Renewed hostilities. Surrender of Sphacteria. Triumph of the Athenians. Who refuse all overtures of peace.
War therefore recommenced, with fresh irritation. The Athenian fleet blockaded the island where the Spartan hoplites were posted, and found in the attempt, which they thought so easy, unexpected obstacles. Provisions clandestinely continually reached the besieged. Week after week passed without the expected surrender. Demosthenes, baffled for want of provisions and water for [pg 263] his own fleet, sent urgently to Athens for re-enforcements, which caused infinite mortification. The people now began to regret that they had listened to Cleon, and not to the voice of wisdom. Cleon himself was sent with the re-enforcements demanded, against his will, although he was not one of the ten generals. The island of Sphacteria now contained the bravest of the Lacedæmonian troops—from the first families of Sparta—a prey which Cleon and Demosthenes were eager to grasp. They attacked the island with a force double of that of the defenders, altogether ten thousand men, eight hundred of whom were hoplites. The besieged could not resist this overwhelming force, and retreated to their last redoubt, but were surrounded and taken prisoners. This surrender caused astonishment throughout Greece, since it was supposed the Spartan hoplites would die, as they did at Thermopylæ, rather than allow themselves to be taken alive, and this calamity diminished greatly the lustre of the Spartan arms. A modern army, surrounded with an overwhelming force, against which all resistance was madness, would have done the same as the Spartans. But it was a sad blow to them. Cleon, within twenty days of his departure, arrived at Athens with his three hundred Lacedæmonian prisoners, amid universal shouts of joy, for it was the most triumphant success which the Athenians had yet obtained. The war was prosecuted with renewed vigor, and the Lacedæmonians again made advances for peace, but without effect. The flushed victors would hear of no terms but what were disgraceful to the Spartans. The chances were now most favorable to Athens. Nicias invaded the Corinthian territory with eighty triremes, two thousand hoplites, and two hundred horsemen, to say nothing of the large number which supported these, and committed the same ravages that the Spartans and their allies had inflicted upon Attica.
Among other events, the Athenians this year captured the Persian ambassador, Artaphernes, on his way to Sparta. He [pg 264] was brought to Athens, and his dispatches were translated and made public. He was sent back to Ephesus, with Athenian envoys, to the great king, to counteract the influence of the Spartans, but Artaerxes had died when they reached Susa.
Situation of Athens in eighth year of the war.
The capture of Sphacteria, and the surrender of the whole Lacedæmonian fleet, not only placed Athens, on the opening of the eighth year of the war, in a situation more commanding than she had previously enjoyed, but stimulated her to renewed operations on a grander scale, not merely against Sparta, but to recover the ascendency in Bœotia, which was held before the thirty years' truce. The Lacedæmonians, in concert with the revolted Chalcidic allies of Athens in Thrace, and Perdiccas, king of Macedonia, also made great preparations for more decisive measures. The war had dragged out seven years, and nothing was accomplished which seriously weakened either of the contending parties.
Despair of the Lacedæmonians, and slaughter of the Helots.
The first movement was made by the Athenians on the Laconian coast. The island of Cythera was captured by an expedition led by Nicias, of sixty triremes and two thousand hoplites, beside other forces, and the coast was ravaged. Then Thyrea, an Æginetan settlement, between Laconia and Argolis, fell into the hands of the Athenians, and all the Æginetans were either killed in the assault, or put to death as prisoners. These successive disasters alarmed the Lacedæmonians, and they now began to fear repeated assaults on their own territory, with a discontented population of Helots. This fear prompted an act of cruelty and treachery which had no parallel in the history of the war. Two thousand of the bravest Helots were entrapped, as if especial honors were to be bestowed upon them, and barbarously slain. None but the five ephors knew the bloody details. There was even no public examination of this savage inhumanity, which shows that Sparta was governed, as Venice was in the Middle Ages, by a small but exceedingly powerful oligarchy.
After this cruelty was consummated, envoys came from Perdiccas and the Chalcidians of Thrace, invoking aid against Athens. It was joyfully granted, and Brasidas, at the request of Perdiccas and the Chalcidians, was sent with a large force of Peloponnesian hoplites.
Attack of Megara.
Meanwhile the Athenians formed plans to attack Megara, whose inhabitants had stimulated the war, and had been the greatest sufferers by it. A force was sent under Hippocrates and Demosthenes to surprise the place, and also Nisæa. The long walls of Megara, similar to those of Athens, were taken by surprise, and the Athenians found themselves at the gates of the city, which came near falling into their hands by treachery. Baffled for the moment, the Athenians attacked Clisæa, which lay behind it, and succeeded.