Latin
Lines 1.22-1.25
Greek and Roman Historians, The Peloponnesian War 1.22-25
Not analysed yet
Athens' magnificent refounding, also in 426, of the Ionian festival of Apollo on the island of Delos, where the Delian League had been established in 478 BC (see above The Delian League), must surely in part be seen as a response to Dorian Heraclea. (There were other motives too, such as desire for expiation for the plague, which had ravaged Athens a second time in the winter of 427-426.) Of the two great Panhellenic sanctuaries, Olympia had taken an ugly anti-Athenian look in 428, while the oracle of Delphi had actually approved the Heraclea colony. Athens, through Delos, was creating or inflating religious propaganda possibilities of its own. The same is true of an Athenian invitation to the Greeks at large, also (possibly) in the 420s, to bring offerings of firstfruits to Eleusis.
Land operations in the northwest occupied much of the purely military history of 426. They were conducted by one of the finest generals of the Peloponnesian War, the Athenian Demosthenes (no relation of Philip's 4th-century opponent). He was at first spectacularly unsuccessful in some ambitious campaigning, perhaps not sanctioned by the Assembly at all, in Aetolia, where his hoplites were nearly helpless against the light-armed tactics of the locals. He was, however, able to retrieve the position subsequently, in Amphilochia, in circumstances that brought further discredit on Sparta, whose commander deserted his Ambracian allies.
The years 425-21
The decisive year in the Archidamian War was 425. Demosthenes, whose credit with the Assembly must now have been excellent, obtained permission to use a fleet round the Peloponnese. He and his troops used it to occupy the remote Messenian headland of Pylos, a prominence at the north end of the Bay of Navarino, and to fortify it. The Spartans foolishly reacted by landing a hoplite force on Sphacteria, the long island to the south of Pylos. This force of 420 men, about half of them full Spartan citizens, was cut off by the Athenians, who thus acquired a potentially valuable bargaining chip. Sparta sued for peace without reference to its allies (so much for liberation), but Cleon persuaded Athens to turn the offer down. Cleon made steep demands, including (in effect) the cession of Megara, showing that he -like Nicias in 427 and Demosthenes and Hippocrates in 424 -grasped the strategic importance of Megara, even if the historian Thucydides did not.