The Athenians had arrived at Pylos dreading battle with the Lacedaemonians. Now that they had managed to make a fight inevitable, they wanted it to come as soon as possible. A hush of expectation came over the fort whenever a Peloponnesian ship set out across the bay; the place was abuzz when enemy troops showed themselves on the high ground of Sphacteria across the strait. But for another two days the enemy did nothing more than observe, probe, and blockade. Just two ships were enough to seal the northern channel; the southern one was far wider, but did not need to be physically blocked as much as guarded. The Peloponnesians stationed ten ships at a camp there, prepared to charge out and take broadside any Athenian vessels that attempted to enter.
During this time Demosthenes exhausted every trick to keep his men busy. He had the shoreline obstacles built higher and higher, until they protruded from the water in a kind of rustic stockade; he also had a ditch dug on the marsh side, in the unlikely event the enemy attempted to attack there. Any attempt on their position, he supposed, would be made in the morning, when the waters of the bay were most calm. The camp was therefore on a war footing hours before sun broke over the Aigaleon hills.
The wait ended on the fifth day.
3.
The Peloponnesian ships were of similar design to the Athenian: slim and sharp, more than one hundred feet long, with three banks of oars projecting from their hulls and outriggers. To Demosthenes, Athenian triremes resembled breaching dolphins, with painted eyes, metal rams for snouts, and upswept curl at their sterns for lobbing flukes. The enemy ships had eyes too, painted on their prows. Now forty of the wooden beasts turned their unblinking eyes on the Athenians’ little outpost.
The enemy fleet approached in broad formation. The devices on their sails showed them to be a motley force-Corinthians, Aeginetans, Sicyonians, Anactorians, Megarians-each no doubt with a Lacedaemonian on board to command its contingent of hoplites. The Athenian camp was in an uproar as the men gathered their rude panoplies and took up their assigned positions. All of them could see that the Peloponnesians were rowing in hard, as if they meant to ground their vessels on the rocks. This was a tactic Demosthenes had not counted on.
In his fear, would his body shatter just standing there, like a flawed pot in the kiln?
The ships halted just out of bow shot from the shore. The Lacedaemonians, it turned out, were intent on offering sacrifice at the last possible moment. On the deck of the lead vessel, a Spartiate elder stood forth with his crimson robe faded from salt spray and dressed locks falling over his shoulders, brandishing a knife over a braying goat. The Athenians could see his unshaven upper lip move in unheard obeisances to the patroness, Artemis Agrotera. The Corinthians and Sicyonians stood by, fretting over the lost momentum of the attack. But their masters would not be rushed as the entrails came out for proper examination.
Something was wrong. The Lacedaemonians huddled around the goat as they disputed among themselves. After some time they all began to wag their ponderous heads, leaning back from the sacrifice as if afraid to partake of some pollution. As the Athenians and the Peloponnesian allies looked on in amazement, the Lacedaemonian commander gave an order to the captain of the Corinthian flagship. The entire enemy fleet then turned around and retired to the other side of the bay.
In this way, thanks to Spartan attentiveness to the portents of goats’ livers, the garrison got a one-day reprieve. Such an admirable reverence for the gods! thought Demosthenes, hoping that the delay would not invite his men to think too much. As a precaution, he absorbed them in laying yet more obstacles and building up the berm yet higher.
The next day dawned under a few clouds but no wind. The ships came on and paused again for the sacrifice. This time the signs were favorable; libations of blood and wine were poured out in the proper order until, with the consecration of the bones, the Lacedaemonians at last pronounced the auspices satisfactory for the day’s labor.
The Corinthians piped the signal to resume pulling for the beach. In good order, the ships sorted themselves into three columns, each aimed at an opening in the Athenian stockade. A stiff wind suddenly came onshore, bringing with it the bodily stench of seven thousand Peloponnesian oarsmen. To see one’s enemies coming on was one thing, but to smell their very sweat made for an unnerving kind of intimacy.
“This is it, boys!” Demosthenes cried. “Let’s let them know we’re here!”
The Athenians roared in defiance of the enemy. They were outshouted, though, by the forty helots at the barricade. These produced a baleful snarl that, in its bottomless sadness, was just big enough to contain the thwarted hopes of untold Messenian lives. Projected down the slope of the berm at the approaching land attack, the cry seemed to wither the hearts of the Peloponnesian allies. But the Lacedaemonians were somehow quickened by it, charging faster, as if they were bred to the sound.
The Athenians let the Peloponnesian ships come as close as they dared before revealing their defense. Just as the first ram passed the outer line of boulders, the defenders rushed out with their straight timbers and braced them against the enemy bows. Demosthenes hoped that in this way just a handful of upright men, leaning hard in the shallow surf, could hold off laden triremes of 170 oars. At first, it worked: the Lacedaemonians hung over the rails, striking at the timbers, but their spears were too light to dislodge them. Other Spartan hoplites tried to reach shore by jumping in the water, yet found themselves submerged too deep to stand and too encumbered by their weapons to swim.
The arrest of the first ship in each line caused all the rest to jam up behind. The ensuing disruption traveled like a wave throughout the Peloponnesian fleet, costing it all semblance of order. Demosthenes heard voices with Dorian accents screaming at the captains to break through the obstacles by smashing their hulls on the rocks. But the Corinthians were too jealous of their assets to make such a sacrifice.
The first serious challenge to Demosthenes’ strategy came when two enemy ships collided with one of the anchored Athenian vessels. The Lacedaemonian hoplites swarmed all over it before his men could set it alight. As the flames exploded through the shredded sailcloth and pitch-soaked cordage, some of the enemy managed to leap overboard into hip-deep water. Demosthenes sent a squad of reserves against them, half a dozen hoplites armed with spears and wicker shields. Having lost their own spears in the tumble off the deck, the Spartans struck at them with short, daggerlike swords. The shallow water under the Athenians gave them the decisive advantage: two of the Lacedaemonians were wounded, and had to be rescued by their fellows who, in turn, were forced to abandon all their equipment. The Spartans dragged their fallen comrades back to the gangway of their ship; the discarded shields were seized as trophies by the Athenians.
The attack got no farther on the land side. The Lacedaemonians approached the berm with shields locked, but could not keep the formation amid the pilings and boulders strewn in their path. As the Spartan line disintegrated, Athenian archery worked its effect against their exposed flanks. The few of the enemy who reached the top of the berm were met by forty wild-eyed Messenian furies who fought with clubs, shearing knives and, as necessary, teeth and fingernails. For their part, the Lacedaemonians failed to bring any archers or slingers to the battle, having nothing but their usual contempt for missile troops. A stalemate developed: the Lacedaemonians could not take the barricade, but the Athenians and Messenians were too few to risk driving the enemy from the field.
At length the Peloponnesian captains untangled their vessels. The attackers came in waves against the stockade, one ship at a time, each one using the same tactic with fresh troops. Demosthenes coped as best he could by rotating his reserves into the defense; the battle dragged on through the morning, and then into the afternoon, as the exhausted Athenians fought with tongues swollen from thirst. At last, as the sun descended over the island, the afternoon winds swirled, and the placid surface of the bay broke into a herringbone pattern of contrary waves. The enemy triremes struggled to avoid each other and the rocks beneath Koryphasion; the Lacedaemonians, landlubbers at heart, hung worried at the rails, and began to gaze longingly at their camp across the bay. They broke off the assault with an hour left of daylight.
The manner of the fighting had kept casualties light on both sides. At the barricade, just a few of the Messenians were down, mostly due to their own recklessness, and the Lacedaemonians suffered mostly nonlethal arrow wounds. In the water, no Athenians were killed, and the enemy lost a handful due to spear thrusts and drowning. The Athenians, delirious with this success, danced on the beach, holding aloft the captured shields with
