While Athens was at war with Sparta she would have little time, thought the Mytileneans, to trouble about their small island, so they revolted and asked the Spartans to support them, if that should be necessary. The Spartans promised to help the Mytileneans if the Athenians should punish their disloyalty, but, as so often happened, they did not attempt to keep their promise until it was too late.
Athens was angry when she heard of the revolt at Mytilene. Although she could ill spare the men, she sent an army under a general named Paches to blockade the town by sea and by land and so to starve her into submission. At all costs Mytilene must not fall into the hands of Sparta.
Before long, so strict was the blockade, food began to run short in the hapless island, and the Spartans failed to send the help they had promised.
But when the citizens were desperate with hunger, a messenger from Sparta reached the town. He had passed the Athenian army unnoticed and had entered Mytilene, to the delight of the starving people. When he assured them that ships laden with corn were on the way and would reach them soon, their joy was unbounded.
Day after day, week after week passed, but the Spartan ships did not come, and hope began to die out of the hearts of the Mytileneans. It was plain that they must either surrender or starve to death; so they determined to surrender.
They sent for Paches, and agreed to give up the city, and to leave their fate to be decided by the Athenian assembly. In the meantime about one thousand of the inhabitants were sent as prisoners to Athens.
The Athenians had been bitterly angry with the Mytileneans for revolting when their hands were already full with war at home and with the misery caused by the plague. They were in no mood now to deal mercifully with them.
Cleon, a leather-merchant, who by his own efforts had risen to a high position in the State, roused the temper of the people by his rough and noisy eloquence, and Pericles was no longer alive to restrain it, as he had so often done, by his wiser, calmer speech.
When the assembly met, it was Cleon who proposed that all those able to bear arms should be put to death, and that the women and children should be sold as slaves. In its angry mood the assembly voted as Cleon wished.
No sooner was the sentence of death passed, than a ship was despatched to the island to bid Paches, the Athenian general, carry out the terrible decision of the assembly.