Only the Brave

I am continuing re-reading a translation of Thucydides book The Peloponnesian War about the 27 year war between Athens and Sparta back in the fifth century B.C.

I mentioned in an earlier item, that the most memorable described event for me was the Athenian reaction to the Revolt of the Lesbians: kill all the men and sell the women and children as slaves. The next most memorable event was the plight of the Spartans trapped on the island of Sphacteria. The Athenians had managed to trap some 400 Spartans on this small island just barely off the coast of the western Peloponnesus. The Spartans were desperate to rescue them. The Athenians were indignant at the failure of their generals to subdue and capture them. The Athenian demagogue Cleon taunted the Athenian military leaders saying that if he was in charge, he would have the Spartans dead or in chains in a week. Much to his surprise the Athenian voters decided to take him up on this. They voted him in charge.

There were few heavy troops available, so Cleon took light troops with him, archers and javelin throwers. With these he joined up with the heavy troops at the scene. The local commander Demosthenes had recently had a mind expanding experience. He had been in command of a force of heavy troops in rough terrain. He had been attacked by light troops who showered his men with javelins and arrows. His heavy troopers were unable to catch the light troops as they scurried out of the way and others closed in behind them. His force had been decimated.

So Cleon and Demosthenes applied this same idea to the Spartans on the island. They used their own heavy troops and the terrain to protect their light troops. The light troopers swarmed around the Spartan heavy troops, striking with javelins and arrows and then darting away. They tightened a ring around the Spartans and eventually exhausted them. In a hopeless situation, the Spartans surrendered. Spartans never gave up, so this was a shocking victory.

The Spartan prisoners were brought back to Athens. Here Athenian noncombatants could taunt them as though they themselves were great conquerors. They felt that they personally had defeated the Spartans. One Athenian civilian taunted one of the Spartan prisoners as a coward. After all, he had been captured while his brave comrades lay dead on the island. Spartans were famous for their sparse use of speech. The area where they lived was called Laconia. The English word “laconic,” meaning a spare use of words, comes from that. The Spartans were adept at pithy one liners, putting a lot of meaning into few words. The Spartan prisoner replied, “The arrow would truly be a great weapon if it killed only the brave.”