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The Battle of Sphacteria was a land battle of the Peloponnesian War,
fought in 425 BC between Athens and Sparta. Following the Battle of Pylos and
subsequent peace negotiations, which failed, a number of Spartans were stranded
on the island of Sphacteria. An Athenian force under Cleon and Demosthenes
attacked and forced them to surrender.
Location:
Sphacteria, a small island at the entrance to the bay of Pylos
Opponents: Athens versus Sparta
Commanders and leaders:
Athens - Demosthenes,
Cleon
Sparta - Epitadas †, Hippagretas, Styphon
Strength:
Athens - 3,000+ soldiers, 8,000 lightly armed rowers
Sparta - 440
Casualties and losses:
Athens -About 230
Sparta - 148 killed, Remainder captured + triremes
Overview:
In the wake of the failed peace negotiations, Demosthenes initially attempted
to starve out the Spartans on Sphacteria, but was unable to blockade the island
tightly enough. In Athens there was concern that the approach of winter would
necessitate abandoning the blockade, unless the impasse was swiftly broken. The
politician Cleon took out reinforcements from Athens and joined forces with
Demosthenes, and the Athenians launched an assault on Sphacteria. Landing in
great force on a weakly defended point, the Athenians swamped the beachfront
defenses and moved inland, harassing the Spartans with missile fire whenever
they attempted to come to grips with the Athenian hoplites. The Spartans
retreated to the northern end of the island and dug in behind their
fortifications, but when the Messenian general Comon succeeded in bringing his
troops through seemingly impassable terrain into their rear, the Spartans
surrendered. The capture of over 292 hoplites (120 of which were Spartans) by
Athens radically shifted the balance of power in the war. Athens threatened to
execute its prisoners if Sparta invaded Attica, and the annual invasions which
had occurred since the war's declaration were thus halted. Athens, meanwhile,
with increased prestige and confidence, went on to pursue the war with more
vigor and initiative for several years, returning to the negotiating table only
after a string of defeats had eroded its position.
Prelude and early moves:
After the Battle of Pylos, (and
Pylos) which resulted in the isolation of over
400 Spartan soldiers on the island of Sphacteria, Sparta sued for peace, and,
after arranging an armistice at Pylos by surrendering the ships of the
Peloponnesian fleet as security, sent an embassy to Athens to negotiate a
settlement. These negotiations, however, proved fruitless, and with the news of
their failure the armistice came to an end; the Athenians, however, refused to
return the Peloponnesian ships, alleging that assaults had been made against
their fortifications during the truce. Hostilities resumed immediately, with
the Athenians guarding the island night and day against attempts at rescue or
resupply. Demosthenes, commanding the force at Pylos, initially planned to
starve the Spartans out rather than attack them, but as time wore on it became
clear that the Spartans would be able to hold out for longer than anticipated.
By offering freedom to Helots and monetary rewards to free men who would
volunteer to carry food across to the island, the Spartans were able to bring
in a small but critical stream of food. Some of these men reached the island by
approaching from the seaward side at night during rough weather; others swam
underwater towing bags of food. The Athenians, meanwhile, found themselves
frequently short on rations, and the entire force was forced to depend on a
single spring for its fresh water. In these adverse circumstances, the
Athenians began to doubt that they could resolve the issue by siege before
winter forced them to lift their blockade.
Debate at Athens:
This downturn of fortunes was the source of much concern at Athens, the
decision to reject Sparta's peace offer became an item of much popular regret.
Noting this turn of popular opinion, Cleon, who had been the principal advocate
of rejecting the peace offer, claimed that the reports brought back from the
scene must be inaccurate. When Nicias, a political opponent of
his and a strategos for that year, proposed to send a commission, with Cleon
among its members, to verify the reports from Pylos, Cleon attacked him for
proposing to waste time that should have been spent attacking. Nicias countered
this rhetorical thrust by offering to stand aside as a general, and allow Cleon
to take command of an expeditionary force to Pylos. Although he had no
authority to make this offer, the assembly, caught up in the enthusiasm of the
moment, went along with him, urging Cleon to back up his words with action.
Cleon was probably aware that an attack was already being planned at Pylos, as
he was likely to have been in communication with Demosthenes, but once he
realized that Nicias's offer was more than a rhetorical ploy he attempted to
back down from his challenge. The crowd, however, refused to permit this, and
Cleon was eventually compelled to accept command. Reassuming the bold attitude
he had taken at the start of the debate, Cleon proclaimed that, with the force
he had been given, he would either kill or capture the Spartans within twenty
days. Naming Demosthenes as his partner in command, he set out from Athens with
a force composed of Athenian sailors and ships carrying allied peltasts and
archers
Attack on Sphacteria:
Demosthenes had already been planning an attack on Sphacteria, as the
difficulty of the circumstances his men were in had led him to doubt the
viability of a prolonged siege. Moreover, a fire on the island, ignited by
Athenian sailors sneaking across to cook a meal away from the crowded confines
of Pylos, had denuded the island of vegetation and allowed Demosthenes to
examine both the contours of the island and the number and disposition of the
defenders. Seeing that only thirty Spartans were detailed to guard the southern
end of the island, away from Pylos, Demosthenes landed his 800 hoplites on both
the seaward and landward sides of the island one night. The Spartan garrison,
thinking that the Athenian ships were only mooring in their usual nightly watch
posts, was caught off guard and massacred. At dawn, the remainder of the
Athenian force streamed ashore; these included some 2,000 light troops (psiloi)
and archers and some 8,000 rowers from the fleet, armed with whatever weapons
could be found. The Spartans, under their commander Epitadas, attempted to come
to grips with the Athenian hoplites and push their enemies back into the sea,
but Demosthenes detailed his lightly armed troops, in companies of about 200
men, to occupy high points and harass the enemy with missile fire whenever they
approached. When the Spartans rushed at their tormentors, the light troops,
unencumbered by heavy hoplite armor, were easily able to run to safety; dust
and ash from the recent fire, stirred up by the commotion, further contributed
to the Spartans' predicament by obscuring their attackers from their sight.
Unable to make any headway, the Spartans withdrew in some confusion to the
northern end of the island, where they dug in behind their fortifications and
hoped to hold out. A stalemate took hold for some time, with the Athenians
trying unsuccessfully to dislodge the Spartans from their strong positions. At
this point, the commander of the Messenian detachment in the Athenian force,
Comon, approached Demosthenes and asked that he be given troops with which to
move through the seemingly impassable terrain along the island's shore. His
request was granted, and Comon led his men into the Spartan rear through a
route that had been left unguarded on account of its roughness. When he emerged
with his force, the Spartans, in disbelief, abandoned their defenses; the
Athenians seized the approaches to the fort, and the Spartan force stood on the
brink of annihilation.
Surrender and aftermath:
At this point, Cleon and Demosthenes declined to push the attack further,
preferring to take as many Spartans as they could prisoner. An Athenian herald
offered the Spartans a chance to surrender, and the Spartans, throwing down
their shields, agreed at last to negotiate. Cleon and Demosthenes met with the
Spartan commander Styphon (Styphon had initially been the third in command, but
Epitadas had been killed and his first successor was severely wounded and had
been left for dead). Styphon requested to send a herald to the mainland to seek
advice; the Athenians refused to allow any of the trapped men to leave, but
permitted as many heralds from the mainland as were desired to pass back and
forth. Several messengers did so, the last of whom left Styphon with the
message "The Spartans order you to make your decision yourselves, so long
as you do nothing dishonorable." Styphon and his men, with no hope of
victory or escape, surrendered. Of the 440 Spartans who had crossed over to
Sphacteria, 292 survived to surrender; of these, 120 were men of the elite
Spartiate class. "The outcome," Donald Kagan has observed,
"shook the Greek world." Spartans, it had been supposed, would never
surrender. Now, with Spartiate hostages in their hands, the Athenians issued an
ultimatum; any invasion of Attica would lead to the execution of their
prisoners. For the first time since the beginning of the war, the Athenians
could farm their crops securely. At Pylos, a Messenian garrison was installed,
and these men, launching raids into country that had once been their home, did
significant damage to the Spartans and instigated the desertion of numerous
Helots. At Athens, Cleon, his seemingly mad promise fulfilled, was the man of
the hour; he was granted meals at the state's expense in the prytaneum (the
same reward granted to Olympic champions), and most scholars see his hand in
the legislation of the following months, the most prominent item of which was
an increased levy of tribute on the empire. Sphacteria had changed the nature
of the war. The next few years would see a newly aggressive Athens, and it
would take a string of Athenian reverses to diffuse the impetus that the
surrenders had given and bring the two sides to the table to negotiate the
Peace of Nicias in 421.
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The battle of Sphacteria in 425 was the second part of a two-part
battle which ended with the surrender of a force of Spartan hoplites (Great
Peloponnesian
War). The chain of events that led to this almost unprecedented disaster
began when an Athenian force under the command of Demosthenes landed on the rocky headland of Pylos,
in the south-west of the Peloponnese and fortified their position. The
Peloponnesian army under King Agis abandoned their short invasion of Attica and
returned to the Peloponnese, while the forces already at Sparta moved west to
deal with the new threat. For a brief period Demosthenes was in serious
trouble. The Spartans summoned their fleet to Pylos, and he found himself
besieged by land and sea. The Athenian position was on a headland at one end of
the Bay of Pylos. The island of Sphacteria ran across the mouth of the bay, and
was occupied by the Spartans. The Spartan fleet moved into the bay, trapping
the Athenians and prevented any supplies from reaching them. In the resulting
battle of Pylos (and Pylos) the Athenians managed to hold off a
two-pronged Spartan assault, but they were really saved by the arrival of an
Athenian fleet. This fleet inflicted a heavy defeat on the Spartan fleet inside
the bay, in the process lifting the blockade of Pylos. The tables were now
turned on the Spartans. A force of 420 Spartan hoplites, under the command of
Epitades son of Molobrus was trapped on Sphacteria. The Spartans responded by
sending senior members of their government to Pylos to examine situation. When
it became clear that they couldn't hope to get supplies onto the island or
rescue the hoplites they asked the Athenians for an armistice. The biggest
weakness in the Spartan system was the shortage of full citizens, and they
could hardly afford to lose 420 full Spartans. This was reflected in the terms
they agreed with the Athenians. Every warship that had taken part in the
earlier fighting and every warship in Laconia was to be handed over to the
Athenians for the duration of the armistice. The Spartans were to stop all
attacks on Pylos, while the Athenians stopped attacking Sphacteria, and allowed
a fixed amount of food onto the island. The armistice would stay in place while
Spartan representatives went to Athens to offer peace terms. The peace
negotiations and their aftermath do not reflect well on the Athenians. They
demanded the return of lands lost at the end of the
First
Peloponnesian war, and when the negotiations broke down refused to honour
the terms of the armistice and kept the Spartan warships. The armistice lasted
twenty days. After the failure of the negotiations the fighting resumed. The
Spartans continued their attacks on the Athenians on Pylos, while the Athenians
maintained the naval blockade of Sphacteria. Both sides were effectively under
siege, but at first it was the Spartans who put the most effort into getting
supplies to their troops. Volunteers were asked to try and get supplies onto
the island, with a cash reward for free men and freedom as the reward for
helots. Any boats used in the operation were valued beforehand, so it
didn’t matter if they were lost. Some men waited for the right weather and
effectively rammed the island at full speed, damaging their boats but winning
the reward. Others swam in under water, towing supplies protected by skins. As
the siege dragged on the Athenian people became concerned that the Spartans
would escape. The politician Cleon, who had played a major role in convincing
the people to reject the Spartan peace offer, became increasingly unpopular. In
an attempt to restore his popularity he tried to blame the general, Nicias son
of Niceratus, for the failures, claiming that a true leader would have easily
captured the island by now. This badly backfired, for the Athenian people began
to ask why Cleon wasn't leading the army if it was that simple. Nicias added to
his problems by giving him permission to take any troops that he required and
take command of the siege. Eventually Cleon was backed into a corner, and had
no choice other than to go to Sphacteria. He now raised the stakes once again
by announcing that he would take the island in twenty days, without using any
fresh Athenian troops. Cleon timed his arrival at Sphacteria perfectly.
Demosthenes had been unwilling to risk a landing on the island because it was
covered in thick woodland, with no paths, and he believed that this would give
the Spartans too big an advantage. Just before Cleon arrived one of the
Spartans accidently set the woods on fire, and most of the trees burnt down.
The fire also revealed a number of landing points, and that there were more
Spartans on the island than previously believed, making them an ever bigger
prize. The two Athenian generals began by sending a herald to the island to ask
the Spartans to surrender on generous terms. When this offer was rejected, they
waited for a day and then launched a surprise attack on the island. The
Spartans were divided into three camps. The main camp, under their commander
Epitades, was in the centre of the island. This was both the most level and
best provided with water. A guard of thirty hoplites was at the end of the
island the Athenians chose to attack (probably the southern end), and another
small detachment was posted at the opposite end, facing the headland of Pylos.
This was the rockiest end of the island, and was topped with an old fort that
the Spartans hoped to use as a final refuge. This attack came on the
seventy-second day after the naval battle that had trapped the Spartans. The
Athenians caught the Spartans out by loading their 800 hoplites onto the ships
while it was still dark. The ships then put out to sea as if they were about to
mount their normal daily patrols, but instead landed on the island. The first
Spartan post was overwhelmed. This allowed Demosthenes to bring over the rest
of his army - 800 archers, at least 800 peltasts, the Allied contingents and
the crews of the seventy Athenian warships. This army was then divided into
groups of around 200, and these groups were posted on high ground all around
the main Spartan position. The Greeks are often accused of being unimaginative
in warfare, relying entirely on simple clashes between hoplites, but here we
see Demosthenes using a different tactic. The Spartans would find themselves in
a trap. If they attempted to attack any part of the Athenian line they would be
exposed to attack from the rear, while the lightly armed Athenian troops would
be able to retreat from the heavily armoured Spartan hoplites. When Epitades
realised that the Athenians had landed on the island he formed up his men and
moved to attack the Athenian hoplites, expected the standard clash between two
lines of similar troops. Instead the Spartans found themselves being harried
from both flanks by the bowmen, peltasts and stone throwers. The Athenian
hoplites refused to come forward and fight, so the Spartans were denied their
main target. They were sometimes able to close up with the light troops, but
not to crush them. Eventually they were forced to retreat back up the island to
the fort. The Athenians followed, and launched a series of frontal assaults on
the fort, but this time the advantages were with the Spartans, and these
attacks failed to push the Spartans out of their final defensive lines before
the fort itself. The stalemate was broken by the commander of the Messinian
contingent. He asked Cleon and Demosthenes to give him some archers and light
troops. He then picked his way around the rocky coastline of the island, until
he was in position on some high ground behind the fort. When these troops
appeared behind them the Spartans abandoned their outer lines and pulled back.
At this point Cleon and Demosthenes called a halt to the fighting, and once
again sent a herald to offer surrender terms. By now the Spartans had lost
Epitades, who had been killed, while their second in command, Hippagretas was
badly wounded and believed falsely to be dead. This left the third in command,
Styphon son of Pharax, in charge. According to Thucydides most of the Spartans
lowered their shields and made it clear that they wanted to surrender when they
first heard the heralds, so Styphon had no choice other than to enter into
surrender negotiations. After consulting with the Spartans on the mainland, who
have him no useful advice ('make your own decision about yourselves, so long as
you do nothing dishonourable'), Styphon decided to surrender. The Athenians had
captured a very valuable prize. Of the 440 hoplites who had been trapped on the
island, 292 were captured and taken to Athens. Of these 120 were full Spartans,
a sizable proportion of a very small group. The surrender of the Spartans
caused shockwaves across the Greek world. Spartans were not expected to
surrender, but to fight to the death, regardless of the odds against them. The
surrender also caused great despondency in Sparta, and triggered a series of
peace offers. The prisoners were still a major factor four years later, when
the Peace of Nicias (421 BC) did actually end the war for a short period. One
of the clauses of the peace treaty saw the Athenians return all Spartans in
prison in Athens or in any Athenian dominion. Pylos and Sphacteria 425,
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