In 413 BCE, Demosthenes led an
army of over 5,000 Athenian and allied forces to Sicily in order to reinforce a
preexisting siege of Syracuse. A certain band of around 1,300 tardy Thracian
mercenaries was meant to be sailing with that army, but when the
swords-for-hire arrived in Athens, they found that Demosthenes had already
sailed away. The jobless Thracians then renewed the offer of their military
services to the city of Athens, which at that time was plagued by the presence
of a nearby Spartan stronghold that had recently been built at Decelea, in the Athenian
heartland of Attica. Although the Thracians were helpful in countering
Peloponnesian raids, the Athenians decided that the mercenary company was too
expensive to keep around. Athens eventually forced the Thracians to leave, but
as they headed home to Thrace, the mercenaries were paid for one last job.
Athens tasked the
homeward-bound Thracian mercenaries with the job of spreading chaos in the
Spartan-aligned regions of Greece as they traveled back to Thrace. To help with this mission, the Athenians
apparently gave the Thracians an advisor (or possibly a general), as well as a
fleet of transport ships. The Thracians sailed these transports along the coast
of Greece, intending to sail into the Euboean Gulf, but they took a detour to
raid Tanagra, on the borderland between Attica and Boeotia. After rushing back
to their ships with the plunder, the mercenaries passed through the Euripus
Strait between Euboea and mainland Greece, continuing to sail along the
Boeotian shoreline.
Yet, before the Thracians
sailed too far from the Euripus Strait, they disembarked on Boeotian soil and
began marching inland. For unknown reasons, but perhaps on direction from their
Athenian advisor, the Thracians continued marching inland until they reached an
uninformed and poorly defended city called Mycalessus. It was a settlement
seemingly devoted to farming, with little else of note except a few modest
shrines and a large school for boys. Perhaps the city also catered to
travelers, for there was a sizable temple of Hermes located only two miles away
from the town. As Mycalessus was well inland and not a power player in the
region, the people there had unfortunately let their guard down. The city was
ill-protected by an inadequate garrison, and, although the city did have walls,
the defensive features of the settlement were dilapidated and crumbling.
Unfortunately, as the city also apparently had little in the way of scouts or
patrols, Mycalessus left its gates wide open and it walls virtually undefended.
The city remained in this sorry state as the army of Thracian mercenaries
marched ever closer.
Eventually, the mercenaries
arrived at the aforementioned temple of Hermes, which lay about two miles out
from the city. Even then, the city of Mycalessus apparently still had no
knowledge of the danger they were in. The mercenaries spent the night camped by
the temple, but once daybreak arrived, they quickly rushed across the two mile
stretch to the city and assaulted the unprepared people of Mycalessus. When the
mercenaries attacked, the gates were still open, the wall still had gaps, and
the garrison of the city was still understaffed. The Athenian general and
historian, Thucydides (c. 460-400 BCE), wrote of this event in his History of the Peloponnesian War and his
account infers that the city fell without a battle—the mercenaries were able to
break in and immediately begin pillaging.
For no stated reason, the
mercenary army’s occupation of Mycalessus became a bloodbath. According to
Thucydides, “The Thracians burst into Mycalessus, sacked the houses and
temples, and butchered the inhabitants, sparing neither the young nor the old,
but methodically killing everyone they met, women and children alike, and even
the farm animals and every living thing they saw” (History of the Peloponnesian War, Book VII, section 29). As
happened with the city’s temples and houses, the boys’ school of Mycalessus was
also invaded, and all of the schoolchildren who had gone to class that morning
were reportedly massacred by the mercenaries. Thucydides’ sympathy for the city
is palpable in his writing. He stated: “Mycalessus lost a considerable part of
its population. It was a small city, but in the disaster just described its
people suffered calamities as pitiable as any which took place during the war”
(History of the Peloponnesian War,
Book VII, section 30).
Fortunately for the survivors
of Mycalessus, the city of Thebes had a competent intelligence network and
learned of the attack quickly. A respected Boeotian commander named Scriphondas
mobilized the forces of Thebes and rushed to the aid of Mycalessus. The Thebans
caught the mercenaries unawares and unprepared. Some Thracians were still pillaging
in the city at the time, while the majority were back out in the field. Upon
the arrival of the Boeotians, the mercenaries apparently abandoned any of their
comrades still inside the city and began an orderly withdrawal back toward their
ships. The main contingent of Thracians was able to escape to the coast by
carefully alternating between advance and retreat against the pursuing Thebans.
Any mercenaries still inside the city, however, were said to have been killed
by the newly arrived Boeotians forces.
When the embattled Thracian
mercenaries reached the sea, a problem quickly developed. The Thebans had
chased the mercenaries to the coast and the Thracians had not been able to
fully embark on the ships before Boeotian archers forced the transports to sail
out of arrow range. Many mercenaries found themselves stranded and some were
either slain on the beach or drowned as they tried to swim to the transports. Although
the majority of the mercenaries had escaped, a reported 250 Thracians died
during the Theban counter-attack at Mycalessus or on the beach. The casualties
of the Theban relief force was much lighter, with twenty men reported dead.
Unfortunately, the leader of the Theban army, Scriphondas, was among the dead.
Written by C. Keith Hansley.
Picture Attribution: (Scene
depicting Aphrodite saving Aeneas, Etruscan black-figure amphora, ca. 480 BC.
Martin-von-Wagner-Museum, L 793, [Public Domain] via Creative Commons).
- History of the Peloponnesian War by Thucydides, translated by Rex Warner and introduced by M. I. Finley. New York: Penguin Classics, 1972.
