Battle of Sphacteria The Battle of Sphacteria was a land battle of the Peloponnesian War , fought in 425 BC between Athens and Sparta . Following the Battle of Pylos and subsequent peace negotiations , which failed , a number of Spartans were stranded on the island of Sphacteria . An Athenian force under Cleon and Demosthenes attacked and forced them to surrender . Overview . In the wake of the failed peace negotiations , Demosthenes initially attempted to starve out the Spartans on Sphacteria , but was unable to blockade the island tightly enough . He therefore requested reinforcements from Athens to assault the island before winter ' s choppy seas made blockading impossible . These reinforcements were sent out under Cleon , and the Athenians launched an assault on Pylos . Landing in great force on a weakly defended point , the Athenians swamped the beachfront defenses and moved inland , harassing the Spartans with missile fire whenever they attempted to come to grips with the Athenian hoplites . The Spartans retreated to the northern end of island and dug in behind their fortifications , but when the Messenian general Comon succeeded in bringing his troops through seemingly impassable terrain into their rear , the Spartans surrendered . The capture of over 292 hoplites ( 120 of which were Spartans ) by Athens radically shifted the balance of power in the war . Athens threatened to execute its prisoners if Sparta invaded Attica , and the annual invasions which had occurred since the war ' s declaration were thus halted . Athens , meanwhile , with increased prestige and confidence , went on to pursue the war with more vigor and initiative for several years , returning to the negotiating table only after a string of defeats had eroded its position . Prelude and early moves . After the Battle of Pylos , which resulted in the isolation of over 400 Spartan soldiers on the island of Sphacteria , Sparta sued for peace , and , after arranging an armistice at Pylos by surrendering the ships of the Peloponnesian fleet as security , sent an embassy to Athens to negotiate a settlement . These negotiations , however , proved fruitless , and with the news of their failure the armistice came to an end ; the Athenians , however , refused to return the Peloponnesian ships , alleging that assaults had been made against their fortifications during the truce . Hostilities resumed immediately , with the Athenians guarding the island night and day against attempts at rescue or resupply . Demosthenes , commanding the force at Pylos , initially planned to starve the Spartans out rather than attack them , but as time wore on it became clear that the Spartans would be able to hold out for longer than anticipated . By offering freedom to Helot s and monetary rewards to free men who would volunteer to carry food across to the island , the Spartans were able to bring in a small but critical stream of food . Some of these men reached the island by approaching from the seaward side at night during rough weather ; others swam underwater towing bags of food . The Athenians , meanwhile , found themselves frequently short on rations , and the entire force was forced to depend on a single spring for its fresh water . In these adverse circumstances , the Athenians began to doubt that they could resolve the issue by siege before winter forced them to lift their blockade . Debate at Athens . This negative turn of fortunes was the source of much concern at Athens , the decision to reject Sparta ' s peace offer became an item of much popular regret . Noting this turn of popular opinion , Cleon , who had been the principal advocate of rejecting the peace offer , claimed that the reports brought back from the scene must be inaccurate . When Nicias , a political opponent of his and a strategos for that year , proposed to send a commission , with Cleon among its members , to verify the reports from Pylos , Cleon attacked him for proposing to waste time that should have been spent attacking . Nicias countered this rhetorical thrust by offering to stand aside as general and allow Cleon to take command of an expeditionary force to Pylos . Although he had no authority to make this offer , the assembly , caught up in the enthusiasm of the moment , went along with him , urging Cleon to back up his words with action . Cleon was probably aware that an attack was already being planned at Pylos , as he was likely to have been in communication with Demosthenes , but once he realized that Nicias ' s offer was more than a rhetorical ploy he attempted to back down from his challenge . The crowd , however , refused to permit this , and Cleon was eventually compelled to accept command . Reassuming the bold attitude he had taken at the start of the debate , Cleon proclaimed that , with the force he had been given , he would either kill or capture the Spartans within twenty days . Naming Demosthenes as his partner in command , he set out from Athens with a force composed of Athenian sailors and ships carrying allied peltast s and archers . Attack on Sphacteria . Demosthenes had already been planning an attack on Sphacteria , as the difficulty of the circumstances his men were in had led him to doubt the viability of a prolonged siege . Moreover , a fire on the island , ignited by Athenian sailors sneaking across to cook a meal away from the crowded confines of Pylos , had denuded the island of vegetation and allowed Demosthenes to examine both the contours of the island and the number and disposition of the defenders . Seeing that only thirty Spartans were detailed to guard the southern end of the island , away from Pylos , Demosthenes landed his 800 hoplites on both the seaward and landward sides of the island one night . The Spartan garrison , thinking that the Athenian ships were only mooring in their usual nightly watch posts , was caught off guard and massacred . At dawn , the remainder of the Athenian force streamed ashore ; these included some 2 , 000 light troops and archers and some 8 , 000 rowers from the fleet , armed with whatever weapons could be found . The Spartans , under their commander Epitadas , attempted to come to grips with the Athenian hoplites and push their enemies back into the sea , but Demosthenes detailed his lightly armed troops , in companies of about 200 men , to occupy high points and harass the enemy with missile fire whenever they approached . When the Spartans rushed at their tormentors , the light troops , unencumbered by heavy hoplite armor , were easily able to run to safety ; dust and ash from the recent fire , stirred up by the commotion , further contributed to the Spartans ' predicament by obscuring their attackers from their sight . Unable to make any headway , the Spartans withdrew in some confusion to the northern end of the island , where they dug in behind their fortifications and hoped to hold out . A stalemate took hold for some time , with the Athenians trying unsuccessfully to dislodge the Spartans from their strong positions . At this point , the commander of the Messenian detachment in the Athenian force , Comon , approached Demosthenes and asked that he be given troops with which to move through the seemingly impassable terrain along the island ' s shore . His request was granted , and Comon led his men into the Spartan rear through a route that had been left unguarded on account of its roughness . When he emerged with his force , the Spartans , in disbelief , abandoned their defenses ; the Athenians seized the approaches to the fort , and the Spartan force stood on the brink of annihilation . 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 Helot s . 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 .