A few months before the Athenian defeat at Delium (November, 424 BC), Brasidas, an ambitious Spartan general, led an army of 1,700 infantry north on a daring march through hostile Thessaly to the Chalcidice. He appeared suddenly before the city of Acanthus, and by a combination of enticements and threats, convinced or intimidated the inhabitants to abandon the Athenian alliance and join the Spartan side. In December, when most military operations were suspended for winter, he marched toward Amphipolis, the most important city in the region, commanding a bridge over the river Strymon. The Athenians depended on this city as a source of timber for their shipbuilding and as a garrison to protect the cities on the coast of Thrace and control the nearby goldmines. With help from a neighboring city, Brasidas marched on through a snowstorm, captured the bridge, and besieged Amphipolis before the inhabitants knew what had hit them. The Athenian garrison sent signals for help to the coastal city of Eion with its own Athenian garrison. Their general happened to be away on the island of Thasos. The general was none other than Thucydides, the future historian of the Peloponnesian War. He hurried back to Eion with his seven ships but arrived too late to rescue Amphipolis, which surrendered to Brasidas. Thucydides saved Eion from an attack, but for losing Amphipolis he was exiled from Athens. His exile made him a disappointed spectator to the war he had helped fight, and gave him the leisure, and perhaps the resentment, to write his great history.
In the spring of 423 the Athenians and Spartans, tired of war, arranged a one-year truce, on the proposal of the Athenian general Laches.[1] Before the truce was announced, however, one city in the Chalcidice, Scione, had revolted against Athens. Brasidas went by boat to “liberate” it and leave some Spartan troops. Nearby Mende also joined the Spartans. When he heard of the truce, Brasidas refused to hand over the cities to the Athenians, claiming that they had revolted before the truce was in force. The Athenian generals Nicias (whom we will meet again shortly) and Niceratus recaptured Mende and besieged Scione while Brasidas was away. Perdiccas, king of Macedon, who had been an ally of the Spartans, switched sides to the Athenians, leaving Brasidas in a precarious situation. Meanwhile, the truce, which was observed in some places, did not stop the fighting in the northeast.
In spring of 422, the Athenian politician and general Cleon was appointed general to take a force of thirty ships, 1,200 infantry and 300 cavalry, as well as perhaps 2,000 soldiers from Lemnos and Imbros, to win back what Athens had lost in the region. In the army was Socrates, now forty-seven years old, in what would be his last military campaign.[2] Cleon sailed to Torone, which had revolted earlier. His forces quickly took the city before Brasidas could return to defend it.[3]
Cleon then sailed on to the Athenian base at Eion to organize his attack on Amphipolis. Brasidas took command of the Spartan troops in Amphipolis, while Cleon assembled his troops, including Socrates, and hired Thracian mercenaries to add to his numbers. A few days later, Cleon assembled his army to reconnoiter Amphipolis. When Brasidas observed Cleon approaching, he led his troops into the city to lure the Athenians on. With no major allies left in the region, now that the Macedonians were supporting the Athenians, he had to force a quick battle rather than try to endure a long siege.[4]
Amphipolis occupied a hill in the bend of the river Strymon. With the river flowing west around the site in a semicircle, the city had a natural moat on three sides. A long wall ran along the east side from the north to the south, meeting the river at both ends, and making the city into a virtual island. Cleon marched his army north from Eion, passing along the east side of Amphipolis, so that his force formed a line of battle facing the long wall. When the Athenian army was in place, Cleon ascended a hill to look over the city and its topography, so as to plan an attack—to be carried out another day. With his superior force Cleon did not expect Brasidas to attack him.
In the city, meanwhile, Brasidas, always the aggressive commander, planned to attack the Athenian army before it could gain reinforcements from allies and cut him off from his supplies. He ordered his colleague Clearidas to assemble half the troops at the northern gate, while he assembled the rest at the southern gate. When the Athenians saw the movement of troops inside the city, Cleon ordered a retreat. His left wing started to withdraw. As the Athenian troops were leaving the field, Brasidas rushed out from the southern gate while Clearidas sallied through the northern gate. The Athenians were caught trying to retreat rather than to fight. Their right wing on the north held its ground, but their left wing on the south broke, leaving the right wing trapped. The battle turned into a rout, with the Athenians taking flight, pursued by light infantry and cavalry. The Athenians lost 600 men, while the Spartans and their allies lost only seven. More important, Cleon fell to a javelin while his opponent Brasidas fell mortally wounded, one of the few Spartan casualties.[5] We do not hear any details of Socrates’ contributions, but we may assume that he retreated without panic, as at Delium.
This battle changed the course of the war. Brasidas had been one of a kind in the Spartan war machine. He was audacious, energetic, and enterprising, like many Athenian generals, but unlike other Spartan generals of his time. The conservative political and military culture of Sparta discouraged initiative and ambition. While other generals were slogging away fighting conventional campaigns, the swashbuckling Brasidas had forced his way through hostile Thessaly to attack Athenian allies who thought they were safely removed from their enemies. While the Spartans were negotiating for peace, Brasidas was capturing cities and stirring up revolts against the Athenians in Thrace and Chalcidice. Just give him a little more time, he demanded, and he would control the whole northeast. The Spartan officials, meanwhile, suspicious of his actions and jealous of his success, never gave him their full support.
On the Athenian side, Cleon had been the leading hawk, having taken an army to Pylos to exploit Demosthenes’ incursion and captured the Spartan force on the island of Sphacteria (ch. 13*). He had consistently opposed making concessions to the enemy and stood in the way of peace processes that many Athenians as well as Spartans favored, after nine long years of war. Now he was gone, and with him the leadership of the pro-war faction. The Athenian army that was sent to recapture Amphipolis sailed back home, leaving Clearidas and the Spartans in control of the city, facing the Athenian garrison in Eion. The standoff continued.
Now, however, the way was open to renew a peace initiative that had stalled a year earlier. Nicias the general emerged as the leader of the peace party in Athens. He would broker a deal to bring the long and costly war to an end.
[1].Thucydides 4.118.11-14.
[2].Plato Apology 28e. Gomme (1945:3.638) argues that Socrates could not have been at this battle because he names it before Delium, assuming that the order given is chronological. But he does not say what other campaign Socrates could be referring to in his speech. The other two campaigns, Potidaea and Delium, each involved at least one major battle, and both of them, together with Amphipolis, involved a heavy loss of life. There seems to be no other occasion when a conscript army fought at Amphipolis, except a battle in 415 when Socrates was too old to be called up (Thucydides 7.9; cf. 5.83).
[3].Thucydides 5.2-3.
[4].Thucydides 5.6-8.
[5].Thucydides 5.8-10.