Part 14

As Pericles advised, the Athenians left the country open to the ravages of the invading forces, and themselves retired within the city. In spite of the resentment of those who saw their property being laid waste, Pericles maintained his ascendency, and persuaded the people to devote their energies to sending out an irresistible fleet, and to establishing a great reserve both of ships and treasure, which were to be an annual charge and brought into active use only in the case of dire emergency. The fleet sailed round the Peloponnese, and the ravages it was able to inflict, with the alarm it created, caused the withdrawal of the forces in Attica.

In that winter Pericles delivered a great funeral oration, or panegyric, in memory of the Athenians who had so far fallen gloriously in defence of their country, in which he painted the characteristic virtues of the Athenian people in such a fashion as to rouse to the highest pitch the patriotic pride of his countrymen, and their confidence in themselves, in their future, and in their leader.

II.--Early Successes of Athens

In the second year of the war, Athens suffered from a fearful visitation of the plague, which, however, made no way in the Peloponnese. It broke out also among the reinforcements dispatched to Potidæa; and it required all the skill of Pericles to reconcile the Athenians to the continuation of the war, after seeing their territories overrun for the second time for six weeks. By dint of dwelling on the supreme importance of their decisive command of the sea, and on the vast financial resources which secured their staying power, he maintained his ascendency until his death in the following year, though he had to submit to a fine. The events which followed his death only confirmed the profundity of his political judgment, and the accuracy with which he had gauged the capacities of the state. In that winter Potidæa was forced to capitulate to the Athenians.

In the summer of the third year, the Lacedæmonians called on the Platæans to desert the Athenian alliance. On their refusal, Platæa was besieged by the allied forces of the Peloponnesians. With splendid resolution, the Platæans defeated the attempt of the allies to force an entry till they were able to complete and withdraw behind a second and more easily tenable line of defence, when the Peloponnesians settled down to a regular investment. The same year was marked by the brilliant operations of the Athenian admiral Phormio in the neighbourhood of Naupactus.

On the other hand, a Peloponnesian squadron threatened the Piræus, caused some temporary panic, and awakened the Athenians to the necessity of maintaining a look-out, but otherwise effected little. The year is further noted for the invasion of Macedonia by the Thracian or Scythian king Sitalces, who was, however, induced to retire.

In the next year, Lesbos revolted against the Athenian supremacy. As a result, an Athenian squadron blockaded Mitylene. The Lacedaæonians were well pleased to accept alliance with a sea-power which claimed to have struck against Athens, not as being subject to her, but in anticipation of attempted subjugation. The prompt equipment, however, of another Athenian fleet chilled the naval enthusiasm of Sparta.

During this winter the Platæans began to feel in straits from shortage of supplies, and it was resolved that a party of them should break through the siege lines, and escape to Athens, a feat of arms which was brilliantly and successfully accomplished.

In the next--the fifth--summer, Mitylene capitulated; the fate of the inhabitants was to be referred to Athens. Here Cleon had now become the popular leader, and he persuaded the Athenians to order the whole of the adult males to be put to death. The opposition, however, succeeded in getting this bloodthirsty resolution rescinded. The second dispatch, racing desperately after the first, did not succeed in overtaking it, but was just in time to prevent the order for the massacre from being carried out. Lesbos was divided among Athenian citizens, who left the Lesbians in occupation as before, but drew a large rental from them.

In the same summer the remaining garrison of Platæa surrendered to the Lacedæmonians, on terms to be decided by Lacedæmonian commissioners. Before them the Platæans justified their resistance, but the commissioners ignored the defence, and, on the pretext that the only question was whether they had suffered any "wrong" at the hands of the Platæans, and that the answer to that was obvious, put the Platæans to death and razed the city to the ground.

Meanwhile, at Corcyra, the popular and the oligarchical parties, who favoured the Athenians and Peloponnesians respectively, had reached the stage of murderous hostility to each other. The oligarchs captured the government, and were then in turn attacked by the popular party; and there was savage faction fighting. An attempt was made by the commander of the Athenian squadron at Naupactus to act as moderator; the appearance of a Peloponnesian squadron and a confused sea-fight, somewhat in favour of the latter, brought the popular party to the verge of a compromise. But the Peloponnesians retired on the reported approach of a fresh Athenian fleet, and a democratic reign of terror followed.

"The father slew the son, and the supplicants were torn from the temples and slain near them." And thus was initiated the peculiar horror of this war--the desperate civil strife in one city after another, oligarchs hoping to triumph by Lacedæmonian and democrats by Athenian, support, and either party, when uppermost, ruling by terror. It was at this time also that the Ionian and Dorian cities of Sicily, headed by Leontini and Syracuse respectively, went to war with each other, and an Athenian squadron was first induced to participate in the struggle.

Among the operations of the next, or sixth, summer was a campaign which the Athenian commander Demosthenes conducted in Ætolia--successful at the outset, but terminating in disaster, which made the general afraid to return to Athens. He seized a chance, however, of recovering his credit by foiling a Lacedæmonian expedition against Naupactus; and in other ways he successfully established a high military reputation, so that he was no longer afraid to reappear at Athens.

Next year, the Athenians dispatched a larger fleet with Sicily for its objective. Demosthenes, however, who had a project of his own in view, was given an independent command. He was thus enabled to seize and fortify Pylos, a position on the south-west of Peloponnese, with a harbour sheltered by the isle of Sphacteria. The Spartans, in alarm, withdrew their invading force from Attica, and attempted to recover Pylos, landing over 400 of their best men on Sphacteria. The locality now became the scene of a desperate struggle, which finally resulted in the Spartans on Sphacteria being completely isolated.

So seriously did the Lacedæmonians regard this blow that they invited the Athenians to make peace virtually in terms of an equal alliance; but the Athenians were now so confident of a triumphant issue that they refused the terms--chiefly at the instigation of Cleon. Some supplies, however, were got into Sphacteria, owing to the high rewards offered by the Lacedæmonians for successful blockade-running. At this moment, Cleon, the Athenian demagogue, having rashly declared that he could easily capture Sphacteria, was taken at his word and sent to do it. He had the wit, however, to choose Demosthenes for his colleague, and to take precisely the kind of troops Demosthenes wanted; with the result that within twenty days, as he had promised, the Spartans found themselves with no other alternatives than annihilation or surrender. Their choice of the latter was an overwhelming blow to Lacedæmonian prestige.

III.--Victories of Lacedæmon

The capture of the island of Cythera in the next summer gave the Athenians a second strong station from which they could constantly menace the Peloponnese. On the other hand, in this year the Sicilians were awakening to the fact that Athens was not playing a disinterested part on behalf of the Ionian states, but was dreaming of a Sicilian empire. At a sort of peace congress, Hermocrates of Syracuse successfully urged all Sicilians to compose their quarrels on the basis of uti possidetis, and thus deprive the Athenians of any excuse for remaining. Thus for the time Athenian aspirations in that quarter were checked.

At Megara this year the dissensions of the oligarchical and popular factions almost resulted in its capture by the Athenians. The Lacedæmonian Brasidas, however--who had distinguished himself at Pylos--effected an entry, so that the oligarchical and Peloponnesian party became permanently established in power. The most important operations were now in two fields. Brasidas made a dash through Thessaly into Macedonia, in alliance with Perdiccas of Macedon, with the hope of stirring the cities of Chalcidice to throw off the Athenian yoke; and the democrats of Boeotia intrigued with Athens to assist in a general revolution. Owing partly to misunderstandings and partly to treachery, the Boeotian democrats failed to carry out their programme, the Athenians were defeated at Delium, and Delium itself was captured by the Boeotians.

Meanwhile, Brasidas succeeded in persuading Acanthus to revolt, he himself winning the highest of reputations for justice and moderation as well as for military skill. Later in the year he suddenly turned his forces against the Athenian colony of Amphipolis, which he induced to surrender by offering very favourable terms before Thucydides, who was in command of Thasos, arrived to relieve it. The further successes of Brasidas during this winter made the Athenians ready to treat for peace, and a truce was agreed upon for twelve months. Brasidas, however, continued to render aid to the subject cities which revolted from Athens--this being now the ninth year of the war--but he failed in an attempt to capture Potidæa.

The period of truce terminating without any definite peace being arrived at, the summer of the tenth year is chiefly notable for the expedition sent under Cleon to recover Amphipolis, and for a recrudescence of the old quarrel in Sicily between Leontini and Syracuse. Before Amphipolis, the incompetent Cleon was routed by the skill of Brasidas; but the victor as well as the vanquished was slain, though he lived long enough to know of the victory. Their deaths removed two of the most zealous opponents of the peace for which both sides were now anxious. Hence at the close of the tenth year a definite peace was concluded.

The Lacedæmonians, however, were almost alone in being fully satisfied by the terms, and the war was really continued by an anti-Laconian confederation of the former Peloponnesian allies, who saw in the peace a means to the excessive preponderance of Athens and Sparta. Argos was brought into the new confederacy in the hope of establishing her nominal equality with Sparta. For some years from this point the combinations of the states were constantly changing, while Athens and Sparta remained generally on terms of friendliness, the two prominent figures at Athens being the conservative Nicias and the restless and ambitious young intriguer Alcibiades.

In the fourteenth year there were active hostilities between Argos, with which by this time Athens was in alliance, and Lacedæmon, issuing in the great battle of Mantinea, where there was an Athenian contingent with the Argives. This was notable especially as completely restoring the prestige of the Lacedæmonian arms, their victory being decisive. The result was a new treaty between Sparta and Argos, and the dissolution of the Argive-Athenian alliance; but this was once more reversed in the following year, when the Argive oligarchy was attacked successfully by the popular party.

The next year is marked by the high-handed treatment of the island of Melos by the Athenians. This was one of the very few islands which had not been compelled to submit to Athens, but had endeavoured to remain neutral. Thither the Athenians now sent an expedition, absolutely without excuse, to compel their submission.

The Melians, however, refused, and gave the Athenians a good deal of trouble before they could be subdued, when the adult male population was put to death, and the women and children enslaved. At this time the Athenians resolved, under colour of an appeal for assistance from the Sicilian city of Egesta, deliberately to set about the establishment of their empire in Sicily. The aggressive policy was vehemently advocated by Alcibiades, and opposed by Nicias. Nevertheless, he, with Alcibiades and Lamachus, was appointed to command the expedition, which was prepared on a scale of unparalleled magnificence. It was on the point of starting, when the whole city was stirred to frenzy by the midnight mutilation of the sacred images called Hermæ, an act laid at the door of Alcibiades, along with many other charges of profane outrages. Of set purpose, however, the enemies of Alcibiades refused to bring him to trial. The expedition sailed. The Syracusans were deaf to the warnings of Hermocrates until the great fleet had actually arrived at Rhegium.

Nicias was now anxious to find an excuse, in the evident falsity of statements made by the Egestans, for the fleet to content itself with making a demonstration and then returning home. The scheme of Alcibiades, however, was adopted for gaining over the other Sicilian states in order to crush Syracuse. But at this moment dispatches arrived requiring the return of Alcibiades to stand trial. Athens was in a panic over the Hermæ affair, which was supposed to portend an attempt to reestablish the despotism which had been ended a hundred years before by the expulsion of the Pisistratidæ. Alcibiades, however, made his escape, and for years pursued a life of political intrigue against the Athenian government.

Nicias and Lamachus, left in joint command, drew off the Syracusan forces by a ruse, and were thus enabled to occupy unchecked a strong position before Syracuse. Although, however, they inflicted a defeat on the returned Syracusan forces, they withdrew into winter quarters; the Syracusans were roused by Hermocrates to improve their military organisation; and both sides entered on a diplomatic contest for winning over the other states of Sicily. Alcibiades, now an avowed enemy of Athens, was received by the Lacedæmonians, whom he induced to send an able Spartan officer, Gylippus, to Syracuse, and to determine on the establishment of a military post corresponding to that of Pylos on Attic soil at Decelea.

IV.--The Disaster of Syracuse

In the spring the Athenians succeeded in establishing themselves on the heights called Epipolæ, overlooking Syracuse, began raising a wall of circumvallation, and carried by a surprise the counter-stockade which the Syracusans were raising. In one of the skirmishes, while the building of the wall was in progress, Lamachus was killed; otherwise matters went well for the Athenians and ill for the Syracusans, till Gylippus was allowed to land at Himera, force his way into Syracuse, and give new life. Nicias was guilty of the blunder of allowing Gylippus to land at Himera, to aid the defence, at the moment when it was on the point of capitulation. A long contest followed, the Athenians endeavouring to complete the investing lines, the Syracusans to pierce them with counterworks. Nicias sent to Athens for reinforcements, while the Syracusans were energetically fitting out a fleet and appealing for air in the Peloponnese. Nicias, in fact, was extremely despondent and anxious to resign; the Athenians, however, answered his dispatches by preparing a great reinforcement under the command of Demosthenes, without accepting the resignation of Nicias. The Lacedæmonians, however, also sent some reinforcements; at the same time they formally declared war, and carried out the plan of occupying and fortifying Decelea, which completely commanded the Athenian territory and was the cause of untold loss and suffering.