The following year, 424, Demosthenes and his fellow general Hippocrates (nephew of the late Pericles) dreamed up another brilliant initiative. The Athenians would launch coordinated attacks on Boeotia, the territory north and west of Athens, which was allied with Sparta. Demosthenes would land with a force on the Corinthian Gulf at the port of Siphae, where dissidents would rise up against their government, as would dissidents in nearby Chaeronea. Everywhere leaders with democratic leanings would be happy to overthrow their governments to institute democracy such as Athens promised to her allies. At the same time Demosthenes was stirring up trouble in the western side of Boeotia, Hippocrates would make a march northward from Attica into eastern Boeotia, where he would build a fortress to use as a base for raiding the countryside. The fortress would be built at Delium, a site not far from the Aegean Sea. The two attacks would be launched on the same day to divide the Boeotians’ forces.[7]
That was the theory. But the realities of transportation, communication, and enemy opposition made coordination impossible. The plans were delayed until early November, after the campaigning season was usually over.[8] Demosthenes had to make some subsidiary expeditions before gathering a force of allies from Acharnania for the invasion of Boeotia. Despite this, he arrived early to Siphae, only to find that the plot had been betrayed and Boeotian forces were arrayed against him. He could not land or seriously threaten western Boeotia.
Meanwhile, Hippocrates, unaware of his colleague’s problems, had gathered an army in Athens for the march north. He drafted not only Athenian citizens but also “metics” or permanent foreign residents of Athens, and even foreign visitors. Among the Athenian citizens called up was Socrates, now forty-five years old. This seems to have been his first duty assignment since the long campaign of Potidaea. He was one of 7,000 infantrymen, to be accompanied by some lightly armed troops and also 10,000 foreign troops — an unusually large force. The objective, Delium, was just a two-days’ march over the border from Attica. The army would take a few days to build a fortress while defending the site against counterattack. Probably the foreign “troops” were present not to fight (soldiers had to furnish their own weapons and armor — foreigners would not have any) but to provide labor for the building project. Once built, the fort would become a thorn in the side of the Boeotians as Pylos was to the Spartans.
The large but heterogeneous forcemarched for two days up to Delium. There, they went about enclosing the precinct of the temple by throwing up earthworks surrounded by a ditch with a palisade on top. They incorporated stone and bricks from some nearby buildings. They constructed wooden watchtowers at strategic points on the wall, and hastily filled gaps in the wall with wood and vines from vineyards in the area. After three days the work was almost complete.[9]
On the following day the body of the army set out homeward, traveling about a mile before halting to wait for Hippocrates to make final dispositions at Delium and give instructions to a garrison of a few hundred men. The lightly armed troops and the foreign conscripts did not wait but headed straight back to Attica. Unbeknownst to the Athenians, a Boeotian army, having thwarted Demosthenes’ invasion, was marching toward Delium from Tanagra nearby. Although some of the Boeotian leaders would have been happy to let the Athenians depart from their lands unmolested, the Theban general Pagondas wanted to teach them a lesson. He brought up his army behind a hill that separated the two forces, arriving in late afternoon. Hippocrates, who had rejoined his army, was informed by his scouts of the enemy force. He, too, was eager to fight. Both armies prepared for battle.
The Boeotians marched out over the crest of the hill, consisting of 7,000 heavy infantry; 10,000 light infantry without armor, including slingers and archers; 500 “peltasts,” medium, mobile infantry carrying a small shield instead of the heavy, large shield of the hoplite; and cavalry. The Athenians assembled opposite them with an equal number of heavy infantry and cavalry, but without light infantry. They formed up in the typical phalanx, eight shields deep, as did most of the Boeotian heavy infantry. But Pagondas arranged his Theban troops, who occupied the right wing of his allied force — the place of honor — twenty-five shields deep, sacrificing width for power. Hippocrates was still giving the traditional pep talk to his army when the Boeotians raised the paean, the battle cry signaling their attack, from the hillside. Hippocrates sent his soldiers to attack on the run, charging uphill.
The Athenians on the right outflanked the troops they faced, and surrounding them began to roll up the enemy’s left. On the other wing, the Thebans with their massed formation pushed back the Athenians. When Pagondas saw his left wing was in trouble, he sent a cavalry unit around behind the hill to attack the Athenian right. As the Athenians saw the horsemen emerging, they thought a large reserve force was attacking them, and they panicked and broke, fleeing the field. The battle turned into a rout. A Greek army was most vulnerable when it lost cohesion and ceased to fight as a line of battle. The Athenians scattered, some heading north to the fort at Delium, some south for Mt. Parnes on the Attic border, some east for the sea, with Boeotian infantry and cavalry in pursuit. As night fell the field became more confused and the Athenian survivors were able to escape.[10]
Plato recounts Socrates’ role in the retreat, as reported by Alcibiades, Socrates’ young friend from the campaign in Potidaea. “You should have seen Socrates, my friends, when the army retreated from Delium in headlong flight. I ran into him when I was on horseback as a cavalryman, he on foot. As the men scattered, he retreated together with Laches. When I encountered them, I cheered on the pair, promising not to abandon them. There I got a better view of Socrates than at Potidaea, for I was in less danger because of being on horseback. First I noticed that he had his wits about him more than Laches. Then I could see that he was making his way, in the words of your play, Aristophanes, ‘swaggering and casting his eyes about,’ calmly surveying both his friends and enemies, so that anyone could see, even from a long way off, that if you laid a finger on this man, he would give you a whipping. That’s how he and his companion got away. In battle the pursuers will never mess with a tough guy like him, but they go after those who turn tail and run.”[11]
Later we will meet Laches and Alcibiades as generals (chs. 15, 17*). Socrates the private soldier could hold his own with the best and bravest, even at forty-five years of age.
The Boeotian army went on to besiege the hastily-built fort at Delium. In a day when most fortifications were safe from siege works, the besiegers built an infernal engine. They hollowed out a beam, attached a cauldron to one end by chains, with a steel pipe going from the beam into the cauldron. Then they attached a bellows to the other end of the beam and filled the cauldron with sulfur, pitch, and coals. Bringing the cauldron on wagons up to the section of the wall that was built with wood and vines, they forced air into the bellows, making the fire blaze up to and shoot out in a makeshift flamethrower. The vulnerable part of the wall went up in flame, and the Boeotians stormed the fort through the burned-out section. Two hundred Athenian defenders were captured; others escaped to ships on the coast nearby. The garrison fell seventeen days after the battle of Delium.
When the Athenians collected bodies from the earlier battle under a truce, they found that almost a thousand infantrymen had died, as well as auxiliaries. Among the dead was Hippocrates the general, nephew of Pericles.[12] The offensive against Boeotia had been a disastrous failure. The brilliant Pylos campaign was followed by a fiasco in Boeotia. The seemingly interminable war went on without a prospect of victory for the Athenians. But Socrates survived and again demonstrated his bravery under fire.
[7].Thucydides 4.76.
[8].For the date, see Thucydides 4.89.1 with Gomme 1945, 3.558. The whole campaign to Delium and back took only about a week: Thucydides 4.90, 96.
[9].Thucydides 4.90.
[10].Thucydides 4.93-94, 96.
[11].Plato Symposium 220e-221c.
[12].Thucydides 4.100-101.