Page:History of Greece Vol VI.djvu/374

 352 HISTORY OF GREECE dred Ainbrakian panoplies, had probably been sufficiently tn umphant : but the entry into Peiraeus on this occasion from Sphakteria, with three hundred Lacedaemonian prisoners, must doubtless have occasioned emotions transcending all former expe rience ; and it is much to be regretted that no description is preserved to us of the scene, as well as of the elate manifestations of the people when the prisoners were marched up from Peiraeua to Athens. We should be curious, also, to read some account of the first Athenian assembly held after this event, the over- whelming cheers heaped upon Kleon by his joyful partisans, whc had helped to invest him with the duties of general, in confidence that he Avould discharge them well, contrasted with the silence or retraction of Nikias, and the other humiliated political enemies. But all such details are unfortunately denied to us, though they constitute the blood and animation of Grecian history, now lying before us only in its skeleton. The first impulse of the Athenians was to regard the prisoners as a guarantee to their territory against invasion : l they resolved to keep them securely guarded until the peace, but if, at any time before that event, the Lacedaemonian army should enter Attica, to bring forth the prisoners and put them to death in sight of the invaders. They were at the same time full of spirits in regard to the prosecution of the war, and became farther confirmed in the hope, not merely of preserving their power undiminished, but even of recovering much of what they had lost before the thirty years' truce. Pylus was placed in an improved state of defence, with the adjoining island of Sphakteria, doubtless as a subsidiary occupation : the Messenians, transferred thither from Naupaktus, and overjoyed to find themselves once more masters even of an outlying rock of their ancestorial territory, began with alacrity to overrun and ravage Laconia, while the Helots, shaken by the recent events, manifested inclination to desert to them. The Lacedaemonian authorities, experiencing evils before unfelt and unknown, became sensibly alarmed lest such desertions should spread through the country. Reluctant as they were to afford obvious evidence of their embarrassments, they neverthe- less brought themselves, probably under the pressure of the 1 Thucyd iv. 41.