Battle of Pylos - Aftermath

Aftermath

News of the crisis at Pylos shocked the government of Sparta, and members of the government were immediately dispatched to the scene to negotiate an armistice. This reaction to the potential capture of a mere 420 soldiers may seem extreme, but is explained by the fact that the 120 Spartiates on the island composed probably one tenth of that elite class, on which the Spartan government was based. The Spartan negotiators met with the Athenian generals at Pylos and quickly arranged an immediate cessation of hostilities. The Spartans were permitted to take food to the men on the island, and sent an embassy to Athens immediately to negotiate for a more permanent peace; all the Spartan ships, meanwhile, were surrendered to the Athenians as security for Spartan good conduct.

When the negotiators reached Athens, they made a speech to the Athenian assembly in which they argued that the Athenians should take advantage of the opportunity they had to make peace. The Spartans, they claimed, had suffered a misfortune not through incapacity or overreaching, but through mere bad luck; the Athenians should seize this opportunity to have peace with them on good terms. This proposal, however, met with derision from the Athenian statesman Cleon; he demanded far harsher terms, which would have given Athens control over Megara and compelled Sparta to abandon several important allies. In his speech, he recalled the concessions Athens had been forced to make in the Thirty Years' Peace of 445 BC, when the Athenians had been at a similar momentary disadvantage. Cleon's terms, Donald Kagan has argued, represented a recognition that the Athenians had little to gain from a peace which surrendered the advantage they had just won without impairing the Spartans' ability to make war, while they might secure far better terms in the future by pressing their advantage. When the Spartans asked to discuss these proposals in private, Cleon demanded that they say whatever they had to say in public. By doing so, he guaranteed that the Spartans would be forced to cut off the negotiations (since they could hardly discuss betraying their allies in public), hastening the moment when the Athenians would be free to move against Sphacteria.

The Spartan ambassadors returned home, and the armistice at Pylos came to an end. The Athenians, alleging that the Spartans had violated the terms of the armistice by attacking their wall, refused to hand the Spartan ships back over. Both sides settled in to fight out the fate of the men on Sphacteria; the result would be decided later at the Battle of Sphacteria.