need, in the event of either truce or peace, to give up the place along with others which had been forcibly occupied. The proposal therefore made to them was that they should submit themselves to the judgement of the Lakedaimonians who would give them a pledge that the guilty only should be punished. The Plataians were in no condition to refuse these terms; but they could at once foresee the issue when on the arrival of the special commissioners dispatched from Sparta they were called upon to answer the single question, whether during the present war they had done any good to the Spartans and their allies. The very form of the question showed that no reference would be suffered to their previous history; but only by such reference was it possible to exhibit in its true light the injustice of their present treatment. They were to be sacrificed, in spite of all that they might urge, to the vindictiveness of the Thebans; and these took care to paint in glaring colours the crime of which the Plataians had been guilty after the surprise of their city. They had promised to keep their prisoners unharmed until they had tried the effect of negotiation; they made no attempt to try it, but straightway slew them all. The retort brings us back to the monster evil of this horrible war,—the exasperated and vindictive spirit which forgot prudence, reason, and sound policy in the blind longing for revenge. It matters not whether we take the version of the Thebans or that of the Plataians. These by their own mouth stand on this point selfcondemned. If one crime was to serve as the justification of another, the Thebans had full warrant for demanding the death of the Plataians. But there was no need to urge a request with which the Spartans had already made up their minds to comply. The prisoners were again asked, one by one, the same question to which their speech had evaded a direct answer; and as each man replied in the negative, he was led away and killed. So were slain two hundred Plataians and twenty-five Athenians who had been shut up in the town; and so fell the city of Plataia in the ninety-third year of its alliance with Athens, to rise again once more and to be once more destroyed. Its territory was declared to be public land, and was let out for ten years to Boiotian graziers. The play was played out, as the Thebans would have it. The phrase is strictly justified, for the existence or the fall of Plataia could have no serious issue or meaning in reference to the war.

CHAPTER IV.

THE PELOPONNESIAN WAR FROM THE REVOLUTION IN KORKYRA TO THE CAPTURE OF SPHAKTERIA BY DEMOSTHENES AND KLEON.

THE defensive alliance of Korkyra with Athens had been followed, it would seem, by something like peaceful and orderly government in that unhappy island; and things remained comparatively quiet until the Corinthians sent back a body of prisoners who were set free, nominally under a promise to pay a heavy ransom, but really to earn their freedom not by money but by severing the island from all connexion with Athens. These men, in fulfilment of their compact, set to work to kindle a flame which was to consume not their enemies only but themselves. The time which followed was marked by a series of frightful crimes, by pitiless massacres, and an iron inhumanity, worthy of the worst days of the first French revolution. Their first step was a personal canvassing of the citizens generally for the purpose of breaking off the alliance with Athens. By their exertions a decree was passed confirming the Athenian alliance but re-establishing the ancient friendship with the Peloponnesians,-an arrangement which defeated itself. Their next act was the accusation of Peithias, a prominent member of the demos, on the general charge of betraying Korkyra to the Athenians. The trial ended in his acquittal: and Peithias in his turn, picking out five men of the wealthiest families, charged them with cutting stakes for vine props from the Temenos of Zeus and Alkinoös. The men were condemned to pay the fine of a stater, or four drachmas, for each stake cut. The vastness of the amount drove them to take sanctuary and to pray for permission to pay by instalments. But Peithias

prevailed on the people to let the law take its course, and he was about to propose the renewal of an offensive alliance with Athens, when the oligarchic faction, breaking suddenly into the council chamber, slew him with sixty of his fellow-senators, and then carried a decree that neither Spartans nor Athenians should be received except with a single ship. The arrival of ambassadors from Sparta and Corinth encouraged the oligarchs to fresh acts of violence; but both oligarchs and demos made efforts to enlist the services of the slaves by the promise of free

M

dom. The slaves for the most part joined the people: the oligarchs were strengthened by 800 mercenaries from the mainland. A battle which took place two days later ended in the defeat of the oligarchs, who set fire to the Agora. At this moment, when the demos was most fiercely excited, the Athenian fleet under Nikostratos reached Korkyra. The wish of the Athenian admiral was to effect an offensive alliance between Athens and Korkyra, and, having done this, to pour oil on the troubled waters. This task he thought that he had accomplished when he had persuaded the Korkyraians to content themselves with bringing to trial ten of the most conspicuous of the oligarchic party. But things had already gone too far. Both parties were alike blinded by suspicion and hatred ; and the sequel brings before us a horrible tale of fierce tumults, of vile treachery, and of pitiless slaughter, in which the Athenian admiral Eurymedon played a most disgraceful part. The result was, that the oligarchic faction was destroyed; and, like fire dying out for lack of fuel, the awful feuds which had drenched Korkyra in blood ceased, necessarily, to rend the island asunder.

The summer of the fifth year of the war (427 B.c.) brought to the Athenians some success by the capture of Minoa, an islet used by the Megarians as a post to defend their neighbouring harbour of Nisaia. The general in command of the successful force was Nikias the son of Nikeratos, who now becomes one of the most prominent actors on the stage of Athenian politics, until his career closed under conditions thoroughly abhorrent to a nature singularly unenterprising and cautious.

This summer was marked also by the first interference of the Athenians in the affairs of Sicily, but by few other events affecting immediately the Athenian empire. The autumn was darkened by the reappearance of the plague which after a lull of some time burst out with extreme violence for a twelvemonth. An unsuccessful attempt on the part of the Athenians in the next year to bring the island of Melos into the Athenian confederacy was followed by an enterprise not much more successful, at first, on the side of the Spartans to found a military colony at Herakleia in Trachis, not far from the mountain passes associated with the exploits of Leonidas. A more serious scheme was that by which Demosthenes, the commander of an Athenian squadron off Leukas, dreamt of restoring the supremacy of Athens in

Boiotia by an attempt made, not from Athens, but from the passes of the Etolian mountains. The enterprise ended in terrible failure; and Demosthenes, not daring to face the people, remained in the neighbourhood of Naupaktos. His help was soon needed by the Akarnanians, whom he had offended by insisting on his march through Etolia, when they wished him to besiege Leukas. They were now, at the beginning of winter, assailed by the Ambrakiots who seized Olpai. By the aid of Demosthenes they won a battle in which the Spartan commander Eurylochos was slain, while the Ambrakiots were compelled to make a disorderly retreat to Olpai. Another body of Ambrakiots, constituting in fact the main force of their state, was cut to pieces at Idomenê, chiefly by means of the Messenians in the service of Demosthenes; and Ambrakia now lay at the mercy of the Messenians, who might have carried the town on the first assault. To this step they were strongly urged by Demosthenes; but having gained their immediate end, they reverted to their old grudge and refused to follow his counsel.

This campaign, marked by fearful carnage, had done little for Athens, but much for Demosthenes. Without calling on the state to aid him, he had achieved a victory which assured to him the condonation of his previous mistakes; but the Athenians had gained nothing beyond a pledge on the part of the Ambrakiots that they would take no part in any operations directed against Athens.

The seventh year of the war (425 B.C.) began with the usual invasion of Attica by the Peloponnesian army under Agis, the son of Archidamos; but scarcely a fortnight had passed since they crossed the Attic border, when Agis received tidings which caused him to hurry homewards with all speed. The Messenians of Naupaktos, who had suggested to Demosthenes his unfortunate Etolian expedition, now urged upon him the vast advantages which would accrue to Athens from the occupation of a strong military post on Spartan territory; and the reputation which he had gained by his victories at Olpai and Idomenê procured for him the consent of the people for employing in any operations along the Peloponnesian coasts the fleet of forty ships which they were sending first to Korkyra and then to Sicily. But the generals with whom he sailed were less disposed to listen when he suggested that Pylos might serve well for the purposes of his scheme. They insisted on sailing

onwards, but a storm brought them back to Pylos, and Demosthenes again vainly urged his scheme upon them; nor had he any better success either with the subordinate officers or with the men. But the storm lasted on for days, and the men, wearied with idleness, began of their own accord to fortify the place by way of passing the time. They soon took a serious interest in the work which they had begun almost in sport, and toiled hard to strengthen the comparatively small extent of ground which was not sufficiently fortified by nature, before a Peloponnesian army could be marched against them. Six days sufficed to complete the wall on the land side, and Demosthenes was left with five ships to hold the place. The spot thus chosen is described by Thucydides as a rocky promontory, separated from the island of Sphakteria by a passage wide enough to admit two triremes abreast. This island stretched from northwest to southeast, a passage capable of admitting eight or nine war-ships abreast dividing it from the mainland. Within this breakwater lay the spacious harbour of Pylos. Either time has altered considerably the configuration of the ground, or the historian was not accurately informed as to measurements; but there can be little doubt, or none, that the bay of Pylos is the present bay of Navarino, and that the spot which witnessed the success of Demosthenes has witnessed also the destruction of the Turkish fleet by Sir Edward Codrington and his French and Russian colleagues.

The tidings that the Athenians were masters of Pylos had brought Agis and his men away from Attica. The plan of the Spartans was to strain every nerve to crush the Athenians by a simultaneous attack by land and sea before they could receive any reinforcements; and for this purpose a body of hoplites under the command of Epitadas was placed on the islet of Sphakteria. Demosthenes on his side had done all that an able and brave leader could do. Having sent two ships to summon with all speed the whole Athenian squadron from Zakynthos, he drew up his own five triremes on the shore under the walls of his fort, and hedged them in with a stout stockade. The attack of the Peloponnesians by sea was made in detachments of four or five vessels at a time; but the Athenians were ready to encounter them at the narrow openings by which alone they could approach the fort, and they had a powerful ally in the rocks and reefs which gird in this dangerous promontory. The