hoplites would probably lead to the slaughter of many of the enemy whom he specially wished to take alive. From the first the Spartans had no chance. All attempts on their part to reach the compact mass of Athenian hoplites were baffled by showers of weapons from the light-armed troops on either side. At length they began to fall back slowly to the guard-post at the north-western end of the island where the ground is highest : but the very fact of their retreat insured their doom. They had abandoned the only spring of water on the islet, and in a few hours more or less thirst would do its work. But Demosthenes was specially intent on saving their lives, and the leader of the Messenian allies, pledging himself to find a track which should bring them to the rear of the enemy, led his men round from a spot not within sight of the Spartans, and creeping along whereever the precipitous ground gave a footing, suddenly showed himself above them. Summarily checking all further attack, Demosthenes sent a herald to demand unconditional surrender; and the dropping of their shields as their hands were raised aloft showed that the inevitable terms were accepted. Of the 420 hoplites who had been cooped up in Sphakteria 292 lived to be taken prisoners, and of these not less than 120 were genuine Spartiatai of the noblest lineage. The work was done. Within twenty days from the time of his departure Kleon redeemed what Thucydides calls his mad pledge, by bringing to the Peiraieus the costliest freight which had ever been landed on its shores.

CHAPTER V.

THE PELOPONNESIAN WAR FROM THE CAPTURE OF SPHAKTERIA TO THE PEACE OF NIKIAS.

THE success of Demosthenes and Kleon changed the public feeling at Athens from a desire for peace to a resolution of carrying on the war with energy. Nearly 300 Spartan hoplites were prisoners at Athens, ready to be brought out and slain, if a Peloponnesian army should dare to pass the Athenian border. The Spartans were, in proportion, lowered in their own selfesteem and in the eyes of the Greek tribes generally. Their humiliation was shown in more than one embassy for peace; but there was no Perikles now living to warn the Athenians against

forcing good fortune too far. They had put one thorn in the side of their enemies by the occupation of Pylos; in the following, or eighth year of the war (424 B.C.), they thrust in another by the occupation of Kythera, the island off the south-eastern promontory of Lakonia. The enterprise had been concerted with a friendly body among the people who wished to be rid of the oligarchic rule of Sparta; and when Nikias and his colleagues arrived with 2,000 hoplites the resistance was more nominal than real. From Kythera Athenian ships made descents on Asine, Helos, and other places on the Lakonian gulf; and their troops, landing at Thyrea where the expelled Aiginetans had found a home, carried the place by storm. The Aiginetans captured within it were all taken to Athens and there put to death. Thus was swept away the remnant of that people who had shared with the Athenians the glory of Salamis, and a catastrophe as horrible as that of Plataia attested the strength of the fatal disease which rendered impossible the growth of an Hellenic nation.

Among those who risked life and limb to convey food to the men shut up in Sphakteria the most prominent were the Helots to whom the Spartans had promised freedom as a reward. Other Helots (probably those who had not been manumitted) were deserting, it seems, to the Messenians at Pylos, or made their escape to Kythera. Fearing the extent to which these desertions might be carried, the Spartans, it is said, proclaimed that all who regarded their exploits on behalf of Sparta as giving them a title to freedom should come forward and claim it, under the assurance that, if their claim should be sound, the boon should be granted. Two thousand, we are told, were selected as worthy of liberty, and with garlands on their heads went the round of the temples in which they now stood on a level with the highest-born Dorian. A few days later, of these 2,000 men not one remained to be seen and none was ever seen again.

The Spartans, in the judgement of Thucydides, were suffering under a paroxysm of selfish fear which had its natural fruit in cowardly and atrocious cruelty. Whether such a state as Sparta was worth the saving, is another question; but there is little doubt that it must have fallen but for the singularly un-Spartan genius of Brasidas. This eminent man saw that only a diversion of the Athenian forces to a distant scene would loosen the

iron grasp in which they now held the Peloponnesos. Such a diversion was rendered practicable by invitations which came from the Chalkidic towns and from the habitually faithless Perdikkas. The Spartans were well pleased to intrust the task to Brasidas: and they were still more pleased at the opportunity of getting rid of another large body of Helots. Seven hundred were armed as hoplites; and the mere fact that after the slaughter of the 2,000 they should not take dire vengeance as soon as they had crossed the Lakonian border, or at the least desert to the Athenians rather than face them in battle, might lead us to think that the story of that fiendish massacre was only a dream.

But before he could complete his levies, his interference was needed nearer home. The minority which even when Megara revolted from the great city had felt that union with Athens was better than independence under an oligarchy, now concerted with the Athenian generals, Hippokrates and Demosthenes, a plan for the surrender of the city. The scheme was betrayed, and the retreat of the Athenian commanders was followed by the entrance of Brasidas into Megara; but this fiery Spartan had more important work to do elsewhere. On his departure a strict oligarchy was set up, and before the close of the year the Megarians gained possession of their long walls, and levelled them with the ground.

Unconscious of the dangers which were threatening them from the north, the Athenians not only did nothing to prevent Brasidas from passing onwards to kindle the flame of revolt in Chalkidike, but were bent on making another attempt to recover the supremacy which had been lost by the defeat at Koroneia; and they were full of hope on finding that in many Boiotian cities there were not a few who would gladly free themselves from the yoke of the Eupatrid houses. By their help it was arranged that Demosthenes should sail from Naupaktos to Siphai, a town about 25 miles to the south-west of Thespiai. By the betrayal of this place the Athenians would obtain a footing in the south. In the north they would have the like advantage by their admission within the walls of Chaironeia, while in the east they would gain a still stronger base of operations by fortifying the ground round the Delion, a temple of Phoibos Apollôn. The success of this plan depended obviously on the exactness of its execution. Unluckily the

Athenian commanders were not punctual. In the Corinthian gulf Demosthenes sailed to Siphai, only to find that the plot had been betrayed and that both Siphai and Chaironeia were held by the Boiotians in full force. In spite of their discovery a large force set out from Athens to fortify the Delion. In five days their work was practically done; but these five days were fatal to the enterprise.

Hurrying towards Delion, the Boiotian troops found that the main body of the enemy had passed across the border; but the scruples which they felt about attacking them on Attic soil were speedily removed by the Boiotarch Pagondas who professed that he could not understand the subtle distinction which forbade encounter with an enemy on his own ground, and the Athenians were their enemies, wherever they might be. It was late in the day; but they resolved to fight at once. The Theban hoplites were drawn up 25 men deep; the Athenian front had a depth of only 8 men. The contrast points to a growing consciousness on the part of the Boiotians, that with opposing forces consisting of men equal in discipline, bravery, and personal strength, weight must decide the contest. battle which followed was fiercely contested, until a body of men, whom Pagondas had sent secretly round a hill, appeared suddenly before the Athenians, and threw them into a confusion which soon became irretrievable. Nearly a thousand Athenian hoplites with their general Hippokrates lay dead upon the field, which the Thebans carefully guarded, while they made ready for the assault of the Delion on the following day. On the next day only an Athenian garrison remained to defend the intrenchments round the temple. The rest of the survivors were sent home by sea.

The

After the battle an Athenian herald, coming to demand the bodies of the dead, was met by a Boiotian herald, who, hurrying back with him to Delion, charged the Athenians with profaning a sacred site, and added that the dead should not be restored so long as the temple or its close should be occupied by an invading force. The obvious rejoinder, that Hellenic laws allowed no conditions to be interposed for the burial of the dead, must have driven them to comply with the Athenian demands ;. but the invaders took the short-sighted course of denying that they were invaders, the close being Attic ground during the time of their occupation. The Boiotians retorted that, if they

spoke the truth, there was an end of all debate. Athenians in Attica might do what they willed with their own, and being within their own borders they might bury their dead without asking permission of anyone. Even here the Athenians might have answered that according to their own theory the limits of Attica extended no further than their own intrenchments, and that thus the Boiotians were bound to give up the dead; but this reply was not made, and the Thebans at once besieged the fort, which was taken on the seventeenth day after the battle. So ended a scheme which, so long as Brasidas was at large, ought never to have been undertaken. By thus wasting their energies they enabled that vigilant leader to reach Thessaly, and, in spite of the leaning of the main body of the people to the Athenian side, to carry his army through it into Makedonia. Not until he had achieved this task were they awakened to a sense of their danger. Even then they merely declared war against Perdikkas. Nothing can show more clearly the fatal loss sustained by Athens in the death of Perikles than the weakness now displayed in maintaining that which they knew to be the very foundation of their empire. That Perikles would have countenanced either of the recent attempts to re-establish the supremacy of Athens in Boiotia, we may very confidently question; that he would have staked the whole power of the state in encountering and crushing Brasidas, we cannot doubt at all.

The grapes were all but ready for the gathering, and the whole produce of the year was therefore at his mercy, when Brasidas appeared before the gates of Akanthos. The oligarchic Chalkidians, at whose invitation he had come, had led him to look for an eager and even an enthusiastic welcome. He was unpleasantly surprised to find that the gates were guarded and that he could do no more than pray for permission to plead his cause in person. His business was to convince the Akanthians that they could secure their own welfare only by revolting from Athens; and he proceeded to convince them after the following fashion. Assuring them that Sparta was honestly anxious to confine itself to the one task of putting down an iniquitous tyranny, he told them that he had come to set them free, and was amazed at not finding himself welcomed with open He could not allow them to slight the proffered boon. Their refusal would tempt the other allies of Athens to think

arms.