Page:History of Greece Vol VI.djvu/389

 ALARM AMONG THE LACEDEMONIANS. 367 all put to death, victims to the long-standing apathy between Athens and JEgina. This cruel act was nothing more than a strict application of admitted customs of war in those days : had the Lacedaemonians been the victors, there can be little doubt that they would have acted with equal rigor. 1 The occupation of Ky thera, in addition to Pylus, by an Athe nian garrison, following so closely upon the capital disaster in Sphakteria, produced in the minds of the Spartans feelings of alarm and depression such as they had never before experienced. Within the course of a few short months their position had com- pletely changed from superiority and aggression abroad to insult and insecurity at home. They anticipated nothing less than incessant foreign attacks on all their weak points, with every probability of internal defection, from the standing discontent of the Helots : nor was it unknown to them, probably, that even Kythera itself had been lost partly through betrayal. The cap- ture of Sphakteria had caused peculiar sensations among the Helots, to whom the Lacedaemonians had addressed both appeals and promises of emancipation, in order to procure succor for their hoplites while blockaded in the island ; and if the ultimate sur- render of these hoplites had abated the terrors of Lacedaemonian prowess throughout all Greece, this effect had been produced to a still greater degree among the oppressed Helots. A refuge at Pylus, and a nucleus which presented some possibility of expand- ing into regenerated Messenia, were now before their eyes ; while the establishment of an Athenian garrison at Kythera opened a new channel of communication with the enemies of Sparta, so as to tempt all the Helots of daring temper to stand forward as lib- erators of their enslaved race. 3 The Lacedaemonians, habitually cautious at all times, felt now as if the tide of fortune had turned decidedly against them, and acted with confirmed mistrust and dismay, confining themselves to measures strictly defensive, and organizing a force of four hundred cavalry, together with a body of bowmen, beyond their ordinary establishment. But the precaution which they thought it necessary to take in regard to the Helots, affords the best measure of their apprehen- sions at the moment, and exhibits, indeed, a refinement ef fraud 1 Thucyd. iv, 58; Diodor. nil 65 Thucyd. iv, 41, 55 56.