real problem is the massive loss of the Athenian Navy, hundreds of ships, as well as thousands of trained oarsmen, which is a hard job to do.

It takes time to teach people to do it to build up the stamina and strength necessary. They were considered irreplaceable. Between the hoplites, the Navy, and the ormen. This is just the worst possible scenario for Athens. But the death of the Athenian Empire was not as fast as you would expect, given everything that we just talked about.

Athens would struggle on through coups and counter-coups and Alcibades fucking around behind the scenes at more than one occasion, until Athens, starving and surrounded, finally surrendered in 404 BCE. The historical opinion of the expedition at large is damning. It's considered doomed from the start at worst and purposefully hamstrung by political infighting at best, left with indecisive commanders in charge who did not want to be there, and let every possible way out of the situation slip by, while somehow picking the exact wrong thing to do at every turn, almost like it was on purpose. And that is the death of the Sicilian expedition. The end.

Yeah, another classic case of everyone could have made better choices at earlier stages and tens of thousands of people wouldn't have died. It's honestly remarkable that I can't think of an episode. or a series that we've done were dude in charge as literally every wrong thing possible to include getting himself in this position in the first place. Yeah, absolutely.

Like, this is totally his own fault. Yeah. Hey, at least he got his in the end, unfortunately. Like, that's the problem with all these guys, right? Every military commander that trips over their own dick into mass slaughter is that they normally die.

But they drag tens of thousands of people down with them. So it's not even like, a bright side like, well, at least Nisius got hacked to pieces into like that weird minced pork that Germans eat for breakfast. But then there's all the dudes who got thrown in chains and die horribly for malaria. That's like, yeah, they didn't get theirs. But, you know, also maybe just don't invade people. The end. If you invade someone, you don't deserve sympathy. I'm sorry. Yeah, if you invade someone, you need to entertain the possibility that you are going to lose 50 to 80% of your

forces to malaria or a swamp or a desert or starvation. Just simply not packing water. And yeah, in 2000 years historians will be examining your correspondence asking for help and will

decrypt whatever archaic language you're using at the time to show that your letters say shit's fucked. Yeah, you never want to do something so a group of historians afterwards can be trying to define what exactly you were trying to do because what happened the best we can figure out looks really dumb. Yeah, because what a cunt is not a really good historiographic argument.

Sometimes it is. Now, Tom, we do a thing on this show called Questions from the Legion. But before we do that, this is the last regular episode in June. So you're coming to the close now in our summer sale for a lot of people who skip the intro. You can use donk 50 to get half off your first month on Patreon at the $5 level. So use that or don't. It's your time and money. Do it as you please. But I think it's a pretty good deal.

Yeah. For the price of a crisp can of white monster region depending where you're living, you can get access to almost nine years of bonus content. It's a lot. And you'll be able to ask us a question from the Legion because you'll have Discord access and Patreon access so you can ask us in our messages you can leave us

a message in the channel on the Discord you can paint it to the shield get malaria and dying a swamp and we'll read it on air today's question is you have a baseball card of yourself what stats does it have listed okay so you're going to have to explain

baseball cards to me thought I might so baseball card it's not just baseball but like famously baseball cards are like the most popular one. It's just like a picture of the player and they'll have their like seasonal stats on the back. Sometimes career stats like goals, assists, games played, stuff like that. Easy one for me would be cigarettes smoked. I would love to see that statistic personally. I, because there's the question that like a lot of comedy podcasts will ask is like,

have you had more pints or wanks in your life? And I think both of those statistics are like massively outweighed by how many cigarettes I've smoked. I've smoked for nearly 15 years. Yeah, see, I can't keep that statistic. This is like, you know, like a really good hockey player going and playing in, like, Iceland or something. Like, you're just inflating your stats because, like, I spent multiple years in places where I was not allowed to drink, but had plenty of time to wank.

So my statistics are fucked. It's like playing on the same line as Wayne Gretzky. My stats do not outline my actual abilities. I was propped up by a great team. You know what I'm saying? I was having a conversation from someone recently and they were asking about my job and about podcasts and stuff.

And they asked me a question I'd never really consider before. It's like, how many hours of podcasts have you edited? And I was thinking it was like, well, I would say maybe about 5,000 hours over the years. Hundreds on this show alone.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. yeah fucking like so much stuff and like there's a lot of stuff that I've worked on that like my name isn't publicly on or whatever but yeah podcast edited

cigarette smoked pints drank line bike accidents that I've been involved in I think my stats would be milligrams of caffeine consumed during a live show I think in London on the 29th

I was at close to it that Yeah, you drank a lot of caffeine that day. It was a personal record. Anybody who met me may have noticed that when you shook my hand, it may have been dully vibrating in some way. Hours of podcasts. I would say it's because I'm like the main host, I don't think simple hours of podcasts works for me.

I think most consecutive hours spent podcasting, which I believe is eight. Shout out to our friends over at the worst of all possible. worlds. There's definitely someone who is listening who probably off the top of their head has the exact number of hours that you have spent recording this podcast. It's not that hard of a number. I think the raw hours is a lot more than people think. Third stat. What can I do with a third stat? I'm going to go with number three being total number of kilos lifted in a lifetime. I can't do a lifetime because it just means eventually I have to drop

dead so I don't have to do it anymore. Yeah. I'm going to say most kilometers run before recording a podcast. Yeah, you have both mean AP on that. Yep. Uh, currently sitting at 15. Yes. But, uh, yeah, my stats

all self-destructive. So are mine. So are mine, brother. So, Tom, that's a podcast, but you host other podcasts. Plug that podcasts. But neat skin, show, but the history of everything told you, the history of tattoos. Had some lovely conversations with people last Friday who got their first tattoo because they listened to it,

which is really cool and really strange. Also, Bloodwork, a show about the economy of violence. By the time you're hearing this, you will have heard two episodes with Greg from Bloodwork on this show. So if you enjoyed his dulcet tones and want to hear about the economy of Afghan war rugs, or how a group of news, Neo-Nazis tried to start a white ethno state in Essex, you can do so on air show. You can find it on Patreon for Patreon.

Patreon.com forward slash blood work show. I have a book out. It's a gunpowder fantasy novel. It's being very well reviewed. Sales have been good. It's called the Highlands Burn. It's available. Check the show notes for various different links.

It's on e-book. It's on audiobook. It's on audiobook. Read by me if you're already sick of my voice. It's on paperback. So if you like military fantasy, gunpowder fantasy, you just want to see what I've been working on. Check it out. Just like the show, it's a completely independent production.

We brought in the best people we could find to work on it together because we didn't feel like dealing with the incredibly toxic presence of the modern publishing industry. And I think we put out something that is really, really good. Also, this show has a Patreon. Consider supporting it. Use code donk 50 for 50% off your first month. Support the show. it makes everything we do possible.

We do no ads. We'll never do any ads. We do no marketing. We just kind of do everything on our own in house. And it allows us to do absolutely everything we do, do live shows, places you want us to do live shows at. It helps us travel. It helps us get venues.

So do your comments on wherever it is, you listen to podcasts. Because that's the kind of thing that venues look at when they actually let us rent the space. Our numbers on Patreon, comments, reviews, all that stuff is really important to us. I talked to a lot of people at the show in London and the comments everybody made were wonderful. Thank you for all of your nice words. We love you all. And until next time, paint a giant X on your shield and become a straight-edge Spartan.