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By Root 1859 0

back in 433 BC, and now it was causing trouble again. The oligoi, the ‘few’, rather than the Athenian-sponsored democrats, had taken back the reins of power. But, hearing Athenian reinforcements were on their way, these insurgents headed for the hills. Men and women both retreated to Mount Istone, the sky-scraping rock that towers dark above the island’s subtropical green. The Athenians claimed they would be relatively lenient to all those from the captured garrison, as long as not one man attempted flight. The insurgents were shipped over to the islet of Ptychia – a stop-off before being put on trial in Athens. But agents (some say democratic Corcyrans, some say Athenians) infiltrated the concentration camp, tempting the prisoners with promises of boats waiting in bays and an open, night-black sea ahead; an escape plan was formulated. Some oligarchs made a dash for it and were immediately executed. A number of survivors still cowered in their island prison, sticking to their side of the bargain. But the Athenians were tested, and did not honour the promise they had made. Two-by-two these prisoners were roped together and brought out in blocks of twenty. The Corcyrans thought they were being transferred, but in fact waiting for them were rows of enemy hoplites – mainly democratic Corcyrans with a grudge – who speared them as they ran. Whips kept the prisoners moving on and into the blades. Sixty or so were torn to pieces. The remaining Corcyrans refused to come out of their barracks – so the democrats used them for target practice, shooting arrows into the garrison, hurling down roof tiles. Many of the rebels decided to take their own lives, slitting their own throats or hanging themselves with shreds of clothes and bed-linen. At least 1,000 died.8

An ideological struggle was turning into a very dirty war.

War, promoted by the democracy, was depriving many of their liberty and their lives. Between 425 and 421 BC Athens’ Agora corralled not just slave-labour, but another kind of captive. Socrates would have seen, as he came to talk around the market-stalls, a dejected reminder of Athens’ imperialism: a great huddle of almost 300 Spartans, prisoners-of-war.9

These drooping captives were treated by the Athenians like the attractions in a freak show. Many citizens came to gawp and point. Because these Spartans – and remember, Spartan boys were trained from the age of seven never to surrender, never to give up, to fight their way through to a beautiful death – had caved in.

Just months before, the men had been trapped in a Spartan garrison, on the small island of Sphacteria opposite the bay of Pylos. The rock here was scrubby, exposed. No chance of agriculture or animal husbandry; birds and a few small rodents were the men’s only companions. Sparta’s allied fleet had been withdrawn and, realising these men would die (they did represent, after all, 10 per cent of the Spartan army), the Spartan authorities sued for peace. Athens refused. The fighting continued, with the marooned Spartans somehow clinging on, eating berries, bugs, rats. And then, disaster. Incompetents in the group managed to start a fire in the dry scrub, and in effect the Spartans smoked themselves out. Dashing to escape the flames, they were picked off by Athenian arrows – usually sneered at by the Spartans as ‘spindles’ because they believed a technological trick like this, that killed at a distance, was feeble, womanish. But now, rather than remain target practice, the survivors surrendered. Hangdog, they were route-marched back to Athens.

And suddenly the Spartiates had a very masculate sword hanging over their heads. The Athenian Assembly had sent a curt message to the Spartan council. If so much as a single Spartan step was taken into Attic territory, the miserable soldiers now hunched in the Agora would be summarily executed. The news chilled the council of Spartan ephors; instead of a ‘beautiful death’, the greatest warriors in the world risked being dispatched, in shackles, like beasts in an abattoir.

One of the Spartan prisoner-of-war’s shields