I’ve always been a bit leery of Brasidas as he is described in Thucydides. He is described as being unlike most other Spartans – not so domineering, a good speaker, etc. – and is one of the few Spartans that Thucydides paints a very positive picture of.

I have had doubts about a lot of this for a couple of reasons. Firstly, there is the fact that Brasidas defeated Thucydides personally. This came at a very inopportune moment, as it allowed Sparta to gain better terms from the peace treaty than if the Athenians had negotiated immediately after Sphakteria. Secondly, Thucydides was exiled for his failure against Brasidas and he might well have been making some excuses.

Still, that doesn’t say much about the tactics used by Brasidas and if they were in any way different from the standard. So I took a very cursory look through Thucydides and made a few notes. In his first appearance, Brasidas races through the scattered lines of the Athenian besiegers and enters Methone. From there he is able to relieve the siege. Then he makes an overland march with rowers to Megara in order to stage a naval raid on the Piraeus. This, however, appears to have been the Megarans idea. There is a naval action at Corcyra and a failed landing at Pylos in which he displays rather standard Spartan virtues.

He next appears on his way to Thrace, where he makes his most important impact on the war. There is a forced march through Thessaly in order to avoid a delaying engagement, but this is on the advice of his guides. He makes a big speech at Akanthos to win them away from the Athenians, but fails to take Amphipolis immediately because he allows his troops to stop and plunder. The first real description of a battle involving Brasidas is the capture of Torone. His second expedition into Lynkos is a detailed description of a running battle, but it sounds very like the march of the 10,000. Finally is the battle for Amphipolis where he is killed.

Torone and Amphipolis have the only real tactical descriptions, but I don’t know how different the tactics used are from the standard. I’ll leave that up to someone with more knowledge of these things. However, I will say that from this cursory examination, Brasidas seems to be different from the average Spartan on the strategic level. His approach to the Thracian cities is what really enabled his success, offering them mild terms and trying to be generally friendly to neutrals.