MANTINEA and TEGEA

 

This city lay in the same upland Arcadian valley as Tegea, which was 10 miles to the south of it and about the same distance from the Laconian frontier. The valley was flat and apt to be water-logged. The mountains surrounded it on all sides, the western spur of Mytika approaching the eastern ridge of Kapnistra within a little over a mile. This bottle neck, or rather hour-glass neck, separated the territories of the two cities. These being near neighbours cherished a tradition of enmity which would be singular in any country other than ancient Greece. Tegea relied on Sparta and had been a loyal and valuable member of the Peloponnesian Confederacy for more than a century. Mantinea in consequence relied on Argos, to which city she was further attached by the enjoyment of a similar democratic constitution for the last half-century. There remained one local and peculiarly virulent cause of bickering between the two Arcadian cities. There is no outlet through the ring of mountains for any of the streams which descend into the valley. Every one of these, sooner or later, sinks into the earth by a pot-hole. Chief of the streams is the brook Ophis, which moves slowly along from south near Tegea to north and disappears in its hole a couple of miles to the south-west of Mantinea. The whole slope of the valley from south to north is very gradual. If the men of Tegea could expedite the water’s flow, the Mantineans found their fields flooded. If the men of Mantinea could arrest or divert the brook’s course, the swamps round Tegea encroached upon that city’s arable lands. That the two cities should co-operate, for the benefit of both, on any scheme of canalisation or other hydraulic device to regulate the Ophis was an idea beyond all possibility. Nature had kindly given them a reason for quarrelling which could never fail.

There was, in Roman days, just the like cause of dispute between two little cities in Central Italy. Rieti is in the upland vale of the Velino river, which, a few miles below the charming little town, tumbles in a glorious cascade down to a rich land at bottom of the fall where is the city of Terni. The river has the habit of increasing the height of the rocky lip of the fall by deposits. When this has continued for some time, the river’s flow is checked and “Rosy Vale” becomes swampy. When the men of Rieti sallied out to clear the river’s way through the rocks at top of the cascade, the citizens of Terni found the rush of water flooding their own fields. So the peace of that most smiling of Italian countrysides was marred by never-ceasing strife between the two hot-headed little towns. Today Terni will take all the water it can get. Manufactures and electricity go far to drain the Rosy Vale of Rieti.

In the late summer of 418 B.C. the Allies mustered in force at Mantinea, threatening Tegea. As in every Greek city, so in Tegea, there was a minority faction which wished the assailants well. If Sparta would save the town, every effort must rapidly be made. Her allies were ordered to gather at Tegea, and King Agis, incommoded by his Spartan Commissary of Ten, marched at head of his army from Sparta north. There can be no doubt that he was burning with the desire to redeem his unjustly damaged reputation as a soldier. His one longing now was for a pitched battle with the enemy. Let it once come to fighting, and Agis, like the youthful Bonaparte, could disregard civilian marplots. Marching by Orestheion, a longer but favourite route of Spartan armies to the north, he arrived in ample time at Tegea. And there his Arcadian allies joined him. Sparta had made her greatest military effort of the war. Five-sixths of her full levy was with Agis. The other sixth, the older and younger men, Agis sent back from Orestheion to his brother-king Pleistoanax to act as garrison to Sparta. His own Spartans numbered exactly 4184 men. So grave was the anxiety at home that presently Pleistoanax also marched north with his remaining sixth. Though law had for a century forbidden both Spartan kings to be present at one and the same time with the army, yet Pleistoanax must march to see what befell in this the most critical of campaigns. He had actually reached Tegea before he heard of the battle fought and the victory won a few miles away.

Agis had also sent messengers to his northern allies, Boeotians, Corinthians, and the rest to join him at Tegea. They mustered at the Isthmus. But it was not easy to find a way through the enemy’s country. Orchomenus now lay like a lion in their path. If they came at all—and Agis neither could nor did count upon their coming—they could enter the valley only under the heights of Alesion to the south-east of Mantinea. So only could they avoid Mantinea itself.

This the Allies, the Argives, Mantineans, Athenians, and others, knew as well as did Agis. They also found themselves somewhat unexpectedly upon the defensive. They must guard Mantinea. Since Agis’ arrival at Tegea a march in force against this town seemed a risky proceeding. At least they had better get the men of Elis back first. An urgent message induced these, still without enthusiasm, to begin to retrace their steps. At any moment they might enter the valley by way of Orchomenus from the north-west. Meanwhile Agis was already at their gates. He marched north from Tegea, crossed the frontier at the Neck, emerged from the oak forest in full view of the city, and pitched his camp at the Temple of Heracles on the northern slope of Mytika. From his camp he sent out ravaging parties to lay waste the Mantineans’ fields. His one object was to tempt the Allies out to battle on the level before the Eleians came. For his own reinforcements from the north he cared not very much. But, at least, he would be in close proximity to them did he see their column winding down under the Alesion ridge into the plain opposite his camp.

But the Allies were wary and in no mood to accept immediate battle.

They took up a strong position just outside Mantinea on the rocky crest of Alesion. This was almost impregnable to direct assault and had the merit also of blocking the way to Agis’ reinforcements from the north. From Alesion ridge there was a clear view down the valley over and beyond the oak woods of the Neck. Only the Mytika spur concealed the ground behind it to the south from view. And they looked straight down upon Agis and his army encamped at the Temple of Heracles.

The king grew impatient. If the enemy would not come down, he would go up against them. He led his troops to the direct assault of the Alesion ridge.

But the nearer they approached the more impregnable the position of the defenders seemed. A veteran at the king’s side dared to remonstrate. “Mending one ill by another”, he shouted, thinking of the retreat from Argos. Agis himself was of much the same mind. Within actually a javelin’s cast of the enemy he called off the attack. The whole army turned about abruptly and marched off southwards, vanishing out of sight behind the spur of Mytika.

The troops on Alesion were first amazed, and then elated. The enemy had run away. Why not pursue? But much time was needed for hot dispute and recrimination. Angry taunts hurtled round the heads of their worried generals. How much longer were they to sit idle on the hill? their infuriated troops demanded. Was it cowardice or treachery? They had let the Spartans escape at Argos. Here they were about to let them slip away again! The generals could not control their army. Towards the close of day they led the whole force cautiously down to the plain and bivouacked for the night, intending next day to march south to the attack.

Agis had been spending that day, according to Thucydides, “diverting the stream, hoping that this would bring the Allies down to the level to try and prevent this”. Mr. Woodhouse, in a recent and suggestive study of the battle, makes merry at this. Only near Tegea, he argues, could Agis have indulged his taste for hydraulics with any prospect of result, and the Mantineans could not have hoped to hinder this. “Thucydides”, he says, “is putting forward a mere guess, and that not a good one, by way of explaining movements the rationale of which quite eluded him.” Agis, according to this critic, had a baggage-train in camp. His movement against Alesion was but a feint to cover its withdrawal, and succeeded. He must entice the enemy down into the plain. A retreat south from the Temple of Heracles was his device. And this too succeeded. The baggage-train, however, seems an unnecessary addition to the narrative, if not to Agis’ army. And it leaves Agis still with a day on his hands. Doubtless “a flooded plain” would not be an inducement to descend to it. But Agis’ “hydraulics” can hardly have hoped to flood the plain in a few hours. Nor would “diverting the stream” promote a flood lower down the same stream. It seems that he did set his troops to work perhaps clearing the channels of the small tributaries into the Ophis from the western heights and so causing a rise in the water lower down. The news would reach the foe and hit them hard on a sensitive spot. “They are tampering with the water.” Down they would come to stop it, Agis reckoned, setting his engineers rather amusedly to work, while the bulk of his army rested and made ready for battle. In this sense the “hydraulics” are a legitimate ruse de guerre, and not to be too contemptuously dismissed from the story of the battle.

Down at least the enemy did come, eager for pursuit, fearful, not so much for flooded fields, as lest the Spartans should escape them once again. Agis had achieved his object. He had drawn the enemy down from the hill. Probably he could see that Alesion that evening was bare of troops. Somewhere then in the level beyond the Mytika ridge and the wood on the Neck he might hope to find them.

Next day he found them somewhat earlier than he expected. His column in usual march-formation came round the spur and through the wood, making for its old camp site at the Temple. It had scarcely emerged into the open before it saw the enemy drawn up in line, in full order of battle, waiting. To this extent Agis’ scouts had failed him rather badly.

It is at this point that Thucydides turns aside to write his memorable praise of Spartan discipline. Never, he says, had a Spartan army been so aghast as now, stumbling thus straight upon the enemy.{517} But no man lost his head. Every man knew his place and what to do. Orders rang out sharply—from battalion commander to company commander, from company commander to platoon leader, from platoon leader to section leader. The whole long column deployed with perfect precision into order of battle. Agis was ready before the commanders of the enemy’s composite forces had finished each making his usual fervid exhortation to his own troops and reminding them of ancient glories and present emergencies. The king himself had no time to address even a few brief words to his own men. But they exhorted themselves, says Thucydides, just “reminding one another of what their brave spirits knew already. They had learned”, the historian drily adds, “that true safety was to be found in long previous training and not in impassioned orations uttered when going into action.”{518}

The lines of battle closed, the Allies impetuously, the others with deliberation, to the sound of flutes, which played to keep the men in step, not “as a matter of religion”, remarks Thucydides curiously. Even so the Czar’s armies in former days had their bands in the fighting line. It became apparent, before the two fronts clashed, that the Allies were outnumbered, and that each line overlapped the opposite line on its own right. This was likely to be emphasised in the actual moment of contact since every Greek hoplite tended, even unconsciously, to edge towards the right, keeping his own unguarded side under shelter of his neighbour’s shield. Not even the tallest, most stalwart, and most resolute “right-hand man” of the line could resist such lateral pressure as it ran down the entire front.

On the Peloponnesian left stood the Sciritae, 600 strong, and next them Brasidas’ veteran battalion. The centre, from left to right, consisted of five battalions of Spartans, the Heraeans, and the Maenalians. On the right next them were the men of Tegea, then two more Spartan battalions. The cavalry were on both extremes of the line and counted for absolutely nothing in the entire engagement.

On the Allies’ right stood in order the Mantineans, other Arcadians, and the corps d’élite of the whole Argive army, a picked battalion of 1000 vigorous youngsters who enjoyed a special training. Next these in the centre, opposite the five Spartan battalions, were the bulk of the Argives, and the men of Cleonae and Orneae. The 1300 Athenians composed the left of the line, their 300 cavalry being on the wing. On the right of their whole line the Mantineans overlapped and threatened to enclose the Sciritae opposed to them. In still greater measure the men of Tegea by themselves extended out beyond the Athenian contingent, while the two Spartan battalions beyond them were practically “in air”—save for the threatening activity of the Athenian cavalry on the opposed wing.

Agis saw in a flash the danger to his left and the superfluity of infantry upon his right. He gave a rapid order. The Sciritae and “Brasidas’ men” were at once to left turn, quick march, and front, equalising their front to the Mantineans. This left a gap in the line between his left and centre. But the gap was to be filled at once by the two Spartan battalions on his extreme right doubling behind his centre to reach their new posts in time. It was truly a hazardous manœuvre when the foe were a spear’s length away. Yet the king judged that there was time and relied on Spartan discipline to effect the combined movement successfully. These orders of his concerned Spartans only (for the Sciritae were a special Spartan battalion). He could not order his whole line to left turn or left incline without exposing their unshielded sides to the charging foe.

BATTLE OF MANTINEA

 

This is Thucydides’ story of Agis and his orders. It rings soundly. The most recent critic suggests that the gap was left purposely to entice the Argive “thousand” into it, when, the Spartan centre moving forward, the two battalions from the right would come marching down behind the advancing line and fall upon the flank of the thousand. There is no kind of advantage in this version.{519} The gap became such another tactical blunder as was Marmont’s famous gap at Salamanca into which Wellington hurled his troops.

For once, the once which always befalls when least desirable, Spartan discipline failed. The Sciritae and “Brasidas’ men” obeyed orders. There was the gap. The battalion commanders on the right flatly refused to budge. It may be that they felt they had no time. Later they were banished for it, after condemnation at Sparta for cowardice. They deserved a heavier penalty.

In vain Agis sent to recall the Sciritae to their original position. The foe were upon them. The “thousand” Argives plunged shouting into the gap. The Spartan left, distressed by order and countermanded order, wavered. The Mantineans swept round them on one side; the thousand beat upon the other; the Arcadians smote at them in front. The whole Spartan left broke and fled, hotly pursued by the victorious foe.

But elsewhere along the line the battle was going very differently. Furious with anger, Agis with his picked royal bodyguard and his five battalions charged upon the enemy’s centre. It fled at once. Much may be said for a corps d’élite but, in the Argive army, it left but sorry quality in the other troops. Ignominiously, with hardly a blow struck, Argives, and those of Cleonae and Orneae, turned their backs and ran.{520}

Meanwhile on Agis’ right there was a more stubborn fight. The Athenian cavalry did good service against the weight of numbers, and the thousand infantry of Athens fought resolutely and well.

Then Agis showed himself a born leader of men. He had his troops in hand, however flushed with victory and eager to pursue. His orders ran sharply down his centre and his right. Every man was to left turn and come down athwart the battlefield to the rescue of the routed left.

Every man obeyed. The irresistible battalions swept across the ground upon the pursuing Mantineans, Arcadians, and the thousand Argives. These were caught and swept helplessly from the field, those farthest in pursuit, the Mantineans on the extreme wing, suffering the heaviest loss. The Allies’ centre continued its rapid flight. The Athenians, seeing, with some surprise, their own assailants drawing away and marching across their front, seized the happy chance and themselves retired quietly and in good order. This was the more natural since both their generals, Laches and Nicostratus, already lay dead upon the field. And yet—if ever there were a chance offered for a counterstroke, surely the fortune of war offered it to the Athenians at that moment when the enemy marched across their front, their unshielded sides exposed to attack. Was there no young subaltern of infantry or cavalry that day who would lead his men to make one final bid for victory?

So ended the battle of Mantinea, by far the greatest and the most interesting of all land battles of the great war. Agis had won a renowned victory. He had redeemed his own prestige, but he had also won back by one single stroke for Sparta her own reputation for invincible valour which the surrender at Sphacteria had shattered.{521} The actual casualty list on either side was, even for a Greek battle, not very heavy. The Allies lost some 1100 men; the Peloponnesians scarcely a third of the number. But never was the immense moral effect of a single victory more marked. And Alcibiades’ “Argive policy” lay broken on the battlefield of Mantinea, never to be restored again.

There were many causes of this disaster to the Allies—Spartan discipline, the generalship of Agis, Argive cowardice, Eleian selfishness. But the Athenian—not the soldier who fought gallantly (redeeming the disgrace of Delium), but the Government—deserves also the most unsparing censure. The Allies, thanks to the Eleian defection, were outnumbered. Had the Government of Athens done its duty, the army at Mantinea, in spite of all the sulks of the men of Elis, might themselves have far outnumbered, and then, in all likelihood, have routed the enemy. Athens’ army of at least 20,000 heavy infantry was hardly employed elsewhere (save for a foolish expedition to the Thraceward district as will be explained). The Government sent 1000 to the battle, and a second 1000 arrived when the battle was over. What would not 5000, 7500, 10,000, under Demosthenes have achieved? The slackness and criminal negligence of the Government can only be ascribed to the one statesman, Nicias, whose heart was not in the campaign, who hated both the Argive policy and its author, Alcibiades. Party faction once again set out to ruin Athens.

Why also was the Athenian navy not used? It was practically idle this summer. A fleet threatening the coast of Laconia must have kept at home a large part of the Spartan army which fought at Mantinea. Perhaps even Sparta would have left Tegea alone to her fate. The Athenian fleet did nothing. The Argives had begged for this help many times. “Come and land just a handful of troops,” they urged imploringly. “They can always get away back on shipboard again,” they added, knowing their allies a little too well. No single ship comes. No single Athenian soldier lands timorously on the Laconian shore. Busolt rightly stigmatises this as “one of Nicias’ gravest political sins”.{522}

And, finally, why was not Alcibiades general this year? As mere envoy he was able to prevail on the Argives to denounce their truce with Sparta. Nicias must bitterly have regretted this. But then Alcibiades disappears from the story. He can hardly even have been present at the battle. He was a soldier. Now, when above all he was wanted, he was not employed.

This puzzle, the last of the “puzzles of Mantinea”, is very great. It is just one of the cases where Thucydides’ silence about events in Athens is most baffling and a real historical blemish. For political events in Athens did gravely influence the course of military events outside the city. Thucydides’ concentration of interest on the latter ought not to have hidden the importance of the former from his eyes, exile though he himself was.

Dr. Gustav Gilbert has tried in this case to remedy the defect.{523}

The Athenians had a peculiar system of getting rid of a troublesome politician. This was named Ostracism. Any year in February, just before the election of generals, the people could if they liked meet en masse and record, each man upon an oyster shell—”ostrakon”—the name of any citizen whatever whom he wished to be rid of out of Athens. If when votes were counted 6000 shells bore the name of the same citizen, he retired with dignity from the city for a period of ten years into a species of honourable banishment. Unlike an exile he did not lose his property. It was a drastic democratic method of “outing” either a Government or an Opposition statesman of repute: a “decennial general election” would be mild compared to it.

About this time in Athens the radical leader Hyperbolus, of whom something has already been said,{524} was emboldened to propose an ostracism. His rivals for the mastery of the Assembly annoyed him. Now for some reason or other he considered he had a good chance of ridding himself (and the city) of some one of them. Alcibiades and Nicias stood badly in his way. There was a third man Phaeax whom some drag into the story. But Phaeax can hardly have counted.{525}

The threatened statesmen were alarmed. Quarrel among themselves as bitterly as they might, their adherents were so nearly balanced in numbers that the peril seemed to threaten both alike. Neither could possibly be confident that the vote would fall out in his own favour. The solution was obvious. Nicias and Alcibiades on this one occasion collogued together. Similar instructions reached all their adherents. When the shells were counted, it was Hyperbolus himself, to his indignant amazement, who found himself ostracised. He retired to Samos. Nicias and Alcibiades resumed their own quarrels, now easy in their minds. The unexpected storm had been diverted and had passed quite harmlessly away.

But the man in the street was not so pleased. The whole intention of ostracism had been to relieve the city of the fierceness of political dispute and leave one man in untroubled influence at least for a time. But now the disreputable tertium quid had paid the price of his temerity, and the political rivalry of the greater men was likely to be worse than ever. It was a low intrigue. Men looked askance both at Nicias the virtuous and at Alcibiades the reprobate. And ostracism was so discredited that it never was tried again.{526}

Now if Hyperbolus proposed the ostracism in February 418 B.C., as Dr. Gilbert suggests, it is this disgust of the people at the abuse of a time-honoured institution which explains the fact that they will not elect Alcibiades as general that year. He is the arch-intriguer. The worthy Nicias can surely have been dragged into this intrigue only reluctantly. “For Brutus is an honourable man.” The electors vented their wrath upon the tempter, not the tempted.

But evidence is against this skilful suggestion. Hyperbolus was assassinated on Samos in 411 B.C. A good historian says that the Athenians ostracised him for six years. He cannot have proposed the method before February 417 B.C.{527}

And this is all to the good, since the later date, and it only, explains why he did make the proposal. For the disaster at Mantinea had thoroughly discredited both Alcibiades and Nicias. Alcibiades was at the bottom of the whole policy which had led up to the defeat. Nicias was in large measure responsible for the defeat itself, as has been explained. Naturally Hyperbolus reckoned on their equal unpopularity, that he would get rid at least of one. As naturally the other two saw that a common peril must be averted by common action. So the boomerang came round and smote the thrower. The ostracism of Hyperbolus is one of the results, not one of the causes, of the defeat at Mantinea.

But why Alcibiades was not elected general for 418 B.C. remains to this day a puzzle unexplained. Who can account for the caprice of a popular electorate? Ostracism had been the antidote for that disease. The medicine now was stale and had lost its virtue.

§ 5. The Chalcidic “alternative to Sicily”

Did I not, without involving you in any great danger or expense, combine the most powerful States of the Peloponnese against the Spartans, and compel these to stake at Mantinea all that they had upon the fortune of one day?

So cried Alcibiades to the Athenian people three years later, looking back.{528} He states a fact. But things had gone awry. Sparta was by common consent supreme again on land. The Argive policy was dead. Sparta had set up oligarchies at Argos, at Sicyon, and in Achaea soon after her victory, and concluded a fifty years’ offensive and defensive alliance with Argos.{529} Even though the Athenian people repented of their fickleness and elected Alcibiades general both for 417 B.C. and for 416 B.C. he could not again galvanise the corpse of his Argive policy into life.

He did what little he could. The Argive oligarchy was overthrown in 417 B.C. and the democracy restored. Long walls were hastily built from Argos to the sea to guarantee her food supply from Athens. The Spartans marched out and destroyed the walls. But still Athenian influence was paramount in the city, and in 416 B.C. Alcibiades appeared there and deported “suspects” to the Aegean islands.{530} But Argos was not likely to take the field again, though she might do what little was possible in other ways to help Athens. And in any case Alcibiades had found the Argive soldier a very broken reed. Athenian politics were simplified. The old question remained—Is war bound to come again? Mantinea had at least made this still more likely.

Nicias still denied it, and hoped to preserve the official peace with Sparta still unbroken. The battle of Mantinea, the 200 Athenian dead, had not broken it officially!

But Alcibiades grew more and more insistent to the contrary. Baffled in his first strategy of offence, he still has just one other to propose. His thoughts turn westwards, to Italy, to Sicily, to Carthage, whither so many men’s thoughts have long since been turning. The Congress at Gela had been a bad check. But need it be more than a temporary set-back? Let Athens revive her enterprise on a far greater scale. Already Syracuse is playing the tyrant again. Renewed appeals for help from her old allies in Sicily begin to reach Athens. Conquer Syracuse. Appropriate Sicily. Add Greek Italy. Then sail upon the dependencies of Carthage. Deal finally with Carthage herself. Queen of the entire West, disposing at her pleasure of all the vast resources of the West, then let Athens see who in the homeland would dare oppose her longer!

For many years these schemes had flitted through many a young Athenian’s mind. Nicias had reason to grow scared of this “ill-fated passion” for Sicily, as older men would call it. But what alternative had he to offer, at least to distract the attention of these worrying youngsters who would be doing something? Mere futile inaction—this was a joyful prerogative of a state of peace. But Alcibiades would not let things be, and his eager adherents grew in number day by day. “Remember your oath in Agraulos’ Temple,” he bade each year’s recruits. “Now the oath”, Plutarch explains, “is that they will take wheat, barley, vines, and olives as the sole boundaries of Attica. All fruitful lands, they were taught, belonged to Athens.” The lads clustered round the veterans, listening with eager ears to their tales of the magic Eldorado of the West. Nicias saw the little groups of youngsters gathered in exercise place and parade ground, with their heads bent down, drawing plans of Sicily on the ground, and putting Libya and Carthage into their dusty maps. What alternative had he to offer these young hotheads?{531}

In 416 B.C. the defiant little island of Melos, pleading in vain to be allowed neutrality, was blockaded, and, in the winter, captured by treachery and surrender. The Athenians butchered all the men and enslaved the women and children. So barbarous an outrage on humanity seems to have stirred Thucydides himself to invent a famous dialogue and in it set forward the Athenian plea that Might and Might alone is Right. He sets the doctrine forth so nakedly that every honest reader with a conscience must have expected a great vengeance from Heaven to follow.{532} Then at once follows the long story of the Sicilian Expedition. Is not this the vengeance, suggested by its very place in the narrative? It is not suggested otherwise by Thucydides. He is not Herodotus. The gods side with the larger battalions. Piety is no excuse for lack of preparations or for the absence of intelligence. It is the facts which are dramatic and not the calm self-possessed historian. Thucydides is more dispassionately “modern” than many an enthusiastic sentimentalist of Charles Kingsley’s noble school today. Some consciences in Athens even were pricked by the barbarity. Alcibiades had supported the decree of vengeance on the islanders of Melos. Men blamed him most for it.{533} But he had just dazzled all men by his Olympia display, and his partisans bade their conscience sleep. In this same winter the Argives began again to raid their neighbours’ lands, even affronting Sparta upon the border land. But Alcibiades was no longer to be attracted to enterprise on land. The West was calling.

What alternative had Nicias to offer? He did offer an alternative at the great debate concerning Sicily in the spring of 415 B.C. And here Thucydides somewhat misleads his readers.

For he allows Nicias to set forth his rival “Chalcidic policy” almost as if it were a new policy worth trying energetically.{534} In itself of course it was the old familiar Periclean plea again—Keep a tight hold of the subject allies. In Nicias’ mouth it takes the form—Reconquer your old Empire in the north-east before you try to conquer a new Empire in the West. In this form it seems likely to appeal forcibly to every man of common sense.

But there is a fact which Thucydides himself does not emphasise, nor does he permit any of his speakers in the great debate to make allusion to it. Only from his own most casual remarks and from other curious sources of information does this fact stand out clearly—that the Athenians for some years past have been experimenting again and again with this rival “Chalcidic policy”. Practically, apart from Mantinea and Melos—which cannot be considered great efforts—they have been doing nothing else except “hammer away” in the north-east. And all their hammering, their expenditure of men and ships and money, has had for its result precisely nothing. No wonder that when in the great debate the old statesman propounded solemnly once more his “Chalcidice—conquest policy” he discovered that the Assembly would have nothing more to do with it. Futile—it was futile beyond all words. Here was the glamour of the West. Here was the city ready and able to equip such an Armada as had never sailed from Peiraeus before. Nicias prates about reconquering the revolted cities of the north-east. The Athenians are quite naturally sick to death of the very mention of the accursed towns.

In the summer of 418 one of their tried generals, Euthydemus, and others are, it seems, on duty in Thrace. Thucydides says nothing of this. The expedition was “a mere episode with no influence on the war”, says Busolt in apology. If only 1300 men are sent at the same time to battle in Arcadia, it had no right to be a mere episode. If you sacrifice your political opponent’s strategy to pursue your own, you might at least make something of your own.{535}

Mantinea continued to cost Athens dear. In the winter after the battle Perdiccas King of Macedon and the Chalcidic cities joined the new alliance between Sparta and Argos.{536} Presently the town of Dium by Athos in Chalcidice revolted.{537} Nicias himself, in the summer of 417 B.C., was instructed to proceed to the district. His expedition was a mere fiasco. The wily Perdiccas protested his goodwill long enough to secure himself from being made the object of Nicias’ attention. Then he withdrew his co-operation, and Nicias came to the conclusion that he had better himself return home. He had achieved absolutely nothing.{538}

The indignant Athenians sent another general, Chaeremon, in the following winter to blockade the Macedonian coast.{539} This failed to impress the king. A year later, therefore, some Athenian cavalry were landed at Methone to help some exiles, victims of Perdiccas’ animosity, to plunder the countryside.{540} Sparta sent bidding her Chalcidian allies take the field. They refused. Perdiccas presently patched up his frayed friendship with Athens once more, and, long after the expedition had sailed to Sicily, appeared to help an Athenian general, Evetion, besiege Amphipolis. They failed to take Amphipolis.{541} The Athenians never retook Amphipolis.

Small wonder that “Go and fight Thrace-way” became almost a comic catchword at this time in the streets of Athens. In Aristophanes’ merry play the Birds (set on the stage in the spring of 414 B.C.) the hero, Peisthetaerus, in his “City of the birds”, is dealing out wings to humans who come to beg for them. There hurries in a rascally youngster asking to be fitted out:

“In fact, I’m gone bird-mad, and fly, and long

To dwell with you and hunger for your laws.”

Says the other:

“Which of our laws? For birds have many laws.”

The lad answers:

“All! All! But most of all that jolly law

Which lets a youngster throttle and beat his father.”

“Aye,” Peisthetaerus replies scathingly:

“If a cockerel beat his father here

We do indeed account him quite a—Man.”

The youth is persistent:

“That’s why I moved up hither and would fain

Throttle my father and get all he has.”

But in the upshot Peisthetaerus gently dissuades him:

“Don’t beat your father, lad, but take this wing,

And grasp this spur of battle in your hand,

And think this crest a game-cock’s martial comb.

Now march, keep guard, live on your soldier’s pay,

And let your father be. If you want fighting,

Fly off to Thraceward regions, and fight there.”

As the lad struts away, crying:

“By Dionysus, I believe you’re right.

I’ll do it too,”

the man looks after him. “Fine sense, by Zeus,” he mutters.{542}

Such was the record of the “Chalcidic policy” which Nicias in the fateful year 415 B.C. blandly recommended once more as the alternative to the “Western policy” of Alcibiades. Ever since the capture of Scione in 421 B.C. it had been a story of muddle, incompetence, futility, and failure. And as for hurting or checking Sparta—the Chalcidic policy would be as likely to damage her as the naked St. George of the English sovereign with his stumpy sword is likely to discommode the dragon. There can be small reason for surprise that the Athenians by a huge majority brushed aside all Nicias’ admonitions and counter proposals and voted with ever-increasing enthusiasm to send the expedition to Sicily. Who of us present in the Athenian Assembly that spring morning in the year 415 B.C. would not have voted for Alcibiades?

So the long ships sailed.

SICILY