In the summer a tsunami devastated the coasts of the Malian and North Euboean gulfs, and the Spartans were again forced to abort their annual invasion of Attica.
Nicias was sent with a fleet of sixty ships and two thousand hoplites to the island of Melos, which had refused to join the Delian League. The Athenians plundered the island, but the Melians still refused to join the league. Nicias then sailed back to the mainland and landed at Oropus on the north coast of Attica. He then marched to Tanagra, where he was joined by the main Athenian army marching north from Athens under Hipponicus (d.424 BC) and Eurymedon (d.413 BC). The Athenians plundered the countryside and defeated a combined Tanagran and Theban army. The main army went back to Athens; Nicias with his sixty ships went on to ravage the Opuntian Locrian coast and then returned home.
Demosthenes (c.450-413 BC) and Procles (d.426 BC) with a fleet of thirty ships were sent around the Peloponnese to operate in the Corinthian Gulf and northwest. When he arrived at Naupactus, Demosthenes gathered an army with contingents from the islands of Corcyra, Cephalonia and Zacynthus, and from Acarnania on the mainland. He then began a blockade of Leucas (Is), a Spartan ally, off the coast of Acarnania.
Rather than laying a siege on Leucas, the Messenians suggested that he should invade Aetolia, a mountainous region on the north coast of the Corinthian Gulf. The Aetolians lived in unwalled villages and were defended only by light-armed troops. This plan appealed to Demosthenes because it would remove the threat to Naupactus and also allow him to invade Boeotia from the west. The Acarnanians, however, were not impressed with the new plan and refused to take part.
Demosthenes sailed southeast along the Greek coast from Leucas to Oeneon in west Locris, the coastal area to the north of the Corinthian Gulf. The Ozolians were allies of the Athenians, and their troops were equipped in a similar manner to the Aetolians. It was agreed that Ozolians would assemble their whole force and meet the Athenians in the interior of Aetolia. The Messenians from Naupactus advised Demosthenes that he should not wait for the Ozolians but to advance quickly before the Aetolians could unite.
Taking their advice Demosthenes proceeded against Aegitium and took it by assault. The Aetolians, however, had already amassed their army and began to attack the Athenians and their allies, running down in various places and throwing their javelins, retreating when the Athenians attempted to advance or when attacked by the archers, and pursuing the Athenians when they retreated. The Athenians were just about able to hold their ground until the commander of the archers was killed. After this, his men scattered and the Aetolians were able to press their attacks with less risk. The hoplites were tired and the Aetolians continued to shower them with javelins. The allied army eventually broke and fled.
It was about this time that at some three kilometres south of the Malian Gulf the Spartans founded Heraclea in Trachis (=Heraclea Trachinia) as a military and naval stronghold, commanded by a harmost (=military governor). Heraclea was close to the Euboic Channel, the Spartan forces controlled the pass of Thermopylae, and Sparta’s allies in Doris included the strategically important town of Cytinium. Sparta by holding both Heraclea and Cytinium could cut the communications between Athens and her ally Thessaly, and perhaps push north to join the Chalcidians and the Bottiaeans. Also about this time the Athenians on the coast of Sicily sailed to the mainland and defeated the Epizephyrian Locrians who came against them, and captured a fort on the Halex River.
Earlier, the Aetolians had sent an embassy to Sparta asking for help to capture Naupactus. The Spartans sent three thousand allied hoplites, five hundred of whom were from Heraclea Trachinia, under the command of the Spartan Eurylochus (d.426 BC). In the autumn this army moved to Delphi and envoys were sent to the neighbouring Locrians, the road to Naupactus passing through their territory. Although the Locrians had supported the Athenians earlier in the year, most of them now agreed to support the Spartans.
Demosthenes, who had remained in the area after his defeat at Aegitium, Realising that the small garrison at Naupactus could not adequately protect the whole circuit of the city’s walls, persuaded the Acarnanians to provide him with a thousand hoplites and then used his fleet to move them into the city. The Spartans seized the unwalled sector of Naupactus without any trouble, but once it was clear that the walled section was fully garrisoned they withdrew.
Eurylochus accepted a plan suggested by the Ambracians for an attack on Athens’ allies in the northwest, Acarnania and Amphilochia. In the winter three thousand Ambracian hoplites marched southwards along the eastern edge of the Ambracian Gulf and took up a position at Olpae, just under five kilometres north of Amphilochian Argos. The Acarnanians reacted by sending part of their army to the city, while the rest went to Crenae, guarding the route which the Spartans were expected to take. They also asked Demosthenes to take command of their army, and help from the twenty Athenian triremes cruising around the Peloponnese at that time.
From Proschium in southwest Aetolia, Eurylochus marched his army north into Acarnania, then west of Stratus and between Amphilochian Argos and Crenae to join the Ambracians at Olpae. Demosthenes arrived in the gulf with the twenty triremes, two hundred Messenian hoplites and sixty Athenian archers. He took command of the combined army and advanced towards Olpae, where he camped on the opposite side of a ravine separating the two armies. The two sides remained in their camps for five days. On the sixth day they prepared for battle. The Peloponnesian army was larger, so Demosthenes concealed in ambush in a hollow overgrown with bushes four hundred hoplites who were to rise up after the onset and take the enemy left wing in the rear.
On his right wing Demosthenes together with the Athenians and Messenians faced Eurylochus and the Peloponnesians; on his left wing the Acarnanians and Amphilochians faced the Ambracians and Mantineans. The Ambracians soon defeated their opponents and pursued them. When the Peloponnesians outflanked Demosthenes’ right he sprang his ambush and the hidden troops plunged into the back of the enemy’s left. Soon the entire left and centre of the Peloponnesian army was retreating in disorder (apart from the Mantineans, who retreated in good order). Eurylochus was killed during the collapse and when the Ambracians broke off their pursuit and returned to the battlefield heavy casualties were inflicted upon them.
The following day, Menedaius, the new commander of the Peloponnesians, with the remnants of his army cut off by land and sea, asked for a truce. In a secret agreement Demosthenes said Menedaius and his Peloponnesians could pass through the enemy lines, but the Ambracians had to be left behind. He had two motives for his decision (a) to weaken the Ambracian army and (b) to discredit the Spartans by showing that to save themselves they were prepared to abandon their allies after a defeat. When the Peloponnesians began to leave the Ambracians attempted to join them. In the fight that followed two hundred Ambracians were killed before the rest managed to escape into the hills.
A second army from Ambracia on its way south to Olpae camped on the lower of the two hills at Idomene. Demosthenes, hearing of its approach, set off on a night march northwards and on arrival at Idomene, occupied the taller hill. At dawn he launched a surprise attack on the Ambracian camp. Expecting the Ambracians to be unaware of the defeat the previous day, Demosthenes put the Messenians in front of his allied army and instructed them to speak in the Doric dialect (the same dialect as spoken by Ambracians) and pretend to be the other Ambracian army. The Ambracians were taken completely by surprise and were slain almost to a man.
Acarnania and Amphilochia were unwilling to let the Athenians occupy Ambracia, and when the Athenian ships departed they formed a hundred-year defensive alliance with Ambracia and the area ceased to be a theatre for active operations. Demosthenes, after his defeat in Aetolia, had restored his reputation with his two victories and he returned safely to Athens. In the winter Corinth sent three hundred hoplites to Ambracia and secured it against an Athenian attack. In the winter the Athenians decided to send forty ships to Sicily; partly in the belief that this would bring the war to a faster conclusion, and partly to afford practice for the navy. A few ships were dispatched under Laches’ successor Pythodoros; the greater part of the fleet followed later under Sophocles (not the tragedian) and Eurymedon. During this time the Athenians’ allies in Sicily landed in the territory of Himera, while the Sicels in concert invaded Himera’s territory from the interior, and later sailed to the Lipari Islands. On their return to Rhegium they met Pythodoros who towards the end of the winter sailed to the Locrian fort that Laches had captured earlier, but was defeated in battle by the Locrians.
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