In the spring Mytilenean and Lesbian exiles took Rhoeteum in the Troad, but restored it for a sum of two thousand Phocaean staters. They then marched southwest to Antandrus and took the town by treachery. From here they had every facility for shipbuilding and could easily ravage Lesbos and make themselves masters of the Aeolian towns on the mainland.
In early summer there was a partial eclipse of the Sun, and early in the same month there was also an earthquake. When in 425 BC Athens had sent out a reinforcement of forty ships even her allies in Sicily began to fear that her intent was to conquer. At the Conference of Delegates held at Gela in 424 BC, Hermocrates of Syracuse (d.407 BC) persuaded the Sicilians to make peace with each other and exclude the Athenians from their island. On returning home the commanders of the Athenian fleet were harshly treated: Pythodoros and Sophocles were exiled; while Eurymedon was fined.
The island of Cythera (which belonged to Sparta) lies opposite the southeastern tip of the Peloponnesian Peninsula. An opposing force occupying the island would be well placed to directly threaten Sparta whose port, Taenarum, was situated at the western promontory of the Laconian Gulf. During the summer Nicias landed on Cythera with two thousand heavy infantry and captured both towns on the island. The Spartans made no attempt to oppose the Athenians in force but went very much on the defensive. Nicias left a garrison and then went on to plunder the defenceless coastal towns of Laconia. Thyrea on the border between Laconia and the Argolid was stormed and captured, and the Aeginetans living there were taken to Athens and executed.
At Megara the people in the city were being pressed by the Athenians, who invaded their territory every year, and also by exiled oligarchs who having established themselves at Pegae were attacking the Megarians in their fields. In the city the philoi (friends of the oligarchs) urged the people to allow the exiles to return. The democrats, becoming fearful, offered to give up the city to Athens. Demosthenes with light-armed troops and Hippocrates (d.424 BC) with six hundred hoplites moved by night from Minoa. At dawn the conspirators opened a gate in the long walls linking Megara to its port Nisaea and the Athenians rushed in. When the next stage of the conspiracy, the surrender of Megara failed, skilled workers were brought from Athens and spent the day walling off the Peloponnesian garrison in Nisaea. Next day the garrison capitulated. The Athenians then broke down the long walls at the junction with Megara and took possession of Nisaea.
At this time Brasidas happened to be in the vicinity of Sicyon and Corinth, getting ready an army for Thrace. On arriving at Megara he was refused admittance as both factions in the city had decided to await the result of the expected battle with the Athenians before declaring their favour. Brasidas set up his army at a convenient position and waited for the Athenians to attack. The Athenians chose not to fight, their generals having decided that the risk was too great and they had already attained most of their objectives. Brasidas now achieved his when the philoi opened Megara’s gates to him.
During the summer Hippocrates and Demosthenes made plans with some dissident Boeotians to take over the Boeotian towns. Exiles from Orchomenus were to seize Chaeronea; Demosthenes operating from Naupactus was to proceed by sea to receive Boeotian Siphae on the Corinthian Gulf; and Hippocrates was to advance from Attica with the main Athenian army to seize and fortify Delium on the Boeotian coast opposite Euboea, just over the Attic border. These events were to take place simultaneously in order to make it difficult for the Boeotians to combine against Hippocrates at Delium. Demosthenes arrived a day early and was forced to withdraw. Siphae and Chaeronea were promptly secured and the conspirators made no attempt to capture the towns.
Hippocrates eventually arrived in Boeotia and began to fortify the temple at Delium. After completing the fortifications and leaving a garrison the Athenians with 7000 hoplites, some cavalry but no proper light troops were caught returning to Athens by a Boeotian army of 7000 hoplites, some cavalry, 500 peltasts and more than 10,000 light troops. Ten generals of the Boeotian army had wanted to let them pass, but the eleventh, Pagondas, one of the two Theban generals, persuaded his colleagues to offer battle.
As usual the hoplites faced each other in the centre, mostly eight ranks deep, except that here the Theban contingent on the right took up the unusual formation of twenty-five ranks deep. The Thebans defeated the Athenian left, and although the Athenian right was first at first successful, it fled in panic at the sudden appearance of Boeotian cavalry, sent round behind a hill just behind the battlefield to support their left. The Boeotians mounted a pursuit but nightfall saved the Athenians from a worse disaster. As it was, Hippocrates and a thousand hoplites lay dead on the field of battle. Later, Delium was overwhelmed and two hundred Athenians taken prisoner.
In the summer, before the Battle of Delium, the Bottiaeans and Chalcidians, who had been in revolt from Athens since 432 BC, and Athens’ ally Perdiccas II (r.c.454-c.413 BC), king of Macedonia, had invited the Spartans to send an army into Thrace. Perdiccas, together with rebels, promised to pay one half of the expenses of the expeditionary force and to induce his neighbours to ally with Sparta. For themselves the rebels were frightened by the Athenian forces in Thrace, while Perdiccas wanted the Spartans to assist him in a war against his western neighbour Arrhabaeus of Lyncus
The Spartans needed something to offset the Athenian harassment of the Peloponnese from Pylos and Cythera so they gave Brasidas seven hundred freed helots (neodamodes, ‘new citizens’) and money to raise a thousand hoplites in the Peloponnese. This army was the one gathering near Corinth when the Athenians attacked Megara and it was used by Brasidas to save the city.
Brasidas marched quickly through Thessaly, which was allied to Athens, before the Thessalians could raise a force to oppose him (on Thessaly’s broad flat land her cavalry would have made things very difficult for Brasidas’ hoplites). When the Athenians heard of Brasidas’ arrival in the north they broke their alliance with Perdiccas. Although Brasidas joined forces with Perdiccas, he refused to be involved in a war against Arrhabaeus. He instead took his army into Chalcidice and persuaded Acanthus on the east coast, Stagirus inland north of Acanthus, and Argilus in the region of Bisaltia west of Amphipolis, to revolt from Athens.
In the winter Brasidas besieged Amphipolis. The city was defended by the Athenian general Eucles, who sent for help from Thucydides (the historian, at this time a general), who was stationed with seven Athenian ships a half-day’s sail east at Thasos. Aware of Thucydides’ presence and to capture the city before Thucydides arrived, Brasidas offered moderate terms to the Amphipolitans, which they accepted. On the same day the city surrendered, Thucydides arrived at Eion at the mouth of the Strymon. Meanwhile, Brasidas began to ally with more Thracian towns. He attacked other towns in the area and captured Torone. Thucydides was made a scapegoat for the loss of Amphipolis and exiled for twenty years.
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