Page:Thucydides, translated into English Vol 2.djvu/49

 55, 56] DESPONDENCY OF THE LACEDAEMONIANS 4I upon them at Sphacteria ; Pylos and Cythera were in the hands of the Athenians, and they were beset on every side by an enemy against whose swift attacks precaution was • vain. Contrary to their usual custom they raised a force of four hundred cavalry and archers. Never in their history had they shown so much hesitation in their niiHtary movements. They were involved in a war at sea, an element to which they were strange, against a power like the Athenians, in whose eyes to miss an opportunity was to lose a victory**. Fortune too was against them, and they were panic-stricken by the man}' startling reverses which had befallen them within so short a time. They feared lest some new calamity like that of the island might overtake them ; and therefore they dared not venture on an engagement, but expected all their undertakings to fail ; they had never hitherto known misfortune, and now they lost all confidence in their own powers. While the Athenians were ravaging their coasts they 56 hardly ever stirred; for each garrison The small garrisons at the places where they happened to stationed in the country land considered in their depressed state " "^'"^ ^° *° of mind that they were too few to act. One of them how- ever, which was in the neighbourhood of Cotyrta and Aphrodisia, did offer some resistance, and by a sudden rush put to flight the multitude of light-armed troops who had been scattered, but, being encountered by the hoplites, they again retired with the loss of some few men and arms. The Athenians, raising a trophy, sailed back to Cythera. Thence they coasted round to Epidaurus Limera and, after devastating some part of its territory, to Thyrea, which is situated in the country called Cynuria, on the border of Argolis and Laconia. The Lacedaemonians, who at that time held the town, had settled there the Aeginetan exiles, whom they wished to requite for services rendered to them at the time of the earthquake and the Helot revolt, and '^ Cp i. 70 mcd. '' Cp. ii. 27. E 2