triremes, under the command of Cnemus, attacked and devastated the isl and of Zacynthus, but did not succeed in effecting a permanent conquest. They were too inferior in naval strength to cope with the Athenians on the open sea; but the Peloponnesian privateers, especially those from the Megarian port of Nisæa, inflicted considerable loss on the Athenian fisheries and commerce. Some of these privateers even ventured as far as the coasts of Asia Minor, and molested the Athenian trade, for the protection of which the Athenians were obliged to despatch a squadron of six triremes, under Melesander. A revolting feature in this predatory warfare was the cruelty with which the Lacedæmonians treated their prisoners, who were mercilessly slain, and their bodies cast into clefts and ravines. This produced retaliation on the part of the Athenians. Some Peloponnesian envoys, on their way to the court of Persia to solicit aid against Athens, were joined by the Corinthian general Aristeus, who persuaded them to visit the court of the Thracian king, Sitalces, in order if possible to detach him from the Athenian alliance. But this was a fatal miscalculation. Not only was Sitalces firmly attached to the Athenians, but his son Sadocus had been admitted as a citizen of Athens; and the Athenian residents at the court of Sitalces induced him, in testimony of zeal and gratitude for his newly conferred rights, to procure the arrest of the Peloponnesian envoys. The whole party were accordingly seized and conducted to Athens, where they were put to death without even the form of a trial, and their bodies cast out among the rocks, by way of reprisal for the murders committed by the Lacedæmonians. § 8. By this act the Athenians got rid of Aristeus, who had proved himself an active and able commander, and who was the chief instigator of the revolt of Potidea, as well as the principal cause of its successful resistance. In the following winter that town capitulated, after a blockade of two years, during which it suffered such extremity of famine, that even the bodies of the dead were converted into food. Although the garrison was reduced to such distress, and though the siege had cost Athens two thousand talents, the Athenian generals, Xenophon, the son of Euripides, and his two colleagues, granted the Potidæans favorable terms. For this they were reprimanded by the Athenians, who had expected to defray the expenses of the siege by selling the prisoners as slaves, and perhaps also to gratify their vengeance by putting the intrepid garrison to death. Potidea and its territory was now occupied by a body of a thousand colonists from Athens. § 9. The third year of the war (B. C. 429) was now opening, and nothing decisive had been performed on either side. After two invasions, but little mischief, probably, was capable of being inflicted on the Attic territory, or at all events not sufficient to induce the Peloponnesians to incur the risk of infection from the plague. Archidamus, therefore, now directed his whole force against the ill-fated town of Platea. As he approached their city, the Platæans despatched a herald to Archidamus to remonstrate against this invasion, and to remind him of the solemn oath which Pausanias had sworn, when, after the defeat of the Persians, he offered sacrifice to Zeus Eleutherios in the great square of Platæa, and there, in the presence of the assembled allies, bound himself and them to respect and guarantee their independence Archidamus replied, that by their oaths they were bound to assist him in the liberation of the rest of Greece; but, if they would not agree to do this, their independence should be respected if they only consented to remain neutral. After this summons had been twice repeated, the Platæans returned for answer, that they could do nothing without the consent of the Athenians, in whose custody their wives and families now were; adding, that a profession of neutrality might again induce the Thebans to surprise their city. Hereupon Archidamus proposed to them to hand over their town and territory to the Lacedæmonians, together with a schedule of all the property which they contained, engaging to hold them in trust and to cultivate the land till the war was terminated, when everything should be safely restored. In the mean time, the Platæans might retire whithersoever they chose, and receive an allowance sufficient for their support. The offer seemed fair and tempting, and the majority of the Plateans were for accepting it, but it was resolved first of all to obtain the sanction of the Athenians: who, however, exhorted them to hold out, and promised to assist them to the last. The Plateans, afraid to send a herald to the Spartan camp, now proclaimed from the walls their refusal of the proffered terms; when Archidamus invoked the gods and heroes of the soil to witness, that it was not until the Platæans had renounced the oaths which bound them, that he had invaded their territory. The Peloponnesians, indeed, seem to have been really unwilling to undertake the siege. They were driven into it by the ancient grudge of the Thebans against Platæa. The siege that ensued is one of the most memorable in the annals of Grecian warfare. Platea was but a small city, and its garrison consisted of only 400 citizens and 80 Athenians, together with 110 women to manage their household affairs. Yet this small force set at defiance the whole army of the Peloponnesians. The first operation of Archidamus was to surround the town with a strong palisade formed of the fruit-trees which had been cut down, and thus to deprive the Plateans of all egress. He then began to erect a mound of timber, earth, and stones against the wall, forming an inclined plane up which his troops might march, and thus take the place by escalade. The whole army labored at this mound seventy days and nights; but whilst it was gradually attaining the requisite height, the Platæans on their side were engaged in raising their walls with a superstructure of wood and brickwork, protected in front with hides. They also formed a subterranean passage under their walls, and undermined the mound, which thus fell in and required constant additions. And as even these precautions seemed in danger of being ultimately defeated, they built a new interior wall, in the shape of a crescent, whose two horns joined the old one at points beyond the extent of the mound; so that if the besiegers succeeded in carrying the first rampart, they would be in no better position than before. So energetic was the defence, that the Lace dæmonians, after spending three months in these fruitless attempts, resolved to turn the siege into a blockade, and reduce the place by famine. § 10. They now proceeded to surround the city with a double wall of circumvallation, the interior space between the two of sixteen feet in breadth being roofed in, and the whole structure protected by a ditch on each side, one towards the town and the other towards the country. The interior was occupied by the troops left on guard, half of which consisted of Bœotians and the other half of Peloponnesians. In this manner the Platæans endured a blockade of two years, during which the Athenians attempted nothing for their relief. In the second year, however, about half the gar rison effected their escape in the following bold and successful manner Provisions were beginning to run short, and the Platean commander exhorted the garrison to scale the wall by which they were blockaded. Only 212 men, however, were found bold enough to attempt this hazardous feat. Choosing a wet and stormy December night, they issued from their gates, lightly armed and carrying with them ladders accurately adapted to the height of the wall. These were fixed against it in the space between two towers occupied by the guard, and the first company, having mounted, slew, without creating alarm, the sentinels on duty. Already a great part of the Platæans had gained the summit, when the noise of a tile loosened by one of the party, and falling down, betrayed what was passing. The whole guard immediately turned out, but in the darkness and confusion knew not whither to direct their blows, whilst the lighted torches which they carried rendered them a conspicuous aim for the arrows and javelins of those Platæans who had gained the other side of the walls. In this manner the little band succeeded in effecting their escape, with the exception of one man who was captured, and of a few who lost their courage and returned to Platea. § 11. But though the provisions of the garrison were husbanded by this diminution in their number, all the means of subsistence were at length exhausted, and starvation began to stare them in the face. The Lacedæmonian commander had long been in a condition to take the town by storm, but he had been directed by express orders from home to reduce it to a voluntary capitulation, in order that, at the conclusion of a peace, Sparta might not be forced to give it up, as she would be in case of a forcible capture. Knowing the distressed state of the garrison, the Lacedæmonians sent in a herald with a summons to surrender and submit themselves to their disposal, at the same time promising that only the guilty should be punished. The besieged had no alternative, and submitted. This took place in B. c. 427, after the blockade had lasted two years. The whole garrison, consisting of 200 Platæans and 25 Athenians, were now arraigned before five judges sent from Sparta. Their indictment was framed in a way which precluded the possibility of escape. They were simply asked, "Whether during the present war they had rendered any assistance to the Lacedæmonians or their allies?" So preposterous a question at once revealed to the prisoners that they could expect neither justice nor mercy. Nevertheless, they asked and obtained permission to plead their cause. Their orators, by recalling the services which Platæa had rendered to Greece in general in the Persian war, and to Sparta in particular, by aiding to suppress the revolt of the Helots, seemed to have produced such an impression on their judges that the Thebans present found it necessary to reply. Their speech does not appear to have contained any very cogent arguments, but it was successful. The Plateans were mercilessly sacrificed for reasons of state policy. Each man, including the twenty-five Athenians, was called up separately before the judgmentseat, and the same question having been put to him, and of course answered in the negative, he was immediately led away to execution. The town of Platea, together with its territory, was transferred to the Thebans, who, a few months afterwards, levelled all the private houses to the ground, and with the materials erected a sort of vast barrack around the Heræum, or temple of Hera, both for the accommodation of visitors, and to serve as an abode for those to whom they let out the land. Thus was Platæa blotted out from the map of Greece. Statue of Theseus, from the Pediment of the Parthenon, in the British Museum. CHAPTER XXVII. PELOPONNESIAN WAR CONTINUED. FROM THE SIEGE OF PLATEA TO THE SEDITION AT CORCYRA. 1. General Character of the War. § 2. Military and Naval Operations of the Third Year. Attempt of Peloponnesians to surprise Peiræus. § 3. Fourth Year. Revolt of Mytilené. 4. Fifth Year. Surrender of Mytilené. § 5. Debates of the Athenian Assembly respecting the Mytileneans. Cleon and the Athenian Demagogues. 6. Bloody Decree against the Mytilenæans. § 7. Second Debate. Reversal of the Decree. Lesbos colonized by Athenians. § 8. Civil Dissensions at Corcyra. 9. Picture of the Times by Thucydides. § 1. In recording the fall of Platæa, we have anticipated the order of chronology. The investment of that town formed, as we have related, the first incident in the third year of the Peloponnesian war. The subsequent operations of that war down to the eleventh year of it, or the year B. C. 421, when a short and hollow peace, or rather truce, called the peace of Nicias, was patched up between the Lacedæmonians and Athenians, were not of a decisive character. There was, indeed, much mutual injury inflicted, but none of those great events which bring a war to a close by disabling either one or both parties from continuing it. The towns captured were, moreover, restored at the peace; by which, consequently, Athens and Sparta were placed much in the same state as when the war broke out. It would be tedious to detail at length all the little engagements which occurred, |