were now half way across, and could not avoid fighting.
Aware of the superior skill of the Athenians, they placed
their ships in a circle, that they might not be able to break
their line ; the small vessels were set within the circle, and
five of the best sailers remained inside, to give aid where
needed. Phormion, having formed his line ahead,* kept
moving round and round them, waiting for the breeze to
spring up, which blows every morning down the gulf, know-
ing that he could then attack to most advantage. As he
* That is, in a line of single ships, xara uiav vavv.
16* x
186 HISTORY O: GREECE.
expected, when the wind blew, Ok ships were driven against
each other, and the crews fell into the greatest confusion.
The Athenians seized the moment of attack ; they sunk one
of the admirals' and several other si -ps, and the Pelepon-
nesians fled, almost without attempting . esistance, to Patrae
and Dyme. The Athenians, having taken twelve ships,
raised a trophy on Cape Rhion, and returned to Naupactus;
the Peloponnesians sailed with the wreck of their fleet to
Cyllene in Elis, where they were joined by the ships under
Cnemus from Acarnania.
The Lacedaemonians, unused to the sea, could see no
cause but cowardice for the defeat of a large by a small fleet,
and they sent Brasidas and two other officers out to join Cne-
mus, with orders for the fleet, which now contained seventy-
seven ships, to put to sea. Phormion, aware of their inten-
tions, sent to Athens for aid, and twenty ships were sent
out ; but as they had orders to take Crete on their way,
they did not arrive till it was too late.
The Peloponnesians sailed round to Panormus in Achaia,
where a land army was encamped. Phormion stationed his
ships without the Crissaean Bay at Anti-Rhion ; the enemy
then proceeded to Rhion, and took their station there ; the
distance between these points being only seven stadia.
The two fleets remained six or seven days opposite each
other. At length the Peloponnesians, to draw the Athenians
within the gulf, moved along the coast in a line of four ships
abreast, twenty of the swiftest leading the line. Phormion,
fearing for Naupactus, as its youth were in the camp at
Anti-Rhion, sailed in also with his line formed ahead. As
soon as the Peloponnesians saw them within the gulf, they
faced about and crossed straight over. The eleven leading
ships of the Athenians escaped into the open gulf by supe-
rior sailing; of the remainder, one was taken with its crew,
and the rest forced ashore. Such of the crews as did not
escape by swimming were put to the sword, and the ships
were already taken in tow, when the Messenians, coming
up, dashed into the sea, and getting on board of them, drove
DEATH OF PERICLES. 187
off the victors, and saved the ships. Meantime the twenty
Peloponnesian ships chased the eleven Athenian to Naupac-
tus. One of the Athenian ships being pursued by a Leuca-
dian, its captain, seeing a merchantman at anchor, made for
it, and doubling round it, came on the Leucadian, and struck
her with such force on the side that she went down. At the
sight of this exploit, the Peloponnesians, who were already
chanting the hymn of victory, stopped short and fell into
disorder. The Athenians seeing this advanced against them,
and they fled to Panormus, leaving six ships in the hands of
the enemy. The Athenians justly erected a trophy on
Anti-Rhion ; the Peloponnesians, as they had been success-
ful in the early part of the day, and had taken one ship,
thought themselves entitled to raise one on the opposite
headland. Phormion acquired great fame by his conduct in
these two actions.
The Peloponnesians, before they separated for the winter,
resolved to make an attempt on the Piraeeus ; which they
learned from the Megarians was unguarded. Each seaman,
therefore, took his oar, cushion, and oar-thong, and coming
to Megara in the night, they launched forty triremes and
sailed for the Piraeeus ; but, either losing courage or impe-
ded by the wind, they landed in Salamis, and began to plun-
der it. Beacons were instantly raised to convey the alarm
to Athens. The terror at first was great, but it soon sub-
sided ; and getting on board of what ships were there, the
Athenians passed over to Salamis, whence they found the
enemy gone. After this alarm the Piraeeus was more strictly
guarded.
In the autumn of this year the great Pericles died. His
latter days were clouded by calamity ; for the plague carried
off all his legitimate children, and most of his nearest
relatives. In the height of his power, some years before,
he had caused a law to b<^ passed restricting the right of
citizenship to those who were Athenians on both the father's
and mother's side; but now he was obliged to supplicate
the people to dispense with his own law, and enrol among
J 83 HISTORY OF GREECE.
the citizens his son of the same name with himself, the off-
spring of the celebrated Milesian Aspasia. After his death,
events soon showed how little he had looked to conse-
quences when engaged in establishing his own power ; for his
place in the popular assembly was instantly taken by Cleon,
a man who has acquired an infamous celebrity as the perfect
type of the selfish, venal, insolent, and tyrannical dema-
gogue.*
Towards winter, Sitalkes, king of Thrace, as ally of the
Athenians, invaded Macedonia and Chalcidice. To his ori-
ginal subjects the Odryssians, who dwelt in the plain be-
tween Rhodope, Haemus, and the Euxine, he united the Ge-
tans, who dwelt from Haemus to the Ister, and collecting, as
he advanced, the tribes of Rhodope and the country thence to
the Strymon, he entered Paeonia, and at the head of 150,000
men, as was said, of which a third were cavalry, invaded
Macedonia from the north. Fearing to encounter so numer-
ous an army in the field, the Macedonians and Chalcidians
shut themselves up in their towns ; and Sitalkes, having wast-
ed the country during thirty days, by the advice of his
nephew Seuthes, led his army home, as provisions began to
run short, and the weather was growing severe. Seuthes
had been induced to give this advice by Perdiccas of Mace-
donia, who had gained him by the promise of the hand of
his sister and a large dowry.
The following spring, (Ol. 88, 1,) Archidamus invaded
Attica as usual. When their provisions were exhausted, the
allies retired and dispersed.
The people of Lesbos, with the exception of the Methym-
naeans, had long meditated revolt from Athens, whose alli-
ance they felt to be a grievous yoke.t The Mytilenaeans,
intending to seize the first favorable opportunity, had been
building ships, strengthening their walls, securing their har-
* " With the death of Pericles," says K. O. Mailer, "ended the de-
mocracy, and began the ochlocracy."
\ Aristotle (Pol. v. 3) says that a dispute relative to an heiress was
the occasion of the revolt of Mytilene.
REVOLT OF MYTILENE. 189
bors, and purchasing corn, and hiring archers in the coun-
tries on the Euxine. But the Tenedians, Methymnaeans, and
a party in Mytilene itself, were devoted to Athens, and they
sent word of what was going on.
The Athenians were unwilling at first to believe what they
did not wish to be true; but when compliance was refused
with the orders which they sent out to Lesbos, they saw
that they must have recourse to stronger measures. A fleet
of forty ships, which was about to go round Peloponnesus,
was therefore ordered to sail secretly to Mytilene, and fall
on and seize the inhabitants, while keeping the feast of
Apollo Malloeis, according to custom, without the town. If
that failed, the admiral was to require them to give up their
ships and demolish their walls, and, on their refusal, to
make war on them. To prevent intelligence being con-
veyed to them, their ten ships which were in the Athenian
fleet were seized and the crews cast into prison ; but an indi-
vidual passed over to Euboea, and getting on board a mer-
chantman which was just sailing, reached Mytilene on the
third day with the news, and the people therefore did not go
out as usual to hold the feast.
When the Athenian fleet arrived, the Mytilenacans made
some show of fighting, but they soon proposed a truce, that
they might send deputies to justify them at Athens. The
Athenian commanders, doubtful of their own strength,
granted it, and the deputies set out ; at the same time a
trireme sailed secretly with an embassy to Peloponnesus.
As was to be expected, that to Athens was unsuccessful, the
other envoys appeared at Olyinpia during the games, and
having stated their case, were received into alliance. To
make a diversion in their favor, it was resolved to invade
Attica a second time this year, by sea and land. The Lace-
daemonians, having directed the allies to join them as usual
at the Isthmus, repaired thither themselves, and made prep-
arations for conveying the ships across it ; but it being har-
vest time, the rest came in very slowly, and the Athenians,
having manned one hundred triremes, sailed to the Isthmus
to show their strength; so that seeing little hopes of forcing
190 HISTORY OF GREECE.
them to recall their fleet from Lesbos, they returned home
to protect their own coast, which they heard another
Athenian fleet was ravaging.
The Mytilenaeans had meantime made a successful at-
tack on the Athenians, and forced them to retire; but the
Athenians, being reenforced by their allies, anchored their
fleet before the harbor, and formed a naval camp on each
side, so as to command it. The land being open to them,
the Mytilenaeans marched out in a body and made an attack
on Methymne, and having strengthened their allied towns,
returned home. Soon after, Paches came out from Athens
with one thousand hoplites ; and a single wall with forts on
the heights was built round Mytilene on the land side, so
that it was now completely shut in. The expenses of this
siege gave occasion to the first property-tax in Athens. It
produced two hundred talents.
In the winter, the garrison of Plataea, seeing no hopes of
aid from Athens, and their provisions running short, re-
solved to attempt the passage of the wall built by the be-
siegers. Having carefully counted the rows of bricks in it,
they made ladders of a sufficient height, and waited till a
night suited to their purpose should arrive.
The besiecrers had built two walls, sixteen feet asunder.
The interior space was roofed over for the habitation of the
soldiers; the walls had battlements, between every ten of
which was a tower of the same breadth as the wall, and
which was pervious, affording shelter to the guards in foul
weather. Ditches ran round the walls on both sides.
The garrison selected for their attempt a dark, windy,
and rainy night. Only two hundred and twenty of them,
however, left the town, the courage of the remainder having
failed. They kept at a little distance from each other, in
order that their arms might not clash, and they had the right
foot bare that they might not slip in the mud. The rattling
of the storm favored them, and its violence had forced the
guards to retire to the towers. Placing their ladders in the
space between two of the towers, twelve men, armed only
with dagger and breastplate, mounted, and went six to
ESCAPE OF THE PLATJEANS. 191
each tower : they were followed by others armed with jave-
lins, after whom came others bearing their shields to give
them when engaged. A good number had mounted, when
one of them chancing to throw down a brick from the bat-
tlements, its noise alarmed the guards. But just then, those
in the town made, as agreed on, an attack on another part
of the wall, to distract their attention, and they remained
inactive, while a party of three hundred men, who were ap-
pointed to move about and give aid where required, went
outside of the wall in the direction of the noise. Fire-sig-
nals were raised towards Thebes; but signals were also
raised in the town to make them of no avail.
The Plataeans had now made themselves masters of the
two towers, and setting ladders, some mounted to the top
of them, whence" they kept off the enemies with their mis-
siles. Their comrades meantime pulled down the battle-
ments, mounted, and crossed the wall as fast as they could,
and then, standing on the other side of the ditch, kept up a
discharge of darts and arrows on such of the enemies as
appeared. Those who occupied the towers then descended,
and just as the last of them were preparing to cross the ditch,
the three hundred men came up with torches in their hands.
The Plataeans outside of the ditch, being in the dark, shot at
them to great advantage ; and their companions, in the mean
time, got safely across, though the state of the ditch, which
was thinly frozen over, rendered the passage very difficult.
To mislead their enemies, the Plataeans went for six or
seven stadia along the road to Thebes ; and, just as they
expected, they saw them pursuing with torches along that
leading to Cithaeron : they then turned to the mountains
on the right, and made their way to Athens. They had lost
but one of their number, an archer who was taken at the
outer dityh. Seven others had lost courage and turned back
to the town ; those who remained in Plataea sent a herald
next morning to demand their bodies, thinking they must all
have been slain, and to their great joy they learned their
escape.
192 HISTORY OF GREECE.
CHAPTER IV.*
SURRENDER OF MYTILENE AND PLATJEA. MASSACRE IN COR-
CYRA. TRANSACTIONS IN WESTERN GREECE. OCCUPA-
TION OF PYLOS. CAPTURE OF THE SPARTANS.
The next summer, (01. 88, 2,) the Peloponnesians, having
sent their admiral Alcidas with forty-two ships to Lesbos,
invaded Attica, where they remained long, and did much
mischief. Alcidas made such delay that food began to run
short in Mytilene. Salaethus, a Spartan envoy, who was
there, having made the government arm the Demos for a
sortie against the Athenians, they refused, when armed, to
obey the magistrates, and threatened, if 'the rich did not
bring forth their corn and distribute it, that they would
give up the town. As the least of the two evils, the upper
classes resolved to surrender at discretion to Paches, only
stipulating for permission to send deputies to Athens, and
that no one should be injured till the decision of the Athe-
nian people was known.
The tardy Spartan admiral, when he came to Myconos,
heard of the loss of Mytilene. He sailed thence to Erythrae
in Ionia, and here he was strongly urged to try a sudden
attack on Mytilene, of which the Athenians had now had
possession only seven days. On his declining, he was
urged to take Cyme or one of the Ionian towns, in order to
induce the people there to cast off the yoke of Athens ; but
he thought only of getting back to Peloponnesus as fast as
he could. He sailed along the coast as far as Ephesus, and
then steered homewards. Paches pursued him a good way
in vain. On his return to Mytilene he sent, contrary to the
treaty, the principal men, and Salaethus with them, prisoners
to Athens.
The people of Athens were highly incensed against the
* Thuc. iii. 25, to the end j iv. 141. Diod. xii. 5763. Plut. Nigias.
SURRENDER OF MYTILENE AND PLAT^A. 193
Mytilenseans, whom they had always, as they supposed,
treated so gently. Sulsethus was put to death at once, though
he offered the liberation of Plataea as a ranson for his life ;
and at the impulse of Cleon, who was now the leading dema-
gogue, a decree was passed to put to death not only those
whom Paches had sent, but all the males of puberty in Myt-
ilene, and to sell the women and children for slaves. A tri-
reme was instantly despatched with these instructions to
Paches ; but next day the Athenians, who were not natu-
rally a cruel people, began to repent of what they had done ;
and the friends of humanity, taking advantage of this change,
had another assembly called to reconsider the decree. Cleon
avowing, as Pericles and others had done, that the Athenian
dominion was a tyranny, maintained that it could only be
held by tyrannic measures, and he urged the people not to
relent ; Diodotus, on the other side, showed that it was im-
politic, if nothing else, to drive their allies to despair ; and
on the votes being taken, a small majority appeared in fa-
vor of mercy. A trireme was instantly sent off with coun-
ter orders to Paches. The Mytilenaean deputies put wine
and bread on board, and promised the crew a large reward
if they should arrive in time. They rowed night and day,
eating bread dipped in wine and oil as they rowed, and sleep-
ing by turns ; and as they met no adverse winds, and the crew
of the other trireme had not hurried with their unpleasant
commission, they arrived just as Paches had read and was
about to execute the decree. Frugal, however, of their
mercy, were the Athenian people! The prisoners sent to
Athens by Paches, near one thousand in number, were, on
the proposal of Cleon, all put to death; the walls of Mytilene
were thrown down, and the ships seized ; all Lesbos, except
Methymne, was divided into three thousand lots, of which
three hundred were set apart for the gods, and the rest
distributed among Athenian citizens, to whom the Lesbians,
who cultivated them, paid an annual rent of two minas a lot.
Such was Athenian mercy ! Let us now see how the Spar-
tans exercised this godlike quality. Plataea, hopeless of aid,
17 Y
194 HISTORY OF GREECE.
and exhausted by want, now surrendered. The besiegers
could have taken it, but as they expected that in case of
peace the conquests on both sides would be restored, and
they wished to retain Platsea, which they could do if a vol-
untary surrender was made, they proposed to the Platseans
to give up the town and take their trial, assuring them that
none but the guilty should be punished. The terms were
accepted; five judges came from Sparta; no charge was
made against the Plataeans ; they were only asked what ser-
vice they had rendered the Lacedaemonians and their allies
in the present war. They saw at once that they were to
be sacrificed to the Thebans : they therefore only urged their
former merits, and the medism of the Thebans, reminded
the Lacedaemonians that it was by their advice they had put
themselves under the protection of Athens, and concluded
by imploring mercy. The Thebans replied, endeavoring
to justify themselves, and excite the judges against the Pla-
taeans; and as they were a powerful and a useful ally in
the present war, their arguments prevailed. The former
question was again put to the Plataeans, and each, as he
answered in the negative, was led to execution. Thus two
hundred Plataeans, and with them twenty-five Athenians,
were butchered in cold blood. The women were sold for
slaves, the town and lands given to the Thebans, who at
first gave the town to some Megarian exiles and to the Pla-
tseans of their party, to live in ; but the next year they lev-
elled it, building out of the materials a large inn or cara-
vanserai at the Heraeon, and a temple to the goddess. The
land was made public property, and let on lease for ten
years to Theban citizens. Such was the end of Plataea, in
the ninety-third year from her alliance with Athens.
One act of atrocity follows another in this unhappy war.
We must now turn our view to Corcyra. The Corinthians
had released the Corcyreans whom they had taken at Epi-
damnus, on their giving sham security for eight hundred
talents, in reality on an understanding that they would gain
over the island to them. They kept their word, but they
MURDER OF PEITHIAS. 195
were counteracted by Peithias, the leader of the Demos and
the friend of Athens : they therefore accused him to the
people of a design to reduce the island beneath the Athenian
dominion. He in return charged five of the richest among
them with cutting stakes in the groves of Zeus and Al-
cinoiis ; and as the penalty was a staler for each stake, and
therefore amounted to a large sum,* they sat as suppliants
at the temples. Hearing that Peithias, who was a senator,
was persuading the people to an alliance offensive and de-
fensive with Athens, they arose, and taking daggers, rushed
into the senate-house and murdered him and sixty other
persons. They then assembled the people, and having made
them vote not to admit more than one ship at a time of
either of the belligerent parties into their port, they sent an
embassy to announce this resolve at Athens.
The Athenians took the ambassadors and confined them
at iEgina. Meantime, encouraged by the presence of a Co-
rinthian trireme and some Lacedaemonian ambassadors, the
oligarchs, who had now the upper hand at Corcyra, fell on
and defeated the Demos. In the night the Demos fled to
the Acropolis and the higher parts of the town, and they
kept them and the port named the Hyllaic harbor: the
others held the market, where most of them lived, and the
harbor which was close to it.
Next day both parties sent out into the country to try and
gain the slaves by the offer of liberty. These mostly joined
the Demos, but eight hundred auxiliaries came over to the
others from the main land. After the interval of a day, the
parties came again to blows : the Demos were victorious,
and the oligarchs, fearing lest they might seize the docks,
set fire to and burned the houses round the market without
distinction. In the night the Corinthian ship made sail, and
* If, as is probable, this was the silver stater, it was four drachmas;
the gold one was worth twenty drachmas. Dr. Arnold thinks the no-
bles were tenants of the sacred ground, and had held it for a long course
of years, and been in the habit of cutting the trees when they wanted
them, in which case the number cut may have been considerable.
196 HISTORY OF GREECE.
most of the allies from the main land slunk home. The fol-
lowing day Nicostratus, an Athenian general, came with
twelve ships and five hundred Messenian hoplites from Nau-
pactus. He sought to reconcile the two parties, and induce
them to form a strict alliance with Athens ; and having suc-
ceeded, was about to depart, when the leaders of the Demos
persuaded him to leave them five of his ships, to give them
the advantage in any future conflict, and to take five of theirs
in their stead. They then selected their enemies to man
these ships, who, fearing that they were to be sent to Athens,
sat as suppliants at the temple of the Dioscuri. Nicostratus
tried to reassure them, but in vain ; the people then, affecting
to be convinced that they had some bad design, took arms,
and would have killed some of them but for Nicostratus. The
rest of the aristocrats, to the number of four hundred, went
and sat as suppliants in the Heraeon ; but the people per-
suaded them to pass over to the island opposite it, whither
they sent them provisions.
Four or five days after, came a Peloponnesian fleet of fifty-
three ships, under Alcidas and Brasidas. The Corcyrseans
got ready in all haste sixty ships, and, led by the twelve
Athenian triremes, moved out to engage them. The action
lasted the entire day, and terminated in favor of the Pelo-
ponnesians. Next day Brasidas proposed to attack the town,
but the indecisive Alcidas refused : they landed at the other
end of the island and plundered the fields ; and in the night,
having learned by fire-signals that sixty Athenian ships were
coming from Leucas, they set out for home, hauling their
ships across the Leucadian isthmus, to avoid fighting the
Athenians.
The Demos at Corcyra, fearing that their prisoners might
make some attempt against them, had brought them back to
the Heraeon ; and now, imboldened by the presence of the
Athenian fleet, they resolved to glut their vengeance. Having
made their own ships sail round to the Hyllaic harbor, they
put to death such of the opposite party as were in them :
then going to the Heraeon, they persuaded fifty of the sup-
MASSACRE IN CORCYRA. 197
pliants to come forth and stand their trial. All these were
forthwith put to death ; the rest, seeing no chance of escape,
put an end to their lives, some by hanging themselves out of
the sacred trees, others in other ways. During seven days
the Demos put to death, under the pretence of their being
hostile to the popular state, their supposed enemies. Private
enmity or private gain actuated many ; debtors, for example,
cancelled their debts with the blood of their creditors.
Atrocities were perpetrated beyond what were usual on such
occasions ; fathers slew their own sons ; suppliants were
dragged from the temples, and slaughtered beside them ; some