In the march which Kleon now undertook, he went up to the top of the ridge which runs nearly in an easterly direction from Amphipolis to Mount Pangæus, in order to survey the city and its adjoining ground on the northern and northeastern side which he had not yet seen; that is, the side towards the lake, and towards Thrace,[736] which was not visible from the lower ground near Eion. The road which he was to take from Eion lay at a small distance eastward of the city long wall, and from the palisade which connected that wall with the bridge. But he had no expectation of being attacked in his march, the rather as Brasidas with the larger portion of his force was visible on Mount Kerdylium: moreover, the gates of Amphipolis were all shut, not a man was on the wall, nor were any symptoms of movement to be detected. As there was no evidence before him of intention to attack, he took no precautions, and marched in careless and disorderly array.[737] Having reached the top of the ridge, and posted his army on the strong eminence fronting the highest portion of the Long Wall, he surveyed at leisure the lake before him, and the side of the city which lay towards Thrace, or towards Myrkinus, Drabêskus, etc., thus viewing all the descending portion of the Long Wall northward towards the Strymon. The perfect quiescence of the city imposed upon and even astonished him: it seemed altogether undefended, and he almost fancied that, if he had brought battering-engines, he could have taken it forthwith.[738] Impressed with the belief that there was no enemy prepared to fight, he took his time to survey the ground; while his soldiers became more and more relaxed and careless in their trim, some even advancing close up to the walls and gates.
But this state of affairs was soon materially changed. Brasidas knew that the Athenian hoplites would not long endure the tedium of absolute inaction, and he calculated that by affecting extreme backwardness and apparent fear, he should seduce Kleon into some incautious movement of which advantage might be taken. His station on Mount Kerdylium enabled him to watch the march of the Athenian army from Eion, and when he saw them pass up along the road outside of the Long Wall of Amphipolis,[739] he immediately crossed the river with his forces and entered the town. But it was not his intention to march out and offer them open battle; for his army, though equal in number to theirs, was extremely inferior in arms and equipment;[740] in which points the Athenian force now present was so admirably provided, that his own men would not think themselves a match for it, if the two armies faced each other in open field. He relied altogether on the effect of sudden sally and well-timed surprise, when the Athenians should have been thrown into a feeling of contemptuous security by an exaggerated show of impotence in their enemy.
Having offered the battle sacrifice at the temple of Athênê, Brasidas called his men together to address to them the usual encouragements prior to an engagement. After appealing to the Dorian pride of his Peloponnesians, accustomed to triumph over Ionians, he explained to them his design of relying upon a bold and sudden movement with comparatively small numbers, against the Athenian army when not prepared for it,[741] when their courage was not wound up to battle pitch, and when, after carelessly mounting the hill to survey the ground, they were thinking only of quietly returning to quarters. He himself at the proper moment would rush out from one gate, and be foremost in conflict with the enemy: Klearidas, with that bravery which became him as a Spartan, would follow the example by sallying out from another gate: and the enemy, taken thus unawares, would probably make little resistance. For the Amphipolitans, this day and their own behavior would determine whether they were to be allies of Lacedæmon, or slaves of Athens, perhaps sold into captivity or even put to death as a punishment for their recent revolt.
These preparations, however, could not be completed in secrecy; for Brasidas and his army were perfectly visible while descending the hill of Kerdylium, crossing the bridge and entering Amphipolis, to the Athenian scouts without: moreover, so conspicuous was the interior of the city to spectators without, that the temple of Athênê, and Brasidas with its ministers around him, performing the ceremony of sacrifice, was distinctly recognized. The fact was made known to Kleon as he stood on the high ridge taking his survey, while at the same time those who had gone near to the gates reported that the feet of many horses and men were beginning to be seen under them, as if preparing for a sally.[742] He himself went close to the gate, and satisfied himself of this circumstance: we must recollect that there was no defender on the walls, and no danger from missiles. Anxious to avoid coming to any real engagement before his reinforcements should arrive, he at once gave orders for retreat, which he thought might be accomplished before the attack from within could be fully organized; for he imagined that a considerable number of troops would be marched out, and ranged in battle order, before the attack was actually begun, not dreaming that the sally would be instantaneous, made with a mere handful of men. Orders having been proclaimed to wheel to the left, and retreat in column on the left flank towards Eion, Kleon, who was himself on the top of the hill with the right wing, waited only to see his left and centre actually in march on the road to Eion, and then directed his right also to wheel to the left and follow them.
The whole Athenian army were thus in full retreat, marching in a direction nearly parallel to the Long Wall of Amphipolis, with their right or unshielded side exposed to the enemy, when Brasidas, looking over the southernmost gates of the Long Wall with his small detachment ready marshalled near him, burst out into contemptuous exclamations on the disorder of their array.[743] “These men will not stand us; I see it by the quivering of their spears and of their heads. Men who reel about in that way, never stand an assailing enemy. Open the gates for me instantly, and let us sally out with confidence.”
With that, both the gate of the Long Wall nearest to the palisade, and the adjoining gate of the palisade itself, were suddenly thrown open, and Brasidas with his one hundred and fifty chosen soldiers issued out through them to attack the retreating Athenians. Running rapidly down the straight road which joined laterally the road towards Eion along which the Athenians were marching, he charged their central division on the right flank:[744] their left wing had already got beyond him on the road towards Eion. Taken completely unprepared, conscious of their own disorderly array, and astounded at the boldness of their enemy, the Athenians of the centre were seized with panic, made not the least resistance, and presently fled. Even the Athenian left, though not attacked at all, instead of halting to lend assistance, shared the panic and fled in disorder. Having thus disorganized this part of the army, Brasidas passed along the line to press his attack on the Athenian right: but in this movement he was mortally wounded and carried off the field, unobserved by his enemies. Meanwhile Klearidas, sallying forth from the Thracian gate, had attacked the Athenian right on the ridge opposite to him, immediately after it began its retreat. But the soldiers on the Athenian right had probably seen the previous movement of Brasidas against the other division, and though astonished at the sudden danger, had thus a moment’s warning, before they were themselves assailed, to halt and take close rank on the hill. Klearidas here found a considerable resistance, in spite of the desertion of Kleon; who, more astonished than any man in his army by a catastrophe so unlooked for, lost his presence of mind and fled at once; but was overtaken by a Thracian peltast from Myrkinus and slain. His soldiers on the right wing, however, repelled two or three attacks in front from Klearidas, and maintained their ground, until at length the Chalkidian cavalry and the peltasts from Myrkinus, having come forth out of the gates, assailed them with missiles in flank and rear so as to throw them into disorder. The whole Athenian army was thus put to flight; the left hurrying to Eion, the men of the right dispersing and seeking safety among the hilly grounds of Pangæus in their rear. Their sufferings and loss in the flight, from the hands of the pursuing peltasts and cavalry, were most severe: and when they at last again mustered at Eion, not only the commander Kleon, but six hundred Athenian hoplites, half of the force sent out, were found missing.[745]
So admirably had the attack been concerted, and so entire was its success, that only seven men perished on the side of the victors. But of those seven, one was the gallant Brasidas himself, who being carried into Amphipolis, lived just long enough to learn the complete victory of his troops and then expired. Great and bitter was the sorrow which his death occasioned throughout Thrace, especially among the Amphipolitans. He received, by special decree, the distinguished honor of interment within their city, the universal habit being to inter even the most eminent deceased persons in a suburb without the walls. All the allies attended his funeral in arms and with military honors: his tomb was encircled by a railing, and the space immediately fronting it was consecrated as the great agora of the city, which was remodelled accordingly. He was also proclaimed œkist, or founder, of Amphipolis, and as such, received heroic worship with annual games and sacrifices to his honor.[746] The Athenian Agnon, the real founder and originally recognized œkist of the city, was stripped of all his commemorative honors and expunged from the remembrance of the people: his tomb and the buildings connected with it, together with every visible memento of his name, being destroyed. Full of hatred as the Amphipolitans now were towards Athens,—and not merely of hatred, but of fear, since the loss which they had just sustained of their saviour and protector,—they felt repugnance to the idea of rendering farther worship to an Athenian œkist. Nor was it convenient to keep up such a religious link with Athens, now that they were forced to look anxiously to Lacedæmon for assistance. Klearidas, as governor of Amphipolis, superintended those numerous alterations in the city which this important change required, together with the erection of the trophy, just at the spot where Brasidas had first charged the Athenians; while the remaining armament of Athens, having obtained the usual truce and buried their dead, returned home without farther operations.
There are few battles recorded in history wherein the disparity and contrast of the two generals opposed has been so manifest,—consummate skill and courage on the one side against ignorance and panic on the other. On the singular ability and courage of Brasidas there can be but one verdict of unqualified admiration: but the criticism passed by Thucydidês on Kleon, here as elsewhere, cannot be adopted without reserves. He tells us that Kleon undertook his march, from Eion up to the hill in front of Amphipolis, in the same rash and confident spirit with which he had embarked on the enterprise against Pylus, in the blind confidence that no one would resist him.[747] Now I have already, in a former chapter, shown grounds for concluding that the anticipations of Kleon respecting the capture of Sphakteria, far from being marked by any spirit of unmeasured presumption, were sober and judicious, realized to the letter without any unlooked-for aid from fortune. Nor are the remarks, here made by Thucydidês on that affair, more reasonable than the judgment on it in his former chapter; for it is not true, as he here implies, that Kleon expected no resistance in Sphakteria: he calculated on resistance, but knew that he had force sufficient to overcome it. His fault even at Amphipolis, great as that fault was, did not consist in rashness and presumption. This charge at least is rebutted by the circumstance, that he himself wished to make no aggressive movement until his reinforcements should arrive, and that he was only constrained, against his own will, to abandon his intended temporary inactivity during that interval, by the angry murmurs of his soldiers, who reproached him with ignorance and backwardness, the latter quality being the reverse of that with which he is branded by Thucydidês.
When Kleon was thus driven to do something, his march up to the top of the hill, for the purpose of reconnoitring the ground, was not in itself unreasonable, and might have been accomplished in perfect safety, if he had kept his army in orderly array, prepared for contingencies. But he suffered himself to be completely out-generalled and overreached by that simulated consciousness of impotence and unwillingness to fight, which Brasidas took care to present to him. Among all military stratagems, this has perhaps been the most frequently practised with success against inexperienced generals, who are thrown off their guard and induced to neglect precaution, not because they are naturally more rash or presumptuous than ordinary men, but because nothing except either a high order of intellect, or special practice and training, will enable a man to keep steadily present to his mind liabilities even real and serious, when there is no discernible evidence to suggest their approach; much more when there is positive evidence, artfully laid out by a superior enemy, to create belief in their absence. A fault substantially the same had been committed by Thucydidês himself and his colleague Euklês a year and a half before, when they suffered Brasidas to surprise the Strymonian bridge and Amphipolis: not even taking common precautions, nor thinking it necessary to keep the fleet at Eion. They were not men peculiarly rash and presumptuous, but ignorant and unpractised, in a military sense; incapable of keeping before them dangerous contingencies which they perfectly knew, simply because there was no present evidence of approaching explosion.
This military incompetence, which made Kleon fall into the trap laid for him by Brasidas, also made him take wrong measures against the danger, when he unexpectedly discovered at last that the enemy within were preparing to attack him. His fatal error consisted in giving instant order for retreat, under the vain hope that he could get away before the enemy’s attack could be brought to bear.[748] An abler officer, before he commenced the retreating march so close to the hostile walls, would have taken care to marshal his men in proper array, to warn and address them with the usual harangue, and to wind up their courage to the fighting-point: for up to that moment they had no idea of being called upon to fight; and the courage of Grecian hoplites, taken thus unawares while hurrying to get away in disorder visible both to themselves and their enemies, without any of the usual preliminaries of battle, was but too apt to prove deficient. To turn the right or unshielded flank to the enemy, was unavoidable from the direction of the retreating movement; nor is it reasonable to blame Kleon for this, as some historians have done, or for causing his right wing to move too soon in following the lead of the left, as Dr. Arnold seems to think. The grand fault seems to have consisted in not waiting to marshal his men and prepare them for standing fight during their retreat. Let us add, however, and the remark, if it serves to explain Kleon’s idea of being able to get away before he was actually assailed, counts as a double compliment to the judgment as well as boldness of Brasidas, that no other Lacedæmonian general of that day perhaps, not even Demosthenês, the most enterprising general of Athens, would have ventured upon an attack with so very small a band, relying altogether upon the panic produced by his sudden movement.