When we
last investigated the Peloponnesian War, the two alliances had scored decisive
victories against each other. Athens had scored naval victories in the Isthmus,
while Sparta had razed Plataea to the ground for the sake of their ally Thebes.
From Mytilene to Aetolia, the war has now become ever more intense, ever more titanic,
and ever more dangerous for the combatants. Welcome to our third video on the Peloponnesian
War, where we will discuss the Mytilenean Revolt and the Wars in Aetolia and Pylos.
We’ll also highlight another worthwhile documentary on this topic currently available
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You’ll learn how the spartans came to be a fiercely strict and martial society,
being under constant threat from the outside, and perhaps even greater threat from the inside
because of their disloyal population of de-facto serfs, the helots. Forgoing walls for soldiers,
forgoing citizen’s rights for military discipline, the spartan elites had to be tough,
and they were proud of the superiority their constant state of vigilance demanded of them.
See how this unique army of Greece came unto being, and how they fought,
with reanactments and visits to the ancient ruins of today, charting the legacy of one of
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MYTILENE’S REVOLT: BETRAYED BY ALLIES In the year 428 BCE, the oligarchic city-state
of Mytilene in Lesbos revolted against Athens They did so by cooperating with Sparta and its allies,
particularly Boeotia. The Mytilenians were considering this rebellion for a while but
seized upon the opportunity as the Peloponnesian League began its annual invasion of the Athenian
countryside. According to Thucydides, Mytilenes wished to develop its own sphere of influence by
taking over the entire island of Lesbos. Hence, they began their preparations by fortifying their
city and hiring mercenaries from the Euxinos Pontos. However, the other cities on Lesbos were
not so quick to accept Mytilenaean overlordship. Some Lesbian cities, such as the Methymnians,
instead preferred to stay with Athens, moreover, pro-democracy elements in Mytilene itself opposed
the direction their oligarchs were taking the city in. These factions, combined with the people
of Tenedos, sent off messengers to Athens, informing them of the oligarchs’ overtures.
Athens was too weakened by the plague and other engagements to intervene at that
moment. As such, Mytilene had time to build up its fortifications, ensuring its revolt would succeed.
When Athens finally got around to dealing with Mytilene, its plan initially was to attack
during the Apollo festival outside the city walls. However, the Mytileneans were warned
of the Athenian sneak attack and decided to face them from within their fortified walls.
When forty Athenian triremes faced the Mytilenean fleet outside the city, they were defeated.
Afterwards, negotiations began, with Mytilene pre-emptively sending runners to Sparta to try
and obtain Lacadaemonian support during the proceedings. Talks soon collapsed,
and the Mytilenean army left the city and attacked the Athenian camp. The Athenians
were devastated but not fully crippled, while the Mytileneans preferred to be on the defensive and
retreated back into their walls. Meanwhile, Sparta brought the matter to the Peloponnesian League,
which formally incorporated the island of Lesbos as an ally within its ranks. Sparta then organized
a campaign to attack Attica in Olympia, but her allies were late due to the harvest season. Athens
heard of this and intimidated the league with 100 warships used to raid the Peloponnese. Meanwhile,
Mytilene tried to raid the other cities of Lesbos, specifically Methymna but was repelled. By 427
BCE, the Athenians had begun a proper siege of the rebellious city. Mytilene was fully surrounded,
subject to starvation and completely reliant on a Spartan fleet of 40 ships commanded by Alcidas.
The fleet was notoriously late in getting there, having not set sail until the summer of 427 BCE.
All told, the Mytileneans were in a very difficult situation: time was running short,
and help was likely not coming in time. Ultimately, they decided to enter negotiations.
While this may have seemed like an easy triumph for Athens, it was, in fact, a Pyrrhic victory.
After battling the annual invasion into Attica, fighting the naval war in the
Isthmus and funding the siege of Mytilene, Athen’s finances were deeply strained.
With this background, we enter the infamous Mytilenean Debate, which occurred in the agora
of the city Beloved of the Poets. The Athenians were both aghast at the strain of the war and
furious at the insolence of the Mytileneans who had brought them such trouble. As such, a motion
was put forward to execute all male citizens of Mytilene and sell the women into slavery.
A trireme was dispatched to do the deed, but a day later, the Athenians held another debate,
the moral pillars of their society speaking out against indiscriminate slaughter. The man who
was pushing for the massacre was Cleon, a man whom Thucydides describes as the most ruthless
man in Athens. He claimed that Athens, instead of punishing, was wasting time with sophistry
and that expediency was key. As such, punishment of the Mytileneans would be the best deterrence:
Do not, therefore, be traitors to yourselves, but recall as nearly as possible the moment
of suffering and the supreme importance which you then attached to their reduction;
and now pay them back in their turn, without yielding to present weakness or forgetting the
peril that once hung over you. Punish them as they deserve, and teach your other allies by a striking
example that the penalty of rebellion is death. Let them once understand this, and you will not
have so often to neglect your enemies while you are fighting with your own confederates.
Then came Diodotos, a man who was against the punishment. He
urged that Athens act in moderation and that aggression would be counterproductive:
"Confess, therefore, that this is the wisest course, and without conceding too much either
to pity or to indulgence, by neither of which motives do I any more than Cleon wish you to
be influenced, upon the plain merits of the case before you, be persuaded by me to try
calmly those of the Mitylenians whom Paches sent off as guilty, and to leave the rest
undisturbed. This is at once best for the future and most terrible to your enemies at the present
moment since good policy against an adversary is superior to the blind attacks of brute force."
In the end, Athens reversed its decision by a slim majority vote. A second trireme was
dispatched and reached Mytilene in time to stop the extinction of an entire demos. It was a rare
moment of mercy in a war known for its brutality that Thucydides had to note as extraordinary.
HINTERLAND WARS: THE AETOLIAN CAMPAIGN
Athens was growing more belligerent as 426 BCE came about, and debates in the agora were now
going on about how to move forward. Eventually, they decided on a massive assault on Boeotia and
Aetolia, regions full of Spartan allied states. Athens had many allies in neighbouring Messenia,
who had lobbied for the campaign to occur on their terms. The Athenians initially sent two
major contingents; one was led by Demosthenes, who was to sail across the Peloponnese and blockade
the Corinthian Gulf. Nicias led the others to attack in Tanagra, Melos and Boeotia. Demosthenes
initially managed to amass a large force of his allies from Messenia, Corcyraea and Acarnania,
as he had promised to lay siege to Leuca. However, as he wanted to split the force in two and take
further reinforcements from Phocis to go to Aetolia first, many of his allies deserted him.
Demosthenes continued on and reached Locris, where he established a base to begin attacking Aetolia.
However, the Aetolians had received intelligence and amassed forces that could easily defeat the
Athenians. Ranged units in the form of javelin-throwers were Athens’s great
weakness during this period, and the Aetolians were particularly skilled in that regard.
As Demosthenes approached towns like Aegitium, he found them empty, for the inhabitants formed bands
of guerilla warriors and fled to the mountains. Using the hilly terrain, the defenders attacked
the Athenians constantly, with only Athenian allied auxiliaries able to retaliate at all
via arrow fire. To compound matters, Demosthenes ended up without a guide, leading to more chaos
among his troops. The result was the complete decimation of the Athenian expeditionary force,
with above-average losses for Athens and its allies. Demosthenes was forced to retreat to
his previous base of Naupaktos. He was loath to return to Athens as his reputation was tarnished.
Hence, he continued to operate in naval wars, winning victories at sea at Olpae and Idomene.
PYLOS AND SPHACTERIA: THERMOPYLAE’S SHAME In 425 BCE, the city of Messina in Sicily
revolted against Athens after a successful bout of Spartan diplomacy compelled them to do so.
As a counterplay, Demosthenes developed an idea of using Pylos as a springboard base to raid Sparta
with the help of the Messenians. He suggested this to negative responses twice, but due to storms,
the Athenian fled, ended up on Pylos anyways, and began building fortifications there.
During this period, the annual invasion of Attica took place. Still, when the Spartan
King Agis heard of Athenian Marines landing on his home city’s doorstep, he withdrew his armies
back to Sparta and sent both troops and ships to Pylos. Athens brought their squadrons from
Zakynthos. Brasidas and Thrasymelidas, the Spartan commanders, controlled 90 ships, while Athens
controlled only 60. Sparta began attacking the fortifications while mooring ships and blocking
the island of Sphacteria and its natural harbour. Ever keen in his strategic insight, Demosthenes
determined where the Spartans were most likely to attack and took a small contingent with him there.
The rest of the hoplites remained in the forts. Sparta began its attack under Thrasymelidas,
commanding 43 out of the 90 Spartan ships, but the harbour was too small for them all to attack at
once. Smaller boat squadrons made repeated sorties into the bay, but were repeatedly pushed back by
the Athenians. Attacks on the fortifications also failed, and after two days of fruitless assaults,
the Spartans abandoned active attacks and dug in for a siege. However, before they could
fully entrench themselves, the Athenian fleet arrived and clashed with the Spartan fleet in
an engagement which saw heavy damages inflicted on the Spartan navy. The Spartans moved their
fleet into the bay between Sphacteria and Pylos, where the fortifications lay. Demosthenes was
now trapped between the Spartan version of the mythical Clashing Rocks, but like the Argonauts,
they managed to push off the Spartans until the last moment when the Athenian fleet arrived.
420 Spartan hoplites under Epitades were now trapped on Sphacteria. This was an unprecedented
situation, so the Spartans sent some officials to inspect the goings on. Since supplies could
no longer be sent to the island, the officials decided to open ceasefire talks with their foe.
Sparta’s unique constitution, based on the small number of Homoioi as the citizenry and the
military force, meant that every loss in manpower could be disastrous in the long run, hence their
eagerness to negotiate. Athens’s demands that all the land they had lost so far in the war was to be
returned were too maximalist to be accepted. The fighting resumed, with Athens besieging
Sphacteria and Sparta throughout Pylos. Attempts by Sparta to send supplies to Sphacteria were
thwarted, but the siege dragged on for Athens as well. The infamous Cleon, ever the populist,
had promoted the rejection of previous compromises with Sparta and was now backed into a corner.
He had been trying to blame Athen’s present lack of success on Nicias, the current commander of
the Athenian forces. Still, the citizenry of Athens was not having it, demanding why,
if Nicias’ performance was so unsatisfactory, why did Cleon did not take over the operation.
Embarrassed, Cleon’s hand was forced, and he amassed some extra troops and proclaimed victory
in twenty days would be his. When Cleon arrived on the scene, the Spartans had accidentally
set the forests of the islet ablaze, which revealed many landing points and removed their
camouflage. Cleon and Demosthenes sent envoys out again, but the Spartans rejected any surrender.
Split across three camps, with Epitades in the centre, one on the edge in a fort, and one facing
Pylos, the Spartans finally faced an Athenian attack of 800 hoplites in the middle of the night.
The first Spartan post was defeated, and 800 archers and 800 peltasts followed in the landing.
Alongside the seamen and the Allied contingents, they surrounded the central Spartan position.
Hence, the main Spartan contingent was surrounded and vulnerable to attack from both flanks.
The Athenians sent bowmen, peltasts and stone throwers which rained hell upon the Spartans.
The latter retreated to the island fort, which served as a last resort position.
They withstood the Athenian onslaught there, as the Delian League could not break into the fort.
After a while, the Messenian commander took some light troops and archers and marched
across the island's rocky coast. He surrounded the fort from the high ground and began pelting
its defenders with missiles from on high. During the commotion, Epitades was killed,
and Cleon and Demosthenes ceased the fighting and once more called for negotiations via heralds.
Spartans are infamous for not wanting to surrender, but despite this, the heralds’
arrival was met with lowered shields, a signal of fatigue and preference for surrender. Ultimately,
all the Spartan hoplites laid down their arms. The Athenians were shocked but also gleeful.
Of the 440 hoplites who had been trapped on the island, 292 survivors were captured and
taken to Athens. Of these, 120 were Homoioi or full Spartan citizens, with the rest most likely
being metics or allies. As news of the surrender spread throughout the Greek world, shock and awe
followed it. Spartans had a tradition of never surrendering, regardless of the odds against them.
So that a contingent of Spartan hoplites had given themselves up before an Athenian enemy was beyond
the comprehension of many Greeks. The Spartan state was perhaps the most shocked of all, as
this was an unprecedented diplomatic situation for them. Much like famous prisoner exchanges between
combatting nations today, this matter dragged on for years, and clauses for releasing all Spartan
prisoners from Athenian or Delian captivity were essential to the Peace of Nicias four years later.
CONCLUSION: CHAOS, MOST INDUBITABLY
The past four years of war had been chaotic for Athens and Sparta. As the annual invasions of
Attica continued and Athens recovered from the plague, it had to face an unprecedented revolt
in its hands with Mytilene. They succeeded in winning, but at great cost and stress to
their allies. Chaos also ensued on the front in Aetolia, and though Athens scored important
victories later, it was still an incredible loss of manpower. Yet somehow, Athens bounced back and
not only scored victories at sea but managed to humiliate Sparta in Pylos and Sphacteria.
Athens now had the upper hand in the conflict, at least for now, while Sparta had faltered. The
Athens had overstretched, so it was also a matter of time before they started losing momentum.
The Archidamian War is approaching its climactic ending, but many epic battles must occur before it
is decided. And even when peace is initially reached, there will be too much hubris from
victories and too much blood spilled for it to fully stop and for war to return to Greek homes.
Hellas has seen much war, and more war will come to its shores, giving Hellenes a chance for more
glory and mourning. To make sure you do not miss this, alongside any other videos on Greek history,
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