THE “North-West” of Greece, the district from the island Zacynthus on the south to Corcyra on the north, was of importance to Athens because its islands, coast towns, and peoples commanded the route which her ships, merchantmen, and war vessels must take on the voyage to and from Italy and Sicily. Until it came to war (when the islanders’ ships were worth the having), the district was not valuable to her for any other reason, either political or commercial, except in so far as it was always a pleasure to annoy Corinth by interference in its affairs. For the district was full of Corinthian colonies.
For years past, the North-West had been the scene of fierce feuds and hatreds. City raged against city, tribe against tribe. The natives of the coast and the hinterland behind it were hardly more civilised than they are today, when competing religions have added their fuel to the flames. It needed Rome to give the district prosperity and peace. All its inhabitants, Greek and barbarian, in 431 B.C., were united in just one very reasonable determination, namely to use the great war for their own ends, to get by it the better of their own local enemies. Otherwise, what did it matter to any of them which of these two distant, powerful, and quarrelsome cities, Athens and Sparta, came out on top? Even Corinth’s interests could kindle but a gentle enthusiasm in her own colonies, and not in all of these. Sparta, indeed, might be more likely to leave the North-West to its own happy devices than were the Athenian busybodies with their ever-restless fleet. And Sparta was proclaiming loudly that she was fighting for the “liberty” of all the Greeks. A noble war-cry! Who would guarantee that Sparta herself would leave them alone if she did manage to win the victory? Meanwhile, however, there were rich chestnuts to be picked out of the blazing fire.
There were two feuds in chief, the one on sea, the other on land. Corcyra had hated Corinth for two and a half centuries. On land there was a feud as bitter. The chief military power of the district (to use grandiose language) was that of the Ambraciots on the north, whose chief city was Ambracia, a Corinthian colony, a town of some 7000 citizens.{198}Their neighbours, the Amphilochians to the east of the Ambraciot Gulf and the Acarnanians to the south of it, had fallen at loggerheads with them concerning the chief town of the district, Amphilochian Argos, near the head of the gulf. Amphilochians first dwelt in this town. Later, there came Ambraciot settlers and lived with them side by side. The original townsfolk learnt Greek ways and speech from them. Their Amphilochian kinsfolk remained barbarians. Presently the new-comers drove the old inhabitants out. These sought aid from the friendly Acarnanians. Appeal was made to Athens. Sometime shortly before the great war, Phormio and 30 ships sailed into the gulf and promptly took the city. The Amphilochians were restored. Their allies the Acarnanians supplied other citizens. The Ambraciots remained in the town—as slaves.{199} Ambracia was minded to revenge her countrymen upon Argos, Acarnania, and Athens at the earliest possible opportunity. And the wild rustic Agraeans to the south-east of Argos, under a tribal king Salynthius, were quite ready to help the best soldiers of the district, the Ambraciots,{200} in any enterprise for fighting and for plunder.{201}
The islands were divided in their sympathies. Zacynthus took the Athenian side, like Corcyra.{202} The midway islands, Cephallenia and Leucas, were mildly attached to Corinth and gave her help of varying value.{203} On Leucas there was a small Corinthian garrison.{204} The towns of the coast-line, mostly Corinthian colonies, were zealous for the Peloponnesian cause. First of these was Oeniadae, a famous city on a low hill in the marshes at the mouth of the great river of the district, the Achelous. The turbulent, muddy river made the city well-nigh impregnable to attack, at least in winter from the landward side.{205} In the legendary days there had come wandering a Greek, Alcmaeon, to whom the whole earth was accursed after his murder of his mother. “Find you a land on which the sun did not shine when the deed was done—then, but not till then, comes escape from your terrors.” So Apollo the sun-god had by his oracle commanded. The foaming Achelous, eddying and twisting in its channel, laid bare a mud-bank. Here the fugitive found his rest and built him a city to dwell in. So he ruled the tribesmen, and left to the country the name of his son, Acarnan. So Oeniadae became a chief city of Acarnania.{206} Here in these same marshes a hundred years ago the Englishman, Byron, defied the conquering Turk, and, falling victim to the pestilence of the swamps, redeemed his own name to undying honour and gave Misolonghi its proud place in the history of Greek liberty.
Oeniadae then stood stoutly for the Spartan side, though her Acarnanian kin were allies of the enemy. North of it, on the coast, lay Astacus, governed by “the tyrant” Evarchus, as poor a little pawn in the great game as ever any petty Italian “despot” who fell into the clutches of Caesar Borgia. Evarchus, misliking democracy, supported Corinth.{207} North again of Astacus lay Sollium, a colony of Corinth, somewhat apprehensive, too, of the native Acarnanian township of Palaerus a few miles away.{208} And on the southern shore and just inside of the narrow entrance into the broad Ambraciot Gulf round Actium promontory was a stronger city, Anactorium by name, a joint Corinthian and Corcyrean colony. The Corinthians in 432 B.C. had treacherously seized and garrisoned this town, which the Acarnanians would gladly have had for their own, and looked all the more angrily for this upon the Corinthian cause.{209} Just four centuries later, Actium won its immortal fame when Cleopatra fled and Mark Antony, following his beloved, gave the lordship of the world to Octavian, greatest of the Romans.
The greater part of the North-West was thus hostile to Athens at the beginning of the great war. To the south, at Naupactus within the Corinthian Gulf, and at Corcyra, far away in the north, her ships could find shelter. At the head of the Ambraciot Gulf, the little hill fort of Olpae guarded the access of the men of Argos, three miles away inland, to the sea. This, too, would welcome an Athenian vessel if it ventured past enemy Anactorium at the entrance.{210} The country-side too behind the coast towns, and the native villages on the coast itself, were friendly. But the hostile towns guarded much of the coast itself and made it dangerous voyaging for the Athenians in time of war. The chief town of Acarnania was Stratus, the modern Surovigli, in the Achelous valley on the river’s western bank. This was the centre of the inland district, with roads radiating from it in all directions. It indeed was friendly.{211} But it was dangerously exposed to attack by the Ambraciots, and was cause of anxiety rather than of strength to the Athenian commander at Naupactus.
In the very first year of the war, an Athenian fleet of 100 ships, under three admirals, men of no note, appeared in the district, after doing some damage to Laconia and Elis coasts en route. Joined by 50 Corcyreans they fared as far as Sollium, which they took and handed over to the Acarnanians of Palaerus to garrison. Voyaging back again, they stormed Astacus, expelling its unlucky tyrant, and won over Cephallenia Island with its four towns peaceably to the Athenian side. Then home they went.{212}
Evarchus made his way disconsolately to Corinth, where he wrought upon the feelings of the Corinthians so successfully that, when the enemy were safely off the scene again, these put valorously out to sea with 40 ships and three commanders. (It was not until the next winter of 430 B.C. that Phormio arrived at Naupactus.) The tyrant contributed a band of mercenaries to the expedition at his own charges. So they brought Evarchus back in triumph to Astacus. He resumed his reign and disappears from any further record. Native villages on the Acarnanian coast, however, refused to listen to Corinthian persuasions, and the men of Crane on Cephallenia entrapped a landing-party. So the Corinthians too went home, not without serious loss of life.{213}
In the following year, 430 B.C., the Athenians, exhausted by their previous achievements, made no attempt to follow up their successes. The Peloponnesians had the field clear. They made a considerable effort. As many as 100 ships descended upon Zacynthus under the Spartan admiral Cnemus, who now makes his first appearance in the western area, where in a few years he managed to lose any reputation for ability which he may once have enjoyed at Sparta. On this occasion he plundered the lands of the men of Zacynthus, and went back home again. In the north the men of Ambracia took the field, assisted by a horde of gleeful barbarians. They marched upon the hated city of Amphilochian Argos. It defied their assaults. They ravaged its fields outside and went back home again. The tribes dispersed.{214}
But the foray had whetted the Ambraciots’ appetite. They proposed a comprehensive plan to the Spartan Government. Give them all due aid, they pleaded, and they would crush Acarnania, take Cephallenia and Zacynthus, and might hope to finish up gloriously by the capture even of Naupactus itself. There would then be an end of these Athenian circumnavigations of the Peloponnese.{215}
The Spartan Government was greatly attracted by the scheme. Corinth was enthusiastic. Every possible ally was called upon for ships, and Cnemus, selected as generalissimo, was sent with a whole thousand Peloponnesian hoplites to act as core of the motley muster of Highland clans. Leucas was the rendezvous. Cnemus successfully slipped across to the island with the thousand, unobserved by Phormio at Naupactus. He found the ships from Leucas, Anactorium, and Ambracia duly arrived. But the Corinthian contingent delayed its coming. The Spartan had now at his disposal without it several thousands of Greek and native troops. The whole strength of the district was collected together. Thucydides calls the barbarian roll with great magnificence: “Chaonians under Photius and Nicanor, presidents; Thesprotians, who also own no king; Paravaeans under King Oroedus; Orestians with them, sent to help by King Antiochus; a Molossian and Atintanian corps under command of Sabylinthus, guardian of Tharypas the king, who was still a minor”—in such precise detail does the historian give us his heroic “catalogue” for the siege of the enemy’s capital Stratus.{216} Perdiccas, too, the trickster, king of distant Macedonia, ally of Athens at the moment, sent a thousand troops. These arrived too late, remarks Thucydides drily. There was the strong Ambraciot levy as well.
Cnemus could not wait indefinitely for the 47 ships from Corinth. He really had too many mouths to feed. At the head of his host he crossed the sand from Leucas to the mainland,{217} and marched in panoply of war upon the scared and isolated Acarnanians. In vain these sent to Phormio at Naupactus for aid. He replied that his business was urgent elsewhere. There was the fleet mustering at Corinth to which he must attend. How skilfully he and his little squadron of 20 did attend to them, at the battle of Chalcis, has been told already.{218} That he had failed earlier to catch Cnemus and the thousand might seem a pity. As things turned out, this was no loss.
Cnemus led his host gaily forwards along the southern shore of the Ambraciot Gulf. They plundered the small unwalled village at Limnaea, crossed the northern spur of Mount Thyamus, and came down from the north upon the town of Stratus. The Acarnanians of the countryside left their chief city to guard itself. Every village kept its warriors at home.
The Spartan general directed his army against the isolated city in line of columns widely separated. The thousand Peloponnesians with the Ambraciots formed the left column, under his personal command. The right consisted of the troops from Leucas and Anactorium and their allies. A dense mass of barbarians formed the centre. No attempt was made by scouts, orderlies, or signallers to keep the columns in touch, and at times they were even out of sight of one another. As day declined, the right and left, which were marching in due order and precaution, halted and made ready to encamp. But the barbarian centre, confident and careless, pushed on at top speed, to have the sole glory of the capture and plunder of the town. So they disappeared in the distance.
The men of Stratus saw them coming. Hastily they set an ambuscade outside the city gates. The barbarians plunged headlong into the trap. Troops from the city sallied out upon them and sprang up from the ambush on either hand. They broke and fled in utter panic.
Down upon Cnemus and his Greeks the fugitives came rushing, with the enemy in hot pursuit. He acted with the skill of a trained soldier, drawing his wings together and confronting the foe boldly and in order. The pursuers halted. The Acarnanians were famous for their use of the sling. A rain of stones fell upon Cnemus’ men at a short distance. In the face of their nimble opponents they dared not break ranks to attack. They stood rooted to the spot, suffering grievously.
The coming of night saved them. Under its sheltering darkness Cnemus hastily withdrew his whole force, marching nine miles west to reach the river Anapus, where he halted in safety. The men of Stratus did not pursue, and the countryside was not yet so roused that its united army could be launched against the defeated enemy. Next day, under flag of truce, Cnemus recovered his dead, and, the men of Oeniadae coming to his rescue, he marched away unpursued down-stream to the coast and so to the sheltering city in the marshes. There he dismissed his allies back to their several homes. And the men of Stratus justly raised a trophy in honour of their “battle with the barbarians”.{219}
Soon after, Cnemus himself sailed away to Cyllene to join the relics of the Corinthian fleet escaped from the defeat by Phormio at Chalcis. There he prepared to try his own fortunes once more, this time at sea against the Athenian admiral. How he fared at the battle of Naupactus has been told already.{220} Cnemus was but a blunderer, both by land and by sea. The great Ambraciot project had ended in disaster.
Of Phormio’s activities after his second victory, of his return to Athens in the spring of 428 B.C., of his death and his fame, the story has also been told. His rival Cnemus must be allowed to make now his own last appearance upon the stage of events.
Cnemus with his discomfited squadron fled to Corinth after his defeat at Naupactus, and there, in that rich and comfortable city, he stayed, Brasidas and his other comrades in misfortune keeping him company. There came to him one day at the approach of this winter of 429 B.C. certain Megarians with a bold suggestion. Peiraeus, Athens’ own great port and arsenal, lay across the water only a bare 20 miles away from Nisaea, Megara’s harbour on the Saronic Gulf. The entrance to Peiraeus harbour, they said, was open and un guarded, “as was natural”, adds Thucydides, “since the Athenians were complete masters of the sea”. There were neither troops in the port nor guard-ships on watch outside the harbour mouth. The place invited a raid. There were, moreover, at the moment as many as 40 ships lying in the docks at Nisaea. Let Cnemus bring his sailors over the isthmus by land from Corinth to Megara, man the ships, and descend, a bolt from the blue, upon Peiraeus.
It was a golden opportunity in very truth. No one in Athens had ever dreamed of an open attack by sea upon Peiraeus. How was it conceivable? Yet the Athenians’ blunder was a grievous one. They claimed entire freedom of action for their fleet, as was natural. Yet they had failed to realise the one indispensable prerequisite for such freedom, that the fleet’s base must be secure and not demand that fleet itself to protect it.{222} The Spartan commanders immediately snatched at the idea. Their sailors crossed the isthmus of Corinth, each man carrying his own rowing-pad, his oar, and the thong which served the oar as rowlock. The 40 ships at Nisaea seem to have lacked these essentials. The men reached Nisaea by night, went aboard, and put out to sea. They had had a long march of nearly 30 miles of mountain road. But they manned the ships at once. Then Cnemus’ heart failed him when the friendly coast vanished in the dark behind him. There loomed up in front of him the near promontory of Salamis, four miles away. Salamis was a hostile shore. Salamis would suit admirably for a raid. There was just one fort upon the promontory at Budorum, and three enemy ships were posted off the point to see that nothing came into or out of Megara by sea. Cnemus and his colleagues gave up the original idea and steered for Salamis. Here they had some hours of undisputed enjoyment. They assailed the fort, towed away the three ships (their crews were either not on board at night or promptly swam ashore), and roamed up and down the greater part of the island, collecting many prisoners and much spoil.
Meanwhile the alarm was given. Fire-signals woke Peiraeus and Athens herself to intense panic. Peiraeus believed that the foe were hard upon them: Athens that they were already masters of Peiraeus. In actual fact, says Thucydides, there was nothing to prevent the raiders sailing right into Peiraeus harbour had they risked it. Their commanders later on pleaded that the wind had been contrary. “The wind would not have prevented it”, the historian remarks coldly. At dawn the whole warrior population of Athens came pouring down tumultuously into Peiraeus. In frantic haste sailors swarmed on shipboard, while the troops spread out to guard the port. Out sailed the avenging fleet. But when they reached Salamis, the island was ravaged and the foe was gone. At first sight of the coming ships Cnemus had retired with all celerity home to Nisaea. His 40 ships had been so long laid up in port that they were leaking badly. The sooner on all accounts he was home again the better. The Athenians sadly gave up the pursuit. They had at least learnt one lesson, to close Peiraeus harbour mouth and guard it in future.
This raid so far as Salamis is concerned was a success. Thucydides is clearly so struck by the brilliance of the original idea that he is almost regretful that Cnemus’ courage failed him at the last moment. The Megarians are indeed to be congratulated on the idea of a raid of greater daring and of fairer promise than ever was the wanton German bombardment of undefended Hartlepool and Whitby. Like so many plans in war, the raid on the Peiraeus ought to have succeeded and did not. Probably it was too ambitious in view of the quality of the troops and sailors to whom it was entrusted and especially of that of their commander. Cnemus was acting under no instructions when he turned aside from his main object, the Peiraeus, to the very minor one of Salamis. Drake and Norris, admirals of the “Counter-Armada” of 1589, were diverted from their main object, the capture of Lisbon, to a very secondary one, the raiding of Corunna, by Elizabeth’s express orders. For that failure the Queen must bear the blame. But the Spartan failure now, as on a very similar occasion fifteen years later,{223} was due to a faint-hearted commander. There is no evidence that Sparta ever used Cnemus again. But he has distracted our attention from the west, the scene of his earlier failures, perhaps too long.
The two years which followed the year of battles, 429 B.C., were inglorious to both sides alike in the west. In 428 B.C. Phormio’s son Asopius arrived at Naupactus with a dozen ships. The Acarnanians, who had specially begged for his coming in their affection for his father, flocked to his standard. But fate dealt hardly with Asopius. He was beaten off in an attack on Oeniadae, and, making a descent upon Leucas, was killed at Nericum on that island.{224}
After this, the interest for the time being shifts wholly to Corcyra and its bitter faction-fighting. How, in 427 B.C., the pusillanimous Alcidas sailed north to help the oligarchs upon that blood-stained island, and how he fled south again at the coming of the Athenian squadron under Eurymedon, are tales already told.{225} Then the maddened democrats, more treacherous than any Communist of the Barricades, took their vengeance upon the opposite party. Those who escaped the horrors of the massacre fortified themselves at last upon Mount Istone on the north of the island, and, burning their boats lest they should ever dream of flight, ravaged and plundered without pause or mercy.{226} Truly the war on Corcyra was a war of fire and a truceless war. Never, until perhaps our own day, had red revolution, that party faction which was the undying curse of ancient Greece, given birth to fouler deeds of crime. And Thucydides himself turns aside to dwell in calm and stately language upon the causes and the nature of that revolutionary spirit of class-hatred. Beneath the surface of his quiet analysis there glows the hidden fire of generous indignation, and his chapters{227} have burnt themselves, and may have cause to burn themselves again, upon the remembrance of mankind.
Then, in the summer of 426 B.C., operations of war began again in the district, and new commanders claim attention. In that summer the Athenians sent out two new generals to the west, Demosthenes and Procles, with 30 ships. It was a year crowded with events, and, in this district, decisive of the issue in favour of Athens. The new general Demosthenes, who had hitherto enjoyed no independent command, was to show himself among the most brilliant, and the only brilliant of Athenian tacticians in the entire war. But he began inauspiciously enough by quarrelling with Athens’ chief allies, the Acarnanians, and by involving himself and his men in such disaster as nearly cost him his life in the dark forest land of Aetolia, and his city all that she had hitherto gained in the north-west. Both quarrel and disaster were closely connected.
The Athenian ships sailed round the Peloponnese and up north to the hostile island of Leucas. The allies of Athens in the district gathered to join forces, the Acarnanians in full strength, 15 ships from Corcyra, Messenians from Naupactus, and contingents from Cephallenia and Zacynthus. They ravaged the fields of the Leucadians both on the mainland opposite the island and on the island itself. They were too strong for the men of the city of Leucas by themselves to withstand, and Sparta had as yet sent no help. The citizens remained within the shelter of their walls.
The Acarnanians were eager to take the city by blockade. All that was needed, they urged the Athenian commanders, was the building of a wall across the sandy isthmus which then linked the so-called island with the mainland. But Demosthenes was not over-interested in the district as an isolated theatre of war. A grander scheme of strategy was in his mind. Leaving Leucas to its own devices, he moved his entire force to Sollium and there expounded his plan to the very sulky Acarnanians.{228}
The Messenians at Naupactus had long been worried by the Aetolian tribes in their neighborhood. Aetolia was a land of dense forests, ravines, and well-nigh trackless mountains. Its tribes were numerous and savage, the largest of them, the Eurytanes, “speak a language more unintelligible than any of their neighbours”, says Thucydides, “and are believed to eat raw flesh”.{229} The natives dwelt after the old primitive fashion in unwalled villages in the clearings of their forests. They stretched away to touch the borders of Phocis and towards the Maliac Gulf on the north-east. All of them were warriors and hunters with hunters’ weapons. Walled cities and heavy armour were equally strange to these, the Red Indians of ancient Greece. There was little love lost between the tribesmen and the alien settlers who had seized the one good harbour, Naupactus, of the coast-line.
In Demosthenes and his large array the Messenians of Naupactus saw their chance. They came to him at Leucas and urged him to attack and conquer Aetolia. It was not a difficult enterprise, they asserted, although the natives were, as they admitted, warlike. But let him deal with them rapidly, tribe by tribe, and the whole country must soon be his. Let him make a beginning with the Apodoti in the hills immediately behind the coast-line beyond the lower course of the river Daphnus (the Mornos of today) to the north-east of Naupactus. Then let him cross the river westwards against the Ophioneis on the farther bank, and so push forward against the Eurytanes themselves beyond the Evenus. When these, the chief folk, were quelled, no other tribe in the whole district but would at once submit.
The simplicity of the Messenians’ plan, however vague and airy, in the absence of any available maps, it must seem to the Athenian soldier, might strike him as more engaging than its positive advantages. Leucas would surely be a far more profitable prey than this Aetolian savage wilderness of mountain and forest. Nothing else, it might well be, was of such concern to his Messenians. But the Athenian mind grasped at a far nobler plan. Devised on the spot this can scarcely have been. There was a new and fiery spirit abroad in the war councils of Athens when Demosthenes left the city for the west. The new statesman Cleon had no love for passive endurance any more. Nicias, too, who also makes his first appearance in the war in this same summer, was in the first flush of an unwonted energy. The War Office, in its zeal for the “new offensive”, looked to the dour, bitter enemy on their northern frontier, Boeotia. There were many wrongs of the invasions of the last five years to avenge. The time for action had come at last. They would assail Boeotia by land. Not indeed theirs to march over the mountain passes straight on Thebes. That still would be an over-risky undertaking. The front door was heavily barred and bolted. But there were side entrances on the coast, Oropus way. And there was a back door down the Cephisus river from its source in the hills of Doris far away in the north-west. To come down unexpectedly on the enemy by the back-door—this should be Demosthenes’ business. Oropus and Tanagra, to be reached, the one by the fleet of Nicias, the other by the great land army under Eurymedon, saviour of Corcyra in the preceding year—these were the concerns of the War Office at home. How many earnest talks did Demosthenes have with Eurymedon in the winter before they parted on their allotted tasks? And there were still many secret friends of Athens in the north-west of Boeotia, “disgruntled democrats” at Chaeronea and elsewhere who had small love for Thebes. How could they be reached and encouraged to revolt save by an Athenian army coming down the great highway from the north-west? Nicias with a powerful fleet at Oropus, Eurymedon with a great army at Tanagra, the north of Boeotia in arms—what would harassed Thebes do then? Let Demosthenes do his part. The expeditions this summer to Oropus and to Tanagra duly took place. But what happened to Demosthenes?
At the very outset of this remarkable enterprise that unfortunate strategist had met with a rude rebuff. With Boeotia in his mind he had listened eagerly to his Messenians’ assurances. Here up the ready access of the Daphnus river valley lay the route to Boeotia through Aetolia. His first objective was a little mountain town, Cytinium in Doris, at the head waters of the Cephisus. The obvious route to Cytinium from the southern waters of the Corinthian Gulf was by the highway from Cirrha on the gulf straight north. Unhappily on this road lay Amphissa, chief city and stronghold of the Ozolian Locrians. Characteristically enough, the city was lukewarm if not actually hostile to Athens, while the Locrians themselves of the countryside were friendly.{230} Moreover, Cirrha was too far from Naupactus and too near to Corinth. Some alternative route must be found which turned the flank of Amphissa. The Daphnus valley offered itself. From the upper valley in the district of the Aetolian tribe the Kallieis it was but a bee-line of eight miles over the watershed hills due east to strike the Amphissa-Cytinium road north of the former city. So Demosthenes would reach Cytinium without hindrance and march cheerfully down Cephisus river, keeping north of Parnassus ridge lying on his right flank, through Phocis in full cry for the Boeotian frontier.
To the Messenians the Aetolian campaign was just part of a great scheme to isolate Ambracia. It was not in this sense that Demosthenes embraced it eagerly; not in this sense that he expounded it to his surprised Acarnanian and Corcyrean allies at Sollium.
What was Boeotia to these? Aetolia might be a matter of mild if unduly remote interest. Boeotia was a name in the distance, far beneath their horizon. Demosthenes’ plan was a wild goose chase, and would take him away out of their ken. What were he and his 30 ships doing in the west if not to help Athens’ faithful allies here to hold their own and plunder the enemy? Phormio had known his business. The unhappy Asopius had tried his best. But—Demosthenes! Aetolia! Boeotia!
There was bad trouble in the camp at Sollium. Back to Corcyra sailed the 15 Corcyrean ships. The Acarnanian army flatly refused its help.
Demosthenes was regretful. The Acarnanians would have been particularly useful. But he had plenty of men without them. With those that remained he sailed back to the gulf and landed at Oeneon, a small port nine miles east of Naupactus. This he had selected as his starting-point. He sent word to the Locrians up country to meet him in the interior with their full levy; engaged a Messenian, Chromon by name, as guide; and, with the Messenians to advise him continually and 300 young Athenian hoplites who were serving as marines on ship on whom to place complete reliance, he gave the word to march. Even some Aetolians, he hopefully reflected, might join the expedition as it marched forwards.
Speed, the Messenians urged, speed was everything, before the tribes could muster in force together. But Demosthenes was troubled. He had a company of archers. But he needed also auxiliaries who knew the Aetolians and their manner of fighting. The Acarnanians were likely to be sorely missed. He must have the Locrians instead, and these had not yet arrived. The enemy’s borders lay but a few miles away. When would the Locrians come?
On the first day of the march from Oeneon, the modern Klima, the army moved westwards, parallel to the sea, and encamped for the night hard by Eupalium, the modern Sules, at the Temple of Nemean Zeus. Early next morning it crossed the frontier of the Apodoti, and took possession of Potidania, the modern Omer Effendi, a hamlet which guarded the one ford over the lower river Daphnus, in an angle of the river. There was no track up the river-bank, and Demosthenes next day struck over the hills a bare six miles to Crocyleum, the modern Ghumaii. Here he was just four miles as the crow flies from the starting-point Oeneon. On the fourth day the army made a better effort, reaching Teichium, the modern Lykochori, three and a half hours’ ride from Crocyleum. Here Demosthenes called a halt. He sent back the spoils of these three insignificant Aetolian settlements to Eupalium. They can hardly have been worth the sending. And still there were no Locrians. The army now lay on the south bank of the Daphnus again. Across the river was the country of another Aetolian tribe, the Ophioneis. Here lay its way, did it advance farther.
The slow pace of the advance up to this point is amazing. The army had moved by quite “ridiculously short stages”, says the modern topographer. “The Athenian general”, he adds, rather heavily, “was impaled upon the horns of a fatal dilemma, vacillating between the alternatives of a daring initiative and a cautious, methodical policy until his enemies forced upon him a solution in the shape of hopeless retreat.”{231}
In fact, at Teichium Demosthenes’ heart misgave him badly. Still no Locrians, a treacherous river, and gloomy forests! Had he not better abandon the whole scheme, or turn it into a purely “Aetolian project”, return to Naupactus, and threaten the Ophioneis in a later campaign?
The Messenians had no misgivings. Let him only push on, they repeated, and all would be well. Luck also seemed to smile on him. He had reached so far without the least hindrance. “Perhaps he had never seen the enemy at all.” Trusting his luck would still hold,{232} Demosthenes resolved to make the plunge. The advance was resumed, and, at last, when it was all too late, with greater energy.
Ten miles beyond Teichium up-stream, on the northern bank of the Daphnus, at a meeting-place of many waters, there was an Aetolian settlement of greater importance, Aegitium, the modern Kastro of Veluchovos, on the foot-hills of Vardhusi mountain, the strongest fortress site in Aetolia. Three valleys with steep rocky slopes led down upon it.{233}
Here first the tribes were likely to muster to bar the way. Built on heights above the Mornos valley, the fortress was conspicuous at a distance to the army pushing up the river.
The fiery cross had already borne the news of the invasion over the mountains of the land to its most distant tribes. Even the remote Bomieis and Kallieis came swarming to the rescue, converging on Aegitium. Demosthenes, pushing at last rapidly up-stream, found the fort itself empty. The inhabitants had stolen away to the refuge of the heights overhanging it on the north and north-east. But every hillside was thick with the enemy from far and near. No sooner had Demosthenes seized the place than the tribesmen came swarming down upon the Athenian army on every side, and showers of darts fell upon the worried troops.
It was no ordered battle such as the Athenian heavy-armed soldier loved. When he charged, the nimble foe fled before him. When he retreated, the natives were back pressing fiercely upon him. Such assailants on broken hilly ground can only be routed by men equally unencumbered and by flank attacks. The helpless Athenian general could only stand fast, and keep the natives off by arrow-fire. So long as his ammunition lasted, so long he might maintain his ground. Presently the store of arrows failed, the captain of the archers fell slain, the tribesmen ventured closer and closer, the rain of enemy missiles grew thicker, the Athenians wavered, lost their order, broke, and fled.
It was a hideous rout and the most joyful of pursuits. In that “wilderness of scrub and ravine”{234} the fugitives had no chance. Every way was strange to them, every hillside an enemy. Their own guide, Chromon, had been killed. The greater number got into the pathless forest. The Aetolians set fire to the undergrowth and burnt their enemy alive.
“So the Athenians tried every means of escape and perished in all manner of ways”, writes Thucydides. The remnant made their way back over the broken country, even today practically a desert, the dozen miles to the sea and Oeneon, Demosthenes among them. His colleague Procles was killed and with him 120 of the Athenian hoplites, “all in the flower of their youth: they were the very finest men whom the city of Athens lost during the war”.{235}
So the Aetolian expedition ended very speedily in complete disaster. Demosthenes conveyed the survivors back to Naupactus. His Athenians he sent off home by ship to Athens. He himself stayed at Naupactus. “For after what had happened he feared the anger of the Athenians.”{236} In this at least he acted sagaciously.
The Athenian general has been the target for some bitter and contemptuous criticism for the whole plan of the Aetolian expedition. “There was no reason to suppose, as he did, that the conquest of Aetolia would be a matter of course; that the Phocians, Sparta’s allies, would join him if he reached them; or that if he and his small force did manage to struggle through to the Boeotian frontier the Boeotians would have been panic-stricken. On the contrary, they would instantly have descended upon and annihilated him. He advanced ‘trusting to luck’. Luck, it is suggested, rarely did him a kinder turn than when it allowed the Aetolians to nip his project in the very early bud.”{237}
Neither does it help his reputation to follow an English historian in suggesting that, as the Spartans were just founding a settlement at Heraclea near the Maliac Gulf, Demosthenes intended to threaten this from Doris! He really need not be made responsible for this “eminently impracticable plan”, as the same historian then himself avows such to be.{238}
The immediate causes of the disaster at Aegitium have become clear from the narrative. The Acarnanian refusal to co-operate and the absence of the Locrians, for whom he waited too long, deprived Demosthenes of the light-armed troops which were essential for success. The local knowledge of the Messenians was the best available, but they had no warrant for their advice. The system of communication from Aetolian village to village was extraordinarily good, as between African villages today, and the tribesmen were mustering in force before ever Demosthenes left Oeneon. Forest fighting, too, was a very novel experience for an Athenian.{239} The general from the first had no chance. At least he learnt and in due course applied one useful lesson from his doleful experience, the value of light-armed troops against heavy-armed in broken country.
The great strategical idea of attack on Boeotia is not to be so cavalierly dismissed, if it be held that co-operation was from the first planned with Nicias and Eurymedon at Tanagra. This is not suggested by Thucydides. It remains none the less quite an attractive idea, inasmuch as the strategy of offence against Boeotia devised two years later, as will be seen, is planned on much the same lines.
Demosthenes may have been the Athenian De Wet, “more of a tactician than a strategist”,{240} and we can let luck play the part in his story we please, so long as we do not ridiculously turn Thucydides into a tragic dramatist. Perhaps, even for the Aetolian expedition, the general merits more consideration from history than he would have received, as he very well knew, from a jury of his indignant countrymen.
The news of the disaster at Aegitium was received with jubilation by all the enemies of Athens. An Aetolian embassy went to Corinth and Sparta, and persuaded the Spartan Government to enter upon vigorous reprisals immediately. As many as 3000 Peloponnesian troops were at once concentrated at Delphi under a Spartan general named Eurylochus, with whom two other Spartans, Macarius and Menedaeus, were associated in the command. The object of the expedition was Naupactus itself, the garrison of which was so depleted as to have too few men even to guard the circuit of its wall. If only Naupactus could be taken, there was a final end of Athenian interference in the district. Demosthenes by his defeat had come near to costing the Athenians very dear. He himself saved the situation. Timely news reached him of the coming attack. He hurried off to Acarnania and begged for help. The Acarnanians were still sulky with him. They could hardly forgive his refusal to blockade Leucas. But his eager entreaties won the day, and they gave him a thousand men. Just in time he brought them back triumphantly by sea to Naupactus. He had enough men now to guard the walls.
So the disconsolate Eurylochus thought. He for his part had done well. But the land march from Delphi had cost him time. He had had to make his way through the length of Locris from Cytinium, whither he had marched from Delphi. It took time to collect hostages from a round dozen Locrian tribes or cities and deposit them at Cytinium before he started. The town of Amphissa gave them readily enough, and the other Locrian communities followed suit, being thoroughly scared. Most joined the expedition, but one small folk at least refused this complaisance, and another had to be persuaded even to give hostages by the capture of a village. All this took time. Hence when Eurylochus came to the end of his 50 mile march from Cytinium by Amphissa to Naupactus, he had to content himself with the capture of Oeneon and Eupalium en route, and leave Naupactus severely alone. It was too strongly garrisoned, he decided, to give any chance for assault. Demosthenes had saved the town. The Spartan contented himself for the moment with the capture of small Molycria round Rhium promontory, six miles west of Naupactus.
This was but an inglorious finale for a great effort. Richer prospects opened out before him. The Ambraciots had seized the opportunity and sent inviting him to their country. Let him help them take Amphilochian Argos, overrun Amphilochia, crush Acarnania. “The whole continent” would thus come over to the Lacedaemonians.
Eurylochus was pleased with the idea. The Ambraciots were not yet ready. He quartered his army among the towns of “Old Aetolia” between the rivers Evenus and Achelous, at Calydon, Pleuron, Proschium, and elsewhere, and waited to be summoned north. His Aetolian allies who had joined him outside Naupactus he judged of small use and dismissed them back to their villages. The summer passed away and winter drew on apace.{241}
Then the Ambraciots marched south against Argos. They were possibly one, possibly three thousand hoplites strong.{242} They seized the strong hill fort of Olpae on the shore of the Ambraciot Gulf, three miles from the city, and sent word to Eurylochus. The Spartan, collecting all his forces at Proschium, crossed the Achelous and marched north to join his allies. Meanwhile the Acarnanians had taken the field. They threw part of their forces into Argos, to help defend the town. With the rest they took up a position at Crenae, “The Wells”, 2½, miles to the south-east of Olpae, and also on the shores of the gulf. Here they lay in wait to intercept Eurylochus. It was above all things important to prevent the two enemy armies joining. It was now also their turn to beg Demosthenes to hasten to their aid from Naupactus. This was the very crisis of the whole war to the whole district. They prayed him urgently to come and take command of the entire operations. They also sent to implore a squadron of 20 Athenian ships then cruising in western waters to come as well. There was no enemy force at sea to stop them. And the Ambraciots at Olpae on their part sent to Ambracia urging the despatch of the whole levy of the rest of their countrymen to join them. Eurylochus, they reflected, might not be able to get through Acarnania, in which case the more of their own men they had at Olpae, either for fighting or for retreat, the better. Meanwhile the first levies on both sides stayed quietly in their positions, the Ambraciots at Olpae, the Acarnanians at “The Wells”.{243}
Eurylochus marched north through the length of Acarnania at top speed. The land was empty, for the men had all obeyed the call to Argos. The Spartan was therefore unopposed. Only Stratus was garrisoned, and he avoided that city by taking the road nine miles west of it through Phoetiae. From Phoetiae he marched through Medeon to Limnaea, where he reached the gulf. Just north of Limnaea the army of the enemy at Crenae and the city of Argos itself now lay in his path. With great skill Eurylochus, waiting for night to fall, struck up into the wild and lonely foot-hills of Mount Thyamus on his right, and came down under cover of the dark, slipping unseen between Crenae on his left and the city of Argos on his right. The distance between the two is a bare mile, and neither the outposts of the army at “The Wells” nor the sentries on the walls of Argos can be commended. The Spartan got through without losing a man and joined the Ambraciots at Olpae. He was now stronger in numbers than any force which could be brought against him, and powerful reinforcements could also be expected any day from Ambracia. He moved his combined forces a few miles to the north and away inland from the sea, to Metropolis, which lay under the southern edge of the Makrinoro heights. There he was nearer Ambracia and not hampered by an unfriendly sea on the flank and a swamp on his rear, as would have been the case if he had formed line of battle at Olpae.{244}
Eurylochus had indubitably won the first, the strategic, victory of the campaign. Spartans had no fear of night marching, as King Agis also showed brilliantly a few years later. It only remained for a tactical victory to crown his strategical success. Tactics, however, have sometimes spoilt strategy.
For now the master tactician arrived to command the other side. It was no fault of Demosthenes that Eurylochus had reached Olpae. The enemy were already at Metropolis when he sailed into the gulf with the 20 ships of Athens as well. The baffled army at “The Wells” had retired into Argos. Demosthenes moored his ships off Olpae and assumed command of the whole of the available forces of Acarnanians, Amphilochians, 200 Messenian hoplites, and just 60 Athenian archers. The last two contingents he had brought with him from Naupactus, the archers being those who were left him after the losses suffered by the corps in the disaster of Aegitium. At head of his entire army he moved out from Argos and took up a position east of Olpae. Eurylochus moved out of Metropolis to meet him, and halted where a deep ravine separated the opposing forces. For five days the generals kept their men within their lines. On the sixth day Eurylochus arrayed his army in order of battle, probably crossing to the enemy’s side of the ravine. He already outnumbered his foe, and decided to wait no longer for the coming reinforcements from Ambracia, of whom there was no sign. Two or three days more patience on the Spartan’s part, and Athens’ fleet might never have sailed for Sicily ten years later.
When the armies stood face to face, Demosthenes, who took the right of his line with his Messenians and archers, saw that the enemy’s left, where Eurylochus himself stood with the best of his Peloponnesians, the men of Mantinea, overlapped and threatened to enclose his own right. He had time to hide 400 men in a hollow lane overgrown with brushwood which lay on the extreme right of the battle-field. This ambush it was which won the day.
For when battle was joined, Eurylochus’ right wing, where Ambraciots and Peloponnesians were intermingled, drove back the Acarnanians on Demosthenes’ left wing, and these fled towards Argos. But when the victors stayed their pursuit and turned back again towards the battle-field, they saw the greater part of their army in melancholy rout. Eurylochus had led his own wing forward, and had bent it round to overlap the enemy, as Demosthenes had foreseen. Then there rose up the 400 from their ambush and fell shouting upon the backs of the foe. The surprise was complete. The whole of the Peloponnesian left was crumpled up. They fled without striking a blow. The panic spread along the line. It seized their comrades of the right as they returned to the scene. The whole army ran for Olpae fort. This was the kind of fighting the Messenians above all men enjoyed. Many of the runners were cut down in the confusion of the flight or as they herded together in the struggle to get in at the gate of the fort. Only the Mantineans drew off in order and retreated as a disciplined force. When evening came, the defeated Peloponnesian and Ambraciot army found itself cooped up within Olpae’s walls, a victorious army outside, and the enemy fleet riding the waters of the gulf just beneath, while among their dead on the battle-field lay Eurylochus himself, and Macarius, one of the other two Spartan generals. Demosthenes had won a most notable victory over superior numbers by the tactical device of the ambush, at a cost to himself of but 300 slain. And he held the enemy’s southern army in the hollow of his hand. Menedaeus, its sole surviving commander, was truly in sorry plight, caught in Olpae fort.{245}
“Armies shut up in a fortress after lost battles are themselves almost invariably lost”, writes the German expert, Von der Goltz.{246} The Spartan general was in no mind to stand a siege. In the small fort of Olpae there can have been little or no food. In the north, Ambracia way, there might perhaps be another army, or there might not. Nothing had been heard of it. Unexpectedly promoted to chief command, Menedaeus had but one single idea in all his narrow Spartan head—escape for himself and his army. He sent parleying with Demosthenes for permission to march away unmolested.
Demosthenes for his part was not too happy. At any moment another hostile army might come down upon him. He would gladly have his hands free to deal with this. Speedily he saw what fruit to pluck out of the situation. Menedaeus’ request was refused. But a secret treaty, known on the one side to Demosthenes and his Acarnanian colleagues, on the other to Menedaeus, the Mantineans, and other Peloponnesians, was concluded allowing these and these only to depart.{247}
Menedaeus and his friends jumped at the chance of escape. For the Ambraciots the Spartan cared not one whit. Theirs had been the unlucky invitation. Let them pay the price for it. His duty to his Home Government was to bring his own excellent Peloponnesian troops back safe to serve in other and more attractive theatres of war. This and this only Sparta would demand of him. No awkward questions would be asked concerning the means which he used to achieve this end.
And so, Thucydides writes, the Peloponnesians hastily buried their dead, and in the afternoon of this the day after the battle,
“the Mantineans and the others who were included in the treaty went out on pretence of gathering herbs and sticks, and stole away one by one, picking up as they went along what they pretended to be looking for. But, as they got farther away from Olpae, they quickened their steps, and then the Ambraciots and others who happened to collect on the instant, when they saw that they were leaving, ran after them at full speed, wanting to catch them up. The Acarnanians at first thought that none of the fugitives were protected by a treaty, and pursued after the Peloponnesians. Some of their officers tried to hold them back, explaining how matters stood, whereon a soldier, suspecting some treachery, shot at them. Presently, however, they let the Mantineans and Peloponnesians go, but started killing the Ambraciots. And there was great contention and ignorance whether a man were a Peloponnesian or an Ambraciot.”{248}
Two hundred fugitives were cut down in cold blood in this way. The rest who escaped fled over Thyamus to the friendly land of the Agraeans, whose King, Salynthius, received them kindly. Thence they made their way south to Oeniadae.
Demosthenes’ stroke was a masterpiece of policy. Who in Ambracia would ever wish to look upon a Peloponnesian again after this display of what Thucydides himself, moved slightly for once, calls selfish treachery?{249} The Spartan reputation in the entire district was dead. However difficult Menedaeus’ situation was, the ruse by which he extricated his own men is an affront to every possible code of military honour. We neither hear nor want to hear of him again.
Demosthenes, who proposed the terms, was probably highly delighted at the result. We must not look for scruples even in an Athenian. He had disposed of the entire southern army just in time, and had the whole of his force at his disposal to meet the new attack from the north. But it was only just in time. His success was a question of a few hours.
This urgency of time recalls a famous episode in the American Civil War. In September 1862, Lee with some 45,000 men was holding the position of Sharpsburg on the Antietam in Maryland north of the Potomac river. A Federal army at least half as strong again under McClellan was slowly moving against him through the town of Frederick on the north-east. In Lee’s rear, 17 miles away, lay the Federal garrison of 12,500 men at the strong fortress of Harper’s Ferry. Lee’s invasion of Maryland over the river from Virginia had for the moment cut the garrison off. But the relieving army was approaching. Lee risked everything to secure the prize. He had sent Stonewall Jackson with 25,000 men to move with the greatest possible speed on Harper’s Ferry, take the place, and then rejoin at Sharpsburg. With the loss of but a hundred men Jackson scared the faint-hearted garrison of the fort into surrender. Back he rushed to the sound of the guns at Sharpsburg. The masses of the northerners were vigorously attacking the position, which Lee was holding with desperate courage, confident of Jackson’s coming. At the very crisis, the latter’s corps commander, A. P. Hill, came up hot haste and struck in. The attack was rolled back, and the great Southern general added yet another victory to the spoil of Harper’s Ferry.
To the spoil of Olpae Demosthenes in 426 B.C. now was to add a second victory over the advancing army which should have relieved the fort. He too had to reckon his available time by hours. For on this same day, while the negotiations with Menedaeus were in progress, Demosthenes’ scouts brought him word that the northern Ambraciot army was marching south. To the north of the marsh at Olpae there stretched the mountain tract of Makrinoro, attaining its greatest height at the peak of Greater Idomene which overhung Metropolis. The pass through the hills ran north-west from this point to the lower height of Lesser Idomene five miles away. To the east stretched away the wild region of the Amphilochian hills. To the west the ground fell to the shore of the Ambraciot Gulf. There was no time to be lost. While the general himself stayed outside Olpae to see the conclusion of that somewhat delicate business, he sent forward a part of his force with precise instructions. He himself would follow with the rest as soon as possible. The advance guard seized the height of Greater Idomene at nightfall. The enemy from the north about the same time having left Ambracia, eight miles away, reached Lesser Idomene and encamped there for the night. They were in blind ignorance both of the battle of the preceding day and of the presence of the advance guard of their foes five miles beyond. They supped, posted sentries, and went, the rest of them, to sleep.
Night was deepening when Demosthenes himself with the rest of his army arrived at Greater Idomene. He had called his men off from their chase of the Olpae garrison in the late afternoon of that winter day. Then after supper he came to join his advance guard with part of his main army. For he had already divided his force, and had sent the rest off to make their way, night notwithstanding, through the Amphilochian hills on the east till they reached the flank and rear of the enemy’s camp on Lesser Idomene. In any suitable spot they were to lie hid in ambush. These, his Amphilochian allies, who were light-armed troops and knew every inch of their own hills, moved quietly away and vanished northwards in the dark. Demosthenes gave them time to reach their allotted stations, resting his own men the while at Greater Idomene. Then, after midnight, he himself advanced up the pass towards the camp of the sleeping enemy. In the van he placed his Messenians (who spoke Dorian). “Answer in your own Dorian tongue when challenged,” he bade them. Close on their heels came the general himself with the flower of his army, the heavy-armed hoplites of Acarnania.
The sky was just growing pale in the east at that hour of earliest dawn when, at the “Stand to!”, men’s courage is lowest and their wits are least alert. The Ambraciot camp began to stir. Its sentries saw dimly a body of men moving rapidly upon them from the south. They challenged. The answer in the Dorian dialect reassured them. These must be their own friends, Eurylochus’ men, coming up to join them from Olpae. In a flash Demosthenes’ troops cut them down and fell upon the drowsy camp.
The surprise was complete, the slaughter speedy. Most of the Ambraciots were slain upon the spot. Those who fled over the hills fell into the ambushes where the Amphilochians lurked. Their nimble foes beset every path, overtook and slew without mercy every fugitive. Some of the Ambraciots even fled down to the seashore, and, seeing the enemy squadron cruising here, immediately off the land, as instructed by Demosthenes, they plunged into the water and swam out to the ships, “thinking it were better to die, if die they must, at hands of the Athenians rather than be slain by their barbarian and most detested foes, the Amphilochians”.{250} Very few came back at last to Ambracia, their city. The bodies lay strewn over the Makrinoro hills, and the victors gleefully despoiled them of their arms, carried them off, and heaped them high together in their camp, now in the plain near Olpae.{251}
Hither next day, the third day after the Olpae battle, the second after the garrison’s flight, there came a herald from the Ambraciot survivors of the southern army, sent by these to recover the bodies of those cut down in their escape from Olpae fort. He gazed with wonder at the huge heap of his compatriots’ weapons.
“Why so amazed?” one asked him, thinking he came from the remnants of the northern army, scattered at Idomene. “How many of you fell?”
“Some two hundred,” he replied.
“Here are the arms of more than a thousand,” his foe answered.
“Then they cannot be our men’s,” the herald said.
“They must be,” the other replied: “you fought yesterday at Idomene.”
“No, no,” said the herald; “we fought nobody yesterday. It was the day before, in the retreat.”
“Well,” the other answered, “these were men we fought yesterday, coming from Ambracia city to help.”
So when the herald heard this, and knew that the army from the city was destroyed, he uttered a cry of anguish and, overwhelmed by the greatness of the present evil, went away at once without doing his errand, and cared no longer to ask for the bodies of the dead.
“For indeed,” Thucydides concludes, “this was the very greatest calamity in the whole war which befel one single Hellenic city within so few days. I have not ventured to write the actual number of those who died, for it would pass men’s belief compared with the size of the city. This, however, I do know, that if the Acarnanians and Amphilochians had been willing to hearken to the persuasion of Demosthenes and the Athenians they might have taken and sacked Ambracia at the very first onset. But they would not, fearing that the Athenians if they got hold of the place would be more troublesome neighbours than ever the Ambraciots were.”{252}
Grote reckons the total number of Ambraciot dead at 6000. The German cuts this figure down by half.{253}
Demosthenes by skilful generalship had won a signal triumph, even though his allies denied him the final fruits of his two victories. His devices, the ambush previously prepared, the night-surprise, the march by night, the proper use and division of his troops, merited the success and the recognition which they gained.
A modern parallel to Demosthenes’ tactics at Idomene may perhaps be of interest. For the Athenian’s devices were those employed by Lord Roberts in his advance on Bloemfontein after the victory of Paardeburg in the spring of 1900. The enemy had occupied a strong position on a ridge upon the banks of the Modder river. In their rear was the one crossing of the stream at Poplar Grove Drift. The English general sent his cavalry under Sir John French on a wide detour to get round the position by night and seize the drift. The infantry, assailing the position at dawn, would then drive the Boers back upon the previously prepared ambush. Our plan miscarried. The cavalry took a wrong direction in the dark, and also, owing to the utter exhaustion of the horses, moved too slowly. Sunrise on March 7 found them barely in rear and in full view of the enemy. There was no surprise. The Boers quietly withdrew over the drift, and with comparative ease made their way to Bloemfontein, to the chagrin of the disappointed cavalry.
The actual political fruits of Demosthenes’ masterly victories seemed meagre. If Sparta lost her popularity in the district owing to Menedaeus, Athens seems never to have had any popularity to lose. As soon as Demosthenes had sailed away again with his 20 Athenian ships to Naupactus, the old embittered foes, Ambraciots and Acarnanians and Amphilochians, met and came to so amicable an agreement that they concluded first a truce, then a defensive Alliance for a Hundred Years! The fugitives at Oeniadae came back peacefully to their homes. The new allies agreed to take no part any more on either side in the great war. If any were attacked by Athenians or Peloponnesians, the rest should help in the defence. The inland of the north-west district was hence-forward not only neutral, but sealed against any warlike interference from outside. The Corinthians, however, were allowed to send a small garrison of 300 men to Ambracia city by land.{254} This mattered very little to Athens. She had no real interest in the interior so long as the coast was friendly. Anactorium, too, at mouth of the Ambraciot Gulf, was expressly excluded from the terms of the Alliance. The Acarnanians were to be allowed to attack it whenever they liked. A few such places still remained unfriendly to Athens’ cause, but the strength of the enemy in the district was broken, and it was not again to be restored.
Demosthenes, himself, could now safely return to Athens, laden with 300 panoplies as his personal share of the spoil. “They are still preserved”, adds Thucydides, “in Athenian temples.” The Athenians of his composite army were allotted a third of the entire loot. In some mysterious fashion the whole of this booty was lost en route, with exception of the 300 panoplies.{255} Demosthenes’ “luck” again! The dead of Aegitium were perhaps not forgotten, for Demosthenes was not elected general for the next year upon his return (if indeed he was back in time for the elections). But he was forgiven, and in a few months justified his pardon by the most brilliant of successes at Sphacteria.
Two more years saw the end of the whole matter.
In 425 B.C. the Spartan Government ventured on yet another naval effort. The city of Corcyra, harried perpetually by its oligarchs, the garrison of Mount Istone, was starving. As many as 60 Peloponnesian ships sailed to Corcyra, disregarding the Athenian ships at Naupactus, which, having neither a Phormio nor a Demosthenes to inspirit them, let the enemy sail north without any hindrance. They had, however, scarcely reached the island when they were recalled to take part in the operations at Pylos and Sphacteria{256} and there to meet their fate, as will be narrated. Later in the year an Athenian squadron arrived at Corcyra. The fort was stormed and the garrison surrendered. The whole six hundred were then treacherously and foully murdered by the vindictive democrats under circumstances of great brutality. The Athenian admirals, Eurymedon and Sophocles, connived at the massacre. They themselves were in a hurry to proceed to Sicily, and did not wish anyone else to have the credit of taking the Corcyrean prisoners alive to Athens. So the waggons piled high with the corpses of the slain, laid crosswise one row on top of another, drove out of Corcyra’s gate in the early morning light before the two noble Athenians’ gratified eyes, and they could sail on their way with satisfaction. Thus Corcyra was completely cleared at last of any partisans of the Spartans. “There was an end of the great sedition for this war at any rate, for of the one of the two parties there was nothing whatever left worth mentioning.” All that was left were the women of the garrison, who became the slaves of the victors.{257}
Anactorium was taken this same year. The Athenians from Naupactus and the Acarnanians came against the town, which was betrayed to them. Its Corinthian garrison was expelled and replaced by an Acarnanian.{258} Even Oeniadae next year, 424 B.C., found itself obliged by the Acarnanians to transfer its allegiance to Athens.{259} Demosthenes himself soon after was sent out again to the scene of his former triumphs. He arrived at Naupactus with 40 ships. Once again the project of a combined attack on Boeotia from three sides was to be attempted. But Demosthenes was not again to essay the perilous march through Aetolia. His part was easier, to arrive on a fixed day at Siphae, on the south coast of the threatened land. Meanwhile, he set to work to collect a large force of allies, and marched against the unlucky Salynthius, King of the Agraeans. This folk alone remained hostile of all Sparta’s old friends in the north-west. The King was won over. Demosthenes had had pleasant summer manœuvres in the interior, and with this the chapter of the “north-west” in the history of the great war ends almost upon a note of bathos.