This lecture will take events in the Peloponnesian War down to the Peace of Nicias in 421 BCE. This peace was a temporary cessation of hostilities within the war itself. We're going to focus on the successful Athenian campaign at Pylos on the island of Sphacteria in 425-424 in some detail. This involves an analysis of Cleon's role in political affairs, we're we take a very different and far more positive view of his role. We're going to end with the Battle of Amphipolis in 422, where Cleon and the Spartan general Brasidas both died, leading to the Peace of Nicias.

By 425, an Athenian fleet headed for Sicily dropped off a contingent of troops at Pylos in the SW Peloponnese. It's on a bay across from a narrow island called Sphacteria, the modern Bay of Navarino. The troops were under the command of Demosthenes d.413, not the famous orator from the later 4th century we've mentioned.

He gave his men orders to fortify Pylos. Whether this was part of some predetermined plan, or to stop the men from simply getting bored, no one is sure. Ian's belief is that it was deliberate policy, that the fortification of Pylos followed on from the annual periplous, that sailing around the Peloponnese of the 100 Athenian triremes, as part of Pericles' strategy. Fortufying Pylos meant this was an attack, if you like, on Sparta itself. The Athenians were trying to grasp Sparta by its Achilles heel. Pylos was in Messenia, home of the helots. Why else would you fortify a place in Messenia, unless you were trying to whip up the helots in some way?

The Athenians, Ian suspects, were trying to establish a base to steer to helots to possible revolt even. This would have distracted Sparta's attention from Athens immediately. By 425, Sparta had made some inroads in Boeotia at the request of Thebes. In fact, two years earlier, in 427, it had destroyed the pro-Athenian town of Plataea.

Now since Boeotia bordered directly on Attica's northern border, the Athenians may have been viewing with no small alarm the growth of Spartan influence to their north. So two years later in 425, they decided to do something about it. Hence, they fortify Pylos to try and divert Spartan attention from Athens. It makes perfect sense, doesn't it?

Needless to say, the Spartans didn't take the Athenian fortification of Pylos lying down. They deployed 420 Peloponnesian hoplites to the island of Sphacteria and they sent a further force by sea to eject the Athenians from Pylos. As soon as he heard of what the Spartans were up to, Demosthenes sent an urgent request for help to the Athenian fleet, the same one that had just dropped him off. So the fleet then immediately returned to Pylos, during which a naval battle was fought in the Bay of Pylos, resulting in a decisive Athenian victory. Once again, the superiority of the Athenian navy is proven.

However, the 420 Peloponnesian troops that had been dropped off early on Sphacteria, were now cut off, and the Athenians now blockaded them on that island. Once more, of these 420 Peloponnesian troops, 120 of them were Spartiates, the rest being from their allies.

This defeat in the Bay of Pylos and then the subsequent blockade of Sphacteria, had surprising results in Sparta. Out of the blue, the Spartan government sued for peace with Athens. In the process, it asked for safe passage for the 420 troops on the island of Sphacteria.

Now this is startling, to have the Spartans to sue for peace. We're accustomed now to the Spartan ethos of dying in battle, or having your mother kill you if you come home as part of a defeated force. So we need to try and come up with an explanation for why this happened in the way it did. We'd surely expect that the 128 Spartiates on Sphacteria would be sacrificed by the state in losses of war. We'd even think that the Spartiates would expect to be abandoned, yet far from it! So what's going on here? Well there's no compelling reason why the Spartans took the course of action they did with the Athenians. There's no one real definitive answer.

Perhaps their appeal for peace might be linked to the declining manpower problems that the Spartans were facing, as we talked about in lecture 16. Remember that the entire corps of ephebes was wiped out in that great earthquake of 464, and we're now in 425. Now 120 soldiers on Sphacteria doesn't sound like that many, does it? Yet if the Spartans were desperate to get them back due to manpower shortages, then we can see how seriously that earthquake 40 years ago had affected them.

Now all of a sudden, the Athenians had the chance to end hostilities. Cleon was not kingpin in the assembly, but what he did has earned him pretty much universal condemnation on the part of modern historians. He persuaded the people to reject the Spartan overtures for peace. Now at first sight, this seems rash, especially since the Athenians were still recovering from the plague. It had run its course in 428, but took 15 years or so for the Athenians to recover fully from it.

As we said, modern historians have condemned Cleon for this course of action, yet Ian thinks Cleon was right! You see, the Spartans wanted an armistice, which is not a peace, but is really no more than a truce, is it? Ian thinks Cleon rightly saw that any truce (let's use that word) which was agreed to at this time, on terms that left the Spartans as powerful as they were at the start of the war, would be ephemeral. Once the Spartans got their troops back from Sphacteria, then it would be a return to the days of 431. The resources on that side hadn't diminished that much.

Now remember Thucydides' truest explanation for the war was Sparta's fear in Athens' growth in power. Yet this wasn't going to abate, so if war ended now, the Athenians would then focus on extending their empire. That's what they'd been doing since they founded the Delian League in 478. The Spartans would continue to be afraid of the growth in Athens' power, so eventually the two sides would clash again. A truce now, an armistice, call it what you like, wouldn't achieve anything in the long-run.

Ian would argue that Cleon knew the value of imposing terms on the Spartans, and the only way of doing this was by defeating them fair and square, not by agreeing to let them get their troops back, which would restore the status quo. Cleon then, saw the value in taking these soldiers alive. They would be security against future Spartan invasions of Attica, such as the Spartan strategy of the annual invasion. Moreover, they would give the Athenians an upper-hand in peace negotiations.

So Cleon rightly advised the Athenians to reject Sparta’s offer and besiege Sphacteria with a view towards capturing those Peloponnesian hoplites on it. Now this is a heresy, though Ian didn’t start his remarks on Cleon by saying we would hear another heresy, but he’s pretty sure that we’ll all work this out along the way! Ian likes Cleon and doesn’t think he deserves the bad press, so he’ll defend him a lot in this lecture.

Now the siege of Sphacteria was entrusted to the aristocratic and wealthy general Nicias. His background made him a natural enemy of a demagogue like Cleon. For some reason, Nicias wasn’t able to capture the troops on the island. As the siege grew protracted and costly, the initial euphoria of the Athenians dissipated. This is normal human behavior. You’re euphoric at the start and then if something carries on, you start to get disillusions with it. Why is it taking so long?

The Athenian’s discontent was displayed at an assembly meeting at which Cleon attacked Nicias for his inefficiency. Now Thucydides tells us about this assembly clash, and what he does though, very interestingly, is gives us the speeches of Nicias and Cleon in reported, or indirect speech. He doesn’t quote them verbatim in the inverted commas, like he did so with the speeches of Cleon and Diodotus in the Mytilene debate.

Cleon apparently tore into Nicias for his bungling and caution, beginning to boast that if he were in charge, he would end the siege. Apparently, says Thucydides, this appealed to the crowd of citizens present, who shouted even more in favor of Cleon. Thucydides goes on to say that this shouting was normal for a mob. This is what he contemptuously calls the people, due to the political power they have. He very much dislikes the power of the people.

Now we get reminded again of the view the aristocrats had to popular power. We also get an insight into how noisy assemblies could be. Let’s not forget our previous point also, that if the statistic is right that only about 20% of the people present could hear 85% of what was going on.

Now according to Thucydides, Nicias suddenly called what he thought was Cleon’s bluff. Nicias tells Cleon to go and do the job, if he thought he could do it better than himself. When Cleon couldn’t wriggle out of the situation, as he tried to do at first, and as the crowd cried out even more to him to go to Sphacteria and capture the troops there, he suddenly requested Demosthenes as partner in the venture. He demanded various troops, and then declares rather dramatically that he would return victorious in 20 days.

Now that Athenians laughed at this, because they knew they would win either way. On other words, either Cleon would live up to his promise, which Thucydides calls a mad promise, and they would end up with Spartan prisoners in Athens, which would be a good thing, or he would die trying to capture them, and hence all of Athens would be better off without him.

Now to everyone’s surprise, Cleon and Demosthenes captured the Spartan troops on Sphacteria, bringing them back to Athens within 20 days! Apparently they just set fire to the island, and of course since people run from fire, the Athenians were just waiting at the other end to mop up.

Now of the original contingent of 420 soldiers, only 292 were left. Yet 120 of these were Spartiates, so these are indeed a prize capture. Although the war continued, the presence of Spartan prisoners in Athens, ended the annual invasions of Attica. That’s something that Cleon had predicted when he said we need to take these Spartan troops alive.

Now there’s no question that this was a major victory, and Cleon’s influence in Athens dramatically increased. After the troops on Sphacteria were captured, Cleon left Demosthenes behind to engage in mopping up operations, while he himself returned to Athens with the prisoners. Cleon was elected strategos for the following year, and this is rather a reversal of the pattern of those who use the generalship as a stepping stone to political life, isn’t it?

Also by 424, Cleon increased the phoros, since Athens was in a bad way financially. In some cases he doubled, and in other cases tripled the amount of tribute an ally was to pay. As a result, the phoros increased to an annual income of 1500 talents. Now needless to say, the allies say this as an act of despotism.

Cleon also increased jury pay by the way, from the two obol daily payment that Pericles had introduced in the 450s, to three obols per day. Perhaps this was meant to be some sort of recompense, some sort of compensation for those farmers whose lands were ravaged in the previous Spartan invasions.

Now just when you thought it safe to go in the water, it’s heresy time again! No one as far as Ian knows, has ever really given the clash in the assembly between Cleon and Nicias more than passing attention. Yet Ian thinks there’s a lot going on here. The common opinion is that Cleon backed himself into a corner with a lot of bar talk, yet fortunately for him, when he got to Sphacteria, the more militarily experiences Demosthenes, was there to bail him out. This is kind of the view that Thucydides gives us and is certainly what modern historians echo as well.

Yet Ian disagrees with this completely. For one thing, when Cleon was given this charge by the assembly to go to Sphacteria, he immediately trotted out a list of specialist troops, archers, infantry, etc. These he wanted to take to Demosthenes. Now you don’t have these sorts of details inside your head if all your going to do at an assembly is going to stand up and verbally trash someone else!

Cleon was by 425-424, a seasoned politician, not a military tactician. Demosthenes on the other hand, was a general by now, a strategos, yet he wasn’t a political speaker. If Cleon had asked for these troops and the command of them against Sphacteria off the bat when he first stood up in the assembly, he would have gotten no where with the people. Yet Ian can quite easily see Demosthenes telling Cleon what troops he needed, and then Cleon, by manipulating the crowd against Nicias, making it seem like Nicias had backed him into a corner. Then, well, OK, I’ll take on this job after all, but I’ll need such and such!

The Pylos/Sphacteria campaign was an enormous win for the Athenians, but the odium attached to the rhetores, the orators, is seen in how Thucydides and his contemporary Aristophanes treated the victory. Thucydides glosses over it, without even any grudging praise for Cleon. Perhaps that’s why he gives us only the barest outline of the assembly clash between Cleon and Nicias. He doesn’t give us the speeches of each one, but merely a sort of paraphrase of them, reported speech. He does that because Cleon did well, and Thucydides doesn’t really want to spend time highlighting a guy he dislikes so much.

His account is also manipulated so that we end up feeling sorry for Nicias. Poor old Nicias being abused the way he was by this upstart Cleon. He ought to stay in his tanning shop! Yet not often mentioned is that Nicias handed over his command to Cleon, with the result that he ought to have suffered censure from the people. It wasn’t his job to resign from command. Yet Nicias is not abused for it, even though we know the Athenians to be quick to censure ineptitude, disloyalty, treachery, on the part of their elected officials.

Even worse is the portrayal of the Pylos/Sphacteria campaign in the comic play Knights, which was performed in 424, the same year as the campaign, written by Aristophanes. In this play, he casts Cleon as a Paphlagonian slave who was an evil, venal man who has bewitched the people of Athens. The people of Athens are cast as an old, gullible man named Demos, which is the technical term for the Athenian citizenry!

Now Cleon is trashed in this play, and at one point, two slaves of Demos who were coincidentally called Demosthenes and Nicias, complain that Cleon stole all the credit due Demosthenes for the victory at Pylos. It’s because Cleon has done so well, that he has to be disregarded or trashed, while if he’d messed up at Sphacteria, we can plausibly imagine Thucydides and Aristophanes having a field day with it all.

Now the Pylos/Sphacteria campaign was the highpoint of the Archidamian War for the Athenians. To an extent, it lulled them into over-commitment. Flush with success, there was a move now to abandon Pericles’ second prong of his strategy of not extending the frontiers of the Athenian Empire. This is seen in the imperialistic invasion of Boeotia in 424. Thebes was doing its utmost to assert its hegemony over Boeotian towns, and Thebes’ alignment with Sparta was a cause for concern.

Now it’s significant the Nicias took no part in this venture of the Athenian invasion of Boeotia. It’s not because he was against this enterprise, but probably because he was still living down the humiliation of handing over his command to Cleon and seeing him do what he, the elected strategos, couldn’t do, and do in just 20 days to boot!

Now although the Athenians gained some successes in Boeotia, they suffered a major defeat at Delium in 424, that undid all their gains in Boeotia to date. Yet the worse loss for the Athenians, was that of their former colony of Amphipolis in Thrace. This had been founded in 434 and was located next to naturally rich timber reserves.

By 424 the Spartans began to get involved in the Chalcidice region, where their general Brasidas won over a number of
Athenian allies to the Spartan side. Apparently the allies were not happy with the increase in the phoros that Cleon had arranged. The Macedonian king at this time, now called Perdiccas, also supported them.

Now the increase in Spartan authority in the north, worried the Athenians, because of their need to preserve their influence there. Let’s not forget why they got involved in Potidaea in 432, in order to protect their interests up there. Nothing has changed since then.

Well when Brasidas turned his attention to Amphipolis, Athens deployed a force northwards under command of Thucydides the historian. He arrived too late to save Amphipolis, and apparently Bradidas didn’t even need to storm the place, since the people voluntarily open their gates to him. So although Thucydides can’t be blames for any of this, nevertheless he was exiled from Athens for 20 years, and Cleon may well have been behind this move.

Brasidas now began to turn the war in favor of Sparta, even though the Athenians still held the Spartan captives from Sphacteria. So the loss of Amphipolis and the Spartan gain, allowed Nicias to regain some of his influence in the assembly. He was moderate in his politics, a pacifist, and naturally then he clashed with Cleon. Although the Spartan government was also in favor of peace, they were now coming to distrust Brasidas.

Brasidas seems to have been something of a loose canon. His activities were cause for concern back in Sparta. So thanks to this Spartan attitude and Nicias’ urgings, a one-year truce was drawn up between Athens and Sparta by 423. Yet the truce was soon shattered by Brasidas’ activities in northern Greece, where he encouraged the city of Scione in the Chalcidice to revolt from Athens. This move then allowed Cleon to disparage the Spartans in the assembly, and as a result, when the truce expired in 422, and Cleon was elected strategos again, he was able to persuade the assembly to send troops under his command to reconquer Amphipolis. Now that of course meant a showdown with Sparta.

At Amphipolis, Cleon and Brasidas met in battle. According to Thucydides, Cleon acted prematurely and as a result, his troops engaged the Spartans too soon. At any rate, the Athenians lost the Battle of Amphipolis, however both Cleon and Brasidas were killed. Even in death, Thucydides has nothing good to say about Cleon, saying he never intended to stand his ground, but that he fled and was speared in the back as he ran away. In fact, Thucydides speaks more glowingly of Brasidas’ death, the enemy!

By the way, the Athenian assembly resolved to kill all the men of Scione and enslave the women and children. Now that’s precisely what Cleon had advocated for Mytilene in 427, and look how he was ripped apart for that by Thucydides. The Athenians will actually do the same thing to the little island of Melos in the Cyclades by 416, so again, what Cleon had proposed in 427 was not uncommon.

Cleon was one of the better demagogues, Ian thinks. He doesn’t deserve the bad press that Thucydides, Aristophanes, and even a century later the Athenian Constitution, gives him. Cleon may well have had a hidden agenda, and may well have acted in the city’s best interest at times, as well as in his own best interest at time. Yet Ian thinks he was right to reject the Spartan overtures for peace in 425, and he did engineer a great victory at Sphacteria in 424. Cleon saw the need to counter Spartan influence in the north, and although he was clearly not the man to beat Brasidas in battle, he did lead a force north to stand against him, so he was not a coward.

We have no evidence to support Thucydides’ account of how Cleon died, or that he was thinking of deserting. How would Thucydides know what was going through Cleon’s mind anyway? The one person in these years who doesn’t command much respect is Nicias. Yet no one says anything bad about him. Why not? He’s an aristocrat, from the right side of the tracks.

Now the Battle of Amphipolis was decisive in that Brasidas’ death ended Spartan policies in the north, and Cleon’s death allowed Nicias to dominate the assembly. Both sides were ready for peace, and after negotiations during the winter of 422-421, the Peace of Nicias was agreed to by March of 421. It was supposed to last for 50 years, and among its terms was that Sparta would remain hegemon of he Peloponnesian league, as Athens would do so for the Delian League. Athens was also supposed to restore Pylos, and return the prisoners of war from Sphacteria. Sparta was supposed to hand over Amphipolis.

However, neither side honored their parts of the deal. To make matters worse, the key Spartan allies of Corinth, Megara, and Boeotia, refused to agree to the peace, refusing to sign it. Corinth was still after blood from its defeats from the Athenians off the hands of Corcyra and Potidaea. Megara was still smarting from the Megarian Decree, plus Athens held its port Nisaea. During the peace negotiations that led to the Peace of Nicias, the Spartans could have insisted on the Athenians returning Nisaea to Megara, yet they didn’t, So that upset the Megarians.

Finally, the Boeotians under the terms of the peace, had to hand over a border fortress called Pynactum to Athens. They not only refused to hand it over, but they destroyed it. So by 421, the big question was not whether the peace would last for 50 years, but how long would it last before hostilities broke out again? What direction would the war take after hostilities broke out again? We’ll find out the answers to these questions in our next lecture.