hoplites, and two hundred horsemen, to say
nothing of the large number which supported these, and committed the same
ravages that the Spartans and their allies had inflicted upon Attica.

Among other events, the Athenians this year captured the Persian
ambassador, Artaphernes, on his way to Sparta. He was brought to Athens,
and his dispatches were translated and made public. He was sent back to
Ephesus, with Athenian envoys, to the great king, to counteract the
influence of the Spartans, but Artaerxes had died when they reached Susa.

(M513) The capture of Sphacteria, and the surrender of the whole
Lacedaemonian fleet, not only placed Athens, on the opening of the eighth
year of the war, in a situation more commanding than she had previously
enjoyed, but stimulated her to renewed operations on a grander scale, not
merely against Sparta, but to recover the ascendency in Boeotia, which was
held before the thirty years' truce. The Lacedaemonians, in concert with
the revolted Chalcidic allies of Athens in Thrace, and Perdiccas, king of
Macedonia, also made great preparations for more decisive measures. The
war had dragged out seven years, and nothing was accomplished which
seriously weakened either of the contending parties.

(M514) The first movement was made by the Athenians on the Laconian coast.
The island of Cythera was captured by an expedition led by Nicias, of
sixty triremes and two thousand hoplites, beside other forces, and the
coast was ravaged. Then Thyrea, an AEginetan settlement, between Laconia
and Argolis, fell into the hands of the Athenians, and all the AEginetans
were either killed in the assault, or put to death as prisoners. These
successive disasters alarmed the Lacedaemonians, and they now began to fear
repeated assaults on their own territory, with a discontented population
of Helots. This fear prompted an act of cruelty and treachery which had no
parallel in the history of the war. Two thousand of the bravest Helots
were entrapped, as if especial honors were to be bestowed upon them, and
barbarously slain. None but the five ephors knew the bloody details. There
was even no public examination of this savage inhumanity, which shows that
Sparta was governed, as Venice was in the Middle Ages, by a small but
exceedingly powerful oligarchy.

After this cruelty was consummated, envoys came from Perdiccas and the
Chalcidians of Thrace, invoking aid against Athens. It was joyfully
granted, and Brasidas, a