Battle of Pylos
Encyclopedia
The naval Battle of Pylos took place in 425 BC
during the Peloponnesian War
at the peninsula of Pylos
, on the Bay of Navarino in Messenia
, and was an Athenian
victory over Sparta. An Athenian fleet had been driven ashore at Pylos by a storm, and, at the instigation of Demosthenes
, the Athenian soldiers fortified the peninsula, and a small force was left there when the fleet departed again. The establishment of an Athenian garrison in Spartan territory frightened the Spartan leadership, and the Spartan army, which had been ravaging Attica
under the command of Agis
, ended their expedition (the expedition only lasted 15 days) and marched home, and the Spartan fleet at Corcyra sailed to Pylos.
Demosthenes had five trireme
s and their complements of soldiers as a garrison, and was reinforced by 40 hoplite
s from a Messenian ship that happened to stop at Pylos. In total, Demosthenes probably had about 600 men, only 90 of which were hoplites. He sent two of his trireme
s to intercept the Athenian fleet and inform Sophocles
and Eurymedon
of his danger. The Spartans, meanwhile, had 43 triremes and a large land army. Finding himself thus outnumbered, Demosthenes pulled his remaining three trireme
s up on land and armed their crews with whatever weapons were at hand. He placed the largest part of his force at the strongly fortified point facing the land. Demosthenes
then hand picked 60 hoplites and a few archers and brought them to the point where he anticipated the Spartans would launch their amphibious assault. Demosthenes expected that the Spartans would hit the southwest corner of the peninsula where the defensive wall was the weakest and the land was most suitable for a landing. The Spartans attacked where Demosthenes had expected, and the Athenians were faced with simultaneous assaults from land and sea. The Athenians held off the Spartans for a day and a half, however, causing the Spartans to cease their attempts to storm Pylos and instead settled in for a siege.
While the Spartans' siege preparations were underway, the Athenian fleet, 50 triremes strong arrived from Zacynthus. The Spartans failed to blockade the entrance of the harbor, so the Athenians were able to sail in and catch the Spartans unprepared; the Spartan fleet was decisively defeated, and the Athenians gained control of the harbor. In doing so, they trapped 420 Spartan hoplites on the island of Sphacteria
, off of Pylos. 120 of these were from the Spartiate
class, and their peril threw the Spartan government into a panic. Members of the government were dispatched to the scene, and negotiated an armistice on the spot; the entire Spartan fleet was surrendered to the Athenians as a guarantee for Spartan good conduct, and ambassadors were sent to Athens to seek a permanent peace. When these negotiations failed, the Athenians retained possession of the Spartan ships on a pretext, and settled in to besiege the hoplites on Sphacteria; eventually, in the Battle of Sphacteria
, those hoplites were captured and taken as hostages to Athens. Pylos remained in Athenian hands, and was used as a base for raids into Spartan territory and as a refuge for fleeing Spartan Helots.
, with Demosthenes
aboard as an advisor, sailed from Athens to campaign in Sicily
and assist Athens' democratic allies at Corcyra. Demosthenes held no official position at the time, but was a strategos
-elect for the Hellenic year that would begin in midsummer 425, and the two generals had been instructed to allow him to use the fleet around the Peloponnese if he wished. Once the fleet was at sea, Demosthenes revealed his plan, which he had previously kept secret; he wished to land at and fortify Pylos, which he believed to be a particularly promising site for a forward outpost. (Pylos was a good distance from Sparta by march, and commanded an excellent harbor in the Bay of Navarino.). The generals rejected this plan, but Demosthenes caught a stroke of luck when a storm blew drove the fleet to the shore at Pylos. Even then the generals refused to order the fortification of the promontory, and Demosthenes was similarly rebuffed when he attempted to appeal directly to the troops and subordinate commanders; only when the boredom of waiting out the storm overcame the Athenians did they set to work building fortifications. Once they began, however, the Athenians worked hard and quickly, and the promontory was fortified and defensible within a few days. The fleet sailed off towards Corcyra, where a Spartan fleet of 60 ships was operating, leaving Demosthenes with five ships and their complements of sailors and soldiers to defend the new fort.
The Spartan government was initially unconcerned with the Athenians' presence at Pylos, assuming that they would soon depart. Once it became clear, however, that Demosthenes and his men intended to hold the site, the king Agis
, who was at the head of an army ravaging Attica
, turned for home, cutting his invasion short after only 15 days in Athenian territory. Once he reached home, Spartan forces immediately moved towards Pylos, the fleet at Corcyra was ordered to sail there immediately, and a summons was sent out calling allied states around the Peloponnese to send troops. The Spartan fleet managed to slip past the Athenian fleet at Zacynthus, but Demosthenes anticipated its arrival and dispatched two of his triremes to inform the Athenian fleet of Pylos' plight; that fleet set out for Pylos as soon as it received the news. Pylos, meanwhile, had been reinforced by the arrival of a privateer with a cargo of arms, which were distributed to the sailors, and by a Messenian pinnace, which brought 40 more hoplite
s to defend the peninsula. (Donald Kagan has asserted that these apparently fortuitous arrivals must have been the result of planning by Demosthenes.) To meet the imminent Spartan attack, Demosthenes divided his force, placing most of his men at the point where the promontory touched the mainland, while he with 60 hoplites and a few archers waited at the point facing out to sea where the Athenian wall was weakest. When the Spartan fleet arrived, the Spartans prepared to blockade the entrance to the harbor by placing hoplites on the island of Sphacteria
, which was in the middle of the entrance, and planned to place ships in the gaps on either side of that island when the Athenian fleet arrived.
, drove their ships into the rocky shore to give their men a chance to disembark and drive the Athenians back, but the defenders refused to give, and repeated waves of attacks failed to break them. The tactic of trying to land troops on a beach facing stiff hoplite resistance was known to be notoriously difficult during this era. These attacks continued for an entire day and then part of the next, but after that the Spartans resigned themselves to a siege and dispatched several ships to bring wood for building siege engines.
On the day after the cessation of attacks, however, the Athenian fleet arrived from Zacynthus. It was too late that day to attack, so the Athenians spent the night on a nearby island, hoping to draw the Spartans out into the open sea to battle. The Spartans refused to take this bait, but the next morning the Athenians sailed in both entrances to the harbor, which the Spartans had failed to block, and quickly routed the Spartan fleet (Donald Kagan has suggested that the Spartans' failure to blockade the entrances indicates that they could not do so, and that their plan was thus fatally flawed from the outset). Pursuit was limited by the size of the harbor, but the Athenians captured some triremes at sea and then landed to attempt to seize the Spartan ships once they reached land. A fierce fight ensued, in which the Athenians were eventually unable to seize more than a few ships, withdrawing after heavy casualties had been suffered by both sides. At the end of the battle, the Athenians controlled the harbor, and were able to sail freely around the island of Sphacteria; they guarded the island closely, ensuring that the hoplites trapped there were unable to escape.
s on the island composed probably one tenth of that elite class, on which the Spartan government was based. The Spartan negotiators met with the Athenian generals at Pylos and quickly arranged an immediate cessation of hostilities. The Spartans were permitted to take food to the men on the island, and sent an embassy to Athens immediately to negotiate for a more permanent peace; all the Spartan ships, meanwhile, were surrendered to the Athenians as security for Spartan good conduct.
When the negotiators reached Athens, they made a speech to the Athenian assembly in which they argued that the Athenians should take advantage of the opportunity they had to make peace. The Spartans, they claimed, had suffered a misfortune not through incapacity or overreaching, but through mere bad luck; the Athenians should seize this opportunity to have peace with them on good terms. This proposal, however, met with derision from the Athenian statesman Cleon
; he demanded far harsher terms, which would have given Athens control over Megara
and compelled Sparta to abandon several important allies. In his speech, he recalled the concessions Athens had been forced to make in the Thirty Years' Peace
of 445 BC, when the Athenians had been at a similar momentary disadvantage. Cleon's terms, Donald Kagan has argued, represented a recognition that the Athenians had little to gain from a peace which surrendered the advantage they had just won without impairing the Spartans' ability to make war, while they might secure far better terms in the future by pressing their advantage. When the Spartans asked to discuss these proposals in private, Cleon demanded that they say whatever they had to say in public. By doing so, he guaranteed that the Spartans would be forced to cut off the negotiations (since they could hardly discuss betraying their allies in public), hastening the moment when the Athenians would be free to move against Sphacteria.
The Spartan ambassadors returned home, and the armistice at Pylos came to an end. The Athenians, alleging that the Spartans had violated the terms of the armistice by attacking their wall, refused to hand the Spartan ships back over. Both sides settled in to fight out the fate of the men on Sphacteria; the result would be decided later at the Battle of Sphacteria
.
425 BC
Year 425 BC was a year of the pre-Julian Roman calendar. At the time, it was known as the Year of the Tribunate of Atratinus, Medullinus, Cincinnatus and Barbatus...
during the Peloponnesian War
Peloponnesian War
The Peloponnesian War, 431 to 404 BC, was an ancient Greek war fought by Athens and its empire against the Peloponnesian League led by Sparta. Historians have traditionally divided the war into three phases...
at the peninsula of Pylos
Pylos
Pylos , historically known under its Italian name Navarino, is a town and a former municipality in Messenia, Peloponnese, Greece. Since the 2011 local government reform it is part of the municipality Pylos-Nestoras, of which it is the seat and a municipal unit. It was the capital of the former...
, on the Bay of Navarino in Messenia
Messenia
Messenia is a regional unit in the southwestern part of the Peloponnese region, one of 13 regions into which Greece has been divided by the Kallikratis plan, implemented 1 January 2011...
, and was an Athenian
Athens
Athens , is the capital and largest city of Greece. Athens dominates the Attica region and is one of the world's oldest cities, as its recorded history spans around 3,400 years. Classical Athens was a powerful city-state...
victory over Sparta. An Athenian fleet had been driven ashore at Pylos by a storm, and, at the instigation of Demosthenes
Demosthenes (general)
Demosthenes , son of Alcisthenes, was an Athenian general during the Peloponnesian War.-Early Military Actions:The military activities of Demosthenes are first recorded from 426 BC when he led an Athenian invasion of Aetolia. This was a failure. Demosthenes lost about 120 Athenians along with his...
, the Athenian soldiers fortified the peninsula, and a small force was left there when the fleet departed again. The establishment of an Athenian garrison in Spartan territory frightened the Spartan leadership, and the Spartan army, which had been ravaging Attica
Attica
Attica is a historical region of Greece, containing Athens, the current capital of Greece. The historical region is centered on the Attic peninsula, which projects into the Aegean Sea...
under the command of Agis
Agis II
Agis II was the 17th Eurypontid king of Sparta, the eldest son of Archidamus II by his first wife, and half-brother of Agesilaus II. He ruled with his Agiad co-monarch Pausanias....
, ended their expedition (the expedition only lasted 15 days) and marched home, and the Spartan fleet at Corcyra sailed to Pylos.
Demosthenes had five trireme
Trireme
A trireme was a type of galley, a Hellenistic-era warship that was used by the ancient maritime civilizations of the Mediterranean, especially the Phoenicians, ancient Greeks and Romans.The trireme derives its name from its three rows of oars on each side, manned with one man per oar...
s and their complements of soldiers as a garrison, and was reinforced by 40 hoplite
Hoplite
A hoplite was a citizen-soldier of the Ancient Greek city-states. Hoplites were primarily armed as spearmen and fought in a phalanx formation. The word "hoplite" derives from "hoplon" , the type of the shield used by the soldiers, although, as a word, "hopla" could also denote weapons held or even...
s from a Messenian ship that happened to stop at Pylos. In total, Demosthenes probably had about 600 men, only 90 of which were hoplites. He sent two of his trireme
Trireme
A trireme was a type of galley, a Hellenistic-era warship that was used by the ancient maritime civilizations of the Mediterranean, especially the Phoenicians, ancient Greeks and Romans.The trireme derives its name from its three rows of oars on each side, manned with one man per oar...
s to intercept the Athenian fleet and inform Sophocles
Sophocles
Sophocles is one of three ancient Greek tragedians whose plays have survived. His first plays were written later than those of Aeschylus, and earlier than or contemporary with those of Euripides...
and Eurymedon
Eurymedon
Eurymedon was one of the Athenian generals during the Peloponnesian War.In 428 BC he was sent by the Athenians to intercept the Peloponnesian fleet which was on its way to attack Corcyra...
of his danger. The Spartans, meanwhile, had 43 triremes and a large land army. Finding himself thus outnumbered, Demosthenes pulled his remaining three trireme
Trireme
A trireme was a type of galley, a Hellenistic-era warship that was used by the ancient maritime civilizations of the Mediterranean, especially the Phoenicians, ancient Greeks and Romans.The trireme derives its name from its three rows of oars on each side, manned with one man per oar...
s up on land and armed their crews with whatever weapons were at hand. He placed the largest part of his force at the strongly fortified point facing the land. Demosthenes
Demosthenes
Demosthenes was a prominent Greek statesman and orator of ancient Athens. His orations constitute a significant expression of contemporary Athenian intellectual prowess and provide an insight into the politics and culture of ancient Greece during the 4th century BC. Demosthenes learned rhetoric by...
then hand picked 60 hoplites and a few archers and brought them to the point where he anticipated the Spartans would launch their amphibious assault. Demosthenes expected that the Spartans would hit the southwest corner of the peninsula where the defensive wall was the weakest and the land was most suitable for a landing. The Spartans attacked where Demosthenes had expected, and the Athenians were faced with simultaneous assaults from land and sea. The Athenians held off the Spartans for a day and a half, however, causing the Spartans to cease their attempts to storm Pylos and instead settled in for a siege.
While the Spartans' siege preparations were underway, the Athenian fleet, 50 triremes strong arrived from Zacynthus. The Spartans failed to blockade the entrance of the harbor, so the Athenians were able to sail in and catch the Spartans unprepared; the Spartan fleet was decisively defeated, and the Athenians gained control of the harbor. In doing so, they trapped 420 Spartan hoplites on the island of Sphacteria
Sphacteria
Sphacteria Sphacteria Sphacteria (Sphacteria (Sphacteria is a small island at the entrance to the bay of Pylos in the Peloponnese, Greece. It was the site of three battles:*the 425 BC Battle of Sphacteria in the Peloponnesian war....
, off of Pylos. 120 of these were from the Spartiate
Spartiate
The Spartiates or Homoioi were the males of Sparta known to the Spartans as "peers" or "men of equal status". From a young age, male Spartiates were trained for battle and put through grueling challenges intended to craft them into fearless warriors...
class, and their peril threw the Spartan government into a panic. Members of the government were dispatched to the scene, and negotiated an armistice on the spot; the entire Spartan fleet was surrendered to the Athenians as a guarantee for Spartan good conduct, and ambassadors were sent to Athens to seek a permanent peace. When these negotiations failed, the Athenians retained possession of the Spartan ships on a pretext, and settled in to besiege the hoplites on Sphacteria; eventually, in the Battle of Sphacteria
Battle of Sphacteria
The Battle of Sphacteria was a land battle of the Peloponnesian War, fought in 425 BC between Athens and Sparta. Following the Battle of Pylos and subsequent peace negotiations, which failed, a number of Spartans were stranded on the island of Sphacteria...
, those hoplites were captured and taken as hostages to Athens. Pylos remained in Athenian hands, and was used as a base for raids into Spartan territory and as a refuge for fleeing Spartan Helots.
Prelude
In the summer of 425 BC, an Athenian fleet commanded by Eurymedon and SophoclesSophocles
Sophocles is one of three ancient Greek tragedians whose plays have survived. His first plays were written later than those of Aeschylus, and earlier than or contemporary with those of Euripides...
, with Demosthenes
Demosthenes (general)
Demosthenes , son of Alcisthenes, was an Athenian general during the Peloponnesian War.-Early Military Actions:The military activities of Demosthenes are first recorded from 426 BC when he led an Athenian invasion of Aetolia. This was a failure. Demosthenes lost about 120 Athenians along with his...
aboard as an advisor, sailed from Athens to campaign in Sicily
Sicily
Sicily is a region of Italy, and is the largest island in the Mediterranean Sea. Along with the surrounding minor islands, it constitutes an autonomous region of Italy, the Regione Autonoma Siciliana Sicily has a rich and unique culture, especially with regard to the arts, music, literature,...
and assist Athens' democratic allies at Corcyra. Demosthenes held no official position at the time, but was a strategos
Strategos
Strategos, plural strategoi, is used in Greek to mean "general". In the Hellenistic and Byzantine Empires the term was also used to describe a military governor...
-elect for the Hellenic year that would begin in midsummer 425, and the two generals had been instructed to allow him to use the fleet around the Peloponnese if he wished. Once the fleet was at sea, Demosthenes revealed his plan, which he had previously kept secret; he wished to land at and fortify Pylos, which he believed to be a particularly promising site for a forward outpost. (Pylos was a good distance from Sparta by march, and commanded an excellent harbor in the Bay of Navarino.). The generals rejected this plan, but Demosthenes caught a stroke of luck when a storm blew drove the fleet to the shore at Pylos. Even then the generals refused to order the fortification of the promontory, and Demosthenes was similarly rebuffed when he attempted to appeal directly to the troops and subordinate commanders; only when the boredom of waiting out the storm overcame the Athenians did they set to work building fortifications. Once they began, however, the Athenians worked hard and quickly, and the promontory was fortified and defensible within a few days. The fleet sailed off towards Corcyra, where a Spartan fleet of 60 ships was operating, leaving Demosthenes with five ships and their complements of sailors and soldiers to defend the new fort.
The Spartan government was initially unconcerned with the Athenians' presence at Pylos, assuming that they would soon depart. Once it became clear, however, that Demosthenes and his men intended to hold the site, the king Agis
Agis II
Agis II was the 17th Eurypontid king of Sparta, the eldest son of Archidamus II by his first wife, and half-brother of Agesilaus II. He ruled with his Agiad co-monarch Pausanias....
, who was at the head of an army ravaging Attica
Attica
Attica is a historical region of Greece, containing Athens, the current capital of Greece. The historical region is centered on the Attic peninsula, which projects into the Aegean Sea...
, turned for home, cutting his invasion short after only 15 days in Athenian territory. Once he reached home, Spartan forces immediately moved towards Pylos, the fleet at Corcyra was ordered to sail there immediately, and a summons was sent out calling allied states around the Peloponnese to send troops. The Spartan fleet managed to slip past the Athenian fleet at Zacynthus, but Demosthenes anticipated its arrival and dispatched two of his triremes to inform the Athenian fleet of Pylos' plight; that fleet set out for Pylos as soon as it received the news. Pylos, meanwhile, had been reinforced by the arrival of a privateer with a cargo of arms, which were distributed to the sailors, and by a Messenian pinnace, which brought 40 more hoplite
Hoplite
A hoplite was a citizen-soldier of the Ancient Greek city-states. Hoplites were primarily armed as spearmen and fought in a phalanx formation. The word "hoplite" derives from "hoplon" , the type of the shield used by the soldiers, although, as a word, "hopla" could also denote weapons held or even...
s to defend the peninsula. (Donald Kagan has asserted that these apparently fortuitous arrivals must have been the result of planning by Demosthenes.) To meet the imminent Spartan attack, Demosthenes divided his force, placing most of his men at the point where the promontory touched the mainland, while he with 60 hoplites and a few archers waited at the point facing out to sea where the Athenian wall was weakest. When the Spartan fleet arrived, the Spartans prepared to blockade the entrance to the harbor by placing hoplites on the island of Sphacteria
Sphacteria
Sphacteria Sphacteria Sphacteria (Sphacteria (Sphacteria is a small island at the entrance to the bay of Pylos in the Peloponnese, Greece. It was the site of three battles:*the 425 BC Battle of Sphacteria in the Peloponnesian war....
, which was in the middle of the entrance, and planned to place ships in the gaps on either side of that island when the Athenian fleet arrived.
Battle
The Spartans assaulted the Athenian fortifications on Pylos from both land and sea. The sea attack came exactly where Demosthenes had expected it would, and he was thus in place to meet it with his men. The landing was difficult at the point of attack, so only a few of the 43 triremes were able to approach the beach at a time. The Spartan captains, following the example of BrasidasBrasidas
Brasidas was a Spartan officer during the first decade of the Peloponnesian War.He was the son of Tellis and Argileonis, and won his first laurels by the relief of Methone, which was besieged by the Athenians . During the following year he seems to have been eponymous ephor Brasidas (died 422...
, drove their ships into the rocky shore to give their men a chance to disembark and drive the Athenians back, but the defenders refused to give, and repeated waves of attacks failed to break them. The tactic of trying to land troops on a beach facing stiff hoplite resistance was known to be notoriously difficult during this era. These attacks continued for an entire day and then part of the next, but after that the Spartans resigned themselves to a siege and dispatched several ships to bring wood for building siege engines.
On the day after the cessation of attacks, however, the Athenian fleet arrived from Zacynthus. It was too late that day to attack, so the Athenians spent the night on a nearby island, hoping to draw the Spartans out into the open sea to battle. The Spartans refused to take this bait, but the next morning the Athenians sailed in both entrances to the harbor, which the Spartans had failed to block, and quickly routed the Spartan fleet (Donald Kagan has suggested that the Spartans' failure to blockade the entrances indicates that they could not do so, and that their plan was thus fatally flawed from the outset). Pursuit was limited by the size of the harbor, but the Athenians captured some triremes at sea and then landed to attempt to seize the Spartan ships once they reached land. A fierce fight ensued, in which the Athenians were eventually unable to seize more than a few ships, withdrawing after heavy casualties had been suffered by both sides. At the end of the battle, the Athenians controlled the harbor, and were able to sail freely around the island of Sphacteria; they guarded the island closely, ensuring that the hoplites trapped there were unable to escape.
Aftermath
News of the crisis at Pylos shocked the government of Sparta, and members of the government were immediately dispatched to the scene to negotiate an armistice. This extreme reaction to the potential capture of a mere 420 soldiers may seem extreme, but is explained by the fact that the 120 SpartiateSpartiate
The Spartiates or Homoioi were the males of Sparta known to the Spartans as "peers" or "men of equal status". From a young age, male Spartiates were trained for battle and put through grueling challenges intended to craft them into fearless warriors...
s on the island composed probably one tenth of that elite class, on which the Spartan government was based. The Spartan negotiators met with the Athenian generals at Pylos and quickly arranged an immediate cessation of hostilities. The Spartans were permitted to take food to the men on the island, and sent an embassy to Athens immediately to negotiate for a more permanent peace; all the Spartan ships, meanwhile, were surrendered to the Athenians as security for Spartan good conduct.
When the negotiators reached Athens, they made a speech to the Athenian assembly in which they argued that the Athenians should take advantage of the opportunity they had to make peace. The Spartans, they claimed, had suffered a misfortune not through incapacity or overreaching, but through mere bad luck; the Athenians should seize this opportunity to have peace with them on good terms. This proposal, however, met with derision from the Athenian statesman Cleon
Cleon
Cleon was an Athenian statesman and a Strategos during the Peloponnesian War. He was the first prominent representative of the commercial class in Athenian politics, although he was an aristocrat himself...
; he demanded far harsher terms, which would have given Athens control over Megara
Megara
Megara is an ancient city in Attica, Greece. It lies in the northern section of the Isthmus of Corinth opposite the island of Salamis, which belonged to Megara in archaic times, before being taken by Athens. Megara was one of the four districts of Attica, embodied in the four mythic sons of King...
and compelled Sparta to abandon several important allies. In his speech, he recalled the concessions Athens had been forced to make in the Thirty Years' Peace
Thirty Years' Peace
The Thirty Years' Peace was a treaty, signed between the ancient Greek city-states Athens and Sparta, in the year 446/445 BC. The treaty brought an end to the conflict commonly known as the First Peloponnesian War, which had been raging since c.460 BC....
of 445 BC, when the Athenians had been at a similar momentary disadvantage. Cleon's terms, Donald Kagan has argued, represented a recognition that the Athenians had little to gain from a peace which surrendered the advantage they had just won without impairing the Spartans' ability to make war, while they might secure far better terms in the future by pressing their advantage. When the Spartans asked to discuss these proposals in private, Cleon demanded that they say whatever they had to say in public. By doing so, he guaranteed that the Spartans would be forced to cut off the negotiations (since they could hardly discuss betraying their allies in public), hastening the moment when the Athenians would be free to move against Sphacteria.
The Spartan ambassadors returned home, and the armistice at Pylos came to an end. The Athenians, alleging that the Spartans had violated the terms of the armistice by attacking their wall, refused to hand the Spartan ships back over. Both sides settled in to fight out the fate of the men on Sphacteria; the result would be decided later at the Battle of Sphacteria
Battle of Sphacteria
The Battle of Sphacteria was a land battle of the Peloponnesian War, fought in 425 BC between Athens and Sparta. Following the Battle of Pylos and subsequent peace negotiations, which failed, a number of Spartans were stranded on the island of Sphacteria...
.