CHAPTER LXVII
BRASIDAS THE SPARTAN
The Athenians were encouraged by the victory they had gained at Sphacteria to hope for still greater success to their arms, and in 424 B.C. they marched boldly into the country of Boeotia. At Delium they seized and fortified a temple, sacred to Apollo.
Now the Boeotians were indignant with the Athenians for invading their land, but they were still more angry that they had dared to enter their temple. They at once marched against the enemy and defeated them with great loss, but the temple was still left in the hands of the Athenians.
As was the custom in those days, the defeated generals asked the victors to allow them to bury their comrades who had fallen on the battlefield. But the Boeotians answered ‘When you give us back our temple you shall bury your dead.’
The Athenians refused to do this, saying that Delium, the site on which the temple stood, belonged to Attica, and they had a right to stay in their own land.
‘If you are in your own land,’ retorted the Boeotians, ‘do as you wish without asking our consent.’ It was easy to say this, for they knew that the defeated army was not strong enough to defy them.
When the invaders still refused to leave the temple, the Boeotians determined to drive them away by setting fire to the wooden barricades with which the Athenians had fortified the temple.
So they took a large beam of wood, and scooping out the centre made it into a hollow tube. To one end they fastened, by an iron chain, a huge caldron. In the caldron they placed charcoal and sulphur, while to the other end of the tube they tied bellows, by which a strong current of air could be blown through to the other end. When this was done the charcoal and the sulphur in the caldron were fanned into a great blaze, and the fortifications of the temple were soon on fire.
The Athenians tried to quench the flames in vain, and at length they were forced to flee, leaving the temple to the triumphant Boeotians, who no longer refused to let them bury their comrades.
The defeat of Delium was followed by many other disasters, and was the beginning of the downfall of the empire of Athens.