Brasidas

Brasidas (d. 422 bc), Spartan commander during the Peloponnesian wars who first came to notice in 431 bc when he saved Methone from an Athenian seaborne attack, and this may have led to his election to the ephorate that autumn. In 429 he was one of the advisers to a Spartan admiral in the Gulf of Corinth and took part in a raid on Salamis. In 427 he was again adviser to an admiral, and after a victory off Corcyra, urged in vain an attack on its main town. In 425 he was wounded in the seaborne attack on the Athenian base at Pylos, and in 424 was instrumental in saving Megara for the Spartan alliance. But his chief claim to fame is as commander of a force of emancipated helots and Peloponnesian mercenaries in Macedonia and Chalcidice from 424 to 422 when, by a mixture of charm and threats, he won over a number of Athens' allies, including the strategically important Amphipolis. He was finally mortally wounded outside its walls in the battle in which the Athenian Cleon also lost his life. Brasidas was a bold and charismatic commander with advanced ideas about how to use mixed forces of hoplites and light troops.

Bibliography

• Kagan, Donald, The Archidamian War (Ithaca, NY, & London, 1974)

— John Lazenby