Page:History of Greece Vol VI.djvu/386

 3G4 HISTORY OF GREECE. directed, net merely against Sparta in her own country, but also to the reconquest of that ascendency in Megara and Boeotia which they had lost on or before the thirty years' truce. On the other hand, it intimidated so much both the Lacedaemonians, the revolted Chalkidic allies of Athens in Thrace, and Perdik- kas, king of Macedonia, that between them the expedition of Brasidas, which struck so serious a blow at the Athenian empire, was concerted. This year is thus the turning-point of the war. If the operations of Athens had succeeded, she would have regained nearly as great a power as she enjoyed before the thirty years' truce : but it happened that Sparta, or rather the Spartan Brasidas, was successful, gaining enough to neutralize all the advantages derived by Athens from the capture of Sphakteria. The first enterprise undertaken by the Athenians in the course of the spring was against the island of Kythera, on the southern coast of Laconia. It was inhabited by Lacedaemonian Periceki, and administered by a governor, and garrison of hoplites, annu- ally sent thither. It was the usual point of landing for mer- chantmen from Libya and Egypt ; and as it lay very near to Cape Malea, immediately over against the gulf of Gythium, the only accessible portion of the generally inhospitable coast of Laconia, the chance that it might fall into the hands of an enemy was considered as so menacing to Sparta, that some poli- ticians are said to have wished the island at the bottom of the sea. 1 Nikias, in conjunction with Nikostratus and Autokles, 1 Thucyd. iv, 54; Hcrodot. vii, 235. The manner in which Herodotus alludes to the dangers which would arise to Sparta from the occupation of Kythera by an enemy, furnishes one additional probability tending to show that his history was composed before the actual occupation of the island by Nikias, in the eighth year of the Peloponnesian war. Had he been cog- nizant of this latter event, he would naturally have made some allusion to it. The words of Thucydides in respect to the island of Kythera arc. the Lacedaemonians nok'tiijv eTrifiefaiav kiroiovvTO TJV yap avTolf TUV re air 1 fdyiiirrov Kal Ai[3vT]c ohnaduv 7rpo<r/3oA$, a? 7.ijaTal u/j.a TI/V A.aKuviKr/v r/aaov khiiirovv in -fral-ucraqf, yTrep fiovov olov r' ijv Kaitovp-yelcrdai TC a a a yap uve^ei Trpdf rb SmeTiiKov Kal KprjriKov K&.ayoq. I do not understand this passage, with Dr. Arnold and Goller, to mean, Unit Laconia was unassailable by land, but very assailable by sea. It rathei