IT had been Pericles’ firm conviction and assurance to his people that the Athenian Empire was invulnerable. Its enemies could attack the Empire only by sea, and Athens was Queen of the seas. The utter failure of the revolt of Lesbos had strengthened the proof. Then a Spartan soldier found another way of attack. Brasidas discovered the “Achilles heel” of the Empire in Chalcidice.
This whole “Thraceward” district lying to the north-east of Athens and on the northern coast of the Aegean had for many years been notoriously disaffected, whether Athens tried to conciliate or to repress its many cities. It was the richest of all the districts of the Empire, contributing at least 30 per cent of the total tribute, besides the profits of trade with the natives of the interior. The key to the district was the city Amphipolis on the Strymon, guarding the only passage of that river. This city the Athenians had finally colonised five years before the outbreak of the great war, in 437 B.C., after many previous doleful failures to get a grip of the place. Its grave defects were two. The population was a very mixed one and by no means attached to the Athenian interest. And it lay a few miles upstream from the coast, so that it could be reached by sea only through its port town Eion. It seems likely that Eion was an open roadstead without harbour or docks.{436} If this were so, the nearest station for the Athenian fleet was at the island of Thasos, half a day’s sail away.
The three-pronged promontory of Chalcidice, to the south-west of the Strymon valley, was full of Greek cities. Here Athens had two main anxieties. The first was the disaffection of the chief city Potidaea, due to her Corinthian origin and the Corinthian influence in the town. The second was the great amorphous kingdom of Macedon to the north-west of the district. No Philip had yet arisen to make Macedon the greatest military monarchy of the ancient world. The folk were more than half barbarian, and the monarchy was still feeble. But King Perdiccas had some power of annoyance. And though at the outset of the war he was nominally an ally and friend to Athens, he was treacherous by nature, or at least as naturally disliked the Athenian strangle-grip upon his coasts as any Bulgar. Athens could place no reliance upon him for a moment.
Here was tinder enough to catch fire if there came one to apply the spark and to tend the flame when once the fire was started. Potidaea’s revolt had blazed up furiously in 432 B.C. It was extinguished after many weary months of bitter winter weather and heavy losses to the besiegers in men and money. Potidaea surrendered in the winter of 430 B.C., after two and a half years’ siege. This had cost Athens quite 2000 talents, some twelve to fourteen times the amount of annual tribute received from the whole Thraceward district.{437} The revolt left the whole country disturbed and Perdiccas uneasy. An Athenian army was all but destroyed up country near Spartolus by the natives in June of the year 429 B.C.,{438} and a second force met a reverse four years later near Mende.{439} King Perdiccas was so moved by the first disaster that he prepared to change sides, and sent secretly 1000 men to help Cnemus in his march on Stratus in 429 B.C., as has been told above.{440} But in that same winter a horde of barbarians came down upon him from the east and gave him other things to think about.
MACEDONIA—CHALCIDICE
These were the Odrysian Thracians under a king Sitalces. This folk lay in the hinterland of the Aegean northern coast stretching all the many miles from the Strymon to the Bosporus. They were an immense horde of utter barbarians, whose strength and importance Thucydides the historian always overrates. As he had estates of his own on the mainland of Thrace and these barbarians were his neighbours, he was disposed to exaggerate the danger they presented. In the winter of 429 B.C. 150,000 Thracian savages flooded into Macedonia and spent a month roaming up and down the unhappy country. Then all their food gave out and they went back to their own land with a Macedonian princess as bride to a future king. There was peace now between Perdiccas and Sitalces.{441}
Two years before, at the very outset of the war, the Athenians had chosen to make alliance with Sitalces.{442} Mercenaries from Thrace were useful in their armies, and the alliance might serve also to keep Perdiccas faithful to their interests for very fear. But when the Macedonian king proved treacherous and Sitalces swept down upon him, the Athenians looked on and did nothing. For this inactivity they have been severely censured. Again and again this year 429 B.C. is a story of Athenian feebleness and prostration, the causes of which were obviously the plague and the death of Pericles. But really all this fighting of savages up country in the distant north concerned Athens very remotely. Why should she intervene? And how could she intervene? She has been credited with an “honourable reluctance to use barbarians”. This did not deter her from making the alliance at the first. Neither was this sensitiveness apparent many years later when she brought 1300 Thracian savages to Athens to form part of the reinforcements sent to Sicily in 413 B.C. They came too late. They cost a drachma each a day (twice as much as a juryman). Athens could not afford the expense. The Government detailed an officer to take them home by sea. “Do any hurt with them you can on the way”, he was ordered. He landed them in Boeotia, and in the early morning led them to the sack of the tiny unprotected little city of Mycalessus. Thucydides tells the story briefly.
“The Thracians dashed into the town, sacked the houses and the temples, and slaughtered the inhabitants. They spared neither old nor young, but cut down all they met, women, children, the very beasts of burden, every living thing they saw.”
There was a boys’ school at Mycalessus, “the largest in the city”. The children had just begun morning lessons. The “bloody savages” (it is Thucydides’ own language) fell upon the school and massacred the boys, every one.
“No greater calamity ever befel a city: never was anything so sudden or so terrible. Considering the size of the place it was the most lamentable, the most pathetic calamity of the entire war.”{443}
Such was Athens’ honourable dislike to use her Thracian allies. In every possible way the Athenians, as soon as the war has begun, seem to do their best to forfeit our sympathies. From Mitylene to Melos and Mycalessus—it is a gloomy chain of incidents. And the treatment of the cities of Chalcidice, now to be narrated, does anything but redeem their humanity.
After the Thracian invaders had retired in 429 B.C. there were three or four years of troubled peace in the north-east. Athens provoked Perdiccas again by encouraging a little trading city Methone on the Thermaic Gulf in its quarrels with the king.{444} Every city in this district of the Empire was restless and fretful. But how could anything be done? Then the news came. A Spartan army was in the neighbourhood!
Perdiccas and the Chalcidian cities had been begging for this. But the difficulties in the way were great. How could an army reach them? Convoy by sea was impossible. On land Thessaly seemed to block the way. For though Thessaly was a land divided against itself, yet the prevailing sympathy among the common folk was for Athens. And, says Thucydides:
“for an armed force to go through a neighbour’s country without his consent was a proceeding which excited jealousy among all Hellenes.”{445}
The Spartan Government was so doubtful of the enterprise that they would risk the life of no single Spartan soldier upon it except that of Brasidas, to whom they gave leave to make an attempt. They did this the more readily as they saw a happy means of getting rid thereby of some hundreds of helots. These dangerous serfs were more than ever excited by the events of the year before. Pylos was in their own kinsmen’s hands. There might, the ephors feared, be a revolt at any moment. “So they were only too glad to send with Brasidas 700 helots as hoplites.”{446} He hired 1000 other hoplites, mostly from the cities of the Isthmus of Corinth, and after saving Megara, as has been narrated, took this tiny force of 1700 men through Boeotia to the little Spartan fort of Heraclea near Thermopylae on the Maliac Gulf. His friends in various Thessalian cities provided guides and escort. In a few days Brasidas “ran through Thessaly”{447} before any force could muster to bar the way. There was one alarming check the very first day on the banks of the upper Enipeus. But Brasidas put off with fair words those who tried to stop him. “He could not possibly go on if they objected”, he said. “Would they not go to consult their folk about it?” No sooner had they gone than he led his little force onwards at top speed and reached Pharsalus in the heart of the country that same night. Thence he pushed on and arrived at Dium in Macedonia under Mount Olympus, 100 miles from the Maliac Gulf, before any measures could be taken to stop him. “He was in every way a good man”, Thucydides writes succinctly. Long after he was dead, his reputation for honour and ability served Sparta well in attaching Athens’ own subject allies to her cause. “Other Spartans will surely be like Brasidas”, they said.{448}
The Athenians, hearing the news, contented themselves with declaring war on Perdiccas.{449}
That king, however, had brought the Spartan north and paid for half the army’s daily cost for his own purposes. At once he took Brasidas to help him crush a troublesome tribe, the Lyncestae, in the far wilds of the interior, under a chieftain Arrhibaeus. Brasidas went reluctantly. He could not break with Perdiccas. But his heart was elsewhere, with the Greek cities to whom he came to offer “liberty”. He patched up a kind of agreement with the chieftain and marched away. Perdiccas was wrathful and cut down his contribution to expenses from one-half to a third.{450}
Then at last Brasidas appeared outside the walls of a Greek city, the subject-ally of Athens. This was Acanthus on the south-west of the Strymonic Gulf, on the neck of the promontory of Acte. He demanded admittance into the town. “How could it be”, he indignantly protested, “that they did not welcome him at once within their walls? He had come to redeem Sparta’s word of honour,” he declared; “Sparta had promised to liberate Hellas from the tyranny of Athens. This, and this alone, was the motive which had impelled her to the war. Acanthus must join in the struggle for liberty. He, Brasidas, was fully able to protect her against any force which Athens could send against her. And Sparta had sworn by the most solemn oaths to respect the autonomy, the right of self-government, of those who joined her.”
“Strive to take the lead now in liberating Hellas. Lay up for yourselves a treasure of undying fame. Save your own property. Crown your city with glory.”{451}
His eloquence moved the men of Acanthus. So did the fear of losing their vintage. The grapes were nearly ripe. They debated the matter for long hours and voted by ballot. The majority decided on revolt against Athens. They opened the gates and Brasidas marched in. It was his first city. Athens’ Empire was vulnerable by land.{452}
Soon, encouraged by their neighbours, Stagirus to the north of Acanthus also revolted from Athens.{453}
Winter drew on apace, the bitter Thracian winter. Snow began to fall. Precious weeks had been wasted in Macedonia. But there were chances for enterprise offered by a black winter night. The greatest prize of all, Amphipolis, lay within reach.
Brasidas marched north, rounding the shore of the Strymonic Gulf. He forded the cold stream flowing from Lake Bolbe to the sea and reached the town of Argilus. The men of Argilus had ever been at bitter feud with the neighbouring greater city of Amphipolis. They received the Spartan army into their walls. That same night they guided Brasidas to his goal, eight miles away.{454}
The city of Amphipolis lay on the eastern bank of the Strymon on a rocky hill, round which the river flowed in a semicircle just after its exit from Lake Cercinitis, and between three to four miles from the river mouth at Eion (which also was on the eastern bank). On the river side the hill was so precipitous that stream and crag protected the city without a wall. The city wall, built by Hagnon in 437 B.C., ran across the base of the arc formed by the bend of the river. A bridge crossed the Strymon to the south of the city, forming the approach from Argilus, to which latter town belonged all the country west of the river, including the heights of Mount Cerdylium, which commanded a prospect to Eion and the sea. The modern bridge crosses the Strymon at its exit from the lake, leading to Serres from the hamlet of Neokhori, which occupies a small part of the site of the ancient Amphipolis. The coast road from Salonica to Constantinople crosses the river, here 180 yards broad, by a ferry to the site of Eion. The ancient bridge on the approach from Argilus was some short distance from the city wall, and it was only later that walls were run from the city to the bridge.{455}
On this winter’s night there was in Amphipolis a small Athenian garrison under command of the general Eucles. A second Athenian general lay with a small squadron of seven ships at the island of Thasos, nearly 50 miles away from Eion. This general was the historian Thucydides himself. He was a man of some influence in the neighbourhood, as he had leased from the State (it seems) the working of some goldmines in Mount Pangaeus. Another story is that he took as his bride a lady of the Thracian village Scapte Hyle, who brought her husband gold-mines and estates as her dowry.{456} Neither general was in the least aware of the coming of the Spartan’s army. The men of Argilus had seen to it that no news should reach their hated neighbours.
There was a small guard posted at the bridge over the Strymon. In the blackness of the snowy night Brasidas’ men rushed it and seized the bridge without difficulty. Crossing the river, they were at once masters of everything outside the city wall. Brasidas did not attempt to storm the latter, trusting that partisans of his within the city would open the gates to him.
But the gates remained shut when day dawned. Eucles sent off an urgent messenger to Thucydides at Thasos, bidding him come with all speed, and meanwhile stood on guard. The messenger reached Thucydides about mid-day. He sailed at once. On arriving at Eion in the evening he found Amphipolis already in the enemy’s hands. Brasidas had offered the most generous terms, which swung the mass of the inhabitants over to his side. Eucles and his small Athenian garrison were disregarded, The city surrendered and Brasidas marched in. At once he made an attack, both by land and water, upon Eion. But Thucydides had by this time arrived and put the town in a state of defence. Brasidas was foiled. He retired to Amphipolis and took all needful measures for the safety of the city. Perdiccas presently arrived to assist him in this. And the three neighbouring towns of Myrcinus, Galepsus, and Oesyme speedily came over to his side.
AMPHIPOLIS
So Athens lost Amphipolis and retained Eion.{457}
“For twenty years I was banished from my country after my command at Amphipolis”, Thucydides very quietly remarks, later on, in quite another connection.{458} He makes no other reference to this result of Brasidas’ capture of the town. There is some later embroidery of the simple fact. That it was Cleon who prosecuted the historian for treachery, or for sloth, carelessness, neglect, is very probable.{459} The length of his exile suggests that a serious view was taken of the matter in Athens, and perhaps this is confirmed by the story that he was recalled by special decree, and not simply as a result of the general amnesty which followed the fall of the “Thirty Tyrants” in 403 B.C. But he may have been recalled by this oligarchy in the previous year.{460} All this is as uncertain as is the place of the plane tree on his Thracian estate under which he wrote his history, according to his most egregious ancient biographer.{461} What is very certain is that his exile gave him the time to collect his materials, the opportunity for learning much of the views of both sides, and the leisure for travel. It is also an ingenious and pleasing suggestion that Oenobius, who proposed the decree for his recall, was the son of his old colleague Eucles.{462} His history was unfinished at the time of his death as an old man aged seventy-five, eight years after his return from exile.{463}
Ought Thucydides to have been at Eion when Brasidas was at least known to be somewhere in the district? Was he therefore rightly made responsible for this most grievous loss of Amphipolis and properly punished? Or was Cleon vindictive and unjust and the Athenian people utterly unreasonable? Ought they not rather to have applauded the energy with which he rushed to the rescue and by his speed saved Eion? Was not one general enough in the town? How could ships lie safely off Eion in winter?{464}
Such questions have been discussed at the most weariful length, until there seems sound sense only in the German Holm’s remark: “If it were not a Thucydides who is concerned no one would care to waste one single word on the matter in view of our complete ignorance of all the precise circumstances of the case.”{465} The old historian himself utters not one single word of indignation or excuse. It is a glorious reticence. Just two considerations besides do suggest themselves. Whether Thucydides’ condemnation for military failure was just or unjust, at least it was, at Athens, anything but extraordinary. His is but one of many examples—far too many examples—of the “over-responsibility of the Athenian executive”. It is the one utterly fatal blemish in the Athenian democracy.
Julius Beloch remarks, very justly, that “such trials were far too frequent at Athens and could at the best serve only to shatter the confidence of the troops in their officers. The practice was certain quickly enough to revenge itself.”{466} This is absolutely true. Punishment follows punishment. The civilian demagogue, the noisy crowded stupid law court, show no mercy. A Demosthenes does not come back to Athens. A Thucydides is banished. A Nicias will not bring his army home safely while he still may, for fear of the anger of the people. An Alcibiades is deprived of his command when he is his city’s last one remaining hope. The justice of each individual sentence can be argued. The cumulative effect of the whole number is overwhelming. It is just a case where the whole is much greater than the sum of the parts. If ever a democracy deserved ruin for its treatment of its own servants, Athens was that democracy. “Thucydides was driven into exile; it was a fate which usually happened to all the best men at Athens”, Cicero drily remarks.{467}
One other reflection may be permitted, however obvious. Cleon, if we accept the story, drove Thucydides into exile. It is therefore Cleon to whom we, in a manner, owe the history written by Thucydides. All may (or may not) commend Cleon at least for this. But had even Cleon known——.
After the fall of Amphipolis matters went rapidly from bad to worse for Athenian interests in Chalcidice. From the Strymon Brasidas turned west again. Winter made no difference to this one Spartan soldier, and his fame had spread far and wide. Men began to be foolishly contemptuous of Athens and forgetful of her power. Brasidas himself was under no such illusion. He sent home asking for reinforcements. The jealous and short-sighted Spartan Government refused his request. Its one desire now was to make peace. In no other way could the handful of prisoners in captivity at Athens be brought safe home again.{468}
The promontory of Acte was full of small cities, inhabited by Greek-speaking barbarians. On the appearance of Brasidas and his army many joined him. Sane, on Xerxes’ Canal, and Dium to the south of it, refused to do so. After ravaging their lands he marched down against the important Greek city of Torone, near the point of the next peninsula, Sithonia. With the aid of confederates within its walls he surprised and rushed the town. The Athenian garrison took refuge in its citadel, called Lekythus. Its battlements were in poor repair, and Brasidas stormed it. A wooden tower erected by the defenders was top-heavy and came crashing down at the very crisis of the assault. The Spartan general had offered thirty minae—a large sum—as reward to the first soldier to scale the wall of the fortress. He awarded it to the local Goddess Athena for her help in overthrowing the tower. What the troops thought of this award is unhappily not recorded.{469}
Spring was at hand, the spring of 423 B.C. The belligerents concluded a general armistice for one year. Both sides were in fact thoroughly weary of the whole war, which had caused loss, failure, disappointment, and led to no conclusive result. To Athens, Cythera and Nisaea were poor compensations for her many recent reverses. Sparta’s thoughts were concentrated on the recovery of the prisoners of Sphacteria. In both cities men hoped that negotiations during the year’s truce would issue in a conclusive and a lasting peace. At any rate, men in Athens sensibly reflected, should war be resumed, the year’s interval would give them time to make preparations to recover the lost ground in the north-east, where Brasidas had caught them all unawares and off their guard. It was imperative at once to stop his raging through the country. Men in Sparta did not reflect sensibly at all.
The “Truce of Laches” for one year was concluded in the early spring of 423 B.C.{470}
On the south coast of Pallene, the westernmost of the three promontories of Chalcidice, there lay two rich and important Greek cities, subjects of the Athenian Empire—Scione and Mende. So long as an Athenian garrison held Potidaea at the narrow neck of the peninsula, no enemy force could possibly reach the two cities by land, and Athens held them in the hollow of her hand. Regardless of the peril, Scione revolted. Brasidas crossed there by sea from Torone, congratulated the townsfolk on their pluck and spirit, and was himself fêted enthusiastically as the champion of Greek liberty. The sea being, for the moment, clear of Athenian ships, he returned to Torone and quickly brought his army back with him to Scione. Mende and Potidaea itself were the next items on his programme. He had friends in both cities.{471}
But now there arrived at Scione two envoys—one from Sparta, one from Athens—who were travelling together round the district to make official proclamation of the year’s armistice. There was a hurried calculation of dates. It was found that Scione had revolted two days after the signing of the truce. All the other allies of Sparta accepted the truce, and Brasidas himself sent his army voyaging back to Torone again. But the Athenian envoy declared that Scione still belonged to Athens, and was thus excluded from the armistice. So far as Sparta was concerned, Athens was free to deal with the rebel as she pleased without interference.
Brasidas hotly disputed the calculation of dates. The matter was at once referred to the home Governments. One of the terms of the truce had been that all disputed points should be decided by arbitration and not by arms. Sparta therefore suggested arbitration. The Athenian people absolutely refused. The dates were beyond all question right. Their wrath with Scione knew no bounds. There was the usual see-saw in politics. Nicias had signed the truce for Athens. Now Cleon seized the chance. He instantly moved and carried in the Assembly a decree that Scione should be destroyed and the whole of the citizens put to the sword. The armistice should hold good in every other quarter of the Greek world. But the Athenians began to equip a powerful expedition against Scione.{472}
At this juncture Mende also revolted. Brasidas’ partisans in the town were fearful of detection when the Athenians came, and his stout defence of Scione had greatly encouraged them. Surely he would never desert them. So they brought their town over to him, the majority of the citizens vainly and feebly protesting.
Brasidas accepted the town. This was a glaring violation of the truce. There was no disputing about dates in Mende’s case. Though he raked up some trivial charges against Athens of infringing the terms of truce, this excused nothing and deceived nobody. The Athenians at home, “more angry than ever”, added Mende to the objects of the coming expedition.{473}
Brasidas, on his side, removed the women and children of both cities away to safety at Olynthus, north of Potidaea, and sent troops, 500 of his own hoplites and 300 Chalcidian targeteers, to help defend the cities. And then (a military mystery almost beyond all comprehension) he vanished with the greater part of his army in the dim interior of Macedonia. Perdiccas took his ally off again against the troublesome Lyncestae once more. No doubt the king thought that it was high time he himself got some value for his money, and Arrhibaeus rankled. But Brasidas! No doubt he hoped and intended to be back at Pallene in time. In this he had made his one and only blunder. Entangled in the intricacies of “north-west-frontier” fighting, he did indeed extricate his little army with the greatest tactical skill from the wild valley into which he had been ensnared. But it was deep summer before he and his weary troops came back again to Torone, leaving behind them a triumphant Arrhibaeus and an angry Macedonian king{474} On their arrival they found Mende already in Athenian hands again. Cleon had carried the decree of vengeance. But it was the “peace-generals”, Nicias and Nicostratus, to whom its execution was entrusted. They had sailed to Potidaea, and thence proceeded against Mende by land and sea. There was some hard fighting before faction within the walls opened the gates to the Athenians. These now marched on Scione. Brasidas had to look on helplessly while Nicias drew lines of investment closely round the city. Then Perdiccas stabbed his Spartan ally in the back. The king made friends again with Athens, and, sending to Thessaly, effectively barred the way to a Peloponnesian army which by this time had actually been mustered in the south to march to Brasidas’ reinforcement. Half a dozen Spartans only reached the general at Torone. Two of the younger of these he appointed as governors, Clearidas to Amphipolis, Pasitelidas to Torone. His promise of “autonomy” to the cities was forgotten in the grave emergency of the military situation.{475}
The winter passed away and spring drew near when Athens would make new efforts. Potidaea was the key to the situation. The open beach at Scione was no good station for a blockading force or the landing of supplies. If Brasidas could take Potidaea he would reduce the Athenians to these straits, and, marching down Pallene, could threaten the investing lines from the hills to the north of the town. The Spanish troops clinging by the eyelids to the cliffs of Alhucemas Bay suggest the uncomfortable position in which the Athenians at Scione might have found themselves. But Potidaea was strongly held and closely guarded. The sole chance was surprise by night. Brasidas marched from Torone on the enterprise. A storming ladder was already in position when the alarm was given. He withdrew his army before daybreak. There was no help now by which he could save Scione.{476}
Spring came. The armistice expired. No peace had been concluded. But all men’s eyes were fixed on the struggle in the north, and there was no other fighting.
Cleon grew impatient. What he had done at Pylos, bringing triumph out of procrastination and blockade, he could do again. He prayed the people to give him the command. They gave it him. This time he had no Demosthenes at the scene of war. His cheerful confidence in his own military skill was not shared by the army. They followed him, it is said, unwillingly.{477} But they had no choice.
With 30 ships, 1200 Athenian hoplites and 300 of their cavalry, and many allies Cleon sailed for Thrace. Touching only at Scione to pick up some of the troops from the investing force, he crossed the gulf to a harbour near Torone. The joyful news there was brought him by deserters that Brasidas himself was at the moment not in the town, and that the garrison was weak. He attacked at once at two points simultaneously and carried the town. Brasidas, hastening to the rescue, was four miles away when the city fell. The women and children were enslaved, the men sent prisoners to Athens, including the Spartan commandant Pasitelidas.{478}
There remained Amphipolis. Scione in Cleon’s eyes was but a minor matter. Could he not repeat on the Strymon his first notable success, the capture of Torone? He sailed to Eion. From it he sent to Perdiccas and to the king of the Odrysian Thracians demanding an army from the one and barbarian mercenaries from the other. Meanwhile he was active. He attacked Stagirus. In this enterprise he failed. He could not waste much time or thought upon Stagirus. He consoled himself by storming Galepsus. Then he returned to Eion and waited for the reinforcements. His self-confidence was unabated, but he intended to surround and storm Amphipolis and judged that his present force was not strong enough for this.{479} But his Athenians, all of them picked troops, began to grumble in disgust. So this was Cleon! They wanted to be done with the affair and back home again. Brasidas was not a lazy coward like their own general, they said. Cleon judged it best to employ them on a reconnaissance in force. He neither expected nor at the moment desired battle. “We will go and look at the place,” he told his cantankerous army. He marched them northwards along the road which, as it reached the city, ran along the top of a ridge just outside the city wall. From it a great part of the interior of the city was visible though not the portion immediately behind the wall. As the long Athenian column marched along the ridge Cleon gazed down upon the city. All seemed quiet and deserted. It was a sore pity, he reflected, that he had not brought his siege engines up with him from Eion. He could have taken the place that morning had he done so. Brasidas and his army could not be in it. The general moved forward to the head of the column just where it reached the top of the pass. Here the road ran down to the river, and a far prospect stretched away over the waters of Lake Cercinitis to the north. He halted his men along the road and stood enjoying the view. The quiet city wall lay on his left hand, its gates fast shut. There were two of these, the “Thracian Gate” at the north-east angle, opening out on the road to Drabescus, and another to the south of it opposite the centre of the Athenian line as it stood halted, now formed up to front the wall.
A scout came hurrying up to Cleon. The whole of the enemy’s army, he reported, was now visible in the city. He had seen many feet of men and horses at bottom of the gate, as if about to sally out. The general turned and hastened to see for himself. Yes—there were undoubtedly the feet. He determined that he still had time to withdraw to Eion, and sent orders to the rear of the column to retire by the left down the road southwards. To his impatience and anxiety they seemed to move too slowly. He turned the rest of his army promptly to the left and began to march them off also, pressing impetuously upon the heels of his retreating vanguard. Brasidas had been watching Cleon’s every movement. From his outpost station on top of Mount Cerdylion over the river he had seen the army leave Eion and march north. He had hurried back into the city and resolved upon a sally in force. Cleon had given him the chance which seemed almost beyond praying for. He knew that at the moment their armies were practically equal in numbers. But he distrusted the quality of his own men. These picked soldiers of Athens might be the better of his own very mixed troops in pitched battle. And Cleon was expecting reinforcements also. But now, before these came, he had delivered himself into the Spartan’s hand. The latter had time for a brief offering of sacrifice, surely too of thanksgiving, to Athena. Then he told his men his plan. The army divided under cover of the wall.
The Athenian line was in motion, moving slowly and in some confusion to the south. “See the heads and spears trembling,” whispered Brasidas fiercely to his men. “They will run, they will run in a moment.” Slowly the enemy’s column deployed to the left, exposing every soldier’s unguarded right side to the waiting garrison. Brasidas gave the word. The southern gate of the city was flung open, and he himself, with 150 picked men, charged at full speed up the slope to the road and hurled himself upon the Athenian centre. The Athenian van fled precipitately southwards out of harm’s way. The centre in the confusion of its retreat gave ground, and scattered in flight to the hills behind it. Brasidas himself at once led his little force against the enemy on his left. He fell desperately wounded and was carried back into the city.
At that moment the great bulk of the garrison under command of Clearidas sallied out of the Thracian Gate and fell upon the rear of the Athenian column. Cleon fled at once, was pursued, and cut down. But his men stood firm. Twice, three times, they repulsed the charge of the heavy infantry. Then Clearidas let loose upon them his few hundred cavalry and all his targeteers. Showers of darts fell upon the Athenians. Then they too broke and fled over the hills to Eion. In the battle and the pursuit the Athenians had lost 600 men, besides their general.{480}
The garrison lost just seven men. But one of them was Brasidas. They had better have lost the city. Like Wolfe, the Spartan fell in the moment of victory. Like Wolfe, he lived long enough to know the victory was won. They buried him in Amphipolis, the whole army following him in full military array to his grave. His sepulchre became a shrine and he himself the Hero to whom sacrifice was offered, in whose honour yearly games were held. He had given a new birth of liberty to Amphipolis, and the city was rededicated to Brasidas its founder. Hagnon, Athenian and enemy, must be forgotten and any memorial of him in the town destroyed forever.{481}
Cleon’s body lay upon the cold hillside. His name became a mockery and a jest for comedians in his city.
The defeated army sailed home from Eion. “Brasidas’ men” kept together as a unit, presently to do service on a distant battlefield again. Next year came peace. In its terms Sparta bargained for her own troops and any more of “Brasidas’ men” beleaguered in Scione. The citizens themselves she callously left to their doom. He who would have once again pleaded their cause and that of Sparta’s honour lay dead. In the summer of 421 B.C. the Athenians took Scione, slew every man, and enslaved the women and children. They gave the desolate site to the exiles from Plataea to dwell in.{482} It were hard indeed to justify such vile betrayal by the friend, such fiendish cruelty, despite all “poetic justice”, by the foe.
Brasidas and Cleon were dead. Peace was at last genuinely possible. The two men who now counted most were earnestly anxious for it. Nicias of Athens had done good service to his city in the ten years of the war, but he had always hated the war, and, old age creeping on apace, became more and more passionately eager for peace. King Pleistoanax of Sparta had but recently returned to his throne after nineteen years in exile. But men still looked askance at him. He had bribed the Delphic Oracle, they said, to induce the Spartans to recall him. Whenever any misfortune happened, there were whispers of sacrilege and corruption. The king sagely reflected that misfortunes were more likely to occur in war than in peace.{483}
Both men found plenty of support in their cities. At Sparta the war had disappointed expectations terribly. Sphacteria was such a blow as had never before in the long history of the city been experienced. The Peloponnese was threatened continually, on the south from Cythera, on the west from Pylos. The helots were daily deserting in large numbers, and the fidelity of the remainder was more than suspect. Secret murder and treacherous assassination of leading helots, however useful a practice in the training of boy Spartans, were no very sure guarantee against a general helot rising. The Spartan prisoners were still in Athens’ keeping. And perhaps the most important consideration of all was the fact that the Thirty Years’ Peace with Argos was on the point of expiring. Argos, unlike her great rival, had suffered nothing from the war. She was fresh, strong, vigorous, thanks to her neutrality. She could never forgo her claim, her ancient traditional claim, to leadership in the Peloponnese. As the minimum price for continued peace she was likely to demand the surrender of the debatable frontier territory, Cynuria, now in Sparta’s possession. Only if Sparta were finally rid of this wasting war with Athens could she withstand such impudent demands and defy Argos with complete confidence. Sparta was eager for peace.
Athens was no less weary of the war, though she had fewer urgent reasons for immediate peace, now that there was no Brasidas to command against her in Chalcidice. But Amphipolis was still in the enemy’s hands. Delium had been a shattering blow, as also had been Cleon’s rout, to her estimate of her own military excellence. There was no more luck in which to trust. The fear of revolt within the Empire grew more lively as year followed year. All her operations seemed doomed now to end in disaster. The Radical Democracy, says Beloch, had lost its leader, and the war policy by this time was thoroughly discredited.{484} Athens was more than willing for peace.
The Spartans summoned a meeting of all the members of the Peloponnesian Confederacy. The majority decided to open negotiations for peace with Athens—Boeotia, Corinth, Elis, and Megara vainly dissenting. In the early days of April 421 B.C. there was concluded a peace between Sparta and Athens, including their respective allies, which was to be for fifty years and is usually called the Peace of Nicias. Both sides were to surrender all prisoners of war. Athens was further to hand over Pylos, Cythera, Methana, and one or two other little places. Sparta was to give back Amphipolis and Panactum. But Athens was to retain Nisaea since Boeotia retained Plataea. Some special terms were concluded concerning a few of the cities of Chalcidice of no great importance. The Peace was quickly followed by a definite alliance between Sparta and Athens, each city pledging its help to the other in case either of attack from outside or a revolt of her slaves.{485} It was just such a peace as Pericles himself might joyfully have concluded.
Two elements of insecurity in the Fifty Years’ Peace very quickly became manifest.
Many states openly refused to agree to it, Corinth and Megara, who gained no compensation for their losses, Boeotia, Elis, and the cities of Chalcidice. And the terms of peace were not carried out. Sparta was mainly to blame for this. She failed to secure the surrender of Amphipolis to Athens, feebly protesting that she had done all she could in the matter when she withdrew her garrison from the town. Athens, therefore, in retaliation retained Pylos and Cythera and began bitterly to regret that she had already handed over the prisoners of Sphacteria. And the Boeotians quite flatly refused to give Panactum back.
There followed many months of recrimination and of confused political intrigues between the various cities, “a greater degree of complication in the grouping and association of the Grecian cities than had ever before been known”.{486} Of all the alliances made or schemed two only were in the upshot based upon genuine friendship or community of interest, that between Sparta and Boeotia in the winter of 421 B.C. and the “Democratic League” of Athens, Argos, Elis, and Mantinea, formed in July 420 B.C. The first of these was most ominous of all to the prospects of the new-made peace. It demonstrated the obvious existence at Sparta of a new “War party” of ever-increasing influence. The manœuvrings for alliances were subtle and many. Argos found herself, now the centre of attraction, now in some imminent risk of being isolated in a ring of foes. Nicias and his friends at Athens still clung desperately like honest men to the hope of peace. It has been said recently concerning the “Pact” that the very signing of it might be the greatest help towards the securing of the objects which it pursues. “Sometimes the written word may help to create the spirit which it prematurely expresses.”{487} If something like this had been Nicias’ hope, he must have been grievously disappointed. Everywhere in Greece men’s spirit seemed to grow more and more bellicose. The war had settled nothing; the peace seemed more and more precarious. For six years and ten months Sparta and Athens refrained from direct attack one on the other’s country. But Spartans were fighting Athenians on the field of battle in the fourth year of the peace. That in this battle Athens was fighting on Argos’ side, and that for Sparta everything was risked on one single throw as never before were results due to the political foresight and genius of one single Athenian, Alcibiades, the most brilliant, the most perplexing, and the most mishandled of all Athenian statesmen.