REPETITIONS, SECOND SERIES
The Battle of Amphipolis
And, at Amphipolis, was the beginning of the end. We were
such fools and believed in our right and our superiority,
intellectual and material. We successively denied offers beneficial
to us, we rejected favorable peace proposals with scorn. We
never suspected Sparta’s preparations and the sudden, those
which we call, decimals of fate. Cleon, although saw Brasidas
descending from the high up hills, although he saw in the city
offerings of libations to the temple of Athena, he didn’t think
of it at all.
And when the messengers stopped him and informed him
that they saw with their own eyes
thousands of legs of horses and men under the Thracian gates
ready for exodus, he couldn’t stop anything anymore. It was
late for an attack, late for retreat. And as he rushed to his
descend a Myrcinean peltast took him out.
In our confusion we
didn’t even mourn him, but truly why mourn? (for their logic
and their personal ambitions we always pay the price).
Brasidas too, before he closed his eyes and while fatally wounded
and carried on the stretcher, he saw, down in the field, his army
to undress all our dead and steadied the triumphant victory
banner in front of the gates of Amphipolis.
Libros Libertad 