orwards two or three times, the last man
that passed over from the Lacedaemonians on the continent brought this
message: "The Lacedaemonians bid you to decide for yourselves so long as
you do nothing dishonourable"; upon which after consulting together they
surrendered themselves and their arms. The Athenians, after guarding
them that day and night, the next morning set up a trophy in the island,
and got ready to sail, giving their prisoners in batches to be guarded
by the captains of the galleys; and the Lacedaemonians sent a herald and
took up their dead. The number of the killed and prisoners taken in the
island was as follows: four hundred and twenty heavy infantry had passed
over; three hundred all but eight were taken alive to Athens; the rest
were killed. About a hundred and twenty of the prisoners were Spartans.
The Athenian loss was small, the battle not having been fought at close
quarters.

The blockade in all, counting from the fight at sea to the battle in
the island, had lasted seventy-two days. For twenty of these, during the
absence of the envoys sent to treat for peace, the men had provisions
given them, for the rest they were fed by the smugglers. Corn and other
victual was found in the island; the commander Epitadas having kept
the men upon half rations. The Athenians and Peloponnesians now each
withdrew their forces from Pylos, and went home, and crazy as Cleon's
promise was, he fulfilled it, by bringing the men to Athens within the
twenty days as he had pledged himself to do.

Nothing that happened in the war surprised the Hellenes so much as this.
It was the opinion that no force or famine could make the Lacedaemonians
give up their arms, but that they would fight on as they could, and
die with them in their hands: indeed people could scarcely believe that
those who had surrendered were of the same stuff as the fallen; and
an Athenian ally, who some time after insultingly asked one of the
prisoners from the island if those that had fallen were men of honour,
received for answer that the atraktos--that is, the arrow--would be
worth a great deal if it could tell men of honour from the rest; in
allusion to the fact that the killed were those whom the stones and the
arrows happened to hit.

Upon the arrival of the men the Athenians determined to keep them in
prison until the peace, and if the Peloponnesians invaded their country
in the interval, to bring them out and put them to death. Meanwhile the