III.
PEACE.

An interval of four years separated the production of the Acharnians
from that of the play with which I am now dealing.

The successes achieved by Athens in the years 427-5 B.C., especially
the capture of the Spartan garrison of Pylos,—an event to which fre-
quent allusions are made in the Avéghis, — were succeeded in 423 by
great disasters. The Athenians had long coveted the fertile country of
their Boeotian neighbours, a country widely different from their own
barren though picturesque and attractive land. They had once as-
serted their supremacy over it, and had maintained it for seven years,
till dispossessed by the disastrous defeat of Coronea in B.C. 440. And
now, again encouraged by a sense of immunity from invasion, — they
had threatened to put all their prisoners to death if a Spartan army
should again cross their frontiers, — they attempted to renew it. Their
hopes were again crushed. The whole military force of the city, except
a few small detachments that were serving elsewhere, was routed by
the Boeotians at Delium. Another defeat, even more serious, at least
as threatening more widely reaching consequences, followed. The
reverse at Delium did nothing more than convince the Athenians that
certain hopes which they had long entertained must be abandoned for-
ever; but the losses which were sustained in the following year in
Thrace deprived them of possessions which they had long regarded as
their own, and threatened to bring down their whole empire in -ruin,
Brasidas, probably the ablest man that Sparta ever produced, succeeded,
by a remarkable combination of military skill and attractive personal
character, in detaching from Athens some of its most important de-
pendencies on the northwest coast of the A®gean. Amphipolis and
other cities of Thrace were now in the hands of the Spartans. Athens
made a great effort to stay the tide of Spartan victory, despatching the
largest force she could raise to attempt the recapture of Amphipolis.
The effort failed totally and even disgracefully; the Athenian forces

57