Page:History of Greece Vol VI.djvu/248

 226 HISTORY OF GREECE. tissa, Pyrrha, and Eresus, the other towns of Lesbos which acted with them. They were even sufficiently strong to march against Methymna, in hopes that it would be betrayed to them by a party within ; but this expectation was not realized, nor could they do more than strengthen the fortifications, and confirm the Mitylenaean supremacy, in the other three subordinate towns ; in such manner that the Methymnaeans, who soon afterwards attacked Antissa, were repulsed with considerable loss. In this undecided condition the island continued, until, somewhere about the month of August B.C. 428, the Athenians sent Paches to take the command, with a reinforcement of one thousand hoplites, who rowed themselves thither in triremes. The Athenians were now in force enough not only to keep the Mitylenjeans within their walls, but also to surround the city with a single wall of circumvallation, strengthened by separate forts in suitable posi- tions. By the beginning of October, Mitylene was thus completely blockaded, by land as well as by sea. 1 Meanwhile, the Mitylenaean envoys, after a troublesome voy- age, reached Sparta a little before the Olympic festival, about the middle of June. The Spartans directed them to come to Olym- pia at the festival, where all the members of the Peloponnesian confederacy would naturally be present, and there to set forth their requests, after the festival was concluded, in presence of all. 2 Thucydides has given us, at some length, his version of the speech wherein this was done, a speech not a little remarkable. Pronounced as it was by men who had just revolted from Athens, having the strongest interest to raise indignation against her as well as sympathy for themselves, and before an audience ex- clusively composed of the enemies of Athens, all willing to hear, and none present to refute, the bitterest calumnies against her, we should have expected a confident sense of righteous and well-grounded though perilous effort on the part of the Mity- lenacans, and a plausible collection of wrongs and oppressions alleged against the common enemy. Instead of which, the speech is apologetic and embarrassed : the speaker not only does not allege any extortion or severe dealing from Athens towards the Mitylengeans, but even admits the fact that they had been treated 1 Thncyd. iii, 18. * Thueyd. iii. 9.