History of the Peloponnesian War, Thucydides [best free ebook reader TXT] 📗

their colleague Pythodorus having already

preceded them thither. These had also instructions as they sailed by

to look to the Corcyraeans in the town, who were being plundered by

the exiles in the mountain. To support these exiles sixty

Peloponnesian vessels had lately sailed, it being thought that the

famine raging in the city would make it easy for them to reduce it.

Demosthenes also, who had remained without employment since his return

from Acarnania, applied and obtained permission to use the fleet, if

he wished it, upon the coast of Peloponnese.

 

Off Laconia they heard that the Peloponnesian ships were already

at Corcyra, upon which Eurymedon and Sophocles wished to hasten to the

island, but Demosthenes required them first to touch at Pylos and do

what was wanted there, before continuing their voyage. While they were

making objections, a squall chanced to come on and carried the fleet

into Pylos. Demosthenes at once urged them to fortify the place, it

being for this that he had come on the voyage, and made them observe

there was plenty of stone and timber on the spot, and that the place

was strong by nature, and together with much of the country round

unoccupied; Pylos, or Coryphasium, as the Lacedaemonians call it,

being about forty-five miles distant from Sparta, and situated in

the old country of the Messenians. The commanders told him that

there was no lack of desert headlands in Peloponnese if he wished to

put the city to expense by occupying them. He, however, thought that

this place was distinguished from others of the kind by having a

harbour close by; while the Messenians, the old natives of the

country, speaking the same dialect as the Lacedaemonians, could do

them the greatest mischief by their incursions from it, and would at

the same time be a trusty garrison.

 

After speaking to the captains of companies on the subject, and

failing to persuade either the generals or the soldiers, he remained

inactive with the rest from stress of weather; until the soldiers

themselves wanting occupation were seized with a sudden impulse to

go round and fortify the place. Accordingly they set to work in

earnest, and having no iron tools, picked up stones, and put them

together as they happened to fit, and where mortar was needed, carried

it on their backs for want of hods, stooping down to make it stay

on, and clasping their hands together behind to prevent it falling

off; sparing no effort to be able to complete the most vulnerable

points before the arrival of the Lacedaemonians, most of the place

being sufficiently strong by nature without further fortifications.

 

Meanwhile the Lacedaemonians were celebrating a festival, and also

at first made light of the news, in the idea that whenever they

chose to take the field the place would be immediately evacuated by

the enemy or easily taken by force; the absence of their army before

Athens having also something to do with their delay. The Athenians

fortified the place on the land side, and where it most required it,

in six days, and leaving Demosthenes with five ships to garrison it,

with the main body of the fleet hastened on their voyage to Corcyra

and Sicily.

 

As soon as the Peloponnesians in Attica heard of the occupation of

Pylos, they hurried back home; the Lacedaemonians and their king

Agis thinking that the matter touched them nearly. Besides having made

their invasion early in the season, and while the corn was still

green, most of their troops were short of provisions: the weather also

was unusually bad for the time of year, and greatly distressed their

army. Many reasons thus combined to hasten their departure and to make

this invasion a very short one; indeed they only stayed fifteen days

in Attica.

 

About the same time the Athenian general Simonides getting

together a few Athenians from the garrisons, and a number of the

allies in those parts, took Eion in Thrace, a Mendaean colony and

hostile to Athens, by treachery, but had no sooner done so than the

Chalcidians and Bottiaeans came up and beat him out of it, with the

loss of many of his soldiers.

 

On the return of the Peloponnesians from Attica, the Spartans

themselves and the nearest of the Perioeci at once set out for

Pylos, the other Lacedaemonians following more slowly, as they had

just come in from another campaign. Word was also sent round

Peloponnese to come up as quickly as possible to Pylos; while the

sixty Peloponnesian ships were sent for from Corcyra, and being

dragged by their crews across the isthmus of Leucas, passed

unperceived by the Athenian squadron at Zacynthus, and reached

Pylos, where the land forces had arrived before them. Before the

Peloponnesian fleet sailed in, Demosthenes found time to send out

unobserved two ships to inform Eurymedon and the Athenians on board

the fleet at Zacynthus of the danger of Pylos and to summon them to

his assistance. While the ships hastened on their voyage in

obedience to the orders of Demosthenes, the Lacedaemonians prepared to

assault the fort by land and sea, hoping to capture with ease a work

constructed in haste, and held by a feeble garrison. Meanwhile, as

they expected the Athenian ships to arrive from Zacynthus, they

intended, if they failed to take the place before, to block up the

entrances of the harbour to prevent their being able to anchor

inside it. For the island of Sphacteria, stretching along in a line

close in front of the harbour, at once makes it safe and narrows its

entrances, leaving a passage for two ships on the side nearest Pylos

and the Athenian fortifications, and for eight or nine on that next

the rest of the mainland: for the rest, the island was entirely

covered with wood, and without paths through not being inhabited,

and about one mile and five furlongs in length. The inlets the

Lacedaemonians meant to close with a line of ships placed close

together, with their prows turned towards the sea, and, meanwhile,

fearing that the enemy might make use of the island to operate against

them, carried over some heavy infantry thither, stationing others

along the coast. By this means the island and the continent would be

alike hostile to the Athenians, as they would be unable to land on

either; and the shore of Pylos itself outside the inlet towards the

open sea having no harbour, and, therefore, presenting no point

which they could use as a base to relieve their countrymen, they,

the Lacedaemonians, without sea-fight or risk would in all probability

become masters of the place, occupied as it had been on the spur of

the moment, and unfurnished with provisions. This being determined,

they carried over to the island the heavy infantry, drafted by lot

from all the companies. Some others had crossed over before in

relief parties, but these last who were left there were four hundred

and twenty in number, with their Helot attendants, commanded by

Epitadas, son of Molobrus.

 

Meanwhile Demosthenes, seeing the Lacedaemonians about to attack him

by sea and land at once, himself was not idle. He drew up under the

fortification and enclosed in a stockade the galleys remaining to

him of those which had been left him, arming the sailors taken out

of them with poor shields made most of them of osier, it being

impossible to procure arms in such a desert place, and even these

having been obtained from a thirty-oared Messenian privateer and a

boat belonging to some Messenians who happened to have come to them.

Among these Messenians were forty heavy infantry, whom he made use

of with the rest. Posting most of his men, unarmed and armed, upon the

best fortified and strong points of the place towards the interior,

with orders to repel any attack of the land forces, he picked sixty

heavy infantry and a few archers from his whole force, and with

these went outside the wall down to the sea, where he thought that the

enemy would most likely attempt to land. Although the ground was

difficult and rocky, looking towards the open sea, the fact that

this was the weakest part of the wall would, he thought, encourage

their ardour, as the Athenians, confident in their naval

superiority, had here paid little attention to their defences, and the

enemy if he could force a landing might feel secure of taking the

place. At this point, accordingly, going down to the water’s edge,

he posted his heavy infantry to prevent, if possible, a landing, and

encouraged them in the following terms:

 

“Soldiers and comrades in this adventure, I hope that none of you in

our present strait will think to show his wit by exactly calculating

all the perils that encompass us, but that you will rather hasten to

close with the enemy, without staying to count the odds, seeing in

this your best chance of safety. In emergencies like ours

calculation is out of place; the sooner the danger is faced the

better. To my mind also most of the chances are for us, if we will

only stand fast and not throw away our advantages, overawed by the

numbers of the enemy. One of the points in our favour is the

awkwardness of the landing. This, however, only helps us if we stand

our ground. If we give way it will be practicable enough, in spite

of its natural difficulty, without a defender; and the enemy will

instantly become more formidable from the difficulty he will have in

retreating, supposing that we succeed in repulsing him, which we shall

find it easier to do, while he is on board his ships, than after he

has landed and meets us on equal terms. As to his numbers, these

need not too much alarm you. Large as they may be he can only engage

in small detachments, from the impossibility of bringing to.

Besides, the numerical superiority that we have to meet is not that of

an army on land with everything else equal, but of troops on board

ship, upon an element where many favourable accidents are required

to act with effect. I therefore consider that his difficulties may

be fairly set against our numerical deficiencies, and at the same time

I charge you, as Athenians who know by experience what landing from

ships on a hostile territory means, and how impossible it is to

drive back an enemy determined enough to stand his ground and not to

be frightened away by the surf and the terrors of the ships sailing

in, to stand fast in the present emergency, beat back the enemy at the

water’s edge, and save yourselves and the place.”

 

Thus encouraged by Demosthenes, the Athenians felt more confident,

and went down to meet the enemy, posting themselves along the edge

of the sea. The Lacedaemonians now put themselves in movement and

simultaneously assaulted the fortification with their land forces

and with their ships, forty-three in number, under their admiral,

Thrasymelidas, son of Cratesicles, a Spartan, who made his attack just

where Demosthenes expected. The Athenians had thus to defend

themselves on both sides, from the land and from the sea; the enemy

rowing up in small detachments, the one relieving the other—it being

impossible for many to bring to at once—and showing great ardour and

cheering each other on, in the endeavour to force a passage and to

take the fortification. He who most distinguished himself was

Brasidas. Captain of a galley, and seeing that the captains and

steersmen, impressed by the difficulty of the position, hung back even

where a landing might have seemed possible, for fear of wrecking their

vessels, he shouted out to them, that they must never allow the

enemy to fortify himself in their country for the sake of saving

timber, but must shiver their vessels and force