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The naval Battle of Pylos took place in 425 BC during the Peloponnesian War at the peninsula of Pylos, on the present-day Bay of Navarino in Messenia, and was an Athenian victory over Sparta. An Athenian fleet had been driven ashore at Pylos by a storm, and, at the instigation of Demosthenes, the Athenian soldiers fortified the peninsula, and a small force was left there when the fleet departed again. The establishment of an Athenian garrison in Spartan territory frightened the Spartan leadership, and the Spartan army, which had been ravaging Attica under the command of Agis, ended their expedition (the expedition only lasted 15 days) and marched home, and the Spartan fleet at Corcyra sailed to Pylos. Demosthenes had five triremes and their complements of soldiers as a garrison, and was reinforced by 40 hoplites from a Messenian ship that happened to stop at Pylos. In total, Demosthenes probably had about 600 men, only 90 of which were hoplites. He sent two of his triremes to intercept the Athenian fleet and inform Sophocles and Eurymedon of his danger. The Spartans, meanwhile, had 43 triremes and a large land army. Finding himself thus outnumbered, Demosthenes pulled his remaining three triremes up on land and armed their crews with whatever weapons were at hand. He placed the largest part of his force at the strongly fortified point facing the land. Demosthenes then hand picked 60 hoplites and a few archers and brought them to the point where he anticipated the Spartans would launch their amphibious assault. Demosthenes expected that the Spartans would hit the southwest corner of the peninsula where the defensive wall was the weakest and the land was most suitable for a landing. The Spartans attacked where Demosthenes had expected, and the Athenians were faced with simultaneous assaults from land and sea. The Athenians held off the Spartans for a day and a half, however, causing the Spartans to cease their attempts to storm Pylos and instead settled in for a siege. While the Spartans' siege preparations were underway, the Athenian fleet, 50 triremes strong arrived from Zacynthus. The Spartans failed to blockade the entrance of the harbor, so the Athenians were able to sail in and catch the Spartans unprepared; the Spartan fleet was decisively defeated, and the Athenians gained control of the harbor. In doing so, they trapped 420 Spartan hoplites on the island of Sphacteria, off of Pylos. 120 of these were from the Spartiate class, and their peril threw the Spartan government into a panic. Members of the government were dispatched to the scene, and negotiated an armistice on the spot; the entire Spartan fleet was surrendered to the Athenians as a guarantee for Spartan good conduct, and ambassadors were sent to Athens to seek a permanent peace. When these negotiations failed, the Athenians retained possession of the Spartan ships on a pretext, and settled in to besiege the hoplites on Sphacteria; eventually, in the Battle of Sphacteria, those hoplites were captured and taken as hostages to Athens. Pylos remained in Athenian hands, and was used as a base for raids into Spartan territory and as a refuge for fleeing Spartan Helots. ==Prelude== In the summer of 425 BC, an Athenian fleet commanded by Eurymedon and Sophocles, with Demosthenes aboard as an advisor, sailed from Athens to campaign in Sicily and assist Athens' democratic allies at Corcyra.〔Unless otherwise noted, all information in this section is drawn from Thucydides, ''The Peloponnesian War'', 4.2-9〕 Demosthenes held no official position at the time, but was a strategos-elect for the Hellenic year that would begin in midsummer 425, and the two generals had been instructed to allow him to use the fleet around the Peloponnese if he wished. Once the fleet was at sea, Demosthenes revealed his plan, which he had previously kept secret; he wished to land at and fortify Pylos, which he believed to be a particularly promising site for a forward outpost.〔Kagan, ''The Peloponnesian War'', 138〕 (Pylos was a good distance from Sparta by march, and commanded an excellent harbor in the Bay of Navarino.).〔Kagan, ''The Peloponnesian War'', 140. There has been some dispute among scholars over the geography of Pylos, with a few suggesting that the harbor in question is not the Bay of Navarino but actually the lagoon of Osmyn Ago on the north side of Pylos, but these arguments have won little traction.〕 The generals rejected this plan, but Demosthenes caught a stroke of luck when a storm blew and drove the fleet to the shore at Pylos. Even then the generals refused to order the fortification of the promontory, and Demosthenes was similarly rebuffed when he attempted to appeal directly to the troops and subordinate commanders; only when the boredom of waiting out the storm overcame the Athenians did they set to work building fortifications. Once they began, however, the Athenians worked hard and quickly, and the promontory was fortified and defensible within a few days. The fleet sailed off towards Corcyra, where a Spartan fleet of 60 ships was operating, leaving Demosthenes with five ships and their complements of sailors and soldiers to defend the new fort. The Spartan government was initially unconcerned with the Athenians' presence at Pylos, assuming that they would soon depart. Once it became clear, however, that Demosthenes and his men intended to hold the site, the king Agis, who was at the head of an army ravaging Attica, turned for home, cutting his invasion short after only 15 days in Athenian territory. Once he reached home, Spartan forces immediately moved towards Pylos, the fleet at Corcyra was ordered to sail there immediately, and a summons was sent out calling allied states around the Peloponnese to send troops. The Spartan fleet managed to slip past the Athenian fleet at Zacynthus, but Demosthenes anticipated its arrival and dispatched two of his triremes to inform the Athenian fleet of Pylos' plight; that fleet set out for Pylos as soon as it received the news. Pylos, meanwhile, had been reinforced by the arrival of a privateer with a cargo of arms, which were distributed to the sailors, and by a Messenian pinnace, which brought 40 more hoplites to defend the peninsula. (Donald Kagan has asserted that these apparently fortuitous arrivals must have been the result of planning by Demosthenes.〔Kagan, ''The Peloponnesian War'', 142〕) To meet the imminent Spartan attack, Demosthenes divided his force, placing most of his men at the point where the promontory touched the mainland, while he with 60 hoplites and a few archers waited at the point facing out to sea where the Athenian wall was weakest. When the Spartan fleet arrived, the Spartans prepared to blockade the entrance to the harbor by placing hoplites on the island of Sphacteria, which was in the middle of the entrance, and planned to place ships in the gaps on either side of that island when the Athenian fleet arrived. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Battle of Pylos」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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