Now in its eighth year, the Peloponnesian War continued unabated on more or less equal terms, with each side striving to get a strategic advantage over the other. With the Spartans invading their territory every year, the Athenians looked for a way to take the war to the doorstep of their enemy. The Athenians at this point gained an edge. In 425 an Athenian fleet on its way westward to the Ionian Sea and then to Sicily stopped to carry out a secret mission. It left the general Demosthenes and three ships to set up a fort at Pylos on the southwestern coast of the Peloponnesus. The peoples of the area were serfs of the Spartans, and the Athenians hoped that with an armed camp in the vicinity they would defect to the Athenian side in large numbers. When the Spartans realized what was happening, they sent their fleet, which had been up in the north, and an army to dislodge Demosthenes. Pylos was a headland adjacent to a long island named Sphacteria, which concealed a large bay, now known as Navarino Bay. When the Spartan forces assembled, Demosthenes sent a boat to the Athenian fleet with an SOS. The Athenian fleet, apprised of the danger, now hurried back to Pylos while the Spartans attacked. The Spartans landed troops on the island and approached the shore of Pylos with their ships. The outnumbered Athenians fought them at the water’s edge, keeping the enemy from landing. When the Athenian fleet of fifty ships arrived, the Spartan fleet, which was no match for the Athenian navy in an even fight, retired to the bay. The Athenians then fought a battle in the bay, capturing five Spartan ships and forcing the other ships to beach themselves. Suddenly the Spartan troops on the island were cut off, surrounded by hostile forces who controlled the water.[1]
On the island were 420 of their first-line infantry, plus helots.[2] They were now at the mercy of the Athenians. Sparta, which operated as a tight-knit aristocracy with only a small contingent of citizens, depended on the preservation of its citizen soldiers. In this dire situation, the Spartan government immediately sued for a truce in the war. The Spartans handed over their ships to the Athenians in the meantime, in return for permission to supply rations to their soldiers trapped on the island. When the truce was over, the Athenians were to return the ships they held hostage. In peace negotiations in Athens, the radical democrat Cleon demanded unreasonable concessions from the Spartans, thus losing an opportunity to end the war once and for all. The Athenians found a pretext for saying their enemies had violated the peace, and they kept the Spartan ships. The Athenians now had to maintain a naval blockade from enemy territory far from their home bases with only a few resources of their own. When the sentiment in Athens turned to making peace, Cleon again opposed it, demanding that the Athenian forces capture the island, which should be easy to do. The general Nicias, a moderate, challenged him to do it himself, if it was so easy.[3] In the end, Cleon’s opponents painted him into a corner, and he agreed to lead an expedition to take the island, promising rashly to capture or kill the Spartans within twenty days.[4] For Cleon’s opponents, it was a win-win situation: in three weeks’ time they would either defeat Sparta or get rid of the obnoxious Cleon.
Coming with reinforcements, Cleon launched an attack before dawn on both sides of the island. The Spartans, who were used to seeing picket ships patrolling around the island, did not discover the attack until too late. A force of as many as 10,000 soldiers attacked the four hundred Spartans and their auxiliary troops. The Athenians included archers, slingers, and javelin throwers who could attack at long range without fighting hand-to-hand. The Spartan force retreated to a fortification on the north of the island, but then was surrounded and forced to surrender. There were 292 survivors of the Spartan force, of whom 120 were Spartan citizens, the others being from tributary peoples. A shock wave went through the Greek world. Since Leonidas and his three hundred Spartans had fought to the death a far superior Persian force at Thermopylae, the Spartans had gained an almost mythical reputation for never surrendering in battle. Now a Spartan force, outnumbered and surrounded, it is true, but fighting in their own territory, had surrendered. The Spartan soldiers had suddenly been revealed as merely human. They were not invincible, and they were not immortal.[5]
Athens now had an ace in the hole. The Spartan prisoners were brought to Athens as hostages, whom the Athenians could put to death if the Spartans invaded their territory.[6] In fact, the Spartan invasion of Attica, which had become an annual event, was called off the following spring. The Athenians also maintained their fort at Pylos, to which Messenian serfs deserted in increasing numbers. The bad news was that a windbag politician—as both Thucydides and Aristophanes viewed Cleon—was now a hero for pulling off an impossible victory in just three weeks. Cleon was a hawk who would keep Athens at war as long as he could exploit the conflict for his own political benefit. Nicias the dove had been shut up, and for the foreseeable future the hawks would rule.
[1].Thucydides 4.13-14.
[2].Thucydides 4.8.9.
[3].Thucydides 4.27-28.
[4].Thucydides 4.28.4-5.
[5].Thucydides 4.38-40.
[6].Thucydides 4.41.