The unfortunate herald now learned for the first time that the large reinforcement from his city had been cut to pieces. So acute was his feeling of mingled anguish and surprise, that he raised a loud cry of woe, and hurried away at once, without saying another word; not even prosecuting his request about the burial of the dead bodies,—which appears on this fatal occasion to have been neglected.[495]
His grief was justified by the prodigious magnitude of the calamity, which Thucydidês considers to have been the greatest that afflicted any Grecian city during the whole war prior to the peace of Nikias; so incredibly great, indeed, that though he had learned the number slain, he declines to set it down, from fear of not being believed,—a scruple which we, his readers, have much reason to regret. It appears that nearly the whole adult military population of Ambrakia was destroyed, and Demosthenês was urgent with the Akarnanians to march thither at once: had they consented, Thucydidês tells us positively that the city would have surrendered without a blow.[496] But they refused to undertake the enterprise, fearing, according to the historian, that the Athenians at Ambrakia would be more troublesome neighbors to them than the Ambrakiots. That this reason was operative, we need not doubt: but it can hardly have been either the single, or even the chief, reason; for, had it been so, they would have been equally afraid of Athenian coöperation in the blockade of Leukas, which they had strenuously solicited from Demosthenês, and had quarrelled with him for refusing. Ambrakia was less near to them than Leukas, and in its present exhausted state, inspired less fear: but the displeasure arising from the former refusal of Demosthenês had probably never been altogether appeased, nor were they sorry to find an opportunity of mortifying him in a similar manner.
In the distribution of the spoil, three hundred panoplies were first set apart as the perquisite of Demosthenês: the remainder were then distributed, one-third for the Athenians, the other two-thirds among the Akarnanian townships. The immense reserve, personally appropriated to Demosthenês, enables us to make some vague conjecture as to the total loss of Ambrakiots. The fraction of one-third, assigned to the Athenian people, must have been, we may imagine, six times as great, and perhaps even in larger proportion, than the reserve of the general: for the latter was at that time under the displeasure of the people, and anxious above all things to regain their favor,—an object which would be frustrated rather than promoted, if his personal share of the arms were not greatly disproportionate to the collective claim of the city. Reasoning upon this supposition, the panoplies assigned to Athens would be eighteen hundred, and the total of Ambrakiot slain, whose arms became public property, would be five thousand four hundred. To which must be added some Ambrakiots killed in their flight from Idomenê by the Amphilochians, in dells, ravines, and by-places: probably those Amphilochians, who slew them, would appropriate the arms privately, without bringing them into the general stock. Upon this calculation, the total number of Ambrakiot slain in both battles and both pursuits, would be about six thousand: a number suitable to the grave expressions of Thucydidês, as well as to his statements, that the first detachment which marched to Olpæ was three thousand strong, and that the message sent home invoked as reinforcement the total force of the city. How totally helpless Ambrakia had become, is still more conclusively proved by the fact that the Corinthians were obliged shortly afterwards to send by land a detachment of three hundred hoplites for its defence.[497]
The Athenian triremes soon returned to their station at Naupaktus, after which a convention was concluded between the Akarnanians and Amphilochians on the one side, and the Ambrakiots and Peloponnesians—who had fled after the battle of Olpæ into the territory of Salynthius and the Agræi—on the other, insuring a safe and unmolested egress to both of the latter.[498] With the Ambrakiots a more permanent pacification was effected: the Akarnanians and Amphilochians concluded with them a peace and alliance for one hundred years, on condition that they should surrender all the Amphilochian territory and hostages in their possession, and should bind themselves to furnish no aid to Anaktorium, then in hostility to the Akarnanians. Each party, however, maintained its separate alliance,—the Ambrakiots with the Peloponnesian confederacy, the Akarnanians with Athens: it was stipulated that the Akarnanians should not be required to assist the Ambrakiots against Athens, nor the Ambrakiots to assist the Akarnanians against the Peloponnesian league; but against all other enemies, each engaged to lend aid to the other.[499]
To Demosthenês personally, the events on the coast of the Ambrakian gulf proved a signal good fortune, well-earned indeed by the skill which he had displayed. He was enabled to atone for his imprudence in the Ætolian expedition, and to reëstablish himself in the favor of the Athenian people. He sailed home in triumph to Athens, during the course of the winter, with his reserved present of three hundred panoplies, which acquired additional value from the accident, that the larger number of panoplies, reserved out of the spoil for the Athenian people, were captured at sea, and never reached Athens. Accordingly, those brought by Demosthenês were the only trophy of the victory, and as such were deposited in the Athenian temples, where Thucydidês mentions them as still existing at the time when he wrote.[500]
It was in the same autumn that the Athenians were induced by an oracle to undertake the more complete purification of the sacred island of Delos. This step was probably taken to propitiate Apollo, since they were under the persuasion that the terrible visitation of the epidemic was owing to his wrath. And as it was about this period that the second attack of the epidemic, after having lasted a year, disappeared,—many of them probably ascribed this relief to the effect of their pious cares at Delos. All the tombs in the island were opened; the dead bodies were then exhumed, and reinterred in the neighboring island of Rheneia: and orders were given that for the future no deaths and no births should take place in the sacred island. Moreover, the ancient Delian festival—once the common point of meeting and solemnity for the whole Ionic race, and celebrated for its musical contests, before the Lydian and Persian conquests had subverted the freedom and prosperity of Ionia—was now renewed. The Athenians celebrated the festival with its accompanying matches, even the chariot-race, in a manner more splendid than had ever been known in former times: and they appointed a similar festival to be celebrated every fourth year. At this period they were excluded both from the Olympic and the Pythian games, which probably made the revival of the Delian festival more gratifying to them. The religious zeal and munificence of Nikias was strikingly displayed at Delos.[501]
CHAPTER LII.
SEVENTH YEAR OF THE WAR.—CAPTURE OF SPHAKTERIA.
The invasion of Attica by the Lacedæmonians had now become an ordinary enterprise, undertaken in every year of the war except the third and sixth, and then omitted only from accidental causes; though the same hopes were no longer entertained from it as at the commencement of the war. During the present spring, Agis king of Sparta conducted the Peloponnesian army into the territory, seemingly about the end of April, and repeated the usual ravages.
It seemed, however, as if Korkyra were about to become the principal scene of the year’s military operations: for the exiles of the oligarchical party, having come back to the island and fortified themselves on Mount Istônê, carried on war with so much activity against the Korkyræans in the city, that distress and even famine reigned there; while sixty Peloponnesian triremes were sent thither to assist the aggressors. As soon as it became known at Athens how hardly the Korkyræans in the city were pressed, orders were given to an Athenian fleet of forty triremes, about to sail for Sicily under Eurymedon and Sophoklês, to halt in their voyage at Korkyra, and to lend whatever aid might be needed.[502] But during the course of this voyage, an incident occurred elsewhere, neither foreseen nor imagined by any one, which gave a new character and promise to the whole war,—illustrating forcibly the observations of Periklês and Archidamus before its commencement, on the impossibility of calculating what turn events might take.[503]