Page:History of Greece Vol VI.djvu/343

 ATTACK OF PYLUS GALLANTRY OF BRASiDAIi. 321 to pieces, nor ought the Peloponnesian allies to be backward in sacrificing their ships for Sparta, in return for the many ser- vices which she had rendered to them. 1 Foremost in perform- ance as well as in exhortation. Brasidas constrained his own pilot to drive his ship close in, and alvanced in person even on to the landing-steps for the purpose of leaping first ashore. But here he stood exposed to all the weapons of the Athenian defenders, who beat him back and pierced him with so many wounds, that he fainted away, and fell back into the bows, or foremost part of the trireme, beyond the rowers ; while his shield, slipping away from the arm, dropped down and rolled overboard into the sea. His ship was obliged to retire, like the rest, without having effected any landing : and all these successive attacks from the t-ea, repeat- ed for one whole day and a part of the next were repulsed by Demosthenes and his little band with victorious bravery. To both sides it seemed a strange reversal of ordinary relations, 2 that the Athenians, essentially maritime, should be fighting on land and that, too, Lacedaemonian land against the Lace- daemonians, the select land-warriors of Greece, now on ship- board, and striving in vain to compass a landing on their own shore. The Athenians, in honor of their success, erected a tro- phy, the chief ornament of which was the shield of Brasidas, which had been cast ashore by the water. On the third day, the Lacedaemonians did not repeat theii attack, but sent some of their vessels round to Asine, in the Messenian gulf, for timber to construct battering machines ; which they intended to employ against the wall of Demosthenes, on the side towards the harbor, where it was higher, and could not be assailed without machines, but where, at the same time, there was great facility in landing, for their previous attack had been made on the sida fronting the sea, where the wall was lower, but 1 Thucycl. iv, 11, 12; Diodor. xii. Consult an excellent note of Dr. Ar- nold on this passage, in which he contrasts the looseness and cxaggcraticn of Diodorus with the modest distinctness of Thucydidcs. 8 Thucyd. iv, 1 2. ETTI iroM ytlp iiroict rfc <5o?;f Iv rtj TOTE, Tolf fziv VKEipuTaif fii'diara fivai ical ni 5re," /t/mr/crrotf, -oif (5t <Sa?.aaaicif rr KG', raif vaval Tr/iftffTov poi^eiv. VOL. vi. M* 2Ioc.