Battle of Sphacteria - Surrender and Aftermath

Surrender and Aftermath

At this point, Cleon and Demosthenes declined to push the attack further, preferring to take as many Spartans as they could prisoner. An Athenian herald offered the Spartans a chance to surrender, and the Spartans, throwing down their shields, agreed at least to negotiate. Cleon and Demosthenes met with the Spartan commander Styphon (Styphon had initially been the third in command, but Epitadas had been killed and his first successor was severely wounded and had been left for dead). Styphon requested to send a herald to the mainland to seek advice; the Athenians refused to allow any of the trapped men to leave, but permitted as many heralds from the mainland as were desired to pass back and forth. Several messengers did so, the last of whom left Styphon with the message "The Spartans order you to make your decision yourselves, so long as you do nothing dishonorable." Styphon and his men, with no hope of victory or escape, surrendered. Of the 440 Spartans who had crossed over to Sphacteria, 292 survived to surrender; of these, 120 were men of the elite Spartiate class.

"The outcome," Donald Kagan has observed, "shook the Greek world." Spartans, it had been supposed, would never surrender. Now, with Spartiate hostages in their hands, the Athenians issued an ultimatum; any invasion of Attica would lead to the execution of their prisoners. For the first time since the beginning of the war, the Athenians could farm their crops securely. At Pylos, a Messenian garrison was installed, and these men, launching raids into country that had once been their home, did significant damage to the Spartans and instigated the desertion of numerous Helots. At Athens, Cleon, his seemingly mad promise fulfilled, was the man of the hour; he was granted meals at the state's expense in the prytaneum (the same reward granted to Olympic champions), and most scholars see his hand in the legislation of the following months, the most prominent item of which was an increased levy of tribute on the empire. Sphacteria had changed the nature of the war. The next few years would see a newly aggressive Athens, and it would take a string of Athenian reverses to diffuse the impetus that the surrenders had given and bring the two sides to the table to negotiate the Peace of Nicias in 421 BC.