History of the Peloponnesian War

On the return of the Peloponnesians from Attica, the Spartans themselves and the Perioeci who were in the neighbourhood of Pylos at once came to its relief; but the other Lacedaemonians were slower in coming, since they had just got back from another campaign.

Word was also sent round to the states of the Peloponnesus, summoning them to come to the relief of Pylos as quickly as possible, and also to the sixty ships that were at Corcyra.[*](cf. 4.2.3.) These were hauled across the Leucadian isthmus, and without being discovered by the Attic ships, which were now at Zacynthus, reached Pylos, where their land forces had already arrived.

But before the Peloponnesian fleet had yet reached Pylos, Demosthenes managed to send out secretly ahead of them two ships which were to notify Eurymedon and the Athenian fleet at Zacynthus to come at once to his aid, as the place was in danger. And so the fleet proceeded in haste in compliance with Demosthenes' summons;

meanwhile, however, the Lacedaemonians were busy with their preparations to attack the fortification both by land and by sea, and they thought that they would have no difficulty in capturing a structure which had been built hastily and was occupied by only a few men.

But since they expected the Athenian fleet to arrive soon from Zacynthus, it was their intention, in case they should fail to take the place before these came, to block up the entrances to the harbour and thus make it impossible for the Athenians to anchor inside and blockade them. Now the island called Sphacteria stretches along the mainland, lying quite close to it, and thus makes the harbour safe and the entrances to it narrow;

on one side, opposite the Athenian fortifications and Pylos, there is only room for two ships to pass through, on the other side, next to the other part of the mainland, there is room for eight or nine.[*](The harbour of Pylos is regarded by Classen and nearly all recent commentators as identical with the modern Bay of Navarino, the ἔσπλοι τοῦ λιμέμος being the entrances north and south of Sphacteria or Sphagia. But the entrance to the harbour of Navarino south of Sphagia is now—and must have been in Thucydides' time—a channel more than three-quarters of a mile wide, and deep all the way across, so that it does not answer to Thucydides' description of a passage only wide enough to admit eight or nine triremes; rather, as Arnold says, “a hundred Greek ships might have found room to sail abreast quiet as easily as eight or nine.” Clearly, then, Thucydides could not have been personally acquainted with the scene, and was misinformed as to the breadth of the harbour's mouth, as Leake supposed. Or we must assume that the dimensions of the entrances mentioned by Thucydides were rather of those north and south of Coryphasium, the modern Palaeo-Kastro, and the “harbour” was not the Bay of Navarino, as Thucydides supposed, but the Lagoon or Lake of Osmyn Aga, north of the bay, and now cut off from it by a sandbar. This is the view of Grundy—who in August, 1895, spent fourteen days there making a survey—as to the lower entrance. The upper entrance, he thinks, was closed already in Thucydides' time, and the historian seems never to have apprehended that fact. Grundy's view as to the lagoon being the harbour meant by Thucydides is accepted by Steup, but he does not approve of Grundy's assumption that Thucydides, without personal knowledge of the region, following at different points reports of different informants, confused statements with reference to the harbour of Pylos and as to the bay as referring to one and the same. See Arnold in App. to Book IV. on Sphacteria; Grundy, “Investigation of the Topography of the Region of Sphacteria and Pylos,” in Journal of Hellen. Studies, xvi. 1-54; Steup, App. on IV.) The whole island was covered with timber and, since it was uninhabited, had no roads, its length being somewhere near fifteen stadia. Now it was the intention of the Lacedaemonians to close up the entrances tight by means of ships placed with their prows outward;

and as for the island, since they were afraid that the Athenians would use it as a base for carrying on the war against them, they conveyed some hoplites across, at the same time posting others along the mainland.

By these measures, they thought, the Athenians would find not only the island hostile to them, but also the mainland, since this afforded no landing-place; for there were no harbours along the shore of Pylos itself outside the entrance,[*](ie., north of the entrance, on the western side.) on the side toward the sea, and therefore the Athenians would have no base from which they could aid their countrymen. Consequently the Lacedaemonians believed that, without running the risk of a battle at sea, they could probably reduce the place by siege, since it had been occupied on short notice and was not supplied with provisions.

As soon as they reached this conclusion they proceeded to convey the hoplites over to the island, drafting them by lot from all the companies. Several detachments had before this time crossed over, one group relieving another; the last to do so—and this is the force that was captured—numbering four hundred and twenty, besides the Helots who accompanied them, and they were under the command of Epitadas son of Molobrus.