While Nikias was thus in what may be called ministerial function, Kleon was not of sufficient importance to attain the same, but was confined to the inferior function of opposition: we shall see in the coming chapter how he became as it were promoted, partly by his own superior penetration, partly by the dishonest artifice and misjudgment of Nikias and other opponents, in the affair of Sphakteria. But his vocation was now to find fault, to censure, to denounce; his theatre of action was the senate, the public assembly, the dikasteries; his principal talent was that of speech, in which he must unquestionably have surpassed all his contemporaries. The two gifts which had been united in Periklês—superior capacity for speech as well as for action—were now severed, and had fallen, though both in greatly inferior degree, the one to Nikias, the other to Kleon. As an opposition-man, fierce and violent in temper, Kleon was extremely formidable to all acting functionaries; and from his influence in the public assembly, he was doubtless the author of many important positive measures, thus going beyond the functions belonging to what is called opposition. But though the most effective speaker in the public assembly, he was not for that reason the most influential person in the democracy: his powers of speech in fact, stood out the more prominently, because they were found apart from that station, and those qualities which were considered, even at Athens, all but essential to make a man a leader in political life. To understand the political condition of Athens at this time, it has been necessary to take this comparison between Nikias and Kleon, and to remark, that though the latter might be a more victorious speaker, the former was the more guiding and influential leader; the points gained by Kleon were all noisy and palpable, sometimes however, without doubt, of considerable moment,—but the course of affairs was much more under the direction of Nikias.
It was during the summer of this year, the fifth of the war,—B.C. 427, that the Athenians began operations on a small scale in Sicily; probably contrary to the advice both of Nikias and Kleon, neither of them seemingly favorable to these distant undertakings. I reserve, however, the series of Athenian measures in Sicily—which afterwards became the turning-point of the fortunes of the state—for a department by themselves. I shall take them up separately, and bring them down to the Athenian expedition against Syracuse, when I reach the date of that important event.
During the autumn of the same year, the epidemic disorder, after having intermitted for some time, resumed its ravages at Athens, and continued for one whole year longer, to the sad ruin both of the strength and the comfort of the city. And it seems that this autumn, as well as the ensuing summer, were distinguished by violent atmospheric and terrestrial disturbance. Numerous earthquakes were experienced at Athens, in Eubœa, in Bœotia, especially near Orchomenus. Sudden waves of the sea and unexampled tides were also felt on the coast of Eubœa and Lokris, and the islands of Atalantê and Peparêthus; the Athenian fort and one of the two guard-ships at Atalantê were partially destroyed. The earthquakes produced one effect favorable to Athens; they deterred the Lacedæmonians from invading Attica. Agis, king of Sparta, had already reached the isthmus for that purpose; but the repeated earthquakes were looked upon as an unfavorable portent, and the scheme was abandoned.[478]
These earthquakes, however, were not considered as calculated to deter the Lacedæmonians from the foundation of Herakleia, a new colony near the strait of Thermopylæ. On this occasion, we hear of a branch of the Greek population not before mentioned during the war. The coast immediately north of the strait of Thermopylæ was occupied by the three subdivisions of the Malians,—Paralii, Hierês, and Trachinians. These latter, immediately adjoining Mount Œta on its north side,—as well as the Dorians, the little tribe properly so called, which was accounted the primitive hearth of the Dorians generally, who joined the same mountain-range on the south,—were both of them harassed and plundered by the predatory mountaineers, probably Ætolians, on the high lands between them. At first, the Trachinians were disposed to throw themselves on the protection of Athens; but not feeling sufficiently assured as to the way in which she would deal with them, they joined with the Dorians in claiming aid from Sparta: in fact, it does not appear that Athens, possessing naval superiority only, and being inferior on land, could have given them effective aid. The Lacedæmonians eagerly embraced the opportunity, and determined to plant a strong colony in this tempting situation: there was wood in the neighboring regions for ship-building,[479] so that they might hope to acquire a naval position for attacking the neighboring island of Eubœa, while the passage of troops against the subject-allies of Athens in Thrace, would also be facilitated; the impracticability of such passage had forced them, three years before, to leave Potidæa to its fate. A considerable body of colonists, Spartans and Lacedæmonian Periœki, was assembled under the conduct of three Spartan œkists,—Leon, Damagon, and Alkidas; the latter we are to presume, though Thucydidês does not say so, was the same admiral who had met with such little success in Ionia and at Korkyra. Proclamation was farther made to invite the junction of all other Greeks as colonists, excepting by name Ionians, Achæans, and some other tribes not here specified. Probably the distinct exclusion of the Achæans must have been rather the continuance of ancient sentiment than dictated by any present reasons; since the Achæans were not now pronounced enemies of Sparta. A number of colonists, stated as not less than ten thousand, flocked to the place, having confidence in the stability of the colony under the powerful protection of Sparta; and a new town, of large circuit, was built and fortified under the name of Herakleia;[480] not far from the site of Trachis, about two miles and a quarter from the nearest point of the Maliac gulf, but about double that distance from the strait of Thermopylæ. Near to the latter, and for the purpose of keeping effective possession of it, a port, with dock and accommodation for shipping, was constructed.
A populous city, established under Lacedæmonian protection in this important post, alarmed the Athenians, and created much expectation in every part of Greece: but the Lacedæmonian œkists were harsh and unskilful in their management, and the Thessalians, to whom the Trachinian territory was tributary, considered the colony as an encroachment upon their soil. Anxious to prevent its increase, they harassed it with hostilities from the first moment, while the Œtæan assailants were not idle: and Herakleia, thus pressed from without, and misgoverned within, dwindled down from its original numbers and promise, barely maintaining its existence.[481] We shall find it in later times, however, revived, and becoming a place of considerable importance.
The main Athenian armament of this summer, consisting of sixty triremes, under Nikias, undertook an expedition against the island of Melos. Melos and Thera, both inhabited by ancient colonists from Lacedæmon, had never been from the beginning, and still refused to be, members of the Athenian alliance, or subjects of the Athenian empire. They thus stood out as exceptions to all the other islands in the Ægean, and the Athenians thought themselves authorized to resort to constraint and conquest; believing themselves entitled to command over all the islands. They might indeed urge, and with considerable plausibility, that the Melians now enjoyed their share of the protection of the Ægean from piracy, without contributing at all to the cost of it: but considering the obstinate reluctance and strong Lacedæmonian prepossessions of the Melians, who had taken no part in the war, and given no ground of offence to Athens, the attempt to conquer them by force could hardly be justified even as a calculation of gain and loss, and was a mere gratification to the pride of power in carrying out what, in modern days, we should call the principle of maritime empire. Melos and Thera formed awkward corners, which defaced the symmetry of a great proprietor’s field;[482] and the former ultimately entailed upon Athens the heaviest of all losses,—a deed of blood which deeply dishonored her annals. On this occasion, Nikias visited the island with his fleet, and after vainly summoning the inhabitants, ravaged the lands, but retired without undertaking a siege. He then sailed away, and came to Orôpus, on the northeast frontier of Attica, bordering on Bœotia: the hoplites on board his ships landed in the night, and marched into the interior of Bœotia, to the vicinity of Tanagra. They were here met, according to signal raised, by a military force from Athens, which marched thither by land; and the joint Athenian army ravaged the Tanagræan territory, gaining an insignificant advantage over its defenders. On retiring, Nikias reassembled his armament, sailed northward along the coast of Lokris with the usual ravages, and returned home without effecting anything farther.[483]
About the same time that he started, thirty other Athenian triremes, under Demosthenês and Proklês, had been sent round Peloponnesus to act upon the coast of Akarnania. In conjunction with the whole Akarnanian force, except the men of Œniade,—with fifteen triremes from Korkyra, and some troops from Kephallênia and Zakynthus,—they ravaged the whole territory of Leukas, both within and without the isthmus, and confined the inhabitants to their town, which was too strong to be taken by anything but a wall of circumvallation and a tedious blockade. And the Akarnanians, to whom the city was especially hostile, were urgent with Demosthenês to undertake this measure forthwith, since the opportunity might not again recur, and success was nearly certain.
But this enterprising officer committed the grave imprudence of offending them on a matter of great importance, in order to attack a country of all others the most impracticable,—the interior of Ætolia. The Messenians of Naupaktus, who suffered from the depredations of the neighboring Ætolian tribes, inflamed his imagination by suggesting to him a grand scheme of operations,[484] more worthy of the large force which he commanded than the mere reduction of Leukas. The various tribes of Ætolians,—rude, brave, active, predatory, and unrivalled in the use of the javelin, which they rarely laid out of their hands,—stretched across the country from between Parnassus and Œta to the eastern bank of the Achelôus. The scheme suggested by the Messenians was, that Demosthenês should attack the great central Ætolian tribes,—the Apodôti, Ophioneis, and Eurytânes: if they were conquered, all the remaining continental tribes between the Ambrakian gulf and Mount Parnassus might be invited or forced into the alliance of Athens,—the Akarnanians being already included in it. Having thus got the command of a large continental force,[485] Demosthenês contemplated the ulterior scheme of marching at the head of it on the west of Parnassus, through the territory of the Ozolian Lokrians,—inhabiting the north of the Corinthian gulf, friendly to Athens, and enemies to the Ætolians, whom they resembled both in their habits and in their fighting,—until he arrived at Kytinium, in Doris, in the upper portion of the valley of the river Kephisus. He would then easily descend that valley into the territory of the Phocians, who were likely to join the Athenians if a favorable opportunity occurred, but who might at any rate be constrained to do so. From Phocis, the scheme was to invade from the northward the conterminous territory of Bœotia, the great enemy of Athens: which might thus perhaps be completely subdued, if assailed at the same time from Attica. Any Athenian general, who could have executed this comprehensive scheme, would have acquired at home a high and well-merited celebrity. But Demosthenês had been ill-informed, both of the invincible barbarians and the pathless country comprehended under the name of Ætolia: some of the tribes spoke a language scarcely intelligible to Greeks, and even eat their meat raw, while the country has even down to the present time remained not only unconquered, but untraversed, by an enemy in arms.
Demosthenês accordingly retired from Leukas, in spite of the remonstrance of the Akarnanians, who not only could not be induced to accompany him, but went home in visible disgust, He then sailed with his other forces—Messenians, Kephallenians, and Zakynthians—to Œneon, in the territory of the Ozolian Lokrians, a maritime township on the Corinthian gulf, not far eastward of Naupaktus,—where his army was disembarked, together with three hundred epibatæ (or marines) from the triremes,—including on this occasion, what was not commonly the case on shipboard,[486] some of the choice hoplites, selected all from young men of the same age, on the Athenian muster-roll. Having passed the night in the sacred precinct of Zeus Nemeus at Œneon, memorable as the spot where the poet Hesiod was said to have been slain, he marched early in the morning, under the guidance of the Messenian Chromon, into Ætolia; on the first day he took Potidania, on the second Krokyleium, on the third Teichium,—all of them villages unfortified and undefended, for the inhabitants abandoned them and fled to the mountains above. He was here inclined to halt and wait the junction of the Ozolian Lokrians, who had engaged to invade Ætolia at the same time, and were almost indispensable to his success, from their familiarity with Ætolian warfare and similarity of weapons. But the Messenians again persuaded him to advance without delay into the interior, in order that the villages might be separately attacked and taken before any collective force could be gathered together: and Demosthenês was so encouraged by having as yet encountered no resistance, that he advanced to Ægitium, which he also found deserted, and captured without opposition.
Here however was the term of his good fortune. The mountains round Ægitium were occupied not only by the inhabitants of that village, but also by the entire force of Ætolia, collected even from the distant tribes Bomiês and Kalliês, who bordered on the Maliac gulf. The invasion of Demosthenês had become known beforehand to the Ætolians, who not only forewarned all their tribes of the approaching enemy, but also sent ambassadors to Sparta and Corinth to ask for aid.[487] However, they showed themselves fully capable of defending their own territory, without foreign aid: and Demosthenês found himself assailed, in his position at Ægitium, on all sides at once, by these active highlanders, armed with javelins, pouring down from the neighboring hills. Not engaging in any close combat, they retreated when the Athenians advanced forward to charge them,—resuming their aggression the moment that the pursuers, who could never advance far in consequence of the ruggedness of the ground, began to return to the main body. The small number of bowmen along with Demosthenês for some time kept their unshielded assailants at bay; but the officer commanding the bowmen was presently slain, and the stock of arrows became nearly exhausted; and what was still worse, Chromon, the Messenian, the only man who knew the country, and could serve as guide, was slain also. The bowmen became thus either ineffective or dispersed; while the hoplites exhausted themselves in vain attempts to pursue and beat off an active enemy, who always returned upon them, and in every successive onset thinned and distressed them more and more. At length the force of Demosthenês was completely broken, and compelled to take flight; but without beaten roads, without guides, and in a country not only strange to them, but impervious from continual mountain, rock, and forest. Many of them were slain in the flight by pursuers, superior not less in rapidity of movement than in knowledge of the country: some even lost themselves in the forest, and perished miserably in flames kindled around them by the Ætolians: and the fugitives were at length reassembled at Œneon, near the sea, with the loss of Proklês, the colleague of Demosthenês in command, as well as of one hundred and twenty hoplites, among the best-armed and most vigorous in the Athenian muster-roll.[488] The remaining force was soon transported back from Naupaktus to Athens, but Demosthenês remained behind, being too much afraid of the displeasure of his countrymen to return at such a moment. It is certain that his conduct was such as justly to incur their displeasure; and that the expedition against Ætolia, alienating an established ally and provoking a new enemy, had been conceived with a degree of rashness which nothing but the unexpected favor of fortune could have counterbalanced.