READING HALL

THE DOORS OF WISDOM

ATHENS . 478—401 B.C.

CHAPTER VIII

THE ARCHIDAMIAN WAR, b.c. 431-421

I

PERICLEAN STRATEGY

THE news of the events at Plataca was the signal for the mobilization of the enemies of Athens. Argos, the old rival of Sparta, remained neutral, as did the Achaeans except the canton of Dellene. But the remainder of the Peloponnese be­longed to the League and obeyed the call of Sparta. Two-thirds of the troops from all these states marched to the Isthmus where, with the Megarians, they formed an army of some 24,000 hoplites attended by swarms of light-armed troops. In Central Greece the Boeotians were in arms and, with the support of the Locrians and the Phocians, they could place in the field some 10,000 hoplites and at least 1000 cavalry. In the north-west of Greece Ambracia Leucas and Anactorium prepared ships and men to fight in the quarrel of Corinth. The naval strength of the Peloponnesians may be assessed at rather more than 100 triremes, but this force was not as formidable as it might appear, for we may assume that the rowers hired throughout the Athenian Empire two years before had returned to their homes or to the quays of the Piraeus.

In the meantime Athens had mustered her forces. Her own troops, citizen-hoplites and metics, provided an active field-army of 13,000 men, and men enough to garrison the city and the Long Walls and to hold the frontier fortresses Eleusis, Oenoe, Panactum, Phyle, Decelea, Aphidna, and Rhamnus. Of the field-army 3000 hoplites were in the lines round Potidaea and the admiral Phormio had taken a further force of 1600 to operate in Chalcidice. The cavalry comprised 1000 horsemen and 200 mounted archers and the Thessalians sent a body of horse. In light-armed troops Athens was definitely inferior to her enemies, for the first duty of Athenian thetes was to row in the fleet. The Empire supplied a revenue which Pericles assessed at 600 talents a year, all of which was available for the needs of the war, and the reserves laid by against this emergency reached 6000 talents. It was possible to raise a considerable force of troops from the subject cities, but it was dangerous. Indeed, as regards troops, the Empire of Athens was rather a liability than an asset. The real contribution of the cities was their tribute and the rowers for the Athenian fleet, which was put on a war footing and reinforced by the squadrons of Lesbos and Chios. Besides the Empire, Athens had allies in the north-west of Greece, Corcyra, Zacynthus and part of Acarnania. Naupactus near the mouth of the Corinthian Gulf was firmly held for Athens by Messenians, and Plataea, faithful by tradition and necessity, lay on the main road from Boeotia to Attica.

The strength of the Peloponnesians lay in an army of hoplites so superior in numbers and quality that in a single battle they could count on victory. Their strategy was dictated by this fact and suggested by their knowledge of the history of the last thirty years. At Tanagra a smaller Peloponnesian army had been victorious, at Coronea the Boeotian levies had shown their mettle, while, fifteen years before, Athenians had made a bad peace rather than risk all in a great pitched battle. Thus the first move was to invade Attica in full strength. Pride might compel the Athenians to fight; the alternative, to watch the Peloponnesians devastate the cornfields and olive-yards of Attica might be more than either pride or self-interest could endure. Beyond that im­mediate direct action lay the plans attributed to the Corinthians: to occupy a permanent position in Attica and to raise fleets which could match the Athenians by sea. The first was not immediately practicable, for the Peloponnesians and their allies had not as yet the margin of military strength necessary to hold a position near Athens permanently and effectively in face of the Athenian army. The second demanded the possession of large funds, together with such a diminution of Athenian naval prestige as would encourage the rowers of the Aegean states to throw in their lot with the Peloponnesians. Nearly twenty years were to pass before these two conditions were fulfilled. It is true that the Corinthians pointed to the treasures of Delphi and Olympia, but, for whatever reason, the Peloponnesians did not mobilize for war the resources of these two sanctuaries. Embassies were sent to the Great King, but he preferred to keep his gold and wait upon events. There were exaggerated hopes of naval help from the Sicilian states, above all from Syracuse, but these hopes were quickly disappointed.

The Athenian strategy was that of Pericles. He, too, had re­flected on the history of the past thirty years, and had realized that he must refuse a decisive battle and rely on the great linked fortress of Athens and the Piraeus for defence, or on the action of the Athenian navy and landing-forces of Athenian hoplites for attack. He must first prove that the existence of Athens and of the Athenian Empire could not be destroyed and then that Athens, too, could harm her enemies. The most vehement of these was also the most vulnerable. The possessions and allies of Corinth in north-west Greece lay within the reach of a naval power that was allied with Corcyra, and the sea-borne trade of Corinth must pass either through the entrance of the Corinthian Gulf or within reach of Athens herself. The coasts of other Pelo­ponnesian states such as Elis and Lacedaemon could not be effectively blockaded. Squadrons of triremes were expensive to maintain, almost helpless at night, and dependent on secure bases near at hand. The development of tactics had made them nimble to defeat their own kind but unsuited in build or complement to roam the seas attacking sturdy merchantmen manned by crews fighting for their lives. Nor was the strategical position entirely in favour of Athens, for the possibility of dragging ships across the Isthmus of Corinth gave to the Peloponnesians an advantage not unlike that which the Kiel Canal afforded to the Germans in 1914—18. Nerveless as was the naval strategy of her enemies, Athens was forced to keep a reserve of triremes to meet a raid in her own waters. On the other hand, the Aegean could be policed and the important routes of Attic trade and food effectively guarded, though enemy privateers might make captures and find refuge on the coasts of Caria and Lycia, the traditional home of piracy. Thucydides attributes to the Peloponnesians the terrorism characteristic of the weaker naval power, which did not spare neutrals or the very subjects of Athens whom they declared they wished to liberate. But the defence was on the whole successful, and neither the historian nor the comedians reflect any anxiety about Athenian food during the whole of the Archidamian War. Finally, the fleets of Athens were a menace to the security of the Peloponnese in that any day in the summer months might see an Attic landing-force attacking villages, burning crops or driving cattle.

Such were the weapons in Athens’ armoury, and their effect was not to be despised. It was a reasonable calculation that the nerve and will-power of her opponents might well be exhausted before the treasures on the Acropolis, and that they might admit that the power and determination of Athens were invincible. If that result was achieved, Pericles’ task was done and the greatness of his city vindicated. Geography and man-power forced upon him the strategy of a Frederick; it is idle for critics to demand from him the strategy of a Napoleon. Once it is granted that a decisive battle offered no prospects of victory, the defence of the Attic country-side became impossible, with the road through the Megarid open to the enemy and the Boeotians, with levies almost a match for the Athenian field-army, pressing on the northern line of fortresses. The Periclean calculation stood the test of ten years war and was not entirely refuted by two factors which were un­foreseeable, the Plague and the unspartan enterprise of the Spartan Brasidas. The struggle was a contest of morale, and with all their faults, the Athenians were a people of singular resolution and elasticity of spirit, quick to learn and slow to forget the pride of empire. Their pride was a match for the Corinthian anger, their ambition more than a match for the self-protective instinct of the Lacedaemonians. Their opponents enjoyed wide-spread sympathy, ‘especially because they declared that they were giving freedom to the Greeks.’ But the beginning, the course, and the end of the Ten Years War show that this claim was a battle-cry and not an ideal, and we need not attribute to Peloponnesian statesmen or to good honest Peloponnesian hoplites sympathies which they never felt or quickly learned to forget. It is no wonder that the Archidamian War was singularly devoid of heroism and of self-sacrifice, or that the perverted idealism of Athens outlasted the determination of her enemies.

The imposing array of the Peloponnesian hoplites concentrated at the Isthmus, and even now, Archidamus, who had not ceased to be a statesman on becoming a general, sent an envoy, the Spartan diplomatist Melesippus, to give Athens a last chance of making concessions to avoid invasion. But Pericles had passed a decree to admit no negotiation under the pressure of an armed threat, and all that the envoy gained was the opportunity to make the prophetic announcement: ‘This day will be the beginning of great evils to the Greeks.’ The Peloponnesians, reinforced by contingents from Boeotia, moved on to the Attic frontier and sat down before the border-fortress of Oenoe, a place worth taking for it guarded the direct routes between Athens and her ally Plataea and between Thebes and an army in north-west Attica. But while Archidamus vainly practised the arts of siege-warfare, his army grumbled, for what offered most chances was a swift invasion of the Attic country-side. The king, it was said, still hoped against hope that the Athenians would not at the last make the sacrifice of their farms, but agree with their adversary. But no herald came from Athens. Reluctantly enough, the Athenians had brought their families and movables into the city and transferred their sheep and cattle to the safe shelter of Euboea and the neighbouring islands. The vacant spaces in Athens, at the Piraeus and between the Long Walls, were soon crowded with improvised dwellings, and the people comforted themselves by watching the preparation of a great fleet to harry their enemies.

By the end of May the siege of Oenoe was abandoned and Archidamus moved into the country of Eleusis and the Thriasian plain. The standing corn was ripe to burn and the Peloponnesians burnt it, and then moved off to the left on Acharnae, the largest of the Attic demes, where Archidamus made a standing camp, ravaged the countryside, and waited for the Athenian army. Acharnae was the home of prosperous growers of vines and olives and of sturdy irascible charcoal-burners, and these, from within the walls of Athens, could see the smoke that meant their ruin. They led the clamour to go out and fight, and the whole city was in an uproar, moved by pride and anger and a multitude of oracles which prophesied to suit all tastes. But Pericles remained unshaken. By the exercise of his powers as General-in-chief and of his unrivalled personal ascendancy, he prevented any meeting of the citizens which might cross his plans, and the crisis passed. The Athenian and Thessalian cavalry did what it could to protect the fields near the city, but the hoplites of Athens were kept within the walls. The Peloponnesian army was too large to live on the country for long, and presently moved north-east to regain touch with supplies from Boeotia and, after gratifying their allies by the devastation of the territory of Oropus, the debatable land between Attica and Boeotia, they marched off home and dispersed to their several cities. The invasion had lasted a month and in that time, despite the losses it had inflicted on the Attic country-side, it had done little to undermine either the will or the power of Athens.

Then came the counterstrokes. Even before the Pelopon­nesians had left Attica, a hundred triremes, carrying 1000 hoplites and 400 bowmen, had sailed from the Piraeus to repay them in their own coin. The fleet coasted along the Peloponnese, landing troops to ravage the country, and contingents from the western allies, above all 50 ships from Corcyra, joined in the good work. The Athenians suffered one check, at Methone in Laconia, due to the resourceful daring of Brasidas son of Tellis, a Spartiate, who ‘chanced to be in the neighbourhood.’ It was not the last time that chance and Brasidas were to conspire to discomfit the Athenians, and the reputation which he acquired by his exploit brought into the Spartan counsels the one man of initiative whom the Peloponnesians produced during the whole Archidamian War. With the Athenians were Messenians who had age-long grudges against Sparta; and these, when a storm left them marooned in the territory of Elis, led a bold and successful raid on the town of Pheia, and then succeeded in escaping to the ships under the eyes of the whole Elean army.

But more vulnerable than the Peloponnese were the western dependencies of Corinth, and before the fleet returned to Athens, it captured Sollium and gave it to the Acarnanians, ejected a pro­Corinthian tyrant from Astacus, and won over the island of Ce- phallenia, the outer-guard of the Corinthian Gulf. In the following winter the Corinthians sent a fleet and army which restored their friend Evarchus at Astacus, but elsewhere they achieved little. The Athenians had given as good as they had got, and their defensive measures were equally energetic. The squadron which guarded Euboea raided the coasts opposite the island, and a fortified post was established on the barren island of Atalante to check privateers from the Malian Gulf. A like danger to Athenian trade in the Saronic Gulf might be anticipated from the people of Aegina, whose intrigues at Sparta had come to light, and the whole population was ejected and replaced by Athenian settlers. The Aeginetans were allowed to find a home, granted to them by the Spartans, in the Thyreatis. Judged by Greek standards, their treatment was clement; some seven years later they were to learn how the long-drawn course of war made the Athenians cruel.

The one other state within reach of Athens was Megara, and in the autumn, when the Peloponnesians were busy with their crops and vintage, Pericles himself led the full available field­army of Athens into the Megarid. There he joined hands with the fleet and, after ravaging the country, fleet and army returned in vindictive triumph to Athens. This was the first of a series of invasions of the Megarid which reduced the Megarians to the  straits which made them a good jest to Aristophanes. It was a classical example of the principle odisse quem laeseris.

All this time the blockade of Potidaea continued. The in­habitants were to be taught how little they gained when the promised invasion of Attica became a reality. The lines drawn round the city were firmly held. Perdiccas was now active on the Athenian side against the Chalcidians, and Phormio could spare men to help in ravaging the country. A timely alliance with Sitalces, the king of the Odrysian Thracians, brought to Athens present security and future hopes. The fall of Potidaea seemed only a question of time, and that time the nearer because the inhabitants had refused to listen to the Corinthian Aristeus when he advised them to abandon the city, leaving him and 500 men to hold it to the last. Aristeus himself escaped and did what he could to keep alive the anti-Athenian movement in Chalcidice and Bottice. Apart from the drain on the Athenian treasury—for the pay and maintenance of the besieging army alone cost about a talent a day—the position in the north-east gave, at the least, no cause for disquietude.

So ended the operations of the first year of the war, and Pericles might well be content. According to the custom, there was the formal eulogy on the citizens who had fallen, and though these were few and not the heroes of any great feat of arms, Pericles himself, as was natural, was spokesman for the city. And Thucydides is spokesman for Pericles. With consummate art the historian has taken this occasion to draw a picture of Athens which is, first of all, a justification of her before the Greeks who, when the words were written, had ended by destroying her political greatness. The ritual is described as if to strangers; then follow the words, in the simple style of a Simonidean epitaph: ‘And when they have laid them in the earth, a man chosen by the city who is reputed to possess insight and understanding and is highly thought of, speaks over them such praise as befits them. And after this they go away.’ And then, in phrases unmarred by the bitterness of defeat or the memory of crimes and follies, there is described the Athens for which men had lived and died, to which the exiled historian avowed his devotion in a world which had proved hostile, faithless, or fainthearted. For the faults of Athens we have only to look elsewhere in the Thucydidean history: if Athens was the school of Greece, she was a hard school and taught much that was evil. It is not easy to forget the cost to Greece of all this greatness, or the justice of the nemesis that struck Athens down, but it remains true that nothing greater than Periclean Athens had ever yet been achieved by the mind and will of man.

II.

THE PLAGUE AND THE FALL OF PERICLES

The winter ended and, as soon as the campaigning season opened, Archidamus led the Peloponnesian army into the central plain of Attica. That was foreseen, but within a few days of their coming came the Plague. Athens and the Piraeus were crowded with the refugees from the country-side, and an epidemic, which had already ravaged the East, reached the Piraeus and spread to the city. The disease was beyond the skill of the Athenian phy­sicians, who themselves fell victims as they sought to save others. ‘Nor did any other human skill avail. And men’s prayers at tem­ples and their recourse to oracles and the like were all in vain’. Penned up within the walls, many of them in stifling booths under the summer heat, the Athenians perished, and as the Plague raged, demoralization spread. Meanwhile the enemy marched on to ravage the coasts of Attica, until after forty days they evacuated the country for fear of infection.

When the Peloponnesians were far enough engaged in Attica and before the Plague had reached its height, an expedition sailed against Epidaurus (towards the end of June 430 b.c.). The forces used showed the importance attached to the expedition, 150 fighting triremes (50 of these from Chios and Lesbos), 4000 hoplites and 300 cavalry in old triremes converted into transports. Pericles himself was in command. This was to be no mere raid but a serious attempt to take Epidaurus, thus securing a foothold in the Peloponnese and possibly inducing the Argives to strike in against their old enemies the Spartans. Epidaurus was strongly walled and a set siege would soon be interrupted by the return of the main Peloponnesian army. We must therefore suppose that the Athenians were relying on that common phenomenon, a party within the city ready to betray it. But, if such were their hopes, they were disappointed; an attack just failed, and the great expedition had to be content with ravaging the lands of Troezen, Halieis, and Hermione and with sacking the Spartan coast-fort of Prasiae. The Plague had infected the troops and crews engaged in the expedition but not so badly as to ruin its effectiveness: it was, accordingly, dispatched under the tried commanders Hagnon and Cleopompus to operate against the Chalcidians and press the siege of Potidaea. The blockade was turned into an active attack but without success. What was worse, the infection in Hagnon’s army spread to the force already before Potidaea, which had so far escaped. The result was that in some forty days Hagnon returned home with the loss by plague of 1050 of his 4000 hoplites. Phormio’s detached force had been recalled before Hannon’s arrival; the remainder of the army in that sector were enough to maintain the blockade, but that was all.

The Plague at Athens continued during the year 430 and 429 and then, after a partial cessation, broke out again in the year 427. In the course of that period, it swept away about one-third of the population. Three hundred of the 1000 Athenian cavalry perished and 4400 hoplites of the field-army, which, including garrisons, may be set at 15,000 men. Of these losses, we may fairly assume that the greater part fall within the summer of 430 b.c. The effect was permanent, for the classes of new recruits during the next twenty years were thinned out. The land forces of Athens were so far weakened as to fall to about the level of the Boeotian army. While at sea their superiority was maintained, it became impossible during the next few years to man such large fleets as before, because it was not to be expected that the rowers from the Aegean states should venture themselves in the plague-stricken city or risk infection from the Athenian oarsmen. Thus the intensity of the Athenian counter-attacks was diminished, while their enemies could pursue plans which before had been at the least hazardous. Attica itself was protected from invasion so long as it was plague-stricken.

The morale of the Athenians was shaken, and their depression turned into anger against Pericles as the author of the war. His calculation, which was to have been triumphant over accident, had been, in part, refuted. It was undeniable that the concentra­tion of the Attic population within the linked fortress of Athens-Piraeus had turned the Plague from a small to a great disaster, and the very reduction of the defended area due to the abandonment of the Phalerum wall had increased this result. If Athens must lose 4000 hoplites, would it not have been better to lose them in the forlorn hope of a great battle, than vainly and ingloriously in the agonies of the Plague? To many at Athens, the Plague was more than Fortune’s criticism of a calculated plan—it was a sign that the wrath of heaven rested on their city. They remembered that Apollo had promised to the Spartans his help, and now he was helping them with the farshooting shafts with which he had avenged the wrongs of his priest on the Greeks before Troy. They saw the Peloponnese almost free of the Plague, and may well have forgotten that the Athenian hold on the Aegean was a kind of quarantine which prevented evils as well as goods from reaching the Peloponnese from the East. On the house of Pericles himself rested the taint of blood-guiltiness and the gods who had turned Pericles’ wisdom into folly may have judged more truly than they about Pericles’ innocence or guilt. Epidaurus had proved a failure; the sending of the army to Potidaea was, to all appearance, a blunder, though to keep it at Athens during the heat of the summer might well have been greater folly.

The first sign of the Athenian change of mood was the dispatch of envoys to open negotiations for peace. What offers they made we do not know; very possibly the Lacedaemonians believed that they had nothing to lose by leaving the Plague to do its worst. At all events, the envoys returned unsuccessful. The war must con­tinue, and Pericles, who still held the office of General-in-chief, summoned the Assembly and faced his fellow-citizens. We cannot deny to him the unbending spirit which inspires every line of the speech which Thucydides puts into his mouth, little as that speech is calculated to conciliate, or to arouse the sanguine optimism which was half the courage of the Athenians. The historian has given us less what Pericles must have said than the authentic accents of Pericles himself as possessing ‘the quality which marks the greatest men and the greatest cities—to be least depressed in thought and most resolute in deed, when misfortunes come.’

His speech, and still more his example, had their effect; the Athenians rallied to their own greatness and made the sacrifices demanded by the war. But their private griefs bit deep. Many poor farmers had lost all that they had: the rich had lost much and the burdens of war bore heavily upon them. Pericles was deposed and accused of malversation, a charge which, however untrue, he had not the means of disproving. Fifteen years of uninterrupted power had involved expenditure of which he could not now give an account. The verdict under a procedure amended by his col­league Hagnon declared him guilty, but the penalty was not death but a fine of 50 talents. The explicit testimony of Thucydides to his probity, and his reinstatement as soon as the anger of the Athenians had passed, clear his character: his fault, if it was a fault, was to worship too well an Athens made in his own image.

III.

THE NORTH-EAST AND THE NORTH-WEST (430-429 B.C.)

With the fall of Pericles the war enters upon its second phase. It is true that when the elections came round in March or April of 429 Pericles was elected General again. But he was a broken man. His two legitimate sons had been carried off by the Plague and he himself had been stricken by it, and within three months of entering on his last term of office he was dead. The unrivalled authority which he had wielded from the ostracism of Thucydides, son of Melesias, to his own deposition, an authority austere, arrogant, and self-reliant, had prevented Athens from being a school of statesmen. The state had become a veiled autocracy: now the autocrat was dead, and the city was plagued by the rivalries of leaders none of whom possessed Pericles’ greatness of mind, or united in themselves his military, financial and diplomatic capacity. The impulse which he had given to Athenian policy kept it on its course. Among the leaders who came forward at this time were none who thought of surrender, none willing to buy peace by abandoning the Empire. It is true that there was a small set of aristocrats who hated the democracy and Empire and would destroy both in order to reduce Athens to an aristocratic well-ordered country town, but they played no part in Athenian public life, where democratic principles were orthodoxy and other principles were blasphemy. For years to come they had to work in secret, protecting each other by the subtle use of private influence, comforting themselves by the sense of their superiority. They had at least the intellectual comfort of adhering to a lost cause, of despising the busy vulgar world around them, in which it was hard to tell who was slave and who was free man. About this time one of their number, armed with an incisive candour which must have surprised old oligarchs, wrote a pamphlet which, by some irony of chance, has been preserved along with the writings of Xenophon. Superficially this pamphlet is an un­willing tribute of admiration to the logical self-protective instinct of the imperial democracy, but between the lines may be read the message, ‘do not seek to mend the democracy, but wait—until one day you may convert loyalty to the good cause into triumphant treason.’ The lesson was well learned, and for the next decade at least there is no sign at Athens of a declared aristocratic party.

But within democratic Athens there was a divergence of opinion due to an economic difference. It is roughly true to say that the rich who bore the financial burdens of the war and the farmers, whose lands were exposed to the enemy, looked forward to peace with a greater longing than the sailors and craftsmen and traders to whom the war brought pay and profit and little danger so long as the naval power of Athens stood above serious challenge. These last found leaders of their own class, Eucrates, Lysicles and Cleon, who sought to convert what was in essence a defensive war into a war of definite triumphant aggression. On the other hand the generals, elected at a time when the farmers were in Athens, were as a rule men who, by position, temperament or training, followed the tradition of Periclean strategy. Chief among these was Nicias son of Niceratus, whose cautious skill and good fortune made him, on the whole, the most trusted commander in the Ten Years War. Devoid as he was of any touch of genius, the very negative quality of his mind fitted him to guide a people which had more to fear from their own errors than from the enterprise of their enemy. But the existence of more adventurous politi­cians and more adventurous soldiers, together with his own lack of moral courage, left Athenian policy and strategy without continuous direction, the sport of programmes, promises and personal ambitions.

Even had there been at Athens continuity of policy and the possibility of directing widely separated operations to a single end, the material resources of Athens were so diminished by the Plague that for the next four years the initiative lay with her enemies, who showed themselves singularly unfitted to use it to advantage. Before the summer of 430 was over an expedition of 100 triremes under the Spartan admiral Cnemus sought to seduce Zacynthus from the Athenian alliance by the potent argument of ravaging her fields. That they could do this without inter­ference from Corcyra or from other Athenian allies in the west suggests that the news of the Plague had weakened Athenian prestige. Athens herself could do little to help her friends especially as long as her main fleet was off Potidaea. The efforts of Cnemus did not succeed, but it was important to show that Athenian naval power was still to be reckoned with, and in the early winter Phormio, who had returned from Chalcidice, was dispatched with 20 triremes to operate from Naupactus against Corinthian trade and to maintain Athenian influence in the North­West. His naval skill, his earlier dealings with the Acarnanians and the liking which he inspired, all justified his appointment.

Meanwhile the diplomatists on either side had not been idle. The hopes of naval reinforcements from Sicily which the Peloponnesians had entertained had proved false. It is possible, though it is nowhere expressly stated, that the populous Sicilian cities had not been unvisited by the Plague. Persia was a doubtful neutral and Spartan envoys together with Aristeus the Corinthian sought to approach the Great King, taking with them an Argive Pollis who, though not commissioned by his government, might play upon the ancient friendship of Persia for Agos. The mission was hazardous, for Athens controlled most of the approaches to Per­sian territory, but there was the chance of travelling across Thrace to the Propontis and so evading the watch kept on the Hellespont. The envoys presented themselves at the court of Sitalces and asked for a safe passage and sought to detach the Odrysian from his new alliance with Athens. But they found at his court Athenian ambassadors to whom Sitalces handed them over as an earnest of his good will. They were taken to Athens and promptly executed, a violation of Greek diplomatic usage which was justified as a reprisal for the Peloponnesian treatment of neutrals at sea.

The failure to win over Sitalces to act against Athens sealed the fate of Potidaea. Before the winter was over, the citizens were driven by hunger to approach the generals of the besieging army, Xenophon, Hestiodorus and Phanomachus. These, anxious to end an expensive war which kept Athenians in a land where winter was an infliction, granted good terms. The inhabitants were allowed to go free, the men with one garment and the women with two, and to carry with them an agreed sum of money to support them by the way. The refugees found homes where they could in the towns of Chalcidice. The Athenians who had not felt the rigours of a Thracian winter censured their generals and presently sent out settlers to occupy the deserted city. The siege had cost 2000 talents: it may be doubted if even this striking example of Athenian tenacity was worth that price.

But more than the capture of Potidaea was needed to secure Athenian power in the Thraceward districts. The three generals had still with them a force of 2000 hoplites and 200 cavalry, and towards the end of May 429 b.c. they advanced against the Chalcidians and Bottiaeans. They hoped to win over Spartolus where there was a party friendly to Athens, but the Chalcidians sent help, and their cavalry and light-armed troops had the better of the Athenians until at last the Athenian hoplites, who had hitherto more than held their own, broke and were driven back on Potidaea with the loss of all three of their generals and 430 men. The Athenians, discouraged, withdrew the remainder of their army. To continue so distant a war which demanded considerable land forces was perhaps beyond their means, the more so as Perdiccas was the least trustworthy of allies. Indeed in the summer of this year he sent help to the Peloponnesians who were operating in Acarnania.

The other ally of Athens was Sitalces, whom the Athenians hoped to use for their own ends. The Athenians had sent envoys headed by Hagnon to arrange with him a march west against the Chalcidians and Perdiccas. He was to be joined by an Athenian fleet and army and the two powers were to settle affairs to their liking. Amyntas the son of Philip was to be set on the throne of Macedonia, and, we may assume, the Athenians were to retain the coast towns while the Chalcidians and Bottiaeans were to be subject to Thrace. It was possible, as the Greeks feared, that the Athenians might recruit a barbarous army to give them a chance of victory at least in Central Greece.

But this far-reaching combination failed. In the early winter Sitalces appeared with an army which rumour declared to be 150,000 men. He overran most of Macedonia and then turned against Chalcidice, where he found, not an Athenian fleet and army, but only envoys with presents. Thucydides states without comment that the reason for the non-appearance of a fleet was that the Athenians did not believe that Sitalces would come. The reason rings false and may well be no more than the official explanation, while we may suspect that the true cause was that Sitalces seemed too formidable and that the plan of joint action with him had been abandoned. Perdiccas had contrived to win over Sitalces’ nephew Seuthes who urged retreat, and the provisioning of so great an army was difficult, so that after 30 days the Thracians withdrew again to their northern home. Stratonice, Perdiccas’ daughter, married Seuthes and the two kingdoms remained on amicable terms. The Athenians continued to hold most of the coast towns of this area, but Perdiccas and the Bottiaeans and Chalcidians remained as possible allies for anyone bold enough to move against Athens. Such an enemy was to appear five years later, when the Athenians must have repented of their half­hearted action.

Thus in the North-East the Athenians had forfeited the initiative which they had spent so much to gain. Affairs in the North-West were equally urgent. The alliances of Athens with Corcyra, Cephallenia, Zacynthus, and part of the Acarnanians, while they made it possible to injure Corinthian commerce by sea and Corinthian trading interests by land, had imposed upon Athens the obligation to defend her friends.

As has been said, the Athenians had replied to the abortive but menacing enterprise of Cnemus by the dispatch to Naupactus of their best admiral Phormio with twenty ships ‘to prevent anyone sailing from Corinth in or out of the Crisaean Gulf. Such a force might go far to achieve its immediate purpose, but it was insufficient to carry out what was plainly the ideal strategy, namely to destroy the last remains of Corinthian influence and leave to Corinth and her allies no foothold from the Gulf of Corinth to Corcyra. This strategy was consistently urged by the Acarnanians, who knew the politics of the North-West; and the need to adopt it was the greater because Corcyra had ceased to co-operate actively in the war and might be seduced by Corinthian intrigue or deflected by the violence of her own internal party warfare. ‘May Poseidon destroy the Corcyraeans in their hollow ships’ wrote the comedian Hermippus about this time ‘for they are double-minded.’ For the present, however, Phormio, though a good diplomatist and personally acceptable to the western allies of Athens, could do no more than hold Naupactus and watch the entrance to the Gulf of Corinth.

His weakness was due to the effects of the Plague and the fact that Athens was already feeling the need to husband her financial resources. Early in 429 b.c. the Ambraciotes, who realized their opportunity, appealed to Sparta to send a force which might help them to destroy the Athenian hold on Zacynthus and Cephallenia and to reduce the Acarnanian communities which held to Athens. Possibly they might even succeed in taking Naupactus. Thus the Athenian fleets would find no friendly harbour to receive them when they sailed round the Peloponnese. Corcyra would soon become neutral and Corinthian influence would be restored. The Corinthians naturally supported these suggestions and the Spartans were wise enough to appreciate the importance of the project. In the summer of 429 they dispatched their admiral Cnemus with 1000 hoplites and a few ships to Leucas. Thence, with the Ambraciotes, Leucadians and Anactorians, and their barbarian allies from the interior of Epirus and the islands, he was to effect a landing and march through Acarnania from north to south. Meanwhile a Peloponnesian fleet was to follow and join the squadrons of Leucas, Anactorium and Ambracia. This combined force would demonstrate off the coast of Acarnania and thus, it was hoped, the country would quickly be overrun or submit.

Cnemus succeeded (August 429) in evading the attentions of Phormio, and his part of the scheme was put into operation. He landed with his troops within the Ambracian Gulf perhaps at Olpae or Metropolis, marched through the territory of Amphilochian Argos leaving the city on his left, sacked Limnaea which was unfortified and thence marched on Stratus. His forces moved in three columns, the centre column consisting of barbarians especially Chaonians, who pushed on rashly and met with a check outside Stratus. On this the other two columns joined forces only to be harassed by the skilful slingers of the Acarnanians. Under cover of night Cnemus retreated to the river Anapus io miles away and there, after admitting the Stratians’ victory by recovering the dead under a truce, effected a junction with the forces of Oeniadae and retired to that town, where they did not find the rein­forcements which they expected. Apparently the plan had been for the fleet from Corinth to land some troops at Oeniadae on its way to join the ships of Leucas and the rest. But the fleet from Corinth did not appear and, as the campaign had clearly broken down, the troops dispersed to their several homes.

The reverse on land was made worse by a reverse by sea. About the same time as the success of the Stratians the fleet from Corinth fell in with Phormio’s squadron just outside the Gulf of Corinth. The Peloponnesians had 47 ships but these were laden with men and stores for a land campaign rather than cleared for a naval action. They trusted that their numbers would be enough to dis­courage Phormio’s squadron from attacking them if they fell in with him. In the evening they sighted his twenty triremes coasting along parallel with them and they tried to slip past in the night. But Phormio caught them in the open sea as they were crossing from Patrae in Achaea in the direction of Oeniadae. They formed in a circle, hoping thus to offer no opening for the Athenian skill in naval attack. With great daring Phormio sailed round and round them, until the circle contracted more and more, and then, as Phormio had anticipated, the east wind from the Gulf arose towards morning and threw them into confusion. The signal was given to charge and the Athenians scattered them with a loss of 12 ships. Some of the Peloponnesians fled to Dyme and others back to Patrae while Phormio sailed back in triumph to Molycrium and thence to Naupactus. The fleet from Corinth felt its way round to the safety of Cyllene where they were joined by Cnemus and the other ships from Leucas. Here the defeated general and the defeated admirals compared defeats, assisted by the reproaches of three commissioners from Sparta, Timocrates, Brasidas and Lycophron, sent with the message to fight another better-managed battle and not be shut off the seas by a few ships.

With the advent of Brasidas came courage and skill, and the fleet prepared to renew the battle, while their allies were instructed to send reinforcements of ships. Phormio got wind of these preparations and sent word to Athens of his victory with an urgent request for reinforcements; for he expected every day to have to fight another engagement.

The Athenians decided to dispatch 20 ships, but, overestimating the slowness of Peloponnesian preparations, sent them first to Crete in the hope of winning over the city of Cydonia. They were persuaded to this by their proxenos at Gortyn, a Cretan named Nicias. But Cretans were deceivers ever, and the Athenian squadron ravaged the territory of Cydonia with no result except the waste of time, and after that they were hindered by bad weather. Phormio looked in vain for their coming, and was left, with no more than his 20 triremes, to face the new Peloponnesian offensive.

With reinforcements chiefly from the western ports of the Peloponnese, for the Athenians barred the way from Corinth and Sicyon, the enemy fleet had been raised to 77 ships, all prepared for sea fighting, and at last they moved to a point on the coast just west of the narrow entrance to the Gulf of Corinth and anchored under cover of a land force. Phormio had brought his squadron just outside the entrance of the Gulf though not so far as to be beyond the support of covering troops from Naupactus. This position would enable him to manoeuvre towards the open sea if the Peloponnesians forced an engagement and would give him the chance of getting into touch with the reinforcements expected from the south-west. This last reason prevented him taking up a safer position just within the Gulf itself. For six or seven days the two fleets moved to and fro along the opposite coasts. Every day was a gain to the Athenians, and the Peloponnesians at last had to force on a battle. They moved in four lines ahead towards the Gulf while Phormio, afraid that they might capture Naupactus, now that its garrison had been brought west to support his fleet, followed in single line ahead along the coast. Thus he covered Naupactus and might hope for a chance of attack as the Gulf widened.

The Athenians needed all their courage based on superior skill to move so near a fleet of nearly four times their number. And in the enemy’s fleet was as enterprising and ingenious a commander as Phormio himself. As Phormio’s squadron was rounding the promontory of Antirrhium the Peloponnesian fleet, instead of pur­suing its course, wheeled and charged. The Athenian squadron was cut into two. The eleven leading ships by hard rowing escaped into the entrance of the Gulf; of the other nine one was captured and the remainder driven on shore. The twenty fastest Peloponnesian triremes which had been put at the head of their formation chased the eleven Athenian ships into Naupactus. Ten of them reached the harbour and turned to face the attack, the eleventh, chased by a Leucadian ship in advance of its fellows, rounded an anchored merchantman and rammed its pursuer. This touch of daring turned defeat into victory. The Peloponnesians were taken aback and stopped rowing; their triremes lost way, and their daring fell on the Athenians and at one command they shouted and charged. After a short confused resistance the Peloponnesians were driven back to their anchorage with the loss of six ships, while the Athenians recovered some of their triremes which the Peloponnesians were preparing to tow away.   

The moral effect of this reverse was decisive. The Peloponnesian fleet retired to Corinth and, on the advent of the 20 ships from Crete, the Athenians were able to keep them cooped up in the Gulf. Cnemus and his colleagues took the one chance that was left to them, and transferred their crews by land to Megara, where they found 40 triremes not in the best of condition. Man­ning these, they attempted to surprise the Piraeus. But during that night beacons flashed the news to Athens and at dawn the Piraeus was strongly held and an Athenian fleet was at sea. Whereupon the Peloponnesians hastily retired, having achieved nothing except the destruction of a station in the north of Salamis. The Athenians’ reply was the protection of the Piraeus’ main harbours with a boom and the redoubling of their vigilance. Perdiccas, miscalculating the chances of the Peloponnesian offensive had sent 1000 men to join Cnemus, but they arrived too late and, no doubt, returned to Macedonia without revealing their true intentions. At least Athens took no official cognizance of this move, and Perdiccas was well able to explain anything away. But in the Phormophoroi of Hermippus, the comedian did not scruple to include among the imports of Athens ‘cargoes of lies from Perdiccas’. Judged by that Macedonian barometer of success, the fortunes of Athens from now onwards began to im­prove. Phormio, once winter had set in, made a triumphal progress along the coast of Acarnania and, landing a force at Astacus, restored the influence of the friends of Athens by the expulsion of their political enemies. There remained Oeniadae in the south, which sided with the enemy, but in the winter the lagoons formed by the river Achelous protected the town from assault, and an attack was reserved for the next summer.

By the early spring of 428 Phormio had returned to Athens with his prizes and prisoners, but only to meet vigilant auditors instead of grateful and admiring fellow-citizens. He was accused of peculation and disgraced. No more is heard of him, but his son Asopius was elected General and, at the express request of the Acarnanians, was dispatched in August 428 to resume his father’s good work. He was only able to keep 12 ships of his squadron, for the remainder were needed against Mitylene and with these he joined the Acarnanians in an unsuccessful attack on Oeniadae. He then turned against a more important objective, Leucas, the last considerable ally of Corinth in western waters. The island, as will be seen later, was of great strategical importance and its capture would have added enormously to the risk and difficulty of any Peloponnesian naval movement in that region. Attempting what may have been no more than a recon­naissance in force, Asopius was defeated and killed. His squadron sailed off to its base, and with his death, what may be called the Phormio phase of Athenian operations in the North-Western theatre of war was ended.

The results achieved were not to be despised. The interests of Corinth had been gravely injured, serious efforts by the Peloponnesians had been frustrated by comparatively slight exertions on the part of the Athenians themselves, and the naval skill of their fleet had been triumphantly vindicated. But, as in the North-East, Athens had not been able or willing to complete her successes and in the enemy’s hold on Leucas and the wavering policy of Corcyra there remained the possibilities of grave embarrassments in the future. The achievement of incomplete successes with small forces was in the end to prove false strategy as well as false economy.

During the campaigning season of 429 b.c., the main Pelopon­nesian army had not invaded Attica, chiefly, no doubt, because the countryside was protected by the presence of the Plague. Otherwise it is possible that they might have taken advantage of the serious weakening of the Athenian field-army to establish a strong point such as Decelea was to prove some sixteen years later. Another objective, however, was within their reach. Plataea guarded the road between Thebes and Attica and was to the Thebans Boeotia irredenta. To control the road the neutrality of Plataea would suffice, and Archidamus after moving the Pelo­ponnesian army into Plataean territory replied to the citizens’ protestation that their country had been promised independence after the crowning mercy vouchsafed to Greece beneath its walls, by offering them the choice of strict neutrality or the safe-keeping of their possessions by Sparta until the war was over. The offer was fair enough and in such matters the Spartan conscience might be trusted, but with pathetic loyalty the Plataeans consulted their ancient ally, Athens. The Athenians encouraged them to resist and made what may have been sincere promises of support which decided the Plataeans to reject Archidamus’ offers. The king called the gods of Plataea to witness the correctness of his procedure and then laid siege to the town, actively supported by the Boeotians, who had far other intentions than their scrupulous allies. Plataea was well prepared for a siege, and as hunger was the most dangerous enemy, the garrison was reduced to 400 Plataeans and 80 Athenians, with 110 women to keep house for them. The city was strong and the circumference of its walls no greater than could easily be defended by this force. Indeed it remained defensible when, some eighteen months later, nearly half the garrison escaped to Athens. In the hope of avoiding the tedium of a blockade, the Peloponnesians pressed the siege by every manner of device but the variety of the attack was defeated by the ingenuity of the defence. The last expedient was an attempt to fire the town. No such conflagration caused by the hand of man had been seen by anyone then alive, but in the nick of time, a thunderstorm quenched the flames. There remained the slow pressure of a blockade, and while part of the Peloponnesian army was sent home, the remainder completed a double wall to shut in the city and ward off any attempt at relief from Athens. By the middle of September the walls were built and a force was left to hold one half, while the Boeotians made themselves responsible for the rest. Thebes was near enough to reinforce the garrison of the circumvallation in case of need, but the Athenians did not raise a hand to implement their promises, and Plataea waited for the day of its inevitable surrender.

IV.

THE REVOLT OF MITYLENE (428-7 b.c.)

With the early summer of the year 428 came the Peloponnesian army which set itself to destroy the crops that had been sown by Attic farmers who hoped to harvest them. But more serious was the news that Mitylene the chief city of Lesbos was preparing to secede from the Athenian alliance. Lesbos, like Chios, had re­mained so far independent that it paid no tribute, maintained its own fleet, and managed its own domestic affairs. But there was no certainty that it would remain an island of freedom in the Empire, or that Athens might not prefer a faithful and sub­servient democracy to the moderate oligarchy which ruled in Mitylene. Even before the war there had been intrigues with Sparta, but Sparta was not then ready to give active support. But now the Plague and the inactivity of Athens emboldened the Mitylenean oligarchs to try their fortune before it was too late. Both Sparta and the Boeotians were willing enough to encourage a movement which might be the signal for a widespread revolt, or, at the least, distract the Athenians from ravaging the Peloponnese or attempting to relieve Plataea. During the winter of 429—8 the Mityleneans had quietly prepared their plans, and begun to improve the fortifications of their town and harbour and to im­port corn and archers from the Pontus. News was brought to Athens by her friends in Mitylene and by the governments of Methymna, the second city in Lesbos, and of Tenedos. For the Mityleneans aimed at nothing less than the domination of all Lesbos. The news was too unwelcome to be readily believed, but it soon became clear that Athens could not evade the challenge to her authority.

Envoys were sent demanding that these suspicious activities should cease, but the demand was refused, and the Athenian government decided to follow up their threats by a sudden stroke. The general Cleippides, with a fleet of 40 triremes which was under orders to sail against the Peloponnese, was dispatched to attempt a surprise of Mitylene while the citizens were outside the city at the feast of Apollo Maloeis. The news of its coming out­stripped the Athenian squadron, and, when Cleippides appeared off Mitylene, it was to find the city and harbours in a state of defence. He accordingly presented an ultimatum and, on its refusal, opened hostilities. The Lesbian fleet, weakened by the absence of 10 triremes which lay at the Piraeus as a proof of loyalty, was driven in, but the Athenian force, though sufficient for a surprise, was not strong enough to undertake a siege and an armistice was agreed upon, during which the Mityleneans might satisfy Athens of their virtuous intentions. At the same time a trireme slipped out carrying envoys to procure help from Sparta. In offering the armistice the Mityleneans were over­clever, for what the moment demanded was not words either at Athens or at Sparta but deeds in Lesbos which might set the Athenian Empire aflame with revolt. While the Athenians turned a polite though incredulous ear to the protestations of the Mitylenean envoys, Cleippides called up reinforcements from the cleruchies of Imbros and Lemnos and from such allies as were near and loyal. Methymna sent help, and when the armistice ended with the return of the Mitylenean ambassadors, the Athenians were able to maintain themselves in their camp to the north of the city. A second post was soon occupied south of the main harbour and the Attic triremes held the approaches by sea and waited for an army from Athens.

In the meantime, the shipload of Mitylenean envoys who had reached Sparta were asking to be formally enrolled as members of the Spartan alliance so as to engage the honour of the Peloponnesians in securing their safety. The answer was an invitation to plead their cause before the Greeks assembled at the Olympian festival. Accordingly, about the middle of August, they addressed the Peloponnesians, justified their revolt, and called for a vigorous offensive against Athens by land and sea. A second invasion of Attica might prevent the dispatch of a besieging army to Lesbos, a naval attack on the Saronic Gulf would force Athens to recall either the 40 triremes which lay off Mitylene or the 30 triremes under Asopius which the Athenians had sent out to sail round the Peloponnese. The Spartans were convinced, and prepared to drag across the Isthmus the fleet which Phormio had driven back into the Corinthian Gulf, while, at the same time, they called up the contingents of the Peloponnesians.

This well-conceived operation failed. The Peloponnesian hop­lites, who had already spent a month ravaging the Attic fields instead of harvesting their own, were now busy with the vintage and the gathering of their figs and olives, and mustered ‘slowly and grudgingly.’ The naval threat was vigorously countered, for the Athenians’ spirit rose with the danger. It was easier to find ships than crews. Year by year since the war began, 100 triremes had been set aside to meet precisely this emergency, but the Plague had thinned the ranks of the Athenian thetes who served in the fleet, and the treasury could ill afford to maintain a reserve of hired rowers from the rest of the Aegean world. At this crisis the hoplites of the zeugite class and the metics were called out to act as rowers and the 100 triremes put to sea. Part of Asopius’ squadron was recalled but not a ship was moved from before Mitylene. The Athenian armada demonstrated before the Isth­mus, and then moved off along the coast of the Peloponnese, and as the levies of their enemies marched into the great camp at the Isthmus, it was to hear that Athenian raiding parties were destroying the vintage which they had left ungathered. The troops were sent back to their homes and, though the military value of the Athenian reserve fleet with its admixture of untrained rowers was more than doubtful, the Peloponnesians abandoned their naval offensive. Phormio’s victories had not been forgotten. At no moment in the war was displayed so clearly how well Athens faced a danger and how ill her enemies used an opportunity.

The immediate danger was overpast but there remained the heavy task of besieging Mitylene. The first few years of war, above all the siege of Potidaea, had been very costly, and a second operation of that kind might well exhaust the reserves of the state. The Plague must have affected Attic trade, there had been loss of tribute in the Thraceward region, and cities in Caria and Lycia had refused to pay their contributions and killed the Athenian general Melesander who tried to exact the tribute as well as to protect the trade-route from Athens to Phoenicia. In this very year a like fate befel the demagogue Lysicles who was defeated and slain by the Carians while engaged on the same errand. And yet the money for a siege must be found at all costs. For the first time as a free democracy the Athenians imposed upon themselves an Eisphora or property-tax, which brought in 200 talents. Such a measure pressed hardly on the richer Athenians, who already bore the burden of equipping triremes and had seen much of their property destroyed by invasion. When, in the second half of September, a force of 1000 hoplites were sent out under Paches who took over the command in Lesbos, the hoplites themselves acted as rowers in order to spare the Athenian treasury.

If Athens was to carry on the war two things were needed: resolution in raising money and economy in spending it. And the man who did most in both directions was Cleon son of Cleaenetus. Both in the Knights and the Wasps of Aristophanes he is repre­sented as extorting money from the Allies and the rich for the demos. But the small peasantry of Attica and the poorer town citizens could supply little and money must be found where money was. What Cleon did at this time is what Pericles himself would have done. Cleon was charged with personal corruption, but as he was bound to make very many enemies, it is hard to believe that, if he had been corrupt, no one could be found to prove it in a court of law. And, once such a charge was proved, his career was ended. But, if not personally corrupt, he was without shame or mercy, and, no doubt, his patriotism and his self-seeking were two facets of the same jewel. Insensitive, unscrupulous, plausible, vain, resolute, and violent, he was one of the necessary evils of an aggressive democracy. But he was led captive by his own policy. To impose on half the Athenians the sacrifices needed to avoid losing the war, he was forced to make the other half believe that the war could be gloriously won. It was his fate at once to make a good peace possible and then to refuse it for the mirage of a better. The immediate danger of his policy was the exhaustion and discontent of the rich Athenians and the resentment of the Allies. But the leader of the rich Athenians, Nicias, while prepared to accept a reasonable peace, was not for surrender, nor willing to see the Athenian Empire broken. To the discontent among the Allies Cleon opposed frank terrorism. The Empire was a tyranny.. .oderint dum metuant.

Athens found the money and the determination to hold on. With the arrival of Paches’ force, the rebels were driven from the open field and by the beginning of the winter Mitylene was blockaded both by sea and land. Its fall was only a question of time unless the Peloponnesians could send help by sea. Towards the end of the winter the Mitylenean position was becoming desperate, but they were encouraged to hold on by Salaethus a Lacedaemonian, who made his way into the city with the news that a Peloponnesian fleet would be sent to their relief. The cam­paigning season of 427 b.c. opened with the invasion of Attica— probably about the end of May. Towards the end of June a Pelo­ponnesian fleet of 40 ships under the Spartan Admiral Alcidas had evaded the vigilance of the Athenians and reached Delos before the Athenians knew that it had started. But it came too late. Mitylene had fallen. Salaethus had despaired of relief and found the food of the city exhausted. Accordingly, as a last resort he armed the mass of the people to make an attempt on the Athenian lines. But no sooner were the people armed than they declared that the rich had supplies of corn which must be divided or they would hand over the city to the besieging army. The oligarchic government, anxious not to be the last to make peace, surrendered to Paches on such terms as they could get. The Athenians were to decide their fate. Salaethus was sent to Athens and put to death at once.

The Peloponnesian fleet reached Embatum near Erythrae seven days after the city had fallen, but before Paches had received warning of its coming. Had Alcidas possessed the resolution to attack at once, all might yet have been retrieved. And that course was urged upon him by one Teutiaplus an Elean who has the honour of pronouncing Thucydides’ verdict upon war, that the good general is he who guards against surprises and watches his opportunity of inflicting them upon the enemy. Three years later the historian was to write or re-read those words with his own bitter experience to prove them true. Alcidas, who appears to have regarded the art of war as a method of avoiding conflict, was not convinced, nor would he adopt an alternative plan of seizing a city in Ionia or Cyme in Aeolis and making it a centre of disaffection against Athens. Optimists declared that perhaps the Satrap of Sardes, Pissuthnes, might strike in on the Peloponnesian side. But Alcidas was no optimist, and did not desire the glory of a forlorn hope. He began to feel his way homewards, slaughtering the unfortunate subjects of Athens whom he caught at sea, until the nimbler-witted exiles from Samos convinced him that his conduct was neither honourable nor politic. By this time the presence of a Peloponnesian fleet in what had become an Athenian lake, had caused widespread alarm, and messages had poured in to Paches culminating in the arrival of the state­triremes, the Paralus and Salaminia, which had themselves sighted Alcidas’ squadron on their way from Athens. Paches gave chase at once; but Alcidas, who could at least understand the mission of the state-triremes, ‘sailed swiftly and fled’ and escaped, having suffered as little injury as he had inflicted.

The whole affair from the false hopes with which the Mity- leneans had been lured to their ruin to the enterprise of Alcidas, which atoned for the rashness of its conception by the timidity of its execution, was a fine commentary on the Spartan programme of freeing the Greeks, and a welcome strengthening of the prestige of Athens.

What remained to be settled was the fate of the people of Mitylene. Alcidas had done them the disservice of inflicting on the Athenians a moment of alarm which reinforced their natural anger. Cleon, a connoisseur of the baser emotions, persuaded the Assembly to decree the indiscriminate slaughter of all Mityleneans of military age, whether democrats or oligarchs, and the enslave­ment of the women and children. This ferocious folly, the reductio ad absurdum of Periclean imperialism, was not consummated, for the Athenians, though swift to anger, were not without pity and intelligence. The very next day the decree was re-considered in a debate which Thucydides has made the setting for a contrast between passion and reason. An Athenian Diodotus appears for a moment in history as the mouthpiece of reasoned state-craft. The Athenian Empire was possible because democrats in the allied cities preferred the rule of the Athenian demos to the domination of their political rivals. To slaughter the democrats at Mitylene who had, after all, turned against the oligarchs, was to alienate the democrats in every city of the Empire. Such arguments pre­vailed over the angry rhetoric of Cleon, though it was by the narrowest of majorities that the decree was reversed. The trireme which had set out for Lesbos with its heavy freight of doom was almost overtaken by the ship which carried the reprieve, and news of the second decree reached Paches between the reading and the execution of the first. ‘So near was Mitylene to destruction’. Cleon had his way with the ring-leaders of the revolt, the walls of the city were dismantled, and its fleet was surrendered. Apart from the faithful Methymna, the lands of the Lesbians were divided into 3000 lots, and these, after the gods had received their tithe, were assigned to Athenians who garrisoned the island,, living on the rent paid to them by the former owners, who con­tinued to farm them. The possessions of Lesbos on the mainland became tributary subjects of Athens. Farther south Paches had taken occasion, as he returned from the chase of Alcidas, to re­establish the Athenian hold on Notium where an anti-Athenian faction held the city with the help of mercenaries hired from Pissuthnes. This success, gained by an adroit treachery, was permanent. The general himself came to a bad end, for he was attacked at the expiry of his year of office, perhaps for malversation in Lesbos, and stabbed himself in open court.

V.

CORCYRA, SICILY, AND THE NORTH-WEST

The reduction of Mitylene marks a revival of Athenian vigour. When the Peloponnesian army retired, Nicias led a force which established a fortified post Minoa at the very entrance to the southern harbour of Megara. From this advanced point the Athenians could observe more promptly the naval movements of the enemy and hinder the coming and going of Megarian commerce and privateers. The mere presence of an Athenian force so near to the city of Megara was a standing invitation to any party within the city to intrigue with the enemy for personal or party ends. We may see in this operation the foreshadowing of a policy which, two years later, was to dominate Athenian strategy.

But the pre-occupation of Athens with Mitylene had proved fatal to Plataea and had seriously endangered Athenian influence in the North-West. The Plataeans had received assurances from Athens that she would not desert them, but these assurances flattered only to deceive. To fight a great pitched battle to force the raising of the siege, would have led to certain defeat and would not have saved the city, but it is at least possible that a surprise attack on the besieging lines might have enabled the whole garrison to escape in safety. No such attack was made. As the second winter of the siege wore on, the defenders were driven to decide between the danger of remaining and the danger of attempting escape. About half the garrison chose the nearer risk, and on a night of sleet and rain, in the dark of the moon and under cover of an easterly gale, they crossed the enemy’s lines and reached Athens. Their departure enabled the remainder of the garrison to hold out longer on their store of provisions but by the middle of August 427 b.c. they were so weakened by famine that they could no longer defend the walls and there was nothing left to them but to surrender. They had no hope but in the memory of their city’s past services to Greece and in the mercy of the Spartans. This hope was destroyed by the triumphant malice of the Thebans, who pointed out the undeniable fact that the Spartans were judg­ing not the Plataeans of the Persian wars, but the Plataeans who had stood by Athens and had slaughtered their Theban prisoners four years before. The Spartans, who wished to please Thebes and were no doubt exasperated by the long siege, put to each prisoner the question, ‘Whether he had done any service to the Lacedae­monians or their allies during the present war?’ The only possible answer meant death, and 200 Plataeans and 25 Athenians were killed, while the women were sold as slaves. After a year of occupation by refugees from the former Theban party in Plataea and from Megara, the city was razed to the ground, and the land became the property of the Theban state. Plataea had ceased to exist, and the Athenians conferred the solatium of Athenian citizenship on the Plataeans who survived.

In North-West Greece since the death of Asopius, the interests of Athens had been neglected. The general Nicostratus had 12 triremes at Naupactus and the Messenian garrison could provide a force of 500 hoplites. But these forces were small and sufficiently occupied with the duty of guarding the entrance to the Gulf of Corinth. Meanwhile at Corcyra the oligarchical faction which did nor wish to serve the interests of a democratic Athens was reinforced by the return of 250 aristocrats whom the Corinthians had taken prisoner at Sybota and now sent home under a show of ransom. The oligarchs hoped to bring back Corcyra to her traditional detachment from Greek politics, while the democrats wished to give more active support to their Athenian allies. At the moment Corcyra was in effect neutral, and Athens and Corinth had each a ship with envoys lying in the harbour. In July 427 b.c. the struggle of parties proceeded from impeachment and counter-impeachment to assassination. Peithias the leader of the pro-Athenian faction successfully defended himself against a charge of treason, and retorted by accusing five of the richest aristocrats of having cut vine-props in the precinct of Zeus and Alcinous. They were convicted and condemned to the enormous fine of a stater for each stake, a fine which Peithias proposed to exact with the full rigour of the law. Whereupon the oligarchs broke into the Council-hall and killed him with sixty of his followers. Having thus gained control of the executive, they forced through a decree declaring neutrality in set terms.

Had Athens accepted the fait accompli the oligarchs might have been contented, and they dispatched envoys to test the feeling of the Athenians. They arrived to find that the news had outstripped them, and that orders had been sent to Nicostratus instructing him to intervene. The envoys and any other Corcyraeans of their party whom the Athenians could lay hands upon were interned in Aegina. In the meantime, Lacedaemonian envoys arrived at Corcyra with promises of help, and the oligarchs decided to force the issue by attacking their democratic fellow-citizens. A force of 800 mercenaries was brought over from the mainland but their help was more than counterbalanced by the fact that the greater part of the large slave population of the island took the side of the democrats. After three days of street-fighting the oligarchs had the worst of it, but before the democrats could complete their victory, Nicostratus with his twelve ships and 500 Messenian hoplites appeared in the harbour. The Athenian commander sought to make a peaceable settlement, provided that Corcyra adhered to her alliance with Athens, but this settlement was too gentle for the passions of Greek party warfare. The democrats, who rightly distrusted their power to live in peace and safety with the oligarchs, requested him to leave five of his triremes while they would man five others to take their place. The five others were to be a floating prison for aristocrats, but these latter, with the rest of their party, preferred the shelter of a temple until they were induced to leave their asylum for a small island off the city.

In the meantime, the fleet of Alcidas, which had returned from its inglorious adventure in the Aegean, was reinforced by 13 ships from Leucas and Ambracia and dispatched to assist the oligarchic coup d'etat, Within a few days of Nicostratus arrival, the news reached Corcyra that this fleet was approaching the city. Sixty ships were manned which, with the Athenian squadron, should have been enough to defeat Alcidas, but with a nice appreciation of the relative merits of their enemies, the Peloponnesians detached 33 ships to face Nicostratus, while the remaining 20 defeated the Corcyraeans as they straggled up to the battle. The Athenians, who were on the point of repeating Phormio’s man­oeuvre in his first naval victory of 429, were forced to be content with covering the retreat of their incompetent allies, and the day ended with the Corcyraeans making hasty preparations to repel an attack on the city. But Alcidas saved them further anxiety. He had with him Brasidas, sent no doubt to lend him a little resolution, but the leaven failed to leaven the whole lump, and Alcidas exercised his right as Admiral to order a useless landing at Leucimne. At nightfall beacons from Leucas warned him of the approach of a second Athenian fleet, and he hastened home, evading the enemy by hauling his ships across the narrow spit of sand which joined Leucas to the mainland, while the Athenians were sailing west of the island. Thus, twice within twenty-four hours, Leucas proved useful to the enemies of Athens.

The retreat, if timid, was wise, for the Athenian fleet consisted of 60 triremes under Eurymedon, dispatched as soon as the news of the oligarchic coup reached Athens. The fears of the Corcyraean democrats turned to savage triumph and they massacred their opponents, public and private, with every circumstance of sacrilege, treachery and judicial murder. For seven days this went on under the eyes of the Athenian generals and moved Thucydides to analyse, with a psychological Insight which sur­passed his powers of expression, the effect of war on the intensely political minds of the Greeks. We are presented with a picture of the Greek city-states, as they were to be for the remainder of the Archidamian War, and from this point onwards, intrigue with parties within other states becomes an increasingly common opera­tion of war.

A remnant of the oligarchs escaped to the mainland and harried their enemies with raids until they were emboldened to cross over and seize Mt Istone some four miles south of the city. Thence they continued their depredations until in 425 b.c. an Athenian squadron on its way to Sicily helped the democrats to storm the fort on the mountain and the remnant of the oligarchs surrendered on the promise of a trial at Athens. They were tricked into attempting escape, and Sophocles and Eurymedon, two generals in a hurry, handed them over to the Corcyraean democrats. Sixty of them were killed as they were driven along between two files of hoplites, each of whom struck and stabbed such prisoners, in passing, as chanced to be his personal enemy. The remainder tried to bar the way into their prison and called on the Athenians to be their executioners. All one night they endured a rain of arrows and tiles from the roof or sought to end their own lives. At dawn the tragedy was over; the Corcyraeans heaped the corpses on waggons and carried them out of the city; and all the women taken in the fort were enslaved. ‘Such was the way in which the Corcyraeans of the mountain were cut off by the democrats: and thus the sedition after being so violent ended, so far at least as concerns this war. For there were none of the aristocratic party left worth mentioning. The Athenian fleet then proceeded to Sicily.

We may now return to the year 427 in which the Athenians were persuaded to intervene actively in Sicilian affairs. As has been said, the power of Syracuse had grown rapidly since the defeat which she inflicted on her rival Acragas in 445 b.c. In the decade which preceded the outbreak of the Archidamian War her navy had increased, and in 431 b.c. the Peloponnesians entertained high hopes of help by sea from their friends in Sicily. No help was sent, and we may assume that this was due to the facts that Syracuse was still preoccupied with her own ambitions, and that the states in Sicily which had reason to fear her were encouraged by Athenian diplomacy as well as by their own interests to produce embarrassing complications. In 433-2 b.c. the Athenians had renewed in identical terms existing treaties with Leontini and Rhegium, and these cities were or became allied with the Chalcidian cities of Sicily and with Camarina. In this way during the early years of the war there was formed a group of cities, predominantly Ionian, which had some claim on Athenian support if only because its continued existence was in the interests of Athens. In natural opposition to this group was Syracuse, the head of the Siceliote Dorian cities whose sympathies were on the side of the Peloponnesians, with whom indeed they were nominally in alliance. The adhesion of Italian Rhegium to the Ionian group was balanced by that of Locri to the Dorian combination.

By the summer of the year 427 the opposition between these two groups had ended in open war, in which the Ionians had the worst of it. Leontini, thereupon, sent envoys, among them the famous sophist Gorgias, appealing to Athens to fulfil her treaty obligations and send help to her Ionian kinsfolk. Greek states, although scrupulous in avoiding what treaties forbade, exercised great freedom in deciding whether to do what treaties prescribed. But the danger that the Ionian group would collapse and that Syracuse would be free to bring powerful help to her mother­city Corinth was decisive. The Athenians voted to dispatch 20 ships to the west and these sailed under the command of Laches and Charoeades about the end of September 427 b.c. The smallness of the squadron, the fact that no considerable body of troops was sent, and the character of the operations on which the Athe­nians embarked, all show that both the generals at Athens and the generals in command of the fleet were pursuing a strictly limited objective, the maintenance of a political equilibrium, how­ever unstable, in Sicily.

A by-product of hostilities in Sicily would be the cessation of the export of corn thence to the Peloponnese. The natural effect of the war with its destruction of peaceable activities had been to make it more convenient, if not necessary, to import corn, and the readiest market open to the Peloponnesians was Sicily, where they may have enjoyed favourable terms because of the sympathy of the Dorian states. No blockade which the Athenians could institute would suffice to prevent merchant-ships reaching the western Peloponnese, but if the Sicilians fought instead of working in the fields, the Peloponnesians might have to work in the fields instead of fighting. So far the purpose of the Athenians may be described as in essence defensive. But, besides the plans of the generals, there were the hopes and pro­mises of demagogues like Cleon and a new parody of Cleon, the lampseller Hyperbolus, who spoke of a possible conquest of the whole island of Sicily. To them this expedition was the first step on a long and glorious road and they taught the Athenians to expect far more than lay within their power to achieve.

Laches set out with the forces and for the purposes of a defensive policy, and for a year he discharged his mission with success. As Leontini was too near Syracuse to be a secure base, the Athenians established themselves at Rhegium and engaged in minor operations against the north coast of Sicily, gained a victory at Mylae, and won over Messana. Thus they secured command of the Straits of Messina and so cut off Locri from her Sicilian allies. But they and the Rhegines failed to do more than win some small successes in southern Italy. Locri itself proved too strong for them and an attempt to raise the Sicels against Syracuse ended in a defeat at Inessa. Charoeades had fallen in battle and Laches must have displayed great tact and resource in making the most of his fleet and the best of his allies. By the close of the campaigning season of 426, the tide of war was beginning to set in favour of the friends of Syracuse. It became plain that the Athenians must send reinforcements to avert the defeat of their allies or, in the phrase of optimistic demagogues, to end the war more quickly. The Syracusans were rapidly gaining the command of the sea and what was needed was a stronger Athenian fleet. Athens had ships and crews to spare, now that the Peloponnesians, since the end of 427 b.c., had not ventured to send out a fleet. As Athenian naval supremacy was secured by constant practice, the use of a fleet in Sicilian waters could be represented, not entirely without reason, as a good thing in itself. It was decided to send out 40 triremes, and meanwhile the general Pythodorus was dispatched with a few ships to supersede Laches and announce the coming of the remainder of the fleet in the following spring. Laches, who had been engaged in campaigning with the Sicels against Himera retired to Rhegium to find himself superseded and after his return to Athens he was prosecuted for peculation, but acquitted. Pythodorus proved incompetent or unfortunate, and allowed the Syracusans to win back Messana, and so re-open communications with Locri. Rhegium was in her turn isolated and, although the Athenians and Rhegines had rather the better of it in a series of naval engagements, they were unable to regain Messana. The alliance with part of the Sicels assisted the Ionian cities in Sicily to hold their own with fair success, but Dorian Camarina showed signs of deserting their cause and, what was more important, the main body of the second Athenian fleet was detained in Greek waters until the summer of 425 b.c. was over.

It had by now become apparent even to the Ionian allies of Athens that the Athenian policy was purely egotistical. Those Athenians who thought only of defence desired the continuance of evenly balanced wars in Sicily, those who had wider ambitions and thought of conquest were as prepared to conquer Ionians as Dorians. For the other cities of Sicily the alternative to becoming either the catspaws or the subject-allies of Athens was to make a reasonable peace with Syracuse and there was a Syracusan states­man, Hermocrates, who realized that the interests of his own city would be better served by a peace which excluded Athenian influence than by a war which had proved so hard to win. In the summer of 424 b.c. a Conference met at Gela, and the Siceliote cities agreed upon a general peace, which removed any justifica­tion for the presence of an Athenian fleet. Eurymedon and Sophocles, the commanders of the new Athenian fleet, and Pythodorus, although he had spent 100 minae on a sophistic training, could hardly defend either the actions or the speeches of the Athenians and acquiesced in the inevitable and returned home, leaving the Siceliote cities to live at peace with each other. But, if we may judge by a hint in a speech which Thucydides puts into the mouth of Nicias, they did succeed in making some kind of a bargain whereby the Sicilian cities renounced any intention of interfering in the politics of Greece proper. That very modest though real achievement did not prevent them from becoming the victims of the Athenian demos, which had been encouraged by Cleon to expect the impossible and fined Eurymedon and banished his colleagues. Two years later (422 b.c.) during a revival of Cleon’s influence, an Athenian envoy, Phaeax, was sent to Italy and Sicily to fish in the troubled waters of interstate politics, but his mission came to nothing. The Syracusans had not proved very formidable enemies and Sicily had become a de­sirable prize, so that nine years after the Conference at Gela the half-formed plans of optimistic demagogues became the considered policy of the Athenian state.

Having traced the course of the first operations of the Athenians in Sicily to their close, we may now return to the main theatre of war. If intervention against Syracuse is regarded, in its inception, as defensive, the general result of the year 427 b.c. was that Athens had overcome or neutralized the attacks upon her interests. There are signs that the old vigour and initiative were returning. But with the winter of 427—6 came a second visitation of the Plague which lasted a year and reduced the fighting strength of the Athenians. Equally serious was the de­pletion of the Athenian treasury. The average cost of the last five years of war may be set at about 1400—1500 talents of which more than half had to be met by borrowing from the state reserve. We possess accounts which show that between 433—2 b.c. and 427-6 b.c. the Athenians had borrowed not far short of 4800 talents, so that even if we allow for some revenue from sacred property accruing to the reserve fund, the 6000 talents with which Athens began the war must have been reduced to little more than 2000. It is to this fact as much as to the difficulty of obtaining crews that we must attribute the smallness of the fleets which from now onwards are sent to sea. None the less the spirit of the people remained high and at the elections for the office of General in 426 b.c. Nicias, the opponent of adventure, was not reappointed, nor Hipponicus, a general who shared his strategic views. Eurymedon, who appears to have combined high demo­cratic orthodoxy with a purely professional attitude towards the war, was re-elected and Laches, though of the party of Nicias, was continued in his Sicilian command. Otherwise, a troop of nonentities was chosen to lead the forces of Athens, with one exception, Hippocrates the nephew of Pericles, who begins a short and unfortunate military career. It may be suspected that the in­fluence of the demagogues, above all of Cleon, was in the ascendant and that the Athenians wished for a more violent prosecution of the war. In the Babylonians produced at the Great Dionysia of 426 b.c. the young poet Aristophanes dared to attack Cleon and his drastic policy towards the Empire with such vigour that he was haled before the Council and narrowly escaped severe punishment.

With the spring of 426 there came the possibility of peace. Archidamus had died and his son Agis had succeeded him, a young man as yet with little influence. At the same time Pleisto- anax had been recalled from exile and his influence was thrown on the side of peace. Sparta had little cause to be satisfied with the events of the last two years and Athens appeared to be invincible. Accordingly, in the Spartan manner, the ephors took advantage of an earthquake which hindered the invasion of Attica to open negotiations for peace. We are not informed what offers were made, but it is possible that they proposed to return to the position as defined in the Thirty Years Peace. Such proposals involved the restoration of Aegina to its old inhabitants and the dispossession of the Athenian cleruchs. The sanguine and violent popular leaders found it easy to arouse the spirit of the demos, and the Lacedaemonians were dismissed with con­tumely. It is significant that Thucydides does not think it worth while even to mention these proposals which were rejected as soon as they were made.

The earliest operations of the year 426 were directed by the generals still in office, but more in the spirit of their successors. Towards the end of May Demosthenes of Aphidna and Procles were sent with a fleet round the Peloponnese to continue the war in North-Western Greece. Soon afterwards, Nicias, as the closing exploit of his year of office, set out with 60 ships and 2000 hoplites to the Dorian island of Melos which refused to take its due place in the Athenian Empire and did not surrender, despite the ravaging of its fields. The returning fleet took part in an interesting operation. The 2000 hoplites were landed at Oropus and advanced on Tanagra while the remainder of the Athenian field­ army under Hipponicus and Eurymedon marched to join them. We may suspect that the movement was intended to entrap the Boeotian army but, if so, it failed, for only the contingents of Tanagra and a small Theban force was brought to battle and defeated. Nicias ravaged the coast of Eastern Locris while the Athenian field-army returned home. The Boeotians made one effective retort in the autumn of this year by razing Plataea to the ground, so that nothing of the city might remain to be bargained away by their half-hearted allies, the Lacedaemonians.

This campaigning season was marked by two offensives in the North-West, the first by Demosthenes, the second by the Pelopon­nesians, both of which ended in failure. The Athenian strategy in that area was complicated by the conflicting interests of the Acarnanians and of the Messenian settlement at Naupactus. Demosthenes was at first guided by the advice of the Acarnanians. The strategic importance of Leucas had become more apparent than ever during the operations of the previous year, and the Athenian fleet, supported by the full strength of the Acarnanians, Corcyraeans and other allies of Athens, attacked the island. The Leucadians were driven into their city and the Acarnanians urged Demosthenes to beleaguer the city and thus finally secure Athenian interests in the North-West. But the tedious operation of a siege did not appeal to the enterprising nature of the Athenian admiral, and a more ambitious and seductive plan was proposed to him by the Messenians of Naupactus. They suggested that the moment had come to subdue Aetolia and thus strengthen Nau­pactus and Athenian influence on the western mainland. To this attraction his own imagination added a yet more alluring prospect, the opening up of a new avenue for an attack upon Boeotia. Beyond Aetolia eastwards lay the Ozolian Locrians, who had promised help, and beyond them the Phocians, who might be brought to remember their old friendship with Athens. Phocis marched with Boeotia, and Demosthenes might hope to force the Boeotians to face an attack on their western border, while the Athenian field-army stood ready to strike in at the right moment, and complete the work of their allies from Western and Central Greece. Such a far-reaching combination reveals in Demosthenes strategic imagination and the spirit of the offensive, but his brilliant conception was not based on an accurate calculation of the forces in the field, and his faith in his own star could not remove the mountains of Aetolia. It is possible that personal considerations weighed with him, for he had not been re-elected in the previous spring and this was perhaps the last opportunity which he would have of distinguishing himself. To the annoyance of the Acarnanians, who retired to their homes, he yielded to these temptations, and broke off the attack on Leucas, and began the new campaign with insufficient preparations, not waiting for contingents of light-armed troops promised him by the Ozolian Locrians. He landed at Oeneon and advanced into Aetolia. There he found his hoplites almost helpless against the Aetolian javelin­men and must have missed the Acarnanians who were masters in the art of skirmishing. After losing 120 out of the 300 Athenian hoplites whom he had with him, he was forced to retire. The Athenian fleet escorted the remainder of the expedition to Nau­pactus, and thence sailed home. But Demosthenes did not return, for he knew well that the Athenians did not forgive failure.

There was soon a better reason for his presence at Naupactus. The Aetolians had appealed to the Corinthians and Lacedaemonians for help, and these now proposed to send a strong force to take advantage of Demosthenes’ failure. About September 426 3000 Peloponnesian hoplites concentrated at Delphi and the second offensive began. The Ozolian Locrians did not dare to offer resistance and Eurylochus, the Spartan commander of the Peloponnesians, pushed on and appeared before Naupactus about the middle of October. Demosthenes showed in adversity the boldness which had tripped him up in prosperity. He succeeded in persuading the Acarnanians to raise 1000 hoplites and with these he made good the defence of Naupactus. Eurylochus moved on into Western Aetolia where his presence emboldened the Ambraciotes to revive the old plan of the conquest of Amphilochia and Acarnania. They were to advance south, while Eurylochus marched north to join them. The Ambraciotes began by investing Olpae (November 426) and this threat to Amphilochian Argos roused the Acarnanians to put their full forces in the field and to invite Demosthenes to lead them. Calling up a squadron of 20 Athenian triremes that had appeared off the north­west of the Peloponnese with two generals, who were no doubt sent to supersede him, he brought his Messenians and 60 Athe­nian archers and took command. Meanwhile Eurylochus had joined forces with the Ambraciotes. A battle followed, in which Demosthenes showed great qualities and won a decisive victory with inferior numbers. Eurylochus was killed; his successor, Menedaeus, negotiated to secure the safe withdrawal of the Peloponnesians, leaving the Ambraciotes and the barbarian mercen­aries to the tender mercy of the Acarnanians. Demosthenes hastened to agree, for such a desertion of their allies by the Peloponnesians was worth more to Athens than another victory. The Peloponnesians withdrew and their allies were chased with heavy loss into the shelter of the neighbouring Agraeans. At dawn of the next day a second Ambraciote force was trapped and destroyed at Idomene, north of Olpae.

Demosthenes could now sail off to Athens in triumph. He was elected General for the year 425 and his voice carried weight in the military councils of the Athenians. The Acarnanians, who had refused to complete the destruction of Ambracia, concluded a peace marked by distrust of Athens. The Ambraciotes on the one side and the Acarnanians and Amphilochians on the other made a treaty pledging themselves to take no offensive action on either side in the war. The Ambraciotes bound themselves not to help their neighbour, the Corinthian colony of Anactorium, which was taken by the Acarnanians in the next year, with the help of Athenian forces from Naupactus.

The result of what may be called the Demosthenes phase in the north-western area of war was to establish his personal reputation, justly enough, for his indomitable energy had more than atoned for his sanguine over-haste. But Athens had gained less than she might have hoped, for it would have been better to capture Leucas and retain the whole-hearted support of the Acarnanians. It was, none the less, true that the power of Corinth was weakened and the military prestige of Sparta was damaged by the discreditable fiasco of Eurylochus’ expedition. Most important of all was the encouragement which these dramatic events gave to the optimists at Athens. In Demosthenes they had a general from whom they might hope the impossible, who had the ingenuity to invent new and promising schemes as well as the capacity to direct their execution. It was all in vain that Aristo­phanes in the Acharnians attacked the party of adventure, with their wild schemes for bringing in help from the ends of the earth, of finding war profitable and exciting, at the expense of honest Athenians who hated the Lacedaemonians but realized the blessings of peace. The Plague had ceased, Apollo’s island of Delos had been purified, and Nicias displayed his piety and wealth in reinstituting the Delian festival. The anger of heaven was appeased and over, and the Athenians began the campaigning season of 425 b.c. in a spirit of resolute hopefulness.

VI.

PYLOS AND SPHACTERIA

The Peloponnesians opened the campaigning season of 425 b.c. with an invasion of Attica and planned to send a fleet of 60 triremes to assist the exiles who were harrying the democrats in Corcyra. In answer to this threat, the Athenian rein­forcements for Sicily were ordered to sail first to Corcyra and, when the position there was secured, to continue their voyage to the West. Such were the instructions with which the two generals, Eurymedon and Sophocles, left Athens before the end of May. But with them went Demosthenes, general-elect for the civil year 425—4, who had obtained from the Assembly leave to employ the fleet off the coast of the Peloponnese if he thought fit. As the Athenians coasted round Laconia, they received the news that the enemy fleet had reached Corcyra and that their help was urgently needed. The two generals who would have to answer for it, if any delay of theirs caused disaster to the friends of Athens, were naturally disposed to abandon or postpone any scheme of Demosthenes. At this juncture, so says Thucydides, Fortune in­tervened in the shape of a storm which drove the Athenians to take shelter in the harbour of Pylos on the west coast of the Peloponnese, the very point at which Demosthenes had intended to employ the fleet. Here, well informed by Messenians, who knew the country, he had designed to establish a force to be a centre for depredation and a rallying point for disaffection in the territory of the Spartans.

The position was well chosen. The peninsula of Pylos was defensible and a garrison could keep in touch with the fleets of Athens. There would be no need to subject Athenians to the tedium and danger of holding the position once it was occupied, for there were Messenians only too ready to raid the fields of their old masters the Spartans. The country round was bare of troops, and the Athenians could occupy and fortify Pylos before the enemy could hinder them. While the storm raged outside, the Athenian commanders disputed within the harbour, until the sailors beguiled their enforced leisure by strengthening the position with rough walls. The storm abated, and Eurymedon and Sophocles hastened on their way, leaving behind them Demosthenes with five triremes to meet disaster or achieve success. The immediate effect went far to justify his boldness, for the Lacedaemonian government recalled their army from Attica, though it is true that bad weather and the unripeness of the Attic crops made them not unwilling to find a good reason for retirement. At the same time their fleet was ordered back from Corcyra and, evading the Athe­nian main squadron, it reached Pylos and the Spartans prepared for an attack by land and sea. This was the test of Demosthenes’ scheme. He had worked hard to strengthen his defences, and the long arm of coincidence, if indeed it was that, had brought along two Messenian privateers with some hoplites and arms, but, even so, his force was small indeed to face a determined attack by the armies and ships of the Peloponnese. With the Spartan forces was Brasidas, his equal in courage, enterprise, and resource.

The peninsula of Pylos, or Coryphasium as the Spartans called it, was joined to the mainland on the north by a neck of sand. At some point, either across the neck or where the high ground of the peninsula sloped down towards the open sea, the Athenians had built a wall which they might hope to hold against any assault not supported by siege-engines. A greater danger was from a simultaneous and resolute attack made from the sea. The east side of the peninsula and the greater part of the west face was sufficiently protected by a high line of cliffs, but at the south-west corner a landing was possible, although difficult because the sea­front was broken by rocks. Here a second wall had been built, but it was weak, and might be taken if the Spartans could land troops on the beach in front of it. At this, the point of danger, Demosthenes himself with a picked force of 60 hoplites and a few archers faced the enemy at the very water’s edge, while his main body, perhaps 600 strong, held the land wall to the north. The Spartans attacked at both points. Brasidas was with the sea attack and pressed it with characteristic vehemence, but the defence held. Brasidas was wounded; the Athenians won his shield and the Spartans lost his counsel. The attack on the north also was re­pulsed, and the enemy had to expect the appearance of the Athe­nian fleet which was now no longer needed at Corcyra. On the naval side the position was that Pylos and the island of Sphacteria to the south guarded what is now the Bay of Navarino. From the mainland to Pylos there now stretches a sandbank, but we must assume, what is in itself probable, that in the fifth century b.c. this sandbank did not make a barrier as far west as Pylos but left open a channel from the bay into an inner harbour which is now the lagoon of Osmyn Aga. A second channel, some 130 yards wide, separated the north of Sphacteria from the peninsula. Thucydides attributes to the Spartans the design of blocking up the entrances to the bay by arranging their ships across them. We must interpret these words as referring to the two channels already mentioned, for the only other entrance, that south of Sphacteria, is 1200 yards across and the water is too deep for anchoring. While the main bay was thus open, it was at least possible to hold the inner harbour and, to assist this operation, the Spartans landed a force on the northern end of the island of Sphacteria. Having done so, they failed to do what gave the landing its meaning, and, after all, left the two channels unblocked.

The attack by land, though renewed, ended in failure, and after two days the Spartans sent away for timber to make siege­engines. But on that day the main Athenian fleet arrived. With tired rowers, Eurymedon and his colleague did not seek to force an engagement at once, but spent the night off the island of Prote, eight miles to the northward. Next morning they attacked, took the Peloponnesian fleet by surprise, and won a decisive victory which gave them the command of the sea and cut off the force on Sphacteria, which consisted of 420 Lacedaemonian hoplites with their attendant Helots.

In a moment the position was reversed and the Athenians became more besiegers than besieged. Their grip on Pylos was secure, for their troops could hold the land wall with the help of the fleet. The Peloponnesians were too shaken to face another battle by sea, and the hoplites on Sphacteria were out of reach of rescue. The heads of the Spartan government came down to see if things were as bad as they were reported to be, and arranged an armistice on the spot, while envoys carried to Athens pro­posals for peace. The terms of the armistice reflect the anxiety and depression of the Spartans. The Peloponnesian fleet, including all warships in Laconian waters, was to be placed in the hands of the Athenians for the duration of the armistice. A fixed, though ample, ration was to be supplied to the Spartans on the island, while each attendant Helot received half as much as his master. The Athenians retained the right to patrol the waters round the island but not to land upon it, and neither side was to make any attack. Any breach of these conditions ended the armistice, which was to last until the return of the Spartan ambassadors.

The Spartan envoys proposed not only peace but alliance between Athens and Sparta. The terms of the settlement would naturally be a matter for private negotiations, and, if the two powers agreed together, no other Greek state would be strong enough to cross them. It was clear that Sparta would make great sacrifices, if only at the expense of her allies, in order to redeem her citizens imprisoned at Sphacteria. But the negotiations broke down before the opposition of the more optimistic or grasping Athenians, adroitly led by Cleon. He demanded that the Spartans should begin by surrendering the hoplites on the island to be held as pledges for the fulfilment of further demands—the surrender to Athens of what she had given up twenty years before, Nisaea and Pegae, Troezen and Achaea. Moreover, he insisted that the negotiations should be conducted openly. Whatever sacrifices Sparta was prepared to make, it was impossible for her to bargain away in public the possessions of her allies, and if the negotiations after all broke down, she would be left without peace and without friends. After a severe struggle in the Assembly, Cleon had his way, and there was nothing left for the Spartans but to return home. With their return the armistice ended. The Athenians refused to hand back the enemy fleet, adducing petty infringe­ments of the armistice.

It now remained to achieve by war what Cleon had failed to attain by negotiation, if that is the word for his conduct, namely, the surrender of the Spartan hoplites. Thucydides does not pronounce judgment on the wisdom of the Athenians at this moment, but the speech which he puts into the mouth of the Spartan envoys contains in itself his criticism. He gives no reply; to him, the Spartans’ arguments were unanswerable. The situation in which the Spartans were placed did not reflect the permanent relative strengths of the two contending powers. The momentary advantage given by fortune, if exploited to the full, leaves the exploiter himself at the mercy of fortune. The right course is to make peace and friendship without undue regard to the advantage which one side holds at the moment; only such a peace can be enduring. To Thucydides, these Spartan envoys grace the triumph of Pericles, not of Demosthenes. It is the policy of Pericles which has brought down the Spartan spirit so low that at a single reverse they come to ask for peace. The logical conclusion of the Periclean strategy would be to make peace now, without insisting on the possession of those places which Pericles had surrendered because Athens was not strong enough to hold them. The policy of Pericles was based on the permanent resources of Athens, and these were not enough to secure all that Cleon hoped.

Thucydides believed that the wise general is bold in making war, temperate in making peace. Cleon was to justify his policy for the moment by a striking success, but Thucydides was right in thinking that Cleon’s success was only less fatal to Athens than its failure would have been. For the time it looked as though Cleon’s policy would soon be refuted by events. The Athenians did not venture to attack the island, occupied as it was by Lacedaemonians screened from observation by the woods which covered it. The blockade was difficult to maintain and not wholly effective, since provisions were brought to the island both by swimmers from the mainland and by daring small craft which ran in from the open sea when westerly winds drove the Athenian triremes into shelter. Weeks passed and the end of August approached without any sign of surrender. Once the autumn gales set in, the blockade would be impossible, and the Spartans on the island might escape to the mainland in the small craft that had brought them food.

From this situation Nicias, the General-in-Chief at Athens, drew one deduction, that it was unfortunate that Cleon had hindered the conclusion of a favourable peace. Cleon, whose political existence was at stake, refused to believe that nothing could be done, and his view was shared, if not prompted, by Demosthenes, who was ever sanguine and resourceful. He had learnt in Aetolia the value of light-armed troops against hoplites and was convinced that with reinforcements, especially of peltasts and archers, a successful attack was possible. His plans were aided by an accidental fire which laid bare the island, denied to the Spartans the advantages of their knowledge of the terrain, and disclosed the fact that their attendant Helots had deserted them. Cleon clamoured in the Assembly for the sending of reinforcements and Nicias retorted that if Cleon was so confident of success, he might take whatever troops he needed and make good his words. He was prepared to waive his powers as general, and have them transferred to his critic for the purposes of this adventure. Cleon, between fear of political ruin and confidence in Demosthenes, accepted the com­mission and promised to capture or kill the Spartans within twenty days. Thucydides, who knew Greek war and autumn weather, judged the promise madness, but Demosthenes supplied a method to make it come true. On Cleon’s arrival at Pylos with troops from Imbros and Lemnos, peltasts, and a force of 400 archers, he found Demosthenes with his plan prepared. An ulti­matum was sent offering to admit to surrender the Spartans on the island. The offer was refused, and after a day’s interval, a landing was effected just before dawn with 800 hoplites who surprised the Spartan pickets and covered the disembarkation of the light troops and of some 8000 men from the crews of the Athenian fleet.

In that broken country the Lacedaemonian hoplites were almost helpless before a well-handled attack. But their defence was worthy of the Spartan reputation. After hours of struggle against overwhelming numbers, they sullenly withdrew to make a last stand behind an ancient line of walls on the high ground at the north of the island. Shielded from any but frontal attack, they held their own until the leader of Demosthenes’ Messenians led a force which by climbing round the cliffs appeared suddenly on the skyline behind the Spartan position. Then at long last the defence broke down. Demosthenes and Cleon, who realized how much more valuable to Athens the Spartans were alive than dead, held up the final attack and offered quarter. Epitadas the Spartan commander had fallen, his lieutenant lay wounded and uncon­scious, the third in command asked leave to communicate with the Lacedaemonians on the mainland. At last he received orders. The force was to consult its own safety so long as it avoided dishonour. Under cover of this phrase the Spartans surrendered, after having done all that brave men could do. Worn out, tortured by thirst, and with no hope of relief, their surrender seems beyond reach of all censure, yet the Greeks wondered that, in any circumstances, Spartans should surrender while they had arms in their hands. Of the 420 Lacedaemonian hoplites 128 had fallen, the rest surrendered, including about 120 full Spartiates. The Lacedae­monian land army retired, and Cleon returned to Athens in triumph with the prisoners of Demosthenes’ bow and spear.

VII.

CLEON: THE OFFENSIVE

Cleon was the man of the hour, and from the moment of his return to Athens he dominated Athenian policy for more than a year. He was strong enough to carry through something like a doubling of the tribute and the prestige of Athens stood so high that no revolt followed, though we must not take it that all the states that were assessed actually made payments. The increase was not without some justification. The states of the Empire might expect to make greater contributions of men and money during a war, even if the war was not of their making or in their interest, and Athens had not called on most of them for contingents of troops and had paid their sailors. It might further be argued that the purchasing power of money had declined and that it was not unreasonable to raise the nominal amount of the tribute. As far as we can check it, the increase was greatest where the Athenian hold was most secure, that is, in the islands, which had been taught by the failure of the Mitylenean revolt that they were at the mercy of the Athenian fleet. This increase of revenue rendered possible a more vigorous prosecution of the war and the raising of the dicasts’ allowance from two obols to three. The Athenian courts were kept busy with prosecutions of all kinds, which gratified the censoriousness and sense of power of elderly jurymen who saw in Cleon the watchdog of the people.

The triumph at Sphacteria enabled the Athenians to use the Spartan prisoners as hostages to secure the immunity of Attica from invasion, and that fact alone brought a spirit of renewed confidence into their military policy. The Messenians at Pylos raided the countryside and made a refuge for Helots who deserted their masters’ estates. The very security which Lacedaemon had enjoyed for so long made the Spartans peculiarly apprehensive of a widespread Helot revolt and repeated embassies visited Athens in the hope of regaining by concessions both Pylos and their prisoners. But the Athenians were in no mood for peace, and the envoys returned empty-handed. The policy of establishing fortified posts in the enemy’s country had proved so successful that it now dominates Athenian strategy.

Nicias himself was glad enough to take an occasion to repair his damaged reputation and very possibly to be spared the spectacle of Cleon’s insolent triumph. He was still General-in-chief and he set out with So ships, 2000 Athenian hoplites and 200 cavalry and some forces from Miletus, Andros and Carystus and sought to establish a second Pylos in the territory of the Corin­thians. The general purpose of his expedition became known to the Argives, who let pass none of the advantages of neutrality, and these sent early news to Corinth. But the exact point of attack was unknown and the Corinthians accordingly concentrated a striking force at the Isthmus and guarded the whole line of their coast along the Saronic Gulf. The Athenians first made a landing at Solygeia to the south-west. But before they could establish themselves and fortify the place, a part of the Corin­thian reserves came up and after a stubborn engagement in which the Athenians gained a dubious and barren victory, Nicias withdrew his men and sailed off to Crommyon at the other end of Corinthian territory. It maybe that, as later in Sicily, he had meant to feint at one point and make his true landing at another, using to the full the mobility afforded by sea power. But if that was his purpose, he failed to carry it through, and after ravaging the country round Crommyon he set off the next morning and contented himself with establishing a fortified post on the isthmus which joined the peninsula of Methana to the territory of Epidaurus and Troezen. This post proved sufficiently in­jurious to those states but its establishment was of second-rate importance as compared with the occupation of a point in Corinthian territory.

But the new policy and yet larger hopes of decisive action prevailed at Athens. The comparative failure of Solygeia might be attributed to over-caution; what was needed was Vaudace and of that Cleon was the embodiment. In February 424, before the elections for the next Attic year, Aristophanes attacked Cleon in the Knights and pointed out that at Pylos Demosthenes was the true architect of victory. The Athenians admired boldness whether in comedians or in politicians and gave the first prize to the one, and elected the other. Demosthenes was also appointed general together with Demodocus, Autocles and Aristides, officers of es­tablished reputation. Two new names appear, those of Eucles and Thucydides the historian, neither of whom was to enjoy a suc­cessful term of office. The skill of Nicias in amphibious operations could not be spared, but, though he was re-elected, the post of General-in-chief seems to have passed to Hippocrates, the nephew of Pericles who as a strategist proposed to improve upon his uncle. The campaigning season of 424 b.c. was to test the capacity of Athens to force a speedy victory.

The first major operation, undertaken before the new generals entered office in July, was directed against Laconia. Nicias with colleagues of his own mind, Nicostratus and Autocles, led an ex­pedition against the island of Cythera off the south-east corner of the Peloponnese. The island was carefully guarded by the Spartans, as it was a favourite landfall for the trading ships that came from Egypt and Libya and apparently a guard station against pirates or privateers. Besides, as appeared from the sequel, the moral effect of its occupation on the already shaken Spartan regime was certain to be considerable. Nicias had with him 60 triremes and 2000 hoplites, some cavalry and allied contingents, and quickly mastered the island. Thence, leaving a garrison, he ravaged the coasts of southern Laconia. The Spartans were much alarmed and found themselves obliged to keep standing forces to protect their coasts. The attrition of their morale was proceeding rapidly, and the weapon of epotigismós was proving its worth. The Spartans were being reduced to act like the barbarian boxers in the orator Demosthenes’ analogue, who do not ward off the blows but clap their hands on the afflicted spot. The Athenian fleet ravaged the coasts of Epidaurus Limera and then descended on the Aeginetans who had been settled at Thyrea. The Spartan garrison of the upper town of Thyrea left them to their fate and Aeginetans were slaughtered, or carried off to Athens and executed in cold blood.

The exultation of the Athenians was dashed by the news from Sicily, though, as has been said, the settlement of Gela removed a temptation rather than added a danger. But, with the entry of the new generals into office, Athenian strategy took a wider range. With the Lacedaemonians immobilized by fear both for their captured citizens and for their coasts, the moment had come to seize the Megarid and then to master Boeotia. The Megarians, worn down by constant invasions, with their northern harbour, Pegae, in the hands of exiles and their southern harbour, Nisaea, blocked by the Athenian occupation of Minoa, had found the war intolerable, and the leaders of the ruling democracy, to save their own skins, made overtures to Hippocrates and De­mosthenes. A plot was laid to isolate the Peloponnesian garrison which held Nisaea, by seizing the Long Walls which joined the port to the city of Megara, and to open the gates of the city itself. At first the plan succeeded brilliantly: the Long Walls were occupied and the garrison at Nisaea surrendered. Though the conspirators within Megara itself had failed in their part of the scheme, the surrender of the city seemed a question of days.

At this point Fortune intervened through her chosen instrument, Brasidas, who happened to be in the neighbourhood of Sicyon and Corinth, preparing an expedition against Thrace. He realized the danger of Megara and he sent word to the Boeotians, who had already divined the ulterior significance of the Athenians to concentrate on Tripodiscus, seven miles north-west of Megara, while he raised what troops he could from Corinth, Phlius and Sicyon. By a night march he reached Tripodiscus and, without waiting for the Boeotians, pushed on to Megara. The Megarians, in a lively state of dissension, refused him admittance and waited to see which side would prove victorious. The Boeotians reached the rendezvous at dawn with 2200 hoplites and 600 cavalry, while the remainder of their levies returned home, willing to leave Brasidas to fight their battles. He had now 6000 hoplites in all and after an indecisive cavalry skirmish he took up a position covering the city and awaited the Athenian attack. But Hippocrates and Demosthenes, whose force was slightly inferior in numbers, did not risk the loss of what they had already gained and, leaving a garrison in Nisaca, retired to Athens. Bra­sidas was free to resume his preparations to deal the Athenians a more serious blow. Those Megarians who had been openly implicated in the plot left the city, the rest of their party came to terms with the oligarchic exiles who returned from Pegae and, after securing the death of a hundred of their opponents, established a strong and long-lived oligarchy.

The first part of the Athenian strategic scheme had failed, though the occupation of Nisaea and part of the Megarian Long Walls could be counted as a success. None the less, the second part of the scheme, the attack on Boeotia, was put into effect. Here as in the Megarid the Athenians might hope for support from within. In Phocis there was a band of exiles who had hired troops in the Peloponnese, and in Orchomenus, the old rival of Thebes, there was a party which promised to open the road into Boeotia by helping to seize the border-city of Chaeronea. Siphae on the Crisaean Gulf was to be betrayed to Demosthenes who was to come by sea from Naupactus with 40 ships and contingents of the western allies of Athens. On the day that he reached Siphae, Hippocrates was to cross the border in the east near Oropus and seize the sanctuary of the Delian Apollo. The Boeotians would have too much to think about, with a democratic rising in the north and a hostile landing in the west, to prevent the fortification of Delium. If the anti-Theban movement spread, Demosthenes and Hippocrates might strike in with decisive effect, while, even if the Thebans held their own at first, the presence of the Athenians at Delium, raiding the country and supporting movements of revolt, would end in breaking down the Theban hegemony in Boeotia and the position as it was before Coronea might be regained. The plan, worked out in secret conclaves at which no doubt the historian Thucydides himself assisted, was well conceived. For its complete success three things were needed, continued secrecy, accurate co-ordination, and commonplace leadership on the side of the enemy.

Delay was the enemy of secrecy, and delay was unavoidable. After the partial failure at Megara, Demosthenes set out with 40 ships and raised the contingents of the western coalition. But before the full forces of the west would engage in the enterprise, they must be secured at home, and Demosthenes had to spend time in bringing into the alliance Oeniadae and Salynthius the king of the Agraei whose hostility might threaten either the Acarnanians or the Aetolians. The second cause of delay was the presence of that disturbing element, Brasidas, who presently com­pleted his preparations and marched through Boeotia into Thessaly. As news came of his progress, the Athenians discerned his objective, Thrace; and Thucydides and Eucles were dispatched to guard Athenian interests with a small fleet instead of a large army. The full hoplite strength of Athens was needed for the great coup. At last, just before the close of the campaigning season, all was ready, but the secret was out. The Boeotian exiles in Phocis had not been silent, and a Phocian, Nicomachus, had taken the news to Sparta. The ephors warned the Boeotian federal executive—the Boeotarchs—and at the cri­tical moment strong forces occupied Chaeronea and Siphae. The full federal army took the field and pro-Athenian intriguers in the various cities did not dare to move.

The enterprise of Demosthenes, once known to the enemy, had small chance of success, but its failure was made doubly certain by a mistake as to the day on which he and Hippocrates were to invade Boeotia. Demosthenes arrived too soon, realized that his project had been foiled and sailed off to suffer a reverse in an attempted landing on the coast of Sicyon.

Thus both secrecy and co-ordination had broken down, and with them two-thirds of the great scheme. There remained the occupation of Delium by Hippocrates, who, according to plan, marched out with the Athenian field-army, 7000 hoplites and something less than 1000 cavalry, together with a rabble of unorganized, ill-armed levies, labourers rather than soldiers. He seized Delium without resistance and it was busily fortified under cover of his regular troops. By noon of the third day the fortifications were complete. Hippocrates had heard nothing or only news of failure, and realized that, as at Megara, he must be content with the occupation of this strong point in the enemy’s country. The light­armed troops resumed the role of soldiers and streamed back along the road to Athens, followed by the hoplites who stood fast on the frontier about a mile from Delium while Hippocrates left final instructions before overtaking them with the cavalry. At this moment news came that the Boeotian army was upon him. By the morning of that day the levies from all the eleven districts of Boeotia had concentrated under their various federal commanders at Tanagra five miles to the westward. A majority of the Boeotarchs was for allowing the main body of the Athenians to retreat unchallenged, now that they were no longer in Boeotian territory. But the chief representative of Thebes, Pagondas, was for fighting and his resolution and energy prevailed. At this critical moment the Boeotians had found a leader. Hippocrates sent word to the hoplites to stand to their arms, left 300 cavalry to hold Delium and to watch their opportunity to strike in during the battle that was imminent, and rejoined the army.

The battle that followed, the most considerable in the Archidamian War, was most probably fought rather more than a mile south of Delium which lay just to the east of the modern village of Dilesi. The Boeotians, after leaving a force to mask Delium, were equal in hoplites, slightly superior in cavalry. They had with them 500 peltasts and 10,000 light-armed troops while the Athe­nians had practically none, and those few of little military value. The Athenian position was well chosen, for its flanks were pro­tected by ravines on either side of a plateau less than a mile across. It was already late in a November afternoon and Hippocrates might hope for an indecisive battle. But Pagondas was as skilful as he was energetic. The Thebans on the right wing of his army were ranged in a column 25 men deep which pushed back the Athenian left and then proceeded to roll up their line. A like advantage gained by the Athenians on the other flank, where stood the men of Thespiae and, no doubt, contingents of light­armed troops to prolong the shortened hoplite line, was countered by an adroit movement. The Theban cavalry on the right which could not come to grips with the enemy because of the ravines was moved round under cover of a hill and suddenly appeared behind the victorious Athenian right wing. They were taken for the vanguard of a new army and the enemy were seized with panic and broke in flight. The fugitives were cut up by the Boeotian cavalry and some “Locrian horse, who came up as the battle was decided, until darkness came on”. Hippocrates fell and nearly 1000 hoplites. Part of the fugitives who had made for Delium or the sea were taken off by a supporting Attic squadron, the remainder made their way across Mt Parnes and took the news to Athens.

Reinforced by troops from Corinth and Megara, the Boeotians then set themselves to take the fortified precinct at Delium. Part of the hastily constructed wall was of palisades and they succeeded in setting fire to this by means of a gigantic kind of blow-pipe. Most of the garrison escaped on shipboard, the remainder were killed or taken. The siege had lasted 16 days, but its success had proved, what had become doubtful, that a fortification could be taken without recourse to blockade. The theory of the new of­fensive made three postulates: the practicability of synchronized surprises, effective support from sections of the enemy states, the impregnability of fortified points in touch with the sea. All these three were denied by the events of this disastrous campaign. Besides that, the small and precious hoplite force of Athens had suffered a severe defeat, Hippocrates was dead, Demosthenes had failed and news came that the ablest of Athens’ enemies was winning rapid successes at the weakest point of Athenian power.

VIII.

BRASIDAS: THE COUNTER-OFFENSIVE

During the five years which followed the fiasco of Sitalces’ invasion, Athens had given little attention to her possessions in the North-East. The Bottiaeans and Chalcidians were not coerced, Perdiccas continued in name to be the friend of Athens, but, justly enough, was both suspected and suspicious. The town of Olynthus grew in power as the centre of some kind of Chalcidian federation which was so far organized as to possess a common foreign policy. The cities eastwards round the coast from Potidaea remained members of the Athenian Empire, and we have no record of any secessions at the time of the revolt of Mitylene. The Athenians had nothing but small garrisons in some of the towns and their triremes were content to apply pressure here and there where the tribute fell into arrears or was refused. Once only, in the early summer of 425, the Athenian general Simonides sought to distinguish himself by scraping together a force of Athenians and Allies to capture the western of the two Eions which lies in the country of the Chalcidians or Bottiaeans. The place was betrayed to him, but his success was short-lived for he was speedily ejected.

In the course of the next year, the feeling against Athens spread among the coast towns which had hitherto been faithful. The increase of the tribute and the domineering policy of Cleon aroused resentment, while the preoccupation of Athens with her schemes nearer home facilitated anti-Athenian intrigues on the part of the aristocrats in the several cities. The very successes of the Athe­nians roused both Perdiccas and the Chalcidians to action, the Chalcidians had reason to fear a day of reckoning for Spartolus, while the King of Macedon had a bad conscience and the recollection of old quarrels. Besides this, Perdiccas had a troublesome neighbour, Arrhabaeus the prince of Lyncestis, whom a new ally might help him to coerce. Accordingly, in the summer of 424 b.c., these two powers approached the Spartans and suggested the sending to Thrace of an expedition by land. The idea was not en­tirely new at Lacedaemon; when the Spartans founded Heraclea in Trachis two years before, one reason according to Thucydides was its position on the road to Thrace. It is at least possible that the project was then in the mind of Brasidas, a mind which the historian seems to have known, perhaps from conversations after the one had caused the exile of the other. But no action followed the founding of Heraclea. In 424, however, the very alarm of the Spartans and their sense of the danger of a Helot rising made them willing to engage in an adventure which might distract from them­selves the pressing attentions of the Athenians, and enable them to employ Helots where they would not be dangerous. In Bra­sidas they had the man for such an undertaking and possibly it appeared more comfortable to employ his restless talents for Sparta but not at Sparta. They provided him with funds to hire 1000 hoplites from the Peloponnesian states and placed under his command 700 Helots armed and drilled in the Spartan fashion. These Helots were more fortunate than 2000 of their like whom the Spartans had chosen out as of especial bravery. For these were crowned with garlands and attended the temples as having been enfranchised, and not long afterwards the Lacedaemonians caused them to disappear and no man knew how each perished.

After organizing this small force, Brasidas made his way through Thessaly, where the mass of the people favoured Athens, partly by the help of various aristocratic dynasts and the agents of Perdiccas and the Chalcidians, partly by his own adroitness and energy. Realizing that Perdiccas was deeply compromised, he re­fused to be his tool and, at the cost of forfeiting some Macedonian support, he made a truce with Arrhabaeus and marched on; so that he reached the territory of Acanthus before the citizens had gathered in their vintage. The presence of his army among the ungathered grapes was a powerful argument which Brasidas re­inforced by his own words, ‘being no bad speaker for a Lacedae­monian/ He pledged the faith of Sparta that they should have real freedom if they abandoned Athens, and the anti-Athenian oligarchs carried the day. And soon afterwards Stagirus followed the example of her neighbour.

On the news that Brasidas had reached the districts towards Thrace, the Athenians declared war upon Perdiccas. To the two generals, Eucles and Thucydides, was assigned the duty of guard­ing, as best they could, the interests of Athens in the North-East. Of these generals the qualifications of Eucles are unknown and are not disclosed in the operations which follow. Thucydides had family and financial connections with Thrace and, if we may believe the apologia which underlies this part of his narrative, he might well hope to secure Thracian help to defend his charge. This task, however, was not made easier by the death of Sitalces, who at this very moment fell in fighting against the Triballians, and the succession, not of his phil-Athenian son Sadocus, but of his nephew Seuthes, Perdiccas’ son-in-law. While Thucydides stationed himself with a small squadron at Thasos and plied his diplomatic arts, Eucles took charge of Amphipolis. Both generals, perhaps, trusted overmuch to the rigours of the Thracian winter which had by now begun.

But Brasidas, like Philip of Macedon, was no respecter of seasons and on a wintry day he marched eastwards from Arnae. He had secured partisans both in Amphipolis itself and in Argilus the city to the south-west of it. By a night march he reached Argilus where his friends were awaiting him and at dawn the bridge across the Strymon was in his hands. The Athenians in Amphipolis and those of their party closed the gates and sent word to Thucydides who, with seven triremes, raced into the river in the evening of that day. But it was already too late. Brasidas had offered easy terms, allowing any who wished to leave the city with their goods within five days, and offering to the remainder the peaceful possession of their rights and property. Eucles had little to say or said little, and the city capitulated. Thucydides beat off an attack on Eion at the mouth of the river, thus denying to Brasidas access from Amphipolis to the sea. But he was without the means to attempt the recapture of the city.

This disaster caused consternation and rage at Athens, for the country behind Amphipolis had supplied them with money and, what was of equal importance, timber for shipbuilding. The road farther eastward was now open, though we need not credit Brasidas with any wild schemes of marching to the Hellespont. At least we hear nothing of any such attempt or of an alliance with the Odrysians which would be its necessary preliminary. But Myrcinus, Oesyme and Galepsus came over to him and the Athe­nians feared further defections. The diplomacy of Brasidas was as dangerous as his army, and the recent reverses in Boeotia had damaged Athenian prestige. But it was winter, and the Athenians contented themselves with sending some troops and banishing Thucydides. Of Eucles we hear no more. There is no good reason to suppose the historian to have been either corrupt or incom­petent, but he had failed. Fie had failed to be wiser than his colleagues or his countrymen, who might have crushed Brasidas with half the force that was defeated at Delium.

Fortunately for Athens, the government of Sparta was more ready for peace than for victory. The influence of the king Pleistoanax was steadily pacific, and the ephors had achieved their object of distracting the attention of Athens and, after Delium, might hope for a peace which would restore to them their imprisoned hoplites. They refused to send to Brasidas the reinforcements he requested and were more concerned to exploit his successes than to assist them. Despite this disappointment Brasidas was active, building triremes on the Strymon against the day when he might capture Eion and intriguing with the disaffected oligarchs in the coast cities. During the winter, he won over the towns on the peninsula of Acte except Dium and Sane, and then marched into Sithonia. The chief city in that peninsula was Torone which was held by a small Athenian garrison. But the walls had fallen into disrepair or had even been dismantled to place the city at the mercy of Athens, and the garrison kept bad watch. Torone had been forced to pay twelve talents instead of six as tribute for at least the last two years and there was a party in favour of Brasidas. With their help the city was surprised and taken, as was soon afterwards the fort of Lecythus to which the Athenian garrison had retired. The Athenian possessions west of the Strymon had shrunk to little more than the peninsula of Pallene, which was guarded by Potidaea, now an Athenian stronghold.

The cumulative effect of the series of disasters which began with Delium and ended with Torone was the temporary eclipse of Cleon’s influence. Nicostratus who shared the views of Nicias seems to have been elected in place of Hippocrates after Delium, and during the winter there were negotiations for an armistice. About April 20th the Athenian Assembly accepted proposals for an armistice which, to judge from the text which is preserved in Thucydides, was drafted at Sparta. It was to last for a year and it was made with the definite object of preserving the status quo while a definitive peace was arranged. The Athenians retained their strong points in enemy territory but were bound not to receive deserters or fugitive slaves. On the other hand, the Lacedaemonians and their allies were not to send out any ships of war, though their trading ships might pass freely on their lawful occasions. There is little doubt that the Spartans hoped to negotiate the Athenians out of Pylos and Cythera and their prisoners out of Athens, while the Athenians hoped to negotiate Brasidas out of the region towards Thrace.

These hopes were soon shattered. Two days after the armistice was ratified, Scione, the second largest city in Pallene, declared for Brasidas, who did not hesitate to throw a garrison into the town. He had now a footing in the peninsula and planned to attack Mende and Potidaea. At this point arrived commissioners from Sparta and Athens with news of the armistice. Agreement was reached about all the cities except Scione. The Athenian com­missioner declared that Brasidas must withdraw; Brasidas refused and asserted, with more vigour than truth, that the revolt happened before the armistice was ratified; the Lacedaemonian government proposed arbitration; the Athenian Assembly declared its intention to take the city and put the inhabitants to death. This motion was proposed by Cleon.

The Greeks had a notable capacity for simultaneous peace and war. The armistice continued in force in Greece proper, while the most active and bitter hostilities were pursued in the peninsula of Pallene. An oligarchical minority in Mende contrived to bring about the secession of that city and the two towns were put in a position of defence. The women and children were removed to Olynthus and 500 hoplites and 500 peltasts were sent to assist the citizens to face the impending attack from Athens. A larger force would have been in place, but Brasidas had to reckon with the fact that, while the Athenians in Potidaea controlled the isthmus, the peninsula was, in effect, an island, in which his whole army might be interned by the Athenian fleet until it starved or out­stayed its welcome. He had to choose between besieging Potidaea and using the main body of his army elsewhere. He chose to march with Perdiccas against Arrhabaeus, though possibly the choice was dictated by the fact that the king had been contributing to the support of his troops and claimed his reward. The expedi­tion ended in the flight of Perdiccas and the retreat of Brasidas, who was left unsupported to face the Lyncestians and their Illyrian allies. His troops in anger plundered the baggage of the Macedonian army, and Perdiccas retorted by making peace once again with the Athenians.

Meanwhile Nicias and Nicostratus with a fleet of 50 triremes and an army which contained 1000 Athenian hoplites had landed in Pallene and had taken Mende all but its citadel. With wise clemency the lives of the citizens were spared, the oligarchic conspirators being handed over to their democratic townsfolk for judgment. Brasidas was helpless so long as the Athenians held Potidaea and the sea, and sat at Torone while blockading lines were drawn round Scione. Perdiccas had used his influence to prevent Lacedaemonian reinforcements from traversing Thessaly. In their place came a Spartan commissioner Ischagoras, who brought with him Spartiate governors for the new allies of Lacedaemon. It is unlikely that these shone by comparison with the Athenians who had preceded them. Nicias and Nicostratus returned to Athens leaving Scione closely besieged. The Athenians could afford to wait for their revenge.

The armistice continued in force until April 422 b.c., but in an atmosphere of recriminations and distrust no progress had been made towards a definitive peace. At the elections in March of that year Cleon was chosen General, and he intended to repeat in the North-East his military triumph of 425. He planned the punish­ment of Scione, the restoration of Athenian power throughout Sithoniaand Acte, and, most resounding success of all, the recovery of Amphipolis. In April the armistice was not renewed, but military operations were postponed until after Cleon entered office in July. Even then there was delay, for the Etesian winds in the Aegean hinder an expedition to the north during the month of August. But meanwhile Athenian diplomacy was active. The Bottiaeans and Chalcidians were too near neighbours to be lasting friends and an alliance was made with the larger part of the Bottiaean communities. Perdiccas was pledged to give help, and the expedition which sailed at the beginning of September had good hopes of success. The troops blockading Scione might be drawn upon, and Cleon took from Athens 1200 Athenian hoplites, 300 cavalry and contingents from the Allies. His success was greater than Thucydides describes. Besides taking Torone, he succeeded in winning back to Athens a string of towns, Singus, Mecyberna, Gale, Cleonae and Acrothoi. At least all these re­appear in the assessment of the year 421 b.c. Part of his task was done, and Scione might be left to starve. There remained Amphipolis, where Brasidas, after failing to relieve Torone, had concentrated his forces. Cleon moved to Ei’on where he waited for reinforcements from Perdiccas and from Polles, king of the Odomantcs, and meanwhile won back Galepsus, but failed in an attempt upon Stagirus. Brasidas had forces equal to his own, but the impatience of the Athenian hoplites, who disliked their general as much as the prospect of a Thracian winter, forced him to make a demonstration. With the hardihood of his ineptitude, he trailed his army along within striking distance of Amphipolis and was defeated. As better soldiers have done, he ran away, and was killed, along with 600 Athenians. Sparta suffered a greater loss, for Brasidas fell in the moment of victory. As the Spartan prisoner said after Cleon’s triumph at Sphacteria: ‘The arrow would be a valuable weapon if it could single out the brave.’

IX.

 THE PEACE OF NICIAS

The death of Brasidas removed the last obstacle from the path of the peace party at Sparta. The king Pleistoanax was anxious to end a war in which the blame for all misfortunes was laid at his door by those who alleged that he had impiously bribed the priestess at Delphi to procure his return. Delphi itself had, doubtless, become more anxious to see Hellas at peace than to witness the victory which Apollo had promised to the Spartans. The kinsmen and friends of the Spartiate prisoners at Athens were prepared to purchase their freedom by any sacrifice. The Thirty Years Truce made with Argos in 451 had almost reached its term, and Argos would soon be free to head an anti­Spartan movement in the Peloponnese or to strike in openly on the side of Athens. Finally, the defeat of Cleon had made the Athenians inclined to peace, while his death had removed the most serious obstacle to a settlement by understanding and com­promise. Nicias, who resumed the direction of Athenian policy, cared more to avoid disaster than to achieve victory, provided only that the power of Athens was left unimpaired and free to restore her hold on the Thraceward district. If the limited objective of Pericles—the demonstration of Athenian invincibility—could be attained, the moment for peace had arrived.

During the winter of 422—1 b.c. envoys went to and fro be­tween Athens and Sparta and the two powers reduced to a minimum the grounds of dispute between them. At Athens Aristophanes wrote his comedy, the Peace to be performed at the Great Dionysia in March 421 b.c.. The play reflects the growing desire for peace, the realization that fratricidal strife was grinding Greece to powder, and that now there was hope because the two ‘pestles of war,’ Cleon and Brasidas, had vanished. Equally clearly are revealed in the play the cross-currents of self-interest which made it hard, even now, to reach a settlement. Sparta was prepared to sacrifice the interests of her allies, but it was imperative that the extent of these sacrifices should be concealed until the last moment; at the same time, the Lacedaemonians could not allow the negotiations to be protracted until the termination of their peace with Argos. They forced the issue by announcing a mobilization of the Peloponnesian armies with the object of establishing a fortified post in Attica, thus turning against Athens her own weapon. Within a few days of the performance of the Peace in the theatre at Athens, the two powers agreed together, and the Spartans summoned a meeting of their allies and laid before them the bargain that had been made.

Thucydides has preserved for us the very phrases of the document which was the product of six months of cautious bargaining after nearly ten years of ruinous, demoralizing war. The Delphians, those honest brokers, received their reward in the formal recognition of their independence as against the Phocians, and of their control of the oracular wisdom of Apollo. Then come clauses in the regular form establishing peace between the Lacedaemonians and Athenians and their respective allies for fifty years. As in the Thirty Years Peace it is provided that any disputes shall be settled by arbitration. The governing principle of the settlement which follows is the re­storation of what each belligerent had taken in the course of the war. But the application of this principle was beset with difficulties, above all in the region towards Thrace, for a number of cities in that area were still in revolt from Athens with the de­clared support of Sparta, and of these at least two, Olynthus and Spartolus, had seceded from the Athenian alliance before the war began. In return for the handing over to her of her cherished colony, Amphipolis, and for a free hand with the remaining cities of that area, Athens acquiesced in a compromise as regards Argilus, Stagirus, Acanthus, Stolus, Olynthus, and Spartolus. These towns were not to be allies either of Athens or of Sparta, except that they might of their own free choice join the Athenian alliance at any time. The inhabitants might, if they wished, remove themselves and their property whithersoever they would, and Athens pledged herself to take no hostile action against these cities so long as they paid ‘the tribute assessed by Aristides’. They are therefore in a special position with no obligation to render to Athens and no right to ask from Sparta the military assistance of an ally. The tribute which they have to pay is not affected by the re-assessment of 425 and they are secured against further increases in the future. With the excep­tion of these six towns, the Athenian control of the Thraceward area is admitted. Express provision is made for the independent existence as cities of Mecyberna, Sane, and Singus, a provision which is best interpreted as a continuation of the Athenian policy of preventing the absorption or coalescence of the small towns in this region. As regards cities held by Athens, among which is included Scione then blockaded beyond hope of relief, the Athenians receive a free hand to deal with the inhabitants at their discretion, and the same clause is extended to cover any of the present members of the Athenian Empire. The implications of the Peace are clear. All the states which accept it accept this settlement and are pledged to abide by its conditions. Against any states which do not accept it, Athens is entitled to make war without hindrance from the other signatories of the Peace. If the other allies of Sparta accept the Peace, the Chalcidians and neighbouring cities are given the choice between abandoning their hopes of complete freedom and facing, unaided, the full power of Athens. Throughout the remainder of the Empire Athens may work her will.

If the war was an attack on the Empire of Athens, the Peace acknowledged its failure. A decade of peace would replenish the treasures on the Acropolis. The two remaining pillars of Athenian power, the linked fortress of the city and the Piraeus and the Athenian fleet, were unchallenged. During the war Athens had lost only two places which could be called integral parts of her own territory, the colony of Amphipolis and the border­town of Panactum betrayed to the Boeotians in the summer of 422 b.c. It was expressly stipulated that these should be restored to her.

The apparent price to be paid for all this was the surrender of what would-only be of use while the war continued. The Peloponnesian prisoners, above all the Spartiates whom the Athenians had taken on Sphacteria, were to be handed back. Included among these were the allies of Sparta who formed part of the garrison of Scione. In return Athenian and allied prisoners were to be restored to their several cities. Further, Athens was to place in the hands of Sparta the strong points occupied for the purpose of war in the Peloponnese and Central Greece, Coryphasium (i.e. Pylos), Cythera, Methana, Pteleum and Atalante.

With the satisfaction of Athenian and Lacedaemonian interests, the force of principle was exhausted. There follows a significant silence, eloquent of Sparta’s betrayal of Corinthian interests. During the war Corinth had lost practically all her allies and dependencies in North-West Greece. There is no word of their restoration. The formal reason for this may have been that what had been taken in war had not passed into the possession of Athens or even of states which, at the moment, were allies of Athens. The very fact that the Acarnanians and Amphilochians had already withdrawn from the war placed their acquisitions at the expense of Corinth outside the purview of a peace which concerned only the allies of Sparta and Athens. Corinth might embark on a private war to regain what she had lost, but she had no claim on Lacedaemonian support, and was too broken in power to contemplate such an adventure unaided. Nor was there anything in the Peace which would preclude Athens from renewing her alliances in North-West Greece at a moment convenient to her and inconvenient to Corinth. The treaty is equally silent about Nisaea, the port of Megara which remained in the hands of Athens as an asset for bargaining. The especial interests of Boeotia were entirely disregarded. Such was the settlement to which the allies of Sparta were invited to assent and pledge themselves by solemn oaths to be renewed each year. The record of this piece of cynical statecraft was to adorn the three centres of Panhellenic religion, Delphi, the Isthmus, and Olympia, as well as the Acropolis of Athens and the Amyclaeum at Sparta. Finally the right of future amendment of the Peace was reserved to the two High Contracting Powers, Athens and Sparta.

It was easy for Athenian and Lacedaemonian envoys to ex­change oaths ratifying this arrangement. The problem was to impose the settlement on the allies of Sparta, and the failure to solve that problem and the consequences of the failure form the subject of the succeeding chapter. The breakdown of the Peace marks the beginning of a new epoch; the achievement of it is the legacy of Periclean state-craft. Athens had secured by the war what Pericles set out to attain, the vindication of Athenian power. But this result might have been reached four years before, after the occupation of Pylos, had Athens been guided then by wiser counsels than those of Cleon. In 425 the Thraceward cities had not yet been inspired by the courage of Brasidas and Argos was not about to enter on the stage of Greek politics as a menace to Sparta and a temptation to Athens. And, further, both then and now, the true price of Sparta’s surrender of her allies was that Athens should help to secure her against their resentment. For, as will be described below, the Peace of Nicias was followed by the formal conclusion and publication of an alliance between Sparta and Athens. It is possible that Nicias looked back beyond the policy of Pericles to the policy of Cimon, and was willing to make some sacrifice of Athenian interests in order to revive an ancient dualism. But, whether Athens was inclined or not to entangle herself by this alliance, we should be doing Spartan diplomacy less than justice if we did not suppose that Pleistoanax and the ephors insisted upon receiving in advance the promise of this insurance against the danger from Argos and the emotions which the publication of the Peace was certain to evoke in the hearts of their deluded allies. Sparta was not yet so reduced that she could be forced to face the risks of the Peace without the security of the alliance. Had Greece been a chessboard, this combination would deserve high applause. But its immediate result was to destroy far more good will than it created and to involve Athens as well as Sparta in numberless complications. Athens had won the war; to win the peace called for the steady patient guidance of a statesman powerful enough to impose upon the Athenian democracy a cool and consistent, above all a pacific, foreign policy. This task was too high for Nicias, too long-drawn for Alcibiades. To complete the victory of Periclean statecraft, the one thing was needed which Athens could not produce—a second Pericles.

CHAPTER IX