Among students of Greek history the little town of Platæa takes a large
hold upon the affections. We have seen how its old time devotion to
Athens brought upon it a sudden descent from the arch-enemy Thebes at the
very outbreak of the Peloponnesian War. It was a case of Greek against
Greek, of Theban duplicity versus Platæan wile. The success of Platæa was
so neat and exasperating as to inspire a desperate revenge. Now it was no
longer a playtime for trickery, and on both sides the sterner elements
of human nature were put to test. The siege of Platæa lasted from the
summer of the third year of the war (429 B.C.) to the summer of the fifth
year (427 B.C.) but it seems better to tell it in isolated continuity.
Accordingly three separate portions of Thirlwall’s vivid history are here
brought together.[a]
[Sidenote: [429 B.C.]]
In the beginning of the summer 429 B.C., a Peloponnesian army was again
assembled at the isthmus, under the command of Archidamus. But instead of
invading Attica, which was perhaps thought dangerous on account of the
pestilence, he gratified the wishes of the Thebans, by marching into the
territory of Platæa, where he encamped, and prepared to lay it waste.
But before he had committed any acts of hostility, envoys from Platæa
demanded an audience, and, being admitted, made a solemn remonstrance
against his proceedings in the name of religion. They reminded the
Spartans that, after the glorious battle which secured the liberty of
Greece, Pausanias in the presence of the allied army, and in the public
place of Platæa, where he had just offered a sacrifice in honour of the
victory, formally reinstated the Platæans in the independent possession
of their city and territory, which he placed under the protection of
all the allies, with whom they had shared the common triumph, to defend
them from unjust aggression. They complained that the Spartans were now
about to violate this well-earned privilege, which had been secured to
Platæa by solemn oaths, at the instigation of her bitterest enemies,
the Thebans. And they adjured him, by the gods who had been invoked to
witness the engagement of Pausanias, as well as by those of Sparta, and
of their violated territory, to desist from his enterprise.
Archidamus in reply admitted the claim of the Platæans, but desired
them to reflect that the rights on which they insisted implied some
corresponding duties; that, if the Spartans were pledged to protect their
independence, they were themselves no less bound to assist the Spartans
in delivering those who had once been their allies in the struggle with
Persia, from the tyranny of Athens. Yet Sparta, as she had already
declared, did not wish to force them to take a part in the war which she
was waging for the liberties of Greece, but would be satisfied if they
would remain neutral, and would admit both parties alike to amicable
intercourse, without aiding either. The envoys returned with this answer,
and, after laying it before the people, came back, instructed to reply:
that it was impossible for them to accede to the proposal of Archidamus,
without the consent of the Athenians, who had their wives and children in
their hands; and they should have reason to fear either the resentment of
their present allies, who on the retreat of the Spartans might come and
deprive them of their city; or the treachery of the Thebans, who under
the cover of neutrality, might find another opportunity of surprising
them. But the Spartan, without noticing the ties that bound them to
Athens, met the last objection with a new offer.
“Let them commit their city, houses, and lands, to the custody of the
Spartans, with an exact account of the boundaries, the number of their
trees, and all other things left behind, which it was possible to number.
Let them withdraw, and live elsewhere until the end of the war. The
Spartans would then restore the deposit entrusted to them, and in the
meanwhile would provide for the cultivation of the land, and pay a fair
rent.”
It is possible that this proposal may have been honestly meant; though
it is as likely that it was suggested by the malice of the Thebans. For
it was evident that the Platæans could not accept it without renouncing
the friendship of the Athenians, to whom they had committed their
families, and in the most favourable contingency, which would be the
fall of their old ally, casting themselves upon the honour of an enemy
for their political existence; while nevertheless the speciously liberal
offer, if rejected, would afford a pretext for treating them with the
utmost rigour. This the Platæans probably perceived; and therefore, when
their envoys returned with the proposal of the Spartans, requested an
armistice, that they might lay it before the Athenians, promising to
accept it if they could obtain their consent.
Archidamus granted their request; but the answer brought from Athens put
an end, as might have been expected, to the negotiation. It exhorted
them to keep their faith with their ally, and to depend upon Athenian
protection. Thus urged and emboldened, they resolved, whatever might
befall them, to adhere to the side of Athens, and to break off all parley
with the enemy, by a short answer, delivered not through envoys, but
from the walls: that it was out of their power to do as the Spartans
desired.[53] Archidamus, on receiving this declaration, prepared for
attacking the city. But first, with great solemnity, he called upon
the gods and heroes of the land to witness, that he had not invaded it
without just cause, but after the Platæans had first abandoned their
ancient confederates; and that whatever they might hereafter suffer would
be a merited punishment of the perverseness with which they had rejected
his equitable offers.
THE SPARTANS AND THEBANS ATTACK PLATÆA
His first operation, after ravaging the country, was to invest the
city with a palisade, for which the fruit trees cut down by his troops
furnished materials. This slight inclosure was sufficient for his
purpose, as he hoped that the overwhelming superiority of his numbers
would enable him to take the place by storm. The mode of attack which
he chiefly relied upon, was the same which we have seen employed by the
Persians against the Ionian cities. He attempted to raise a mound to
a level with the walls. It was piled up with earth and rubbish, wood
and stones, and was guarded on either side by a strong lattice-work of
forest timber. For seventy days and seventy nights the troops, divided
into parties which constantly relieved each other, were occupied in this
labour without intermission, urged to their tasks by the Lacedæmonians
who commanded the contingents of the allies. But as the mound rose, the
besieged devised expedients for averting the danger.
First they surmounted the opposite part of their wall with a
superstructure of brick--taken from the adjacent houses which were pulled
down for the purpose--secured in a frame of timber, and shielded from
fiery missiles by a curtain of raw hides and skins, which protected the
workmen and their work. But as the mound still kept rising as fast as
the wall, they set about contriving plans for reducing it. And first,
issuing by night through an opening made in the wall, they scooped out
and carried away large quantities of the earth from the lower part of the
mound. But the Peloponnesians, on discovering this device, counteracted
it, by repairing the breach with layers of stiff clay, pressed down close
on wattles of reed. Thus baffled, the besieged sank a shaft within the
walls, and thence working upon a rough estimate, dug a passage under
ground as far as the mound, which they were thus enabled to undermine.
And against this contrivance the enemy had no remedy, except in the
multitude of hands, which repaired the loss almost as soon as it was felt.
But the garrison, fearing that they should not be able to struggle long
with this disadvantage, and that their wall would at length be carried
by force of numbers, provided against this event, by building a second
wall, in the shape of a half-moon, behind the raised part of the old
wall, which was the chord of the arc. Thus in the worst emergency they
secured themselves a retreat, from which they would be able to assail the
enemy to great advantage, and he would have to recommence his work under
the most unfavourable circumstances. This countermure drove the besiegers
to their last resources. They had already brought battering engines to
play upon the walls. But the spirit and ingenuity of the besieged had
generally baffled these assaults; though one had given an alarming shock
to the superstructure in front of the half-moon. Sometimes the head of an
engine was caught up by means of a noose; sometimes it was broken off by
a heavy beam, suspended by chains from two levers placed on the wall.
Now, however, after the main hope of the Peloponnesians, which rested
on their mound, was completely defeated by the countermure, Archidamus
resolved to try a last extraordinary experiment. He caused the hollow
between the mound and the wall, and all the space which he could reach
on the other side, to be filled up with a pile of faggots, which, when
it had been steeped in pitch and sulphur, was set on fire. The blaze
was such as had perhaps never before been kindled by the art of man;
Thucydides compares it to a burning forest. It penetrated to a great
distance within the city; and if it had been seconded, as the besiegers
hoped, by a favourable wind, would probably have destroyed it. The alarm
and confusion which it caused for a time in the garrison were great; a
large tract of the city was inaccessible. Yet it does not appear that
Archidamus made any attempt to take advantage of their consternation and
disorder. He waited; but the expected breeze did not come to spread the
flames, and--according to a report which the historian mentions, but does
not vouch for--a sudden storm of thunder and rain arose to quench them.
Thus thwarted and disheartened, and perhaps unable to keep the whole of
his army any longer in the camp, he reluctantly determined to convert
the siege to a blockade, which it was foreseen would be tedious and
expensive. A part of the troops were immediately sent home: the remainder
set about the work of circumvallation, which was apportioned to the
contingents of the confederates. Two ditches were dug round the town,
and yielded materials for a double line of walls, which were built
in the intermediate space on the edge of each trench. The walls were
sixteen feet asunder; but the interval was occupied with barracks for
the soldiers, so that the whole might be said to form one wall. At the
distance of ten battlements from each other were large towers, which
covered the whole breadth of the rampart. At the autumnal equinox the
lines were completed, and were left, one-half in the custody of the
Bœotians, the other in that of their allies. The troops who were not
needed for this service were then led back to their homes. The garrison
of the place at this time consisted of four hundred Platæans, and eighty
Athenians; and 110 women who had been retained, when all the useless
hands were sent to Athens, to minister to the wants of the men.
PART OF THE PLATÆANS ESCAPE; THE REST CAPITULATE
Athens could do nothing for the relief of Platæa. The brave garrison had
begun to suffer from the failure of provisions; and, as their condition
grew hopeless, two of their leading men, Theænetus a soothsayer, and
Eupompidas, one of the generals, conceived the project of escaping
across the enemy’s lines. When it was first proposed, it was unanimously
adopted: but as the time for its execution approached, half of the
men shrank from the danger, and not more than 220 adhered to their
resolution. The contrivers of the plan took the lead in the enterprise.
Scaling ladders of a proper height were the first requisite; and
they were made upon a measurement of the enemy’s wall, for which the
besieged had no other basis than the number of layers of brick, which
were sedulously counted over and over again by different persons, until
the amount, and consequently the height of the wall, was sufficiently
ascertained. A dark and stormy night, in the depth of winter, was chosen
for the attempt; it was known that in such nights the sentinels took
shelter in the towers, and left the intervening battlements unguarded;
and it was on this practice that the success of the adventure mainly
depended. It was concerted, that the part of the garrison which remained
behind should make demonstrations of attacking the enemy’s lines on the
side opposite to that by which their comrades attempted to escape. And
first a small party, lightly armed, the right foot bare, to give them
a surer footing in the mud, keeping at such a distance from each other
as to prevent their arms from clashing, crossed the ditch, and planted
their ladders, unseen and unheard; for the noise of their approach was
drowned by the wind. The first who mounted were twelve men armed with
short swords, led by Ammeas son of Corœbus. His followers, six on each
side, proceeded immediately to secure the two nearest towers. Next
came another party with short spears, their shields being carried by
their comrades behind them. But before many more had mounted, the fall
of a tile, broken off from a battlement by one of the Platæans, as he
laid hold of it, alarmed the nearest sentinels, and presently the whole
force of the besiegers was called to the walls. But no one knew what had
happened, and the general confusion was increased by the sally of the
besieged. All therefore remained at their posts; only a body of three
hundred men, who were always in readiness to move toward any quarter
where they might be needed, issued from one of the gates in search of the
place from which the alarm had arisen. In the meanwhile the assailants
had made themselves masters of the two towers between which they scaled
the wall, and, after cutting down the sentinels, guarded the passages
which led through them, while others mounted by ladders to the roofs,
and thence discharged their missiles on all who attempted to approach
the scene of action. The main body of the fugitives now poured through
the opening thus secured, applying more ladders, and knocking away the
battlements: and as they gained the other side of the outer ditch, they
formed upon its edge, and with their arrows and javelins protected their
comrades, who were crossing, from the enemy above. Last of all, and with
some difficulty--for the ditch was deep, the water high, and covered with
a thin crust of ice--the parties which occupied the towers effected their
retreat; and they had scarcely crossed, before the three hundred were
seen coming up with lighted torches. But their lights, which discovered
nothing to them, made them a mark for the missiles of the Platæans, who
were thus enabled to elude their pursuit, and to move away in good order.
All the details of the plan seem to have been concerted with admirable
forethought. On the first alarm fire signals were raised by the besiegers
to convey the intelligence to Thebes. But the Platæans had provided
against this danger, and showed similar signals from their own walls,
so as to render it impossible for the Thebans to interpret those of the
enemy. This precaution afforded additional security to their retreat. For
instead of taking the nearest road to Athens, they first bent their steps
toward Thebes, while they could see their pursuers with their blazing
torches threading the ascent of Cithæron. After they had followed the
Theban road for six or seven furlongs, they struck into that which led by
Erythræ and Hysiæ to the Attic border, and arrived safe at Athens. Out of
the 220 who set out together, one fell into the enemy’s hands, after he
had crossed the outer ditch. Seven turned back panic-struck, and reported
that all their companions had been cut off: and at daybreak a herald was
sent to recover their bodies. The answer revealed the happy issue of the
adventure.
[Sidenote: [427 B.C.]]
By this time the remaining garrison of Platæa was reduced to the last
stage of weakness. The besiegers might probably long before have taken
the town without difficulty by assault. But the Spartans had a motive
of policy for wishing to bring the siege to a different termination.
They looked forward to a peace which they might have to conclude upon
the ordinary terms of a mutual restitution of conquests made in the war.
In this case, if Platæa fell by storm, they would be obliged to restore
it to Athens; but if it capitulated, they might allege that it was no
conquest. With this view their commander protracted the blockade, until
at length he discovered by a feint attack that the garrison was utterly
unable to defend the walls. He then sent a herald to propose that they
should surrender, not to the Thebans, but to the Spartans, on condition
that Spartan judges alone should decide upon their fate. These terms
were accepted, the town delivered up, and the garrison, which was nearly
starved, received a supply of food. In a few days five commissioners came
from Sparta to hold the promised trial. But instead of the usual forms
of accusation and defence, the prisoners found themselves called upon to
answer a single question: Whether in the course of the war they had done
any service to Sparta and her allies. The spirit which dictated such an
interrogatory was clear enough. The prisoners however obtained leave to
plead for themselves without restriction; their defence was conducted by
two of their number, one of whom, Lacon son of Aimnestus, was _proxenus_
of Sparta.
The arguments of the Platæan orators, as reported by Thucydides, are
strong, and the address which he attributes to them is the only specimen
he has left of pathetic eloquence. They could point out the absurdity of
sending five commissioners from Sparta, to inquire whether the garrison
of a besieged town were friends of the besiegers; a question which, if
retorted upon the party which asked it, would equally convict them of a
wanton aggression. They could appeal to their services and sufferings in
the Persian War, when they alone among the Bœotians remained constant
to the cause of Greece, while the Thebans had fought on the side of
the barbarians in the very land which they now hoped to make their own
with the consent of Sparta. They could plead an important obligation
which they had more recently conferred on Sparta herself, whom they
had succoured with a third part of their whole force, when her very
existence was threatened by the revolt of the Messenians after the great
earthquake. They could urge that their alliance with Athens had been
originally formed with the approbation, and even by the advice, of the
Spartans themselves; that justice and honour forbade them to renounce a
connection which they had sought as a favour, and from which they had
derived great advantages; and that, as far as lay in themselves, they had
not broken the last peace, but had been treacherously surprised by the
Thebans, while they thought themselves secure in the faith of treaties.
Even if their former merits were not sufficient to outweigh any later
offence which could be imputed to them, they might insist on the Greek
usage of war, which forbade proceeding to the last extremity with an
enemy who had voluntarily surrendered himself; and as they had proved,
by the patience with which they had endured the torments of hunger, that
they preferred perishing by famine to falling into the hands of the
Thebans, they had a right to demand that they should not be placed in a
worse condition by their own act, but if they were to gain nothing by
their capitulation, should be restored to the state in which they were
when they made it.
But unhappily for the Platæans they had nothing to rely upon but the
mercy or the honour of Sparta: two principles which never appear to
have had the weight of a feather in any of her public transactions; and
though the Spartan commissioners bore the title of judges, they came in
fact only to pronounce a sentence which had been previously dictated
by Thebes. Yet the appeal of the Platæans was so affecting, that the
Thebans distrusted the firmness of their allies, and obtained leave to
reply. They very judiciously and honestly treated the question as one
which lay entirely between the Platæans and themselves. They attributed
the conduct of their ancestors in the Persian War, to the compulsion
of a small, dominant faction, and pleaded the services which they had
themselves since rendered to Sparta. They depreciated the patriotic deeds
of the Platæans, as the result of their attachment to Athens, whom they
had not scrupled to abet in all her undertakings against the liberties of
Greece. They defended the attempt which they had made upon Platæa during
the peace, on the ground that they had been invited by a number of its
wealthiest and noblest citizens, and they charged the Platæans with a
breach of faith in the execution of their Theban prisoners, whose blood
called for vengeance as loudly as they for mercy.
These were indeed reasons which fully explained and perhaps justified
their own enmity to Platæa, and did not need to be aided by so glaring a
falsehood, as the assertion that their enemies were enjoying the benefit
of a fair trial. But the only part of their argument, that bore upon the
real question, was that in which they reminded the Spartans that Thebes
was their most powerful and useful ally. This the Spartans felt; and
they had long determined that no scruples of justice or humanity should
endanger so valuable a connection. But it seems that they still could not
devise any more ingenious mode of reconciling their secret motive with
outward decency, than the original question, which implied that if the
prisoners were their enemies, they might rightfully put them to death;
and in this sophistical abstraction all the claims which arose out of the
capitulation, when construed according to the plainest rules of equity,
were overlooked. The question was again proposed to each separately,
and when the ceremony was finished by his answer or his silence, he was
immediately consigned to the executioner. The Platæans who suffered
amounted to two hundred; their fate was shared by twenty-five Athenians,
who could not have expected or claimed milder treatment, as they might
have been fairly excepted from the benefit of the surrender. The women
were all made slaves. If there had been nothing but inhumanity in the
proceeding of the Spartans, it would have been so much slighter than that
which they had exhibited towards their most unoffending prisoners from
the beginning of the war, as scarcely to deserve notice. All that is very
signal in this transaction is the baseness of their cunning, and perhaps
the dullness of their invention.
The town and its territory were, with better right, ceded to the Thebans.
For a year they permitted the town to be occupied by a body of exiles
from Megara, and by the remnant of the Platæans belonging to the Theban
party. But afterwards--fearing perhaps that it might be wrested from
them--they razed it to the ground, leaving only the temples standing.
But on the site, and with the materials of the demolished buildings,
they erected an edifice 200 feet square, with an upper story, the whole
divided into apartments, for the reception of the pilgrims who might
come to the quinquennial festival, or on other sacred occasions. They
also built a new temple, which together with the brass and the iron
found in the town, which were made into couches, they dedicated to Hera,
the goddess to whom Pausanias was thought to have owed his victory. The
territory was annexed to the Theban state lands, and let for a term of
ten years. So, in the ninety-third year after Platæa had entered into
alliance with Athens, this alliance became the cause of its ruin.[b]
NAVAL AND OTHER COMBATS
[Sidenote: [429 B.C.]]
While Archidamus was holding Platæa by the throat, other enterprises were
meeting with varied success. Athens sent 2000 hoplites and 200 horse to
Chalcidian Thrace under the Xenophon to whom Potidæa had surrendered.
He made an assault on the town of Spartolus, only to lose a desperate
battle, and to be crushed on his retreat; Xenophon and two associated
generals were killed, and with them 430 hoplites, a loss of about 25 per
cent.
In Thrace, Sitalces, king of an immense realm, came to the aid of Athens
against the double-dealing Macedonian king, Perdiccas. He invaded
Macedonia and the Chalcidian territory, and voyaged far and wide until
the severity of winter and the failure of Athenian aid led him to retire.
Meanwhile, the Spartans had tried to wrest the Ionian Sea from Athens.
Their expedition against Cephallenia and Zacynthus in 430 B.C. had
failed, but now a powerful horde was gathered against Acarnania. Sparta
sent a thousand hoplites under the admiral Cnemus. Corinth, Leucadia,
Anactorium, and Ambracia furnished troops, and other bodies came from
barbaric Epirots and Macedonian tribes otherwise obscure, including 1000
Chaonians, 1000 Orestæ besides Thesprotians, Molossians, Atintanes, and
Paravæi. Even the Macedonian king, Perdiccas, a professed ally of Athens,
sent 1000 Macedonians. These arrived, however, too late; fortunately for
them, since the troops, without waiting for the fleet, marched against
the Acarnanian city of Stratus in such disorderly pride that they fell
into ambush, and, after a chaotic retreat, dispersed.
The fleet which was to have collaborated in the campaign hoped to evade
the vigilance of the Athenian fleet as Cnemus had done, but the imperial
fleet was under the command of the great and cunning Phormion, who was
not deterred from attack by inferiority of numbers. Interesting naval
chess-play followed.[a]
Now the fleet from Corinth and the rest of the confederates coming
from the Crissæan Bay, which ought to have joined Cnemus, in order to
prevent the Acarnanians on the coast from succouring their countrymen
in the interior, did not do so; but they were compelled, about the same
time as the battle was fought at Stratus, to come to an engagement with
Phormion and the twenty Athenian vessels that kept guard at Naupactus.
For Phormion kept watching them as they coasted along out of the gulf,
wishing to attack them in the open sea. But the Corinthians and the
allies were not sailing to Acarnania with any intention to fight by
sea, but were equipped more for land service. When, however, they saw
them sailing along opposite to them, as they themselves proceeded along
their own coast, and on attempting to cross over from Patræ in Achaia to
the mainland opposite, on their way to Acarnania observed the Athenians
sailing against them from Chalcis and the river Evenus (for they had
not escaped their observation when they had endeavoured to bring to
secretly during the night); under these circumstances they were compelled
to engage in the mid passage. They had separate commanders for the
contingents of the different states that joined the armament, but those
of the Corinthians were Machaon, Isocrates, and Agatharcidas.
And now the Peloponnesians ranged their ships in a circle, as large as
they could without leaving any opening, with their prows turned outward
and their sterns inward; and placed inside all the small craft that
accompanied them, and their five best sailers, to advance out quickly and
strengthen any point on which the enemy might make his attack.
On the other hand, the Athenians, ranged in a single line, kept sailing
round them, and reducing them into a smaller compass; continually
brushing past them, and making demonstrations of an immediate onset;
though they had previously been commanded by Phormion not to attack them
till he himself gave the signal. For he hoped that their order would not
be maintained like that of a land-force on shore, but that the ships
would fall foul of each other, and that the other craft would cause
confusion; and if the wind should blow from the gulf, in expectation
of which he was sailing round them, and which usually rose towards
morning, that they would not remain steady an instant. He thought, too,
that it rested with him to make the attack, whenever he pleased, as his
ships were the better sailers; and that then would be the best time for
making it. So when the wind came down upon them, and their ships, being
now brought into a narrow compass, were thrown into confusion by the
operation of both causes--the violence of the wind, and the small craft
dashing against them--and when ship was falling foul of ship, and the
crews were pushing them off with poles, and in their shouting, and trying
to keep clear, and abusing each other, did not hear a word either of
their orders or the boatswains’ directions; while, through inexperience,
they could not lift their oars in the swell of the sea, and so rendered
the vessels less obedient to the helmsmen; just then, at that favourable
moment, he gave the signal.
And the Athenians attacked them, and first of all sank one of the
admiral-ships, then destroyed all wherever they went, and reduced them
to such a condition, that owing to their confusion none of them thought
of resistance, but they fled to Patræ and Dyme, in Achaia. The Athenians
having closely pursued them, and taken twelve ships, picking up most of
the men from them, and putting them on board their own vessels, sailed
off to Molycrium; and after erecting a trophy at Rhium, and dedicating
a ship to Neptune, they returned to Naupactus. The Peloponnesians also
immediately coasted along with their remaining ships from Dyme and Patræ
to Cyllene, the arsenal of the Eleans; and Cnemus and the ships that were
at Leucas, which were to have formed a junction with these, came thence,
after the battle of Stratus, to the same port.
Then the Lacedæmonians sent to the fleet, as counsellors to Cnemus,
Timocrates, Brasidas, and Lycophron; commanding him to make preparations
for a second engagement more successful than the former, and not to be
driven off the sea by a few ships. For the result appeared very different
from what they might have expected (particularly as it was the first
sea-fight they had attempted); and they thought that it was not so much
their fleet that was inferior, but that there had been some cowardice;
for they did not weigh the long experience of the Athenians against their
own short practice of naval matters. They despatched them, therefore,
in anger; and on their arrival they sent round, in conjunction with
Cnemus, orders for ships to be furnished by the different states, while
they refitted those they already had, with a view to an engagement.
Phormion, too, on the other hand, sent messengers to Athens to acquaint
them with their preparations, and to tell them of the victory they had
gained; at the same time desiring them to send him quickly the largest
possible number of ships, for he was in daily expectation of an immediate
engagement. They despatched to him twenty; but gave additional orders
to the commander of them to go first to Crete. For Nicias, a Cretan of
Gortyn, who was their _proxenus_, persuaded them to sail against Cydonia,
telling them that he would reduce it under their power; for it was at
present hostile to them. His object, however, in calling them in was,
that he might oblige the Polichnitæ, who bordered on the Cydonians.
The commander, therefore, of the squadron went with it to Crete, and
in conjunction with the Polichnitæ laid waste the territory of the
Cydonians; and wasted no little time in the country, owing to adverse
winds and the impossibility of putting to sea.
During the time that the Athenians were thus detained on the coast of
Crete, the Peloponnesians at Cyllene, having made their preparations for
an engagement, coasted along to Panormus in Achaia, where the land-force
of the Peloponnesians had come to support them. Phormion, too, coasted
along to the Rhium near Molycrium, and dropped anchor outside of it,
with twenty ships, the same as he had before fought with. This Rhium was
friendly to the Athenians; the other, namely, that in the Peloponnesus,
is opposite to it; the distance between the two being about seven stadia
of sea, which forms the mouth of the Crissæan Gulf. At the Rhium in
Achaia, then, being not far from Panormus, where their land-force was,
the Peloponnesians also came to anchor with seventy-seven ships, when
they saw that the Athenians had done the same. And for six or seven days
they lay opposite each other, practising and preparing for the battle;
the Peloponnesians intending not to sail beyond the Rhia into the open
sea, for they were afraid of a disaster like the former; the Athenians,
not to sail into the straits, for they thought that fighting in a
confined space was in favour of the enemy.
Now when the Athenians did not sail into the narrow part of the gulf to
meet them, the Peloponnesians, wishing to lead them on even against their
will, weighed in the morning, and having formed their ships in a column
four abreast, sailed to their own land towards the inner part of the
gulf, with the right wing taking the lead, in which position also they
lay at anchor. In this wing they had placed their twenty best sailers;
that if Phormion, supposing them to be sailing against Naupactus, should
himself also coast along in that direction to relieve the place, the
Athenians might not, by getting outside their wing, escape their advance
against them, but that these ships might shut them in. As they expected,
he was alarmed for the place in its unprotected state; and when he saw
them under weigh, against his will, and in great haste too, he embarked
his crews and sailed along shore; while the land-forces of the Messenians
at the same time came to support him. When the Peloponnesians saw them
coasting along in a single file, and already within the gulf and near
the shore (which was just what they wished), at one signal they suddenly
brought their ships round and sailed in a line, as fast as each could,
against the Athenians, hoping to cut off all their ships. Eleven of
them, however, which were taking the lead, escaped the wing of the
Peloponnesians and their sudden turn into the open gulf; but the rest
they surprised, and drove them on shore, in their attempt to escape, and
destroyed them, killing such of the crews as had not swum out of them.
Some of the ships they lashed to their own and began to tow off empty,
and one they took men and all; while in the case of some others, the
Messenians, coming to their succour, and dashing into the sea with their
armour, and boarding them, fought from the decks, and rescued them when
they were already being towed off.
To this extent then the Peloponnesians had the advantage, and destroyed
the Athenian ships; while their twenty vessels in the right wing were in
pursuit of those eleven of the enemy that had just escaped their turn
into the open gulf. They, with the exception of one ship, got the start
of them and fled for refuge to Naupactus; and facing about, opposite the
temple of Apollo, prepared to defend themselves, in case they should
sail to shore against them. Presently they came up, and were singing
the pæan as they sailed, considering that they had gained the victory;
and the one Athenian vessel that had been left behind was chased by a
single Leucadian far in advance of the rest. Now there happened to be
a merchant vessel moored out at sea, which the Athenian ship had time
to sail round, and struck the Leucadian in pursuit of her amidship,
and sunk her. The Peloponnesians therefore were panic-stricken by this
sudden and unlooked-for achievement; and moreover, as they were pursuing
in disorder, on account of the advantage they had gained, some of the
ships dropped their oars, and stopped in their course, from a wish to
wait for the rest--doing what was unadvisable, considering that they were
observing each other at so short a distance--while others even ran on the
shoals, through their ignorance of the localities.
The Athenians, on seeing this, took courage, and at one word shouted
for battle, and rushed upon them. In consequence of their previous
blunders and their present confusion, they withstood them but a short
time and then fled to Panormus, whence they had put out. The Athenians
pursued them closely, and took six of the ships nearest to them, and
recovered their own, which the enemy had disabled near the shore and
at the beginning of the engagement, and had taken in tow. Of the men,
they put some to death, and made others prisoners. Now on board the
Leucadian ship, which went down off the merchant vessel, was Timocrates
the Lacedæmonian; who, when the ship was destroyed, killed himself, and
falling overboard was floated into the harbour of Naupactus. On their
return, the Athenians erected a trophy at the spot from which they put
out before gaining the victory; and all the dead and the wrecks that were
near their coast they took up, and gave back to the enemy theirs under
truce. The Peloponnesians also erected a trophy, as victors, for the
defeat of the ships they had disabled near the shore; and the ship they
had taken they dedicated at Rhium, in Achaia, by the side of the trophy.
Afterwards, being afraid of the reinforcement from Athens, all but the
Leucadians sailed at the approach of night into the Crissæan Bay and the
port of Corinth. Not long after their retreat, the Athenians from Crete
arrived at Naupactus, with the twenty ships that were to have joined
Phormion before the engagement. And thus ended the summer.
Before, however, the fleet dispersed which had retired to Corinth and
the Crissæan Bay, Cnemus, Brasidas, and the rest of the Peloponnesian
commanders wished, at the suggestion of the Megarians, to make an attempt
upon Piræus, the port of Athens; which, as was natural from their decided
superiority at sea, was left unguarded and open. It was determined,
therefore, that each man should take his oar, and cushion, and
_tropoter_, and go by land from Corinth to the sea on the side of Athens;
and that after proceeding as quickly as possible to Megara, they should
launch from its port, Nisæa, forty vessels that happened to be there,
and sail straightway to Piræus. For there was neither any fleet keeping
guard before it, nor any thought of the enemy ever sailing against it
in so sudden a manner; and as for their venturing to do it openly and
deliberately, they supposed that either they would not think of it, or
themselves would not fail to be aware beforehand, if they should. Having
adopted this resolution, they proceeded immediately to execute it; and
when they had arrived by night, and launched the vessels from Nisæa, they
sailed, not against Athens as they had intended, for they were afraid
of the risk (some wind or other was also said to have prevented them),
but to the headland of Salamis looking towards Megara; where there was a
fort, and a guard of three ships to prevent anything from being taken in
or out of Megara. So they assaulted the fort, and towed off the triremes
empty; and making a sudden attack on the rest of Salamis, they laid it
waste.
Now fire signals of an enemy’s approach were raised towards Athens, and
a consternation was caused by them not exceeded by any during the whole
war. For those in the city imagined that the enemy had already sailed
into Piræus; while those in Piræus thought that Salamis had been taken,
and that they were all but sailing into their harbours: which indeed, if
they would but have not been afraid of it, might easily have been done;
and it was not a wind that would have prevented it. But at daybreak the
Athenians went all in a body to Piræus to resist the enemy; and launched
their ships, and going on board with haste and much uproar, sailed with
the fleet to Salamis, while with their land-forces they mounted guard
at Piræus. When the Peloponnesians saw them coming to the rescue, after
overrunning the greater part of Salamis, and taking both men and booty,
and the three ships from the port of Budorum, they sailed for Nisæa as
quickly as they could; for their vessels too caused them some alarm, as
they had been launched after lying idle a long time, and were not at all
water-tight. On their arrival at Megara they returned again to Corinth by
land. When the Athenians found them no longer on the coast of Salamis,
they also sailed back; and after this alarm they paid more attention in
future to the safety of Piræus, both by closing the harbours, and by all
other precautions.
[Sidenote: [429-428 B.C.]]
During this winter, after the fleet of the Peloponnesians had dispersed,
the Athenians at Naupactus under the command of Phormion, after coasting
along to Astacus, and there disembarking, marched into the interior of
Acarnania, with four hundred heavy-armed of the Athenians from the ships
and four hundred of the Messenians. From Stratus, Coronta, and some
other places, they expelled certain individuals who were thought to be
untrue to them; and having restored Cynes, son of Theolytus, to Coronta,
returned again to their vessels and sailed home to Athens at the return
of spring, taking with them such of the prisoners from the naval battles
as were freemen (who were exchanged man for man), and the ships they had
captured. And so ended this winter, and the third year of the war.[c]
Bury, following Grote, says, that after this, Phormion “silently drops
out of history, and as we find his son Asopius sent out in the following
summer at the request of the Acarnanians, we must conclude that his
career had been cut short by death”: Duruy says he died in 428 B.C., and
that “the city gave him an honourable funeral and placed his tomb beside
that of Pericles.” Asopius after failing in an assault on Œniadæ, was
killed before Leucas.[a]
FOOTNOTES
[53] [In the words of Thucydides,[c] “Never to desert the Athenians, to
bear any devastation of their lands, nay, if such be the case, to behold
it with patience, and to suffer any extremities to which their enemies
might reduce them; that, further, no person should stir out of the city,
but an answer be given from the walls; that it was impossible for them to
accept the terms proposed by the Lacedæmonians.”]
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