When it Rains...or, Bona Fortuna! May 21

Thucydides could really tell a story!  Like a freight train bearing down on a disabled automobile on the tracks, the juggernaut of the Syracusan military victory rolls on to sweep the Athenians from their their high and mighty status.  I'm almost to the end of Book 7 of the History of the Peloponnesian War and after a disastrous sea battle, the Athenian general, Nicias says "we must remember there is an unpredictable element of warfare" and, he tells his troops, he has the "hope that we, too may have fortune with us."  Before the battle got underway, Thucydides put a speech in the mouth of the Spartan general, Gylippus, in league with the Syracusans.  Gylippus observes of the Athenians that, in relation to this war in Sicily, the Athenians were "trusting in luck more than in good management."

Luck, good fortune, the favor of the gods.  Thucydides played this all for us earlier in his work.  Only then, the Athenians were in the superior position.  In Book 5 one finds the so-called Melian Dialogue which was supposed to have taken place in 416/7 B.C.  Then the Athenian military was facing the woefully under supplied residents of the small island of Melos.  In an effort to get the Melians to surrender, the Athenians declare:

"Hope, that comforter in danger!  If one already has solid advantages to fall back upon, one can indulge in hope.  But hope is by nature and expensive commodity, and those who risking their all on one cast find out what it means only when they are already ruined...Do not be like those people who...miss the chance of saving themselves in a human and practical way, and, when every clear and distinct hope has left them in their adversity, turn to what is blind and vague, to prophecies and oracles and such things which by encouraging hope lead men to ruin."

So the supremely rational Athenians, the Athenians who boasted Plato and Socrates,  get hoisted by their own petard! 

My morning reading leaves me at the beginning of the section that Rex Warner translated as "Destruction of the Athenian Expedition, 413."  The end is just around the corner.

Round about me, though, are the more mundane tasks of the day to look after.  Checking out our little greenhouse I find that fourteen of the eighteen plantings of hollyhocks have sprouted and are growing fast.

You can't quite appreciate the elevation without a different point of view:

 So far, the tree seeds are not budging.   I hope it's not a long wait!  Given the success of this endeavor, I grab a second "greenhouse" and plant up a batch of Cosmos flowers  we shall see what develops in a few days.

Meanwhile I have drilled the plastic canisters:

 I also hustled up our garden cart to the edge of our property line and filled it high with the gravel and pebble alluvium.  The cart wheels barely turn for the weight of the load.  

This isn't the first time I've drawn on this source for drainage for my plants, and I have a special screen to separate the good particles from the bad.  Soon, new plants!

The afternoon is moving into evening and I take a quick walk around the place to check out growth caused by the recent rains we've been having.  Shrub trimming is next on the list.