The Hemlock Cup - Bettany Hughes [129]
Two years after the town had first been taken by their laconic enemies, the Athenians, led by Cleon, tried to attack the Spartan garrison. The Athenian general manoeuvred his troops into position, but when the Spartans failed to emerge from within Amphipolis’ barricades, he presumed they could not be tempted out to fight. Given that the Spartans were well drilled for this kind of head-on collision, the situation seemed unusual. Cleon turned tail, retreating so that he could formulate another plan. But the Spartan forces were following behind him. Hoplites, trained in the foothills of the Taygetan mountains and on the Eurotan plain, were proving themselves adept at this kind of guerrilla warfare. What followed was a one-sided massacre: 300 horses, brought in by the aristocratic Athenian cavalry, screamed and slipped in the gore. The Spartans routed their Attic cousins; 600 Athenian hoplites died that day, but as few as seven Spartans.2 Brasidas, leading from the front, was mortally wounded, although he lived long enough to be told that he had successfully seen off the Athenian threat.
Developed, specifically, as an outpost of Athenian power, as a taxing point for rich raw materials, Amphipolis was now occupied by Spartan heavies and fireside stories of Spartan ‘do-gooding’. Brasidas was clearly a charismatic man; after his death locals celebrated him, every year, with games and sacrifices. A monument was erected, posthumously he was honoured as the ‘founder’ of Amphipolis itself and lauded as the ‘liberator of Hellas’. Even more galling for Athenians than the strategic loss of the city was the fact that the local population appeared to welcome the Spartans with open arms. Athens was plangently failing in its mission to ‘force’ other Greeks to love the demos. The democratic superpower was not wanted here; Amphipolis represents a moral as well as a military setback.
The capture of Amphipolis caused great alarm at Athens … The cities subject to Athens … eagerly embraced the idea of a change, made overtures to Brasidas, begging him to march on their territory, and vied with each other in being the first to revolt.3
The chirpy birdsong in the trees that now grow over the site of the battle is a useful corrective. This was a defeat for Athens, yes, but a victory for the Spartans. Since the Athenians wrote our history of Greece, their account is naturally biased. We are used to reading about the fifth century BC from the Athenian point of view. Make this the Athenian War rather than the Peloponnesian War and Amphipolis becomes a great, a significant victory: a victory of the oppressed against their oppressors. Sparta had won affection once more, Athens had lost another cash-cow.
The year 422 was a busy one. After the defeats at Amphipolis, the remaining Athenians moved, with the other hoplite troops, against the rebellious settlements of Scione, Mende and Torone. Mende caved in after only two days of resistance – and the Athenian troops pillaged the town. At Scione the male inhabitants were executed. And now it was the turn of Torone. Coastal Torone is strategically situated; during the Second World War the Germans used its bay as a naval base. Today it is sleepy. A Byzantine fortress is all that visibly stands from earlier fortifications. But the orders were harsh here too and in 423/2 BC the lilting landscape would have been bruised and broken. Here all women and children were captured and enslaved, all men were marched back to Athens as prisoners-of-war.4 One by one, cities in the region were bullied and beaten into submission.
In Potidaea, where the bid for democracy forced besieged men to eat one another;