“Ye gods and heroes, who hold the Platæan territory, be ye my witnesses, that we have not in the first instance wrongfully—not until these Platæans have first renounced the oaths binding on all of us—invaded this territory, in which our fathers defeated the Persians after prayers to you, and which ye granted as propitious for Greeks to fight in,—nor shall we commit wrong in what we may do farther, for we have taken pains to tender reasonable terms, but without success. Be ye now consenting parties: may those who are beginning the wrong receive punishment for it,—may those who are aiming to inflict penalty righteously, obtain their object.”
It was thus that Archidamus, in language delivered probably under the walls, and within hearing of the citizens who manned them, endeavored to conciliate the gods and heroes of that town which he was about to ruin and depopulate. The whole of this preliminary debate,[326] so strikingly and dramatically set forth by Thucydidês, illustrates forcibly the respectful reluctance with which the Lacedæmonians first brought themselves to assail this scene of the glories of their fathers. What deserves remark is, that their direct sentiment attaches itself, not at all to the Platæan people, but only to the Platæan territory; it is purely local, though it becomes partially transferred to the people, as tenants of this spot, by secondary association. It was, however, nothing but the long-standing antipathy[327] of the Thebans which induced Archidamus to undertake the enterprise; for the conquest of Platæa was of no avail towards the main objects of the war, though its exposed situation caused it to be crushed between the two great contending forces in Greece.
Archidamus now commenced the siege forthwith, in full hopes that his numerous army, the entire strength of the Peloponnesian confederacy, would soon capture a place of no great size, and probably not very well fortified; yet defended by a resolute garrison of four hundred native citizens, with eighty Athenians: there was no one else in the town except one hundred and ten female slaves for cooking. The fruit-trees, cut down in laying waste the cultivated land, sufficed to form a strong palisade all round the town, so as completely to block up the inhabitants. Next, Archidamus, having abundance of timber near at hand in the forests of Kithæron, began to erect a mound up against a portion of the town wall, so as to be able to march up by an inclined plane, and thus take the place by assault. Wood, stones, and earth, were piled up in a vast heap,—cross palings of wood being carried on each side of it, in parallel lines at right angles to the town wall, for the purpose of keeping the loose mass of materials between them together. For seventy days and as many nights did the army labor at this work, without any intermission, taking turns for food and repose: and through such unremitting assiduity, the mound approached near to the height of the town wall. But as it gradually mounted up, the Platæans were not idle on their side: they constructed an additional wall of wood, which they planted on the top of their own town wall, so as to heighten the part over against the enemy’s mound: sustaining it by brickwork behind, for which the neighboring houses furnished materials: hides, raw as well as dressed, were suspended in front of it, in order to protect their workmen against missiles, and the woodwork against fire-carrying arrows.[328] And as the besiegers still continued heaping up materials, to carry their mound up to the height even of this recent addition, the Platæans met them by breaking a hole in the lower part of their town wall, and pulling in the earth from the lower portion of the mound; which thus gave way at the top and left a vacant space near the wall, until the besiegers filled it up by letting down quantities of stiff clay rolled up in wattled reeds, which could not be pulled away in the same manner. Again, the Platæans dug a subterranean passage from the interior of their town to the ground immediately under the mound, and thus carried away unseen the lower earth belonging to the latter; so that the besiegers saw their mound continually sinking down, in spite of fresh additions at the top,—yet without knowing the reason. Nevertheless, it was plain that these stratagems would be in the end ineffectual, and the Platæans accordingly built a new portion of town wall in the interior, in the shape of a crescent, taking its start from the old town wall on each side of the mound: the besiegers were thus deprived of all benefit from the mound, assuming it to be successfully completed; since when they had marched over it, there stood in front of them a new town wall to be carried in like manner.
Nor was this the only method of attack employed. Archidamus farther brought up battering engines, one of which greatly shook and endangered the additional height of wall built by the Platæans over against the mound; while others were brought to bear on different portions of the circuit of the town wall. Against these new assailants, various means of defence were used: the defenders on the walls threw down ropes, got hold of the head of the approaching engine, and pulled it by main force out of the right line, either upwards or sideways: or they prepared heavy wooden beams on the wall, each attached to both ends by long iron chains to two poles projecting at right angles from the wall, by means of which poles it was raised up and held aloft: so that at the proper moment, when the battering machine approached the wall, the chain was suddenly let go, and the beam fell down with great violence directly upon the engine and broke off its projecting beak.[329] However rude these defensive processes may seem, they were found effective against the besiegers, who saw themselves, at the close of three months’ unavailing efforts, obliged to renounce the idea of taking the town in any other way than by the process of blockade and famine,—a process alike tedious and costly.[330]
Before they would incur so much inconvenience, however, they had recourse to one farther stratagem,—that of trying to set the town on fire. From the height of their mound, they threw down large quantities of fagots, partly into the space between the mound and the newly-built crescent piece of wall,—partly, as far as they could reach, into other parts of the city: pitch and other combustibles were next added, and the whole mass set on fire. The conflagration was tremendous, such as had never been before seen: a large portion of the town became unapproachable, and the whole of it narrowly escaped destruction. Nothing could have preserved it, had the wind been rather more favorable: there was indeed a farther story, of a most opportune thunder-storm coming to extinguish the flames, which Thucydidês does not seem to credit.[331] In spite of much partial damage, the town remained still defensible, and the spirit of the inhabitants unsubdued.
There now remained no other resource except to build a wall of circumvallation round Platæa, and trust to the slow process of famine. The task was distributed in suitable fractions among the various confederate cities, and completed about the middle of September, a little before the autumnal equinox.[332] Two distinct walls were constructed, with sixteen feet of intermediate space all covered in, so as to look like one very thick wall: there were, moreover, two ditches, out of which the bricks for the wall had been taken,—one on the inside towards Platæa, and the other on the outside against any foreign relieving force. The interior covered space between the walls was intended to serve as permanent quarters for the troops left on guard, consisting half of Bœotians and half of Peloponnesians.[333]
At the same time that Archidamus began the siege of Platæa, the Athenians on their side despatched a force of two thousand hoplites and two hundred horsemen, to the Chalkidic peninsula, under Xenophon son of Euripidês (with two colleagues), the same who had granted so recently the capitulation of Potidæa. It was necessary doubtless, to convoy and establish the new colonists who were about to occupy the deserted site of Potidæa: moreover, the general had acquired some knowledge of the position and parties of the Chalkidic towns, and hoped to be able to act against them with effect. They first invaded the territory belonging to the Bottiæan town of Spartôlus, not without hopes that the city itself would be betrayed to them by intelligences within: but this was prevented by the arrival of an additional force from Olynthus, partly hoplites, partly peltasts. These peltasts, a species of troops between heavy-armed and light-armed, furnished with a pelta (or light shield), and short spear, or javelin, appear to have taken their rise among these Chalkidic Greeks, being equipped in a manner half Greek and half Thracian: we shall find them hereafter much improved and turned to account by some of the ablest Grecian generals. The Chalkidic hoplites are generally of inferior merit: on the other hand, their cavalry and their peltasts are very good: in the action which now took place under the walls of Spartôlus, the Athenian hoplites defeated those of the enemy, but their cavalry and their light troops were completely worsted by the Chalkidic. These latter, still farther strengthened by the arrival of fresh peltasts from Olynthus, ventured even to attack the Athenian hoplites, who thought it prudent to fall back upon the two companies left in reserve to guard the baggage. During this retreat they were harassed by the Chalkidic horse and light-armed, who retired when the Athenians turned upon them, but attacked them on all sides when on their march; and employed missiles so effectively that the retreating hoplites could no longer maintain a steady order, but took to flight, and sought refuge at Potidæa. Four hundred and thirty hoplites, near one-fourth of the whole force, together with all three generals, perished in this defeat, and the expedition returned in dishonor to Athens.[334]
In the western parts of Greece, the arms of Athens and her allies were more successful. The repulse of the Ambrakiots from the Amphilochian Argos, during the preceding year, had only exasperated them and induced them to conceive still larger plans of aggression against both the Akarnanians and Athenians. In concert with their mother-city Corinth, where they obtained warm support, they prevailed upon the Lacedæmonians to take part in a simultaneous attack of Akarnania, by land as well as by sea, which would prevent the Akarnanians from concentrating their forces in any one point, and put each of their townships upon an isolated self-defence; so that all of them might be overpowered in succession, and detached, together with Kephallênia and Zakynthus, from the Athenian alliance. The fleet of Phormio at Naupaktus, consisting only of twenty triremes, was accounted incompetent to cope with a Peloponnesian fleet such as might be fitted out at Corinth. There was even some hope that the important station at Naupaktus might itself be taken, so as to expel the Athenians completely from those parts.
The scheme of operations now projected was far more comprehensive than anything which the war had yet afforded. The land-force of the Ambrakiots, together with their neighbors and fellow-colonists the Leukadians and Anaktorians, assembled near their own city, while their maritime force was collected at Leukas, on the Akarnanian coast. The force at Ambrakia was joined, not only by Knêmus, the Lacedæmonian admiral, with one thousand Peloponnesian hoplites, who found means to cross over from Peloponnesus, eluding the vigilance of Phormio,—but also by a numerous body of Epirotic and Macedonian auxiliaries, collected even from the distant and northernmost tribes. A thousand Chaonians were present, under the command of Photyus and Nikanor, two annual chiefs chosen from the regal gens. Neither this tribe, nor the Thesprotians who came along with them, acknowledged any hereditary king. The Molossians and Atintânes, who also joined the force, were under Sabylinthus, regent on behalf of the young prince Tharypas. There came, besides, the Paranæi, from the banks of the river Aôus under their king Orœdus, together with one thousand Orestæ, a tribe rather Macedonian than Epirot, sent by their king Antiochus. Even king Perdikkas, though then nominally in alliance with Athens, sent one thousand of his Macedonian subjects, who, however, arrived too late to be of any use.[335] This large and diverse body of Epirotic invaders, a new phenomenon in Grecian history, and got together doubtless by the hopes of plunder, proves the extensive relations of the tribes of the interior with the city of Ambrakia,—a city destined to become in later days the capital of the Epirotic king Pyrrhus.
It had been concerted that the Peloponnesian fleet from Corinth should join that already assembled at Leukas, and act upon the coast of Akarnania at the same time that the land-force marched into that territory. But Knêmus finding the land-force united and ready, near Ambrakia, deemed it unnecessary to await the fleet from Corinth, and marched straight into Akarnania, through Limnæa, a frontier village territory belonging to the Amphilochian Argos. He directed his march upon Stratus,—an interior town, and the chief place in Akarnania,—the capture of which would be likely to carry with it the surrender of the rest; especially as the Akarnanians, distracted by the presence of the ships at Leukas, and alarmed by the large body of invaders on their frontier, did not dare to leave their own separate homes, so that Stratus was left altogether to its own citizens. Nor was Phormio, though they sent an urgent message to him, in any condition to help them; since he could not leave Naupaktus unguarded, when the large fleet from Corinth was known to be approaching. Under such circumstances, Knêmus and his army indulged the most confident hopes of overpowering Stratus without difficulty. They marched in three divisions: the Epirots in the centre,—the Leukadians and Anaktorians on the right,—the Peloponnesians and Ambrakiots, together with Knêmus himself, on the left. So little expectation was entertained of resistance, that these three divisions took no pains to keep near or even in sight of each other. Both the Greek divisions, indeed, maintained a good order of march, and kept proper scouts on the look out; but the Epirots advanced without any care or order whatever; especially the Chaonians, who formed the van. These men, accounted the most warlike of all the Epirotic tribes, were so full of conceit and rashness, that when they approached near to Stratus, they would not halt to encamp and assail the place conjointly with the Greeks; but marched along with the other Epirots right forward to the town, intending to attack it single-handed, and confident that they should carry it at the first assault, before the Greeks came up, so that the entire glory would be theirs. The Stratians watched and profited by this imprudence. Planting ambuscades in convenient places, and suffering the Epirots to approach without suspicion near to the gates, they then suddenly sallied out and attacked them, while the troops in ambuscade rose up and assailed them at the same time. The Chaonians who formed the van, thus completely surprised, were routed with great slaughter; while the other Epirots fled, after but little resistance. So much had they hurried forward in advance of their Greek allies, that neither the right nor the left division were at all aware of the battle, until the flying barbarians, hotly pursued by the Akarnanians, made it known to them. The two divisions then joined, protected the fugitives, and restrained farther pursuit,—the Stratians declining to come to hand-combat with them until the other Akarnanians should arrive. They seriously annoyed the forces of Knêmus, however, by distant slinging, in which the Akarnanians were preëminently skilful; nor did Knêmus choose to persist in his attack under such discouraging circumstances. As soon as night arrived, so that there was no longer any fear of slingers, he retreated to the river Anapus, a distance of between nine and ten miles. Well aware that the news of the victory would attract other Akarnanian forces immediately to the aid of Stratus, he took advantage of the arrival of his own Akarnanian allies from Œniadæ (the only town in the country which was attached to the Lacedæmonian interest), and sought shelter near their city. From thence his troops dispersed, and returned to their respective homes.[336]