History of the Peloponnesian War

Of all the events of this war this came as the greatest surprise to the Hellenic world; for men could not conceive that the Lacedaemonians would ever be induced by hunger or any other compulsion to give up their arms, but thought that they would keep them till they died, fighting as long as they were able;

and they could not believe that those who had surrendered were as brave as those who had fallen. And when one of the Athenian allies sometime afterwards sneeringly asked one of the captives taken on the island, whether the Lacedaemonians who had been slain were brave men and true,[*](Implying that the survivors were not.) the answer was, that the shaft, meaning the arrow, would be worth a great deal if it could distinguish the brave, intimating that it was a mere matter of chance who was hit and killed by stones and bow-shots.

When the captives were brought to Athens, the Athenians determined to keep them in prison until some agreement should be reached, but if before that the Peloponnesians should invade their territory, to bring them out and put them to death.

They also placed a garrison in Pylos, and the Messenians at Naupactus, regarding this territory as their fatherland—for Pylos belongs to the country that was once Messenia—sent thither such of their own number as were best fitted for the task and proceeded to ravage the Laconian territory, and they did a great deal of damage, since they were men of the same speech as the inhabitants.

As for the Lacedaemonians, they had never before experienced predatory warfare of this kind, and therefore, when the Helots began to desert and there was reason to fear that the revolutionary movement might gain still further headway in their territory, they were uneasy, and, in spite of their desire not to betray their alarm to the Athenians, kept sending envoys to them in the endeavour to recover Pylos and the prisoners.