Vacation days in Greece

by Rufus B. Richardson

Before a blow was struck this simple lodgment of Demosthenes brought about two great results. The Spartan fleet hastened back to the spot, slipping past the Athenian fleet; and the Spartan army, which had made the annual invasion of Attica, came hastily back to Sparta after only fifteen days of occupation. The fleet occupied the bay, and the land army butted its head in vain against the walls on that side. Then came the attempt which Demosthenes had expected. They tried to land in front of his sea-wall. But as the handful of men in possession held their ground not a Spartan reached the shore, though the gallant Brasidas, who here appears as the simple commander of a trireme, tried it with a daring that nearly cost him his life. For nearly two days this attack continued. It failed as signally as the land attack. The Spartans were at their wits’ ends. They had sent to Asine, a day’s journey distant, for big timbers to make battering-rams and break down the walls toward the mainland. They also landed a force on the island, Sphacteria, to overawe by their proximity the Athenians across the narrow channel, and to prevent any future lodgment of the Athenians on Sphacteria also.

When the Spartan fleet had first appeared Demosthenes had sent two of his five triremes to advise the Athenian Admirals that the plot was thickening; and the Athenian fleet, strengthened to fifty sail, appeared off the entrances of the bay; but seeing both entrances defended by the Spartan fleet and the shore crowded with Spartan soldiers, it put about, and, going back to an island a few miles to the north, passed the night there. This was probably a ruse to throw the Spartans off their guard; for the next day the Athenians reappeared, and with no hesitation drove in at both entrances upon the Spartans, who were evidently not thoroughly prepared. After a long and fierce struggle the victory of the Athenians was decisive. They erected a trophy, gave up the Spartan dead, took possession of the wrecks and many of the sound vessels of the enemy, and sailed at will around the bay and the entrances. The main army of the Spartans lay close at hand; but all their hope of getting materials for battering down Demosthenes’s landward walls, or of starving out his little band, was cut off.

The whole situation was changed at a single blow. The centre of interest shifts to the island, Sphacteria, where the Spartans were now imprisoned. The Athenians thought them sure game, and patrolled the island to cut off escape. The situation was so serious that the highest magistrates of Sparta appeared on the scene, and, after surveying the situation, decided that the only thing to do was to propose a truce. And a truce was immediately agreed upon, all the Spartan ships being given over to the Athenians as a pledge until Spartan envoys could be taken to Athens on an Athenian trireme and secure a permanent treaty of peace.

The envoys went and begged for peace, but the party in power at Athens made too great demands, and the envoys returned re infecta. The Athenians, claiming some slight infraction of the treaty, refused to deliver over the ships.

All interest was now centred on the fate of the Spartans shut up on Sphacteria. Instead of laying down their arms they waited for the Athenians to “come and take them.” The starving process failed, because daring Spartans on shore were found who risked their lives to carry in provisions. Helots, especially, ran every risk, securing freedom as the price of success. The Athenians themselves suffered terribly, inasmuch as they controlled only the sea, and so were forced to take their meals in cramped quarters or in imminent fear of attack by the dreaded Spartan hoplite. More painful still was the lack of good drinking water. They were obliged to scratch away the sand with their hands and drink brackish sea water. The Spartans on the island had a well which afforded much better water. When this strain had lasted nearly two months the patience of the Athenians gave out. But just at this critical time a fire was accidentally started on the island by some Athenians who were cooking their dinner there, out of sight of the Spartans. Nearly the whole island, which was uninhabited and heavily wooded, was burned over. For the first time the Athenians were able to see how few the enemy were, and to watch their movements. Demosthenes, now the soul of every movement, resolved to attack them. But in the meantime tidings of the sad plight and sufferings of the besiegers had been carried to Athens, and a stormy and somewhat amusing scene had taken place in the Athenian Assembly, in which Cleon, the leader of the majority, who had been responsible for the failure of the peace negotiations, was compelled, much against his will, to go to Pylos, as commander, “to show how easy it was to take the Spartans by force.” But he arrived in the nick of time, and, by trusting everything to Demosthenes, he went back to Athens with the captives within the few days in which he had boastfully said he would do it. It was, however, well understood at Athens that the planner and executer of the deed was Demosthenes. Aristophanes, in the Knights, makes Demosthenes say: “Out at Pylos I had kneaded up a Spartan cake, and Cleon, in a most rascally manner, snatched it away and served it up.” Demosthenes landed on the island a force of about fifteen thousand men, mostly light armed, who could skip about over the rocks and burnt trees, inflicting injuries on the Spartan hoplites without suffering much in return. There were only 420 Spartans, and no note is taken of their attendant light armed. If we allow seven such attendants to each of them, which is a usual proportion, we should have a total force of 3,360; but as Thucydides says nothing of light armed troops on the Spartan side, but makes it an affair of hoplites against light armed, there was probably not a large body of auxiliaries present to the Spartans; but allowing the maximum, the opposing forces were in a proportion of five to one. If, however, the light armed attendants were lacking, the proportion was about fifty to one. Never in all Spartan history did their splendid fighting machine better show its superiority than in the slow march from the well at the centre of the island to the “old fort” at the north end. Demosthenes had distributed his light armed, in detachments of several hundred each, all along the line of march. His small force of hoplites, every time it was confronted by the Spartans, fell back at once and gave place to the light armed, who, with arrows and javelins, inflicted severe losses, easily keeping out of reach of the Spartan spears. There was, in fact, no serious loss to chronicle on the Athenian side. But that the little company led by Epitidas should move steadily toward its goal during the whole of a long summer day, half stifled with ashes and smoke, oppressed by raging thirst, surrounded by yelling thousands and pelted by every kind of missile, without the slightest thought of surrender, is perhaps the most brilliant page in the annals of Sparta. However much we may be inclined to throw up our cap at every success of Athens, we must here assign the honors to the vanquished. The movement of the Spartans over that mile and a half reminds us of a lion worried by a pack of yelping hounds.

Epitidas, and after him the second in command, had been killed before the little band reached the fort, which is made in a semicircle around the west side of the peak to which the island rises on the northeast. When they got inside this the attack slackened. But the end came by a turn that one can hardly understand, even with all the explanation afforded by an exact knowledge of the lay of the land. A Messenian captain told the Athenian leaders that they were wasting time and men, but that he knew a way to approach the Spartans in the rear. His suggestion being accepted, he, with a few desperate men, scrambled up a precipice and appeared suddenly on the summit in the rear of the Spartans.

The mystery is how this could have been so unexpected by the Spartans; a single picket posted on the summit, only a few paces distant from the line that they were defending, could have seen the approach of the new enemy. How could they have failed to keep such a watch? But the sudden appearance of the Messenians is regarded as closing the fight. The Athenian commanders preferred to capture rather than kill, and so summoned the survivors to surrender. They then lowered their shields. Their commander at once asked permission to communicate with the Spartan army on the mainland. This was granted; and when the answer came back, “The Lacedemonians bid you act as you think best; but you are not to dishonor yourselves,” they consulted and surrendered. Of the 420 Spartan hoplites, 120 surrendered. That a hundred Spartans had surrendered on the field of battle threw Greece into wild amazement, and broke the spell of Sparta’s supposed invincibility until it was restored again by Agis on the field of Mantineia seven years later.

In modern warfare we consider it folly to throw away life after the battle is absolutely decided; and on Sphacteria we bow our heads reverently to the Spartans who, after a fight never surpassed in the world’s history, dared to surrender and save their lives for the good of Sparta. When, however, we pass over to Pylos we pass to an admiration of Demosthenes, who planting himself in the midst of dangers, outwitted and outfought the enemy in superior numbers; and, by his wise plan, brought Sparta into such a position that, had Athens possessed a statesman wise enough to use it, she might have concluded an honorable peace which would have left her victor in the struggle into which Pericles led her with his eyes wide open. But Cleon let the golden opportunity pass through his fingers. The handful of heroes that were paraded so long in Athens were only a miserable residuum of the lost opportunity.