The comic poets enjoyed making fun of Nicias. In his The Cavalrymen, Aristophanes has his “Cleon” say:
I’ll shout down every speaker and put the wind up Nicias.
Phrynichus, another well-liked writer of farces, writes of one of his characters:
He’s the best of citizens, as well I know.
He doesn’t cringe and creep about like Nicias.
Nicias inherited the defensive, cautious policy of Pericles. In the debate Cleon put the blame for inaction on him.
“If only our generals were real men,” he shouted, “it would be easy to take out a force and capture the Spartans on the island.”
Nicias retorted: “As far as the generals are concerned, Cleon can take whoever he likes and see what he can do himself.”
Cleon thought this was merely a ploy and said he was perfectly willing to accept the command. But he soon realized that Nicias was in earnest and did his best to wriggle out of the commitment. But finding that the ecclesia was insistent he changed tack and accepted the command. Brazenly doubling the odds, he claimed that he would bring back the prisoners within twenty days or kill them.
—
Everyone laughed to see Cleon hoist on his own petard; but he took the commission seriously and soon set off for Pylos with a substantial force. His critics were delighted. Either Cleon would fail—which was what they rather expected—and they would be rid of him, or if they were proved wrong, they would have the Spartans in their power. Heads I win, tails you lose.
On his arrival at Pylos, Cleon immediately agreed to the plan of Demosthenes (the two men were close and he may already have been briefed about it before the debate in Athens). They waited for a day and then just before dawn landed eight hundred hoplites on Sphacteria. They quickly overran an outpost. Once a bridgehead had been established the rest of the army arrived—up to thirteen thousand hoplites, lightly armed skirmishers (called peltasts), and archers.
The Athenians marched against the Spartans in their camp in the center of the island. The skirmishers and archers wore down the heavily armed and relatively immobile hoplites. Clouds of red earth and black cinders created an artificial fog and blinded the defenders, who eventually withdrew to the ruined hilltop fort.
A small group of Messenian exiles from Naupactus knew the terrain and completely surrounded the Spartans. Their position was hopeless. After consulting the authorities on the mainland they capitulated. Of the original 420 soldiers, 128 were dead. The 292 survivors, of whom 120 were Equals, were shipped to Athens as prisoners.
The Athenians set up a trophy. This was routine for a victorious army left in charge of the battlefield. Trophies were usually a selection of enemy arms—helmets, cuirasses, and the like—fastened to a wooden post, which was fixed in the ground on a hill or a rise. Some captured shields were sent back to Athens for permanent exhibition. To prevent rust, they were coated in pitch. They were still on show in the second century A.D. and one of them has been unearthed in the agora. The Messenians of Naupactus commissioned a statue of a winged Victory at Olympia, which can still be seen there today.
Cleon had delivered on his mad promise. The impact of the news was colossal. The whole point about Equals was that they never surrendered. Thucydides commented: “Nothing that had happened in the war surprised the Greeks as much as this event.”
—
There was a widespread desire for peace, but two years passed before a treaty was signed.
An infuriated Aristophanes wrote two fierce satires in 425 and 424, The Acharnians, in which the protagonist negotiates a private peace with Sparta and enjoys its fruits, and The Cavalrymen, a bitter, no-holds-barred caricature of the Athenian political system. Cleon appears in the latter as a comic monster who can be blamed for all that was wrong with the polis. The chorus of cavalrymen sing to the assembled demos:
For everyone that’s here,
One thing they’ll all agree on:
They’ll greet with cheer on cheer
The overthrow of Cleon!
In the Peloponnese, Athens improved her position still further, winning control of the substantial island of Cythera, the love goddess Aphrodite’s birthplace, or so it was said, and Methone, a port on the coast of Messenia. Sparta was under real threat in its home base and the possibility of another Messenian revolt was edging into probability. It was now that the two thousand able and troublesome helots were notoriously tricked with the promise of freedom and liquidated in secret. Cautious, pessimistic, and irritated with its allies, Sparta had lost its zest for the war.
Athens did not have it all its own way. Attacks on Corinth and Megara met with only partial success and a botched attempt to invade Boeotia culminated in a bad defeat at the town of Delium. One thousand Athenians lost their lives. The event was notable for the participation of Socrates, the famous Athenian philosopher, at forty-five years nearly too old to fight, and his pupil, the handsome young aristocrat Alcibiades, now in his mid-twenties. Alcibiades, who had been Socrates’ messmate in an earlier campaign, recalled the philosopher’s valor under fire. “He quietly observed the movements of friend and foe and made it perfectly plain even at a distance that he was prepared to put up a strong resistance to any attack. That is how both he and his companion got off safe.” Alcibiades was on horseback on this occasion and rode alongside Socrates until he was out of danger.
Cleon did not last. He was obliged to capitalize on his newfound military reputation by leading an expeditionary force to a strategically important corner of the Athenian empire, Chalcidice. There he confronted a most un-Spartan Spartan. This was Brasidas, enterprising, imaginative, and charming. The only quality he shared with his compatriots was courage.
With some enfranchised helots and Peloponnesian mercenaries, he had marched so quickly up the length of Greece that nobody had had time to stop him. Once in Chalcidice he had raised the standard of revolt and, to great alarm in Athens, won the important city of Amphipolis to his cause.
Cleon was no fool, but he was inexperienced and, after Pylos, overconfident. To reconnoiter the terrain, he went too close to the city walls for safety. He guessed what was going to happen next, for he saw the feet of men and horses under one of the gates, but Brasidas was too quick for him. He sortied out quickly and caught the Athenians before they could get away.
Cleon was killed. There were plenty of other so-called demagogues to take his place during this period—among them Hyperbolus, who apparently had been a lamp maker before entering politics, Androcles, and Cleophon, a lyre maker. They have all received a bad press from ancient historians, who were snobbishly contemptuous of middle-class politicians. However, Cleon was a towering figure. Although he never attained the heights of power that Pericles had scaled, his more forceful and energetic approach to the war was an intelligent response to the Olympian’s failed war plan.
The Athenian defeat in front of Amphipolis was a disaster for Athens, but with terrible luck for Sparta Brasidas too fell. The symbolism of the opposing generals’ simultaneous deaths was not lost on peacemakers. Now that the two liveliest proponents of war had gone, the trouble of agreeing on an accord was greatly eased.