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1.
Next summer, about the time of the corn's
coming into ear, ten Syracusan and as many Locrian vessels sailed to
Messina, in Sicily, and occupied the town upon the invitation of the
inhabitants; and Messina revolted from the Athenians.
[2]
The Syracusans contrived this chiefly because they saw that the place
afforded an approach to Sicily, and feared that the Athenians might
hereafter use it as a base for attacking them with a larger force; the Locrians because they wished to carry on hostilities from both sides of
the Strait and to reduce their enemies, the people of Rhegium.
[3]
Meanwhile, the Locrians had invaded the Rhegian territory with all their
forces, to prevent their succoring Messina, and also at the instance of some
exiles from Rhegium who were with them; the long factions by which that town had been torn rendering it for the
moment incapable of resistance, and thus furnishing an additional temptation
to the invaders.
[4]
After devastating the country the Locrian land forces retired, their ships
remaining to guard Messina, while others were being manned for the same
destination to carry on the war from thence.
2.
About the same time in the spring, before the
corn was ripe, the Peloponnesians and their allies invaded Attica under
Agis, the son of Archidamus, king of the Lacedaemonians, and sat down and
laid waste the country.
[2]
Meanwhile the Athenians sent off the forty ships which they had been
preparing to Sicily, with the remaining generals Eurymedon and Sophocles;
[3]
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.
[4]
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.
3.
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.
[2]
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.
[3]
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.
4.
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.
[2]
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;
[3]
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 fortification.
5.
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.
[2]
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.
6.
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.
[2]
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.
7.
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.
8.
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.
[2]
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.
[3]
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.
[4]
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.
[5]
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
entrance of the harbour to prevent their being able to anchor inside it.
[6]
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.
[7]
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.
[8]
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.
[9]
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.
9.
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.
[2]
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 ardor,
[3]
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.
[4]
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:—
10.
‘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.
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