Page:History of Greece Vol VI.djvu/335

 CAPTURE OF SPHAKTERIA. 313 guoverted the freedom and prosperity of Ionia was now re- newed. The Athenians celebrated the festival with its accompa- nying matches, even the chariot-race, in a manner more splendid than had ever been known in former times : and they appointed a similar festival to be celebrated every fourth year. At this period they were excluded both from the Olympic and the Pythian games, which probably made the revival of the Delian festival more gratifying to them. The religious zeal and muni Sconce of Nikias was striking displayed at Delos. 1 CHAPTER LII. SEVENTH YEAR OF THE WAR. -CAPTURE OF SPHAKTERIA. THE invasion of Attica by the Lacedaemonians had now be- <xe an ordinary enterprise, undertaken in every year of the war except the third and sixth, and then omitted only from acci- dental causes ; though the same hopes were no longer entertained from it as at the commencement of the war. Daring the present spring, Agis king of Sparta conducted the Peloponnesian army into the territory, seemingly about the end of April, and repeated the usual ravages. It seemed, however, as if Korkyra were about to become the principal scene of the year's military operations : for the exiles of the oligarchical party, having come back- to the island and for- tified themselves on Mount Istone, carried on war with so much activity against the Korkyraeans in the city, that distress and even famine reigned there ; while sixty Peloponnesian triremes were sent thither to assist the aggressors. As soon as it became known at Athens how hardly the Korkyraeans in the city were pressed, orders were given to an Athenian fleet of forty triremes, about to sail for Sicily under Eurymedon and Sophokles, to halt 1 Thucyd. iii, 104 ; Plutarch, Nikias, c. 3, 4 ; Diodor. xii, 58 VOL. VI. 14