captains of the ships exhibited a natural reluctance to risk the destruction of their vessels. Furious at the sight, Brasidas asked them whether they meant for the sake of saving some timber to allow the enemy to establish himself in their country; and, insisting that his own ship should be driven straight upon the beach, he took his stand on the gangway ready to spring on land. In this position he was exposed to showers of darts and arrows; and as he fell back fainting with his left arm hanging over the side of the vessel, his shield slipped off into the water. Dashed up presently by the waves on the beach, it was seized by the Athenians who with it crowned the trophy raised after the battle. Evening closed on the strange victory of Athenians on the Peloponnesian coast over Peloponnesians who sought in vain to effect a landing from their own ships on their own shores. Two days more were spent in futile efforts on the part of the Spartans to obtain a footing on the beach. On the third day the Athenian fleet arrived from Zakynthos. For that night the Athenian commanders fell back on the islet of Protê. On the following morning they advanced with the intention of forcing their way within the passage, unless the enemy should come out to meet them in the open sea. With a strange infatuation the Spartans awaited their attack within the harbour; and the Athenians sweeping in at both entrances dashed down upon their ships, disabling many and taking five. The Spartans saw with dismay that their hoplites were now cut off in the island; and something must at once be done, if these men, many of them belonging to the first families in Sparta, were to be saved from starvation or from the risk of being captured by an overwhelming force. The ephors themselves at once hurried from Sparta to Pylos to effect a truce until envoys should have returned from Athens with the decision of the people whether for peace or for continued war. The terms on which this truce was arranged were sufficiently stringent. Every ship of the Lakedaimonian fleet, wherever it might be, was to be surrendered to the Athenians, to be given up again at the end of the truce, and no attack was to be made on their fortifications, the Spartans being allowed on these conditions to send in a daily allowance of food and wine for the men imprisoned in Sphakteria. The infraction of any one clause of the agreement was to nullify the whole. Not very many days had passed since the Athenians had witnessed the premature retreat of the invading army; and nothing was further from their minds than the thought that the next scene in the drama would be the sight of Spartan ambassadors suing for peace with a tone of moderation in little harmony with their general character. The blockade of the hoplites in Sphakteria had suddenly opened the eyes of the Spartans to the exceeding value of forbearance and kindliness, and indeed to the general duty of the forgiveness of injuries. The Hellenic world, they urged, was sorely in need of rest, and the boon would be not the less welcome because they knew not now who had begun the quarrel, and had at best a vague notion as to what they were fighting for. The Spartans were no doubt perfectly sincere for the time in their professions of kindly feeling to the Athenians, and never spoke more to the purpose than when they said that the time for ending the war had come. It was true that when Athens was down under the scourge of the great pestilence, they had dismissed with contempt the Athenian envoys who had come to sue for peace; but many of the more moderate citizens were content to overlook this inconsistency in their wider regard for the permanent interests not of Athens only but of Hellas. Unfortunately among these moderate citizens not one was to be found who could venture to force these interests on the attention of the people. Perikles was dead, and Kleon was living with a spirit unchanged from the day when he hounded on his countrymen to slaughter the friendly Demos as well as the rebellious oligarchy of Mytilene. Insisting that the Athenians could not honourably demand less than the surrender of the hoplites in Sphakteria with all their arms, he added that after these men should have been brought to Athens, the Spartans might make a further truce on the one condition of giving back to the Athenians Nisaia, Pegai, Troizen, and Achaia which had been extorted from them under constraint long before the beginning of the war. So far Kleon was thoroughly justified; nor would he have been in the least abandoning his position, had he assented to the request which the Spartan envoys now made that commissioners should be appointed to discuss the terms with them and submit the result to the people. But with amazing folly he burst out into loud and indignant denunciations of their double-dealing. He had suspected from the first that they had come with no good intent: he was now sure that they wished only to cheat and mislead the people, before whom he bade them speak out anything which they had to say. The envoys were taken by surprise. They were wholly without experience in addressing large popular assemblies; nor had any citizen of the moderate party, from Nikias downwards, the courage to demand that the request of the envoys should be submitted to the decision of the people. The Athenians chose to follow Kleon; and Kleon in bringing about the dismissal of the envoys was miserably in the wrong. With the return of the envoys to Pylos the truce ended, and the Spartans demanded the restoration of their fleet. But alleging some infraction of the agreement, the Athenians refused to surrender the ships. Protesting against the iniquity, the Spartans made ready to carry on the war. They did so at a great disadvantage: but at first it seemed as though, nevertheless, the Athenians would find that they had undertaken a task beyond their powers. Their slender garrison was itself besieged by an army which occupied the land on all sides: and one solitary spring on the summit of the little peninsula furnished a scanty supply of water for them and for the crews of the triremes. On the other hand the hoplites in Sphakteria were well supplied from a spring in the centre of the island; and the Spartans on shore promised freedom to Helots and large rewards to freemen who might succeed in bringing provisions into the island. The next tidings brought to Athens told the people that at the beginning of the winter season the triremes must be withdrawn, and that on their departure the imprisoned hoplites would at once make their escape. According to the Athenian fashion of shifting all responsibility upon advisers, popular indignation ran high against Kleon who was sorely perplexed, while his opponents were in the same measure delighted. At the spur of the moment he charged the messengers from Pylos with falsehood: but when he was chosen to go as a commissioner to ascertain the state of things at the spot, he felt that he must either eat his own words, if their account should be correct, or be soon convicted of a lie, if he ventured to put a better face upon the matter. But he was none the less right in telling the Athenians, that if they believed the news just brought to them, their business was to sail without a moment's delay to help their countrymen and seize the hoplites in Sphakteria; that if the Strategoi then present were men they would at once do so; and that if he were in their place not an hour should be wasted before setting off. The reference to himself was at the worst only an indiscretion; but Nikias, instead of admitting that Kleon had simply pointed out to him his clear duty, answered that, if the task seemed to him so easy, he had better undertake it himself. Seeing that Nikias was in earnest, he candidly confessed his incompetence for military command. With incredible meanness, if not with deliberate treachery, Nikias stuck to his proposal; and the eagerness of the demos to ratify the compact was increased by the wish of Kleon to evade it. As for Nikias, it is enough to say that regarding the matter as a fair trap for catching political opponents, he could calmly propose to risk the destruction of an Athenian army by despatching on an arduous, if not an impossible, errand a man whom he believed to be wholly incompetent. When at length Kleon said that he would go, he added that he should set out with the assurance of bringing back within twenty days, as prisoners, the Spartan hoplites then in Sphakteria. Thucydides speaks of this promise as a sign of madness. Yet Kleon had only asserted that Athens was able to do what Nikias pronounced to be impossible, and he further took care that his colleague should be the man who had achieved a harder task among the Akarnanian and Amphilochian mountains. He could scarcely have shown sounder sense or greater modesty yet Thucydides tells us that his speech was received by the Athenians with laughter, and that sober-minded men were well pleased with an arrangement which could not fail to insure one of two good things, either the defeat and ruin of Kleon or a victory which might open the way for peace. Still more astounding is his statement that the ruin of Kleon was what these sober-minded men especially desired. In the judgement of Englishmen these sober-minded men would be mere traitors; but it is not easy to avoid the conclusion that the laughter came not from the people generally, but only from the members of the oligarchic clubs and from those who were afraid of offending them. Having reached Pylos, Kleon at once proposed to the Spartans to surrender the hoplites, who should be well treated until terms of peace should be arranged. But the Spartans would not hear of it; and with the full consent of Kleon Demosthenes arranged the plan of attack. His great aim was to do his work by means of the light-armed troops. An encounter of |