given this region its chief renown. This episode has been described
in the luminous narrative of Thucydides; and the land and the book so
exactly coincide that we can trace every movement of the Athenians and
Spartans in that struggle of more than two months' duration. In one
respect only is Thucydides's topography wide of the mark, for that he
makes Sphacteria a mile too short is not important; he says that the
southern entrance is broad enough for eight ships to sail in abreast,
whereas it is approximately a mile wide. The whole Athenian fleet of
fifty ships could easily sail in in line. Arnold of Rugby felt this
difficulty so strongly that in his edition of Thucydides he advanced
the view that Pylos was Sphacteria, supposing that the third opening
at the time of Thucydides had not been silted up. He then sought Pylos
in the northern promontory of the mainland. This, however, was jumping
out of the frying-pan into the fire; for if one makes the middle
mass Sphacteria the large island to the south, generally taken to be
Sphacteria, is utterly ignored. There is no doubt that Thucydides
in this one point departed from his principle of always getting
information from eye-witnesses. Some have thought he got this broad
opening confounded with a narrower one, which at that time, before
the sand-bar reached clear up to Pylos, as it now does, led into the
northern part of the bay, a sort of lagoon, affording a secure harbor,
in which the Spartan fleet awaited attack, supported, morally at
least, by the proximity of their land forces. In every other point the
narrative fits the minutest _nuances_ of hill and shore.
Most unexpectedly the seat of war was transferred to this quarter. In
the spring of 425 B.C. an Athenian fleet was sailing past Pylos bound
for Sicily, on which Athens even then had her eye, with instructions to
attend first to the Spartan fleet that was hovering off Kerkyra, trying
to bring the island over to the Peloponnesian alliance by the aid of
their partisans then in exile near at hand. Accompanying the fleet was
Demosthenes, the man of deeds, whose path through this war is marked
with brightness. Ever capable and adequate to every emergency, he was
at last destroyed, and Athens with him, by the incompetency of Nikias.
In the previous year he had gained in Akarnania the greatest Athenian
victory of the war, cutting off all the able-bodied men of Ambrakia and
luring Sparta into a discreditable abandonment of her allies. In the
full enjoyment of the public confidence he accompanied the fleet, with
indefinite powers to use it in any way that seemed to be for the good
of Athens.
When they were off Pylos he saw there, in that deserted region, a
chance to strike a deadly blow at Sparta. He proposed to fortify Pylos,
and establish there Messenians, who, knowing the land and loving it,
would be a thorn in the side of Sparta. But the Admirals, Eurymedon
and Sophokles, felt that the chief function of the fleet was to save
Kerkyra, inasmuch as Athens had entered into the war depending upon
the help that this great naval power could give. They refused to stop,
telling Demosthenes that there were headlands enough on the shores of
Peloponnesus as good as this, if he really wanted to throw away the
money of Athens in fortifying them. He had no power of coercion; but he
tried every form of persuasion. The men agreed with the Admirals; but
he turned to the captains; and when they also refused to help him out
he had to abandon his plan and move on with the rest. The relation of
Demosthenes to the fleet seems droll. But by his strong personality,
aided by luck, he accomplished all, and perhaps more than all, that he
had hoped for.
The fleet had hardly put out to sea when, luckily for him, a storm
came on, and they were all driven back into the bay for shelter. The
storm continued for several days, and after awhile the men by a common
impulse began to fortify Pylos. It was a regular lark. They had brought
along no tools to cut stones; so they took stones which lay ready at
hand and piled them up just as they happened to fit. They used their
backs as hods to carry mud, clasping their hands low down behind them
and letting their companions load them up. Two short stretches of wall
at the north and south ends made Pylos secure from attack on the land
side. Another longer one, but not so high, on the sea front at the
southwest angle was a sort of lure to invite attack by sea. In front of
the wall was the only level space on Pylos; but before one could reach
it by sea he must run his ship in close to a belt of jagged rocks, and
get across them as best he could. Demosthenes, who was the director of
all this jolly activity, frankly told his men that he never meant to
fight behind this wall, but in front of it; never allowing a man of the
enemy to reach the shore.
In six days the work of fortification was completed; and the Admirals
went on, leaving Demosthenes and five of their forty ships to carry
out his plan. By good luck his men, who were marines and not very well
equipped for land fighting, were immediately re-enforced by a Messenian
pirate boat, with a lot of wicker shields on board, and, to crown all,
forty heavy armed soldiers (hoplites).
Before a blow was struck this simple lodgment of Demosthenes brought
about two great results. The Spartan fleet hastened back to the spot,
slipping past the Athenian fleet; and the Spartan army, which had made
the annual invasion of Attica, came hastily back to Sparta after only
fifteen days of occupation. The fleet occupied the bay, and the land
army butted its head in vain against the walls on that side. Then
came the attempt which Demosthenes had expected. They tried to land
in front of his sea-wall. But as the handful of men in possession
held their ground not a Spartan reached the shore, though the gallant
Brasidas, who here appears as the simple commander of a trireme, tried
it with a daring that nearly cost him his life. For nearly two days
this attack continued. It failed as signally as the land attack. The
Spartans were at their wits' ends. They had sent to Asine, a day's
journey distant, for big timbers to make battering-rams and break down
the walls toward the mainland. They also landed a force on the island,
Sphacteria, to overawe by their proximity the Athenians across the
narrow channel, and to prevent any future lodgment of the Athenians on
Sphacteria also.
When the Spartan fleet had first appeared Demosthenes had sent two
of his five triremes to advise the Athenian Admirals that the plot
was thickening; and the Athenian fleet, strengthened to fifty sail,
appeared off the entrances of the bay; but seeing both entrances
defended by the Spartan fleet and the shore crowded with Spartan
soldiers, it put about, and, going back to an island a few miles to the
north, passed the night there. This was probably a ruse to throw the
Spartans off their guard; for the next day the Athenians reappeared,
and with no hesitation drove in at both entrances upon the Spartans,
who were evidently not thoroughly prepared. After a long and fierce
struggle the victory of the Athenians was decisive. They erected a
trophy, gave up the Spartan dead, took possession of the wrecks and
many of the sound vessels of the enemy, and sailed at will around
the bay and the entrances. The main army of the Spartans lay close
at hand; but all their hope of getting materials for battering down
Demosthenes's landward walls, or of starving out his little band, was
cut off.
The whole situation was changed at a single blow. The centre of
interest shifts to the island, Sphacteria, where the Spartans were now
imprisoned. The Athenians thought them sure game, and patrolled the
island to cut off escape. The situation was so serious that the highest
magistrates of Sparta appeared on the scene, and, after surveying the
situation, decided that the only thing to do was to propose a truce.
And a truce was immediately agreed upon, all the Spartan ships being
given over to the Athenians as a pledge until Spartan envoys could be
taken to Athens on an Athenian trireme and secure a permanent treaty of
peace.
The envoys went and begged for peace, but the party in power at Athens
made too great demands, and the envoys returned _re infecta_. The
Athenians, claiming some slight infraction of the treaty, refused to
deliver over the ships.
All interest was now centred on the fate of the Spartans shut up on
Sphacteria. Instead of laying down their arms they waited for the
Athenians to "come and take them." The starving process failed, because
daring Spartans on shore were found who risked their lives to carry
in provisions. Helots, especially, ran every risk, securing freedom
as the price of success. The Athenians themselves suffered terribly,
inasmuch as they controlled only the sea, and so were forced to take
their meals in cramped quarters or in imminent fear of attack by the
dreaded Spartan hoplite. More painful still was the lack of good
drinking water. They were obliged to scratch away the sand with their
hands and drink brackish sea water. The Spartans on the island had a
well which afforded much better water. When this strain had lasted
nearly two months the patience of the Athenians gave out. But just at
this critical time a fire was accidentally started on the island by
some Athenians who were cooking their dinner there, out of sight of the
Spartans. Nearly the whole island, which was uninhabited and heavily
wooded, was burned over. For the first time the Athenians were able to
see how few the enemy were, and to watch their movements. Demosthenes,
now the soul of every movement, resolved to attack them. But in the
meantime tidings of the sad plight and sufferings of the besiegers had
been carried to Athens, and a stormy and somewhat amusing scene had
taken place in the Athenian Assembly, in which Cleon, the leader of
the majority, who had been responsible for the failure of the peace
negotiations, was compelled, much against his will, to go to Pylos, as
commander, "to show how easy it was to take the Spartans by force."
But he arrived in the nick of time, and, by trusting everything to
Demosthenes, he went back to Athens with the captives within the few
days in which he had boastfully said he would do it. It was, however,
well understood at Athens that the planner and executer of the deed was
Demosthenes. Aristophanes, in the Knights, makes Demosthenes say: "Out
at Pylos I had kneaded up a Spartan cake, and Cleon, in a most rascally
manner, snatched it away and served it up." Demosthenes landed on the
island a force of about fifteen thousand men, mostly light armed, who
could skip about over the rocks and burnt trees, inflicting injuries
on the Spartan hoplites without suffering much in return. There were
only 420 Spartans, and no note is taken of their attendant light armed.
If we allow seven such attendants to each of them, which is a usual
proportion, we should have a total force of 3,360; but as Thucydides
says nothing of light armed troops on the Spartan side, but makes it an
affair of hoplites against light armed, there was probably not a large
body of auxiliaries present to the Spartans; but allowing the maximum,
the opposing forces were in a proportion of five to one. If, however,
the light armed attendants were lacking, the proportion was about
fifty to one. Never in all Spartan history did their splendid fighting
machine better show its superiority than in the slow march from the
well at the centre of the island to the "old fort" at the north end.
Demosthenes had distributed his light armed, in detachments of several
hundred each, all along the line of march. His small force of hoplites,
every time it was confronted by the Spartans, fell back at once and
gave place to the light armed, who, with arrows and javelins, inflicted
severe losses, easily keeping out of reach of the Spartan spears. There
was, in fact, no serious loss to chronicle on the Athenian side. But
that the little company led by Epitidas should move steadily toward its
goal during the whole of a long summer day, half stifled with ashes
and smoke, oppressed by raging thirst, surrounded by yelling thousands
and pelted by every kind of missile, without the slightest thought of
surrender, is perhaps the most brilliant page in the annals of Sparta.
However much we may be inclined to throw up our cap at every success of
Athens, we must here assign the honors to the vanquished. The movement
of the Spartans over that mile and a half reminds us of a lion worried
by a pack of yelping hounds.
Epitidas, and after him the second in command, had been killed before
the little band reached the fort, which is made in a semicircle around
the west side of the peak to which the island rises on the northeast.
When they got inside this the attack slackened. But the end came by
a turn that one can hardly understand, even with all the explanation
afforded by an exact knowledge of the lay of the land. A Messenian
captain told the Athenian leaders that they were wasting time and
men, but that he knew a way to approach the Spartans in the rear. His
suggestion being accepted, he, with a few desperate men, scrambled up
a precipice and appeared suddenly on the summit in the rear of the
Spartans.
The mystery is how this could have been so unexpected by the Spartans;
a single picket posted on the summit, only a few paces distant from
the line that they were defending, could have seen the approach of
the new enemy. How could they have failed to keep such a watch? But
the sudden appearance of the Messenians is regarded as closing the
fight. The Athenian commanders preferred to capture rather than kill,
and so summoned the survivors to surrender. They then lowered their
shields. Their commander at once asked permission to communicate with
the Spartan army on the mainland. This was granted; and when the answer
came back, "The Lacedemonians bid you act as you think best; but you
are not to dishonor yourselves," they consulted and surrendered. Of
the 420 Spartan hoplites, 120 surrendered. That a hundred Spartans had
surrendered on the field of battle threw Greece into wild amazement,
and broke the spell of Sparta's supposed invincibility until it was
restored again by Agis on the field of Mantineia seven years later.
In modern warfare we consider it folly to throw away life after the
battle is absolutely decided; and on Sphacteria we bow our heads
reverently to the Spartans who, after a fight never surpassed in
the world's history, dared to surrender and save their lives for
the good of Sparta. When, however, we pass over to Pylos we pass to
an admiration of Demosthenes, who planting himself in the midst of
dangers, outwitted and outfought the enemy in superior numbers; and,
by his wise plan, brought Sparta into such a position that, had Athens
possessed a statesman wise enough to use it, she might have concluded
an honorable peace which would have left her victor in the struggle
into which Pericles led her with his eyes wide open. But Cleon let the
golden opportunity pass through his fingers. The handful of heroes that
were paraded so long in Athens were only a miserable residuum of the
lost opportunity.
[Illustration: <Maps of Dalmatia Northern & Southern and Sicily.>]
A TOUR IN SICILY
It was with an appetite whetted by long waiting that I landed in Sicily
on the last day of May, 1897. _Anybody_ might enjoy travel in Sicily.
Its scenery is magnificent. A mountainous country with a coast-line
of rugged headlands, and here and there a river breaking through to
the sea, opening up vistas into the interior and forming a fertile
plain at its mouth; above all, snow-capped and smoking Ætna, with its
nearly eleven thousand feet towering so high as to be seen from every
part of the island except the valleys, form a combination attractive
even to one who has left history and art out of his travelling outfit.
The student of history, however, gets a keener enjoyment in this land
where so much history--ancient, mediæval, and modern--has been enacted.
Not only was it the apple of discord between Rome and Carthage, but,
to say nothing of Sikans, Elymi, and Sikels, because their movements
are wrapped in the mist of a prehistoric past, Phœnicians, Greeks,
Carthaginians, Romans, Franks, Vandals, Goths, Byzantines, Saracens,
Normans, Germans, French, and Spaniards successively shaped its
destinies until Garibaldi at last brought it to rest in the bosom of
the kingdom of Italy. But Sicily has an especial interest for the
student of the history and art of ancient Greece. He who studies the
country now known as Greece and neglects the greater Hellas in the west
makes a great mistake. Akragas and Selinus have left more imposing
ruins than Athens, Olympia, and Delphi; and Syracuse was at one time
the most populous and the most powerful of all Greek cities.
It was this especial claim which drew me and my two companions, members
of the American School at Athens, to Catania. We desired to become as
familiar with western Hellas as we had already become with eastern
Hellas. We came rather too late in the year; not that physical comfort
is an element for great consideration in such a land; it is rather
the psychological aspect which I have in mind. Theocritus has thrown
such associations of spring over Sicily that the traveller feels
that he ought to be there with "pulses thronged with the fulness of
the spring," which can hardly be the case in the great heat of June.
Perhaps our bicycles might seem to some out of time with Theocritus
and Pindar, and we did not try to throw any glamour of poetry over
them. But they were vastly convenient. We had sent forward our heavy
luggage to Palermo, and they carried all that we needed for two weeks.
While they were not a substitute for trains, they freed us from servile
dependence on trains. If a train went our way at our time, as it
did from Syracuse to Girgenti, we took it. But finding no railroad
connection between Girgenti and Selinus, except such as took us across
to the north side of the island and then back again to the south side,
we passed the intervening space in a direct line along the southern
shore, saving both time and money. When we were at Syracuse we wished
to visit the river Asinaros, where the fugitive Athenian army was
brought to bay and slaughtered and captured. The five o'clock train was
too early. Who likes to take a morning meal at half-past four with the
fear of losing a train before his eyes? Discomfort if not dyspepsia
hovers over him. The alternative of a later train involved giving up
the day to this excursion, and we needed that day for something else.
We took a comfortable meal, and, starting at six o'clock, at a quarter
past eight were on the banks of the Asinaros, and by the aid of a train
were back in Syracuse at ten o'clock, ready for a good day's work.
Our beginning was inauspicious. A chapter of small accidents on the
lava-paved streets of Catania kept us hovering around a shop presided
over by a woman in which sewing-machines and a few other miscellaneous
machines, including bicycles, were repaired. Here, in a subordinate
position, was one of those mechanics who know how to do things as if
by instinct, a not unworthy successor of Hephæstos, who used to do
business on a grander scale hard by, with Ætna for his forge. Your
real mechanic, from Tubal Cain down, is always the right man in the
right place. A deft-handed New Hampshire mechanic once said to me,
after putting some dislocated object to rights in less than five
minutes, "I shall have to charge you ten cents for doing the job and
fifteen cents for knowing how." It struck me as a good expression of
the claims of the guild.
When we got off it was nearly eleven o'clock, and the flower of the
day was gone; but we had vowed to see the sunrise from the theatre of
Taormina the next morning; and so we sped off in the heat over roads
so bad as to make us repent of all the hard things we had said of the
roads of Greece. A good deal of the way lay between Ætna and the sea
over lava-beds of various ages, among them the identical stream which,
coming down fresh and hot, turned Himilco from proceeding straight
against Dionysius and Syracuse after the destruction of Messina,
and obliged him to make the circuit of the awful mountain. Shortly
after noon we passed, on the highest of these lava-beds, Acireale,
the most important of several Acis, all of which commemorate Acis,
who here, to his grief, associated with Galatea and Polyphemus. Near
by are several jagged islands pointed out by tradition as the very
rocks which the latter hurled at Ulysses with such poor results. From
this point on Taormina lay clear before us in the distance, high up
above the sea, though but a short horizontal distance from it. When
we reached Giardini, the village on the seashore which serves as a
railroad station for Taormina, parched with heat and thirst, we were
reminded of the verse of Euripides, "The sea washes away all human
ills," and we here began a series of baths with which we encircled the
island. Nemesis marked me when, in exuberance of spirit, I made the
understatement, "This bath is worth a dollar," and made it cost me
just that amount. Between the road and the shore was a railroad with a
cactus hedge on each side of it. In passing this I hardly noticed that
my wheel had lightly brushed against a cactus plant. But we had hardly
begun the ascent to Taormina before my wheel was in a state of collapse.
Well, the morrow must take thought for the things of itself. Here was
Taormina for us to enjoy. We had planned to spend one night only here,
because there was little material for archæological study except the
famous theatre, which in its present state is Roman. It was indeed
refreshing to see near the upper rim of the theatre, and partly covered
by its massive but cheap-looking walls of brick, the foundations of
a Greek temple in four courses with its perfect joints of stone. But
while Syracuse and Girgenti and Selinus were our proper fields for
study, Taormina was for pleasure. From this eyrie, Ætna, which from
Catania is in some degree disappointing, as is even Mont Blanc when
seen from Chamonix, rises as grandly as does Mont Blanc when seen
from the heights across the valley, Flégère or Brévent; and when the
sun, rising over Calabria, gives a rosy color to the slope up to the
snow-line, one gazes, forgetting the theatre in the glory of the
mountain.
Although we had studied the theatre adequately on the first day, we
were caught by the charm of the place; and a second sunrise in the
theatre seemed so desirable that we broke our carefully drawn up
itinerary at the very outset, the necessary two-thirds vote being
easily obtained. About a thousand feet above Taormina rises a height
which once served as an acropolis to ancient Tauromenium, crowned
with a village and castle called Mola. Having climbed this in the
hot afternoon we saw, about another thousand feet above us, a point
called Monte Venere, which seemed to dominate the whole region. We
subsequently read in Frances Elliot's "Travels in Sicily," "Certain
misguided travellers have even been known to attempt Monte Venere." But
not suspecting at the time that we were misguided, but only questioning
whether the scaling of Monte Venere would cost us our table d'hôte
dinner at the Hotel Timeo, we decided, by a rather doubtful two-thirds
vote, to try it. We stormed it at a pace such as the Bavarian division
struck at Speicheren when told that a fresh keg of beer was to be
broached "up there" at ten o'clock, and that they must be on hand.
As the result of our toil we got a superb view into the interior,
including a peep in behind Ætna, which from this point seemed even
grander than from Taormina. It was labor well spent.
During our whole stay at Taormina there was no spot on which my eye and
my thoughts so frequently rested as on the little tongue of land just
below us to the south, which we had passed in coming from Catania. On
this vine-covered plain once lay Naxos, settled by men from Chalkis
in 734 B.C. What a chain of consequences followed upon this small
beginning! Leontini and Catania were founded from Naxos itself almost
immediately afterward. Dorian Corinth, following hard after Ionian
Chalkis, founded Syracuse, and with the birth of western Hellas the
strife of Dorian and Ionian was made a part of its life. But before
this strife brought ruin a period of expansion and prosperity followed
which finds its only parallel in the two centuries and a half of the
history of our own country.