The Historians' History of the World 03 [Greece to the Peloponnesian War]

The balance of power was now disturbed, fortune leaned to the side of the Athenians. Nevertheless, while the Lacedæmonians were taking their land-forces economically over into Attica from Laconia, Athens was ruining herself by maintaining fleets in all the seas of Greece, recruiting at heavy cost the rowers to man them. Her annual expenses amounted to twenty-five hundred talents. In 425 the reserved funds amassed by Pericles being exhausted, it became necessary to increase both the tribute paid her by her allies and the tax laid upon the revenues of her citizens. One of these measures was to cause disaffection later, and the other, that which weighed upon the rich, was to give rise to plots against the popular government, germs of disaster that the future was to bring to fruition.

FURTHER ATHENIAN SUCCESSES

[425-424 B.C.]

The Athenians had as yet no forebodings, but applied rare vigour to the following up of their success. Nicias, at the head of a considerable armament, landed on the isthmus and defeated the Corinthians, then he proceeded to the capture of Methone between Trœzen and Epidaurus on the peninsula, and extending towards Ægina. A garrison was left behind a wall that closed the isthmus, and from this post which communicated by fire signals with Piræus the Athenians made frequent raids into Argolis (425). The following year Nicias took the island of Cythera which, situated near the southern coast of the Peloponnesus, offered great facility for making raids into that district and for waylaying ships bound there. It commanded, moreover, the seas of Crete and Sicily in both of which Athens had stationed fleets for the support of the cities at war with Syracuse.

After having ravaged Laconia for seven days with impunity, Nicias returned to Thyrea in Cynuria, where the Spartans had established the Æginetans. He took the city despite the proximity of a Lacedæmonian army which did not venture to aid it, and his prisoners were sent to Athens and there put to death. This new-born national greatness, if such a return to savagery can merit the name, increased constantly in power: the foe was a criminal meriting punishment and his defeat equivalent to a sentence of death. In just this period occurred a tragedy, the story of which we would refuse to receive were it not for Thucydides’ direct affirmation; the massacre of two thousand of the bravest helots for the sole purpose of weakening the corps and of frightening those of their companions to whom the success of Athens might have given the idea of revolt. Overwhelmed by so many reverses and fearful of seeing war established permanently around Laconia, at Pylos, Cythera, and Cynuria, the Spartans shrank from further action. Whatever step they took might lead them into error and having never learned the lessons of misfortune, they remained irresolute and timid. The Athenians, on the contrary, were full of confidence in their good fortune. The Greeks in Sicily having brought their wars to a close by a general reconciliation, the generals sent to that country by the Athenians allowed themselves to be included in the treaty. On their return the people condemned two of them to exile and one to a heavy fine, on the pretext that they had it in their power to subjugate Sicily but had been bought off by presents. The Athenian people believed themselves to be irresistible, and in the loftiness of their aspirations denied to any enterprise, whether practicable or not, the possibility of defeat. This was the forerunner of the fatal madness that seized them when Alcibiades planned the unfortunate expedition into Sicily.