Diodorus Siculus, Library 8-40

§ 12.47.3 The Athenians appointed Xenophon and Phanomachus generals and sent them to Thrace with a thousand soldiers. When this force arrived at Spartolus in the territory of Bottice, it laid waste the land and cut the grain in the first growth. But the Olynthians came to the aid of the Bottiaeans and defeated them in battle; and there were slain of the Athenians both the generals and the larger part of the soldiers.

§ 12.47.4 And while this was taking place, the Lacedemonians, yielding to the request of the Ambraciotes, made a campaign against Acarnania. Their leader was Cnemus and he had a thousand foot-soldiers and a few ships. To these he added a considerable number of soldiers from their allies and entered Acarnania, pitching his camp near the city known as Stratus.

§ 12.47.5 But the Acarnanians gathered their forces and, laying an ambush, slew many of the enemy, and they forced Cnemus to withdraw his army to the city called Oeniadae.

§ 12.48.1 During the same time Phormio, the Athenian general, with twenty triremes fell in with forty-seven Lacedemonian warships. And engaging them in battle he sank the flag-ship of the enemy and put many of the rest of the ships out of action, capturing twelve together with their crews and pursuing the remaining as far as the land. The Lacedemonians, after having suffered defeat contrary to their expectations, fled for safety with the ships which were left them to Patrae in Achaea. This sea battle took place off Rhium, as it is called. The Athenians set up a trophy, dedicated a ship to Poseidon at the strait, and then sailed off to the city of Naupactus, which was in their alliance.

§ 12.48.2 The Lacedemonians sent other ships to Patrae. These ships joined to themselves the triremes which had survived the battle and assembled at Rhium, and also the land force of the Peloponnesians met them at the same place and pitched camp near the fleet.

§ 12.48.3 And Phormio, having become puffed up with pride over the victory he had just won, had the daring to attack the ships of the enemy, although they far outnumbered his; and some of them he sank, though losing ships of his own, so that the victory he won was equivocal. After this, when the Athenians had dispatched twenty triremes, the Lacedemonians sailed off in fear to Corinth, not daring to offer battle. These, then, were the events of this year.

§ 12.49.1 When Diotimus was archon in Athens, the Romans elected as consuls Gaius Julius and Proculus Verginius Tricostus, and the Eleians celebrated the Eighty-eighth Olympiad, that in which Symmachus of Messene in Sicily won the “stadion.”

§ 12.49.2 In this year Cnemus, the Lacedemonian admiral, who was inactive in Corinth, decided to seize the Peiraeus. He had received information that no ships in the harbour had been put into the water for duty and no soldiers had been detailed to guard the port; for the Athenians, as he learned, had become negligent about guarding it because they by no means expected any enemy would have the audacity to seize the place.

§ 12.49.3 Consequently Cnemus, launching forty triremes which had been hauled up on the beach at Megara, sailed by night to Salamis, and falling unexpectedly on the fortress on Salamis called Boudorium, he towed away three ships and overran the entire island.

§ 12.49.4 When the Salaminians signalled by beacon-fires to the inhabitants of Attica, the Athenians, thinking that the Peiraeus had been seized, quickly rushed forth in great confusion to its succour; but when they learned what had taken place, they quickly manned a considerable number of warships and sailed to Salamis.

§ 12.49.5 The Peloponnesians, having been disappointed in their main design, sailed away from Salamis and returned home. And the Athenians, after the retreat of the enemy, in the case of Salamis gave it a more vigilant guard and left on it a considerable garrison, and the Peiraeus they strengthened here and there with booms and adequate guards.

§ 12.50.1 In the same period Sitalces, the king of the Thracians, had succeeded to the kingship of a small land indeed but nonetheless by his personal courage and wisdom he greatly increased his dominion, equitably governing his subjects, playing the part of a brave soldier in battle and of a skilful general, and furthermore giving close attention to his revenues. In the end he attained to such power that he ruled over more extensive territory than had any who had preceded him on the throne of Thrace.

§ 12.50.2 For the coastline of his kingdom began at the territory of the Abderites and stretched as far as the Ister River, and for a man going from the sea to the interior the distance was so great that a man on foot travelling light required thirteen days for the journey. Ruling as he did over a territory so extensive he enjoyed annual revenues of more than a thousand talents;

§ 12.50.3 and when he was waging war in the period we are discussing he mustered from Thrace more than one hundred and twenty thousand infantry and fifty thousand cavalry. But with respect to this war we must set forth its causes, in order that the discussion of it may be clear to our readers. Now Sitalces, since he had entered into a treaty of friendship with the Athenians, agreed to support them in their war in Thrace; and consequently, since he desired, with the help of the Athenians, to subdue the Chalcidians, he made ready a very considerable army.

§ 12.50.4 And since he was at the same time on bad terms with Perdiccas, the king of the Macedonians, he decided to bring back Amyntas, the son of Philip, and place him upon the Macedonian throne. It was for these two reasons, therefore, as we have described them, that he was forced to raise an imposing army. When all his preparations for the campaign had been made, he led forth the whole army, marched through Thrace, and invaded Macedonia.

§ 12.50.5 The Macedonians, dismayed at the great size of the army, did not dare face him in battle, but they removed both the grain and all the property they could into their most powerful strongholds, in which they remained inactive.

§ 12.50.6 The Thracians, after placing Amyntas upon the throne, at the outset made an effort to win over the cities by means of parleys and embassies, but when no one paid any attention to them, they forthwith made an assault on the first stronghold and took it by storm.

§ 12.50.7 After this some of the cities and strongholds submitted to them of their own accord through fear. And after plundering all Macedonia and appropriating much booty the Thracians turned against the Greek cities in Chalcidice.

§ 12.51.1 While Sitalces was engaged in these operations, the Thessalians, Achaeans, Magnesians, and all the other Greeks dwelling between Macedonia and Thermopylae took counsel together and united in raising a considerable army; for they were apprehensive lest the Thracians with all their myriads of soldiers should invade their territory and they themselves should be in peril of losing their native lands.

§ 12.51.2 Since the Chalcidians made the same preparations, Sitalces, having learned that the Greeks had mustered strong armies and realizing that his soldiers were suffering from the hardships of the winter, came to terms with Perdiccas, concluded a connection by marriage with him, and then led his forces back to Thrace.

§ 12.52.1 While these events were taking place, the Lacedemonians, accompanied by their allies of the Peloponnesus, invaded Attica under the command of Archidamus their king, destroyed the grain, which was in its first growth, ravaged the countryside, and then returned home.

§ 12.52.2 The Athenians, since they did not dare meet the invaders in the field and were distressed because of the plague and the lack of provisions, had only bleak hopes for the future. These, then, were the events of this year.

§ 12.53.1 When Eucleides was archon in Athens, the Romans elected in place of consuls three military tribunes, Marcus Manius, Quintus Sulpicius Praetextatus, and Servius Cornelius Cossus. This year in Sicily the Leontines, who were colonists from Chalcis but also kinsmen of the Athenians, were attacked, as it happened, by the Syracusans. And being hard-pressed in the war and in danger of having their city taken by storm because of the superior power of the Syracusans, they dispatched ambassadors to Athens asking the Athenian people to send them immediate aid and save their city from the perils threatening it.

§ 12.53.2 The leader of the embassy was Gorgias the rhetorician, who in eloquence far surpassed all his contemporaries. He was the first man to devise rules of rhetoric and so far excelled all other men in the instruction offered by sophists that he received from his pupils a fee of one hundred minas.

§ 12.53.3 Now when Gorgias had arrived in Athens and been introduced to the people in assembly, he discoursed to them upon the subject of the alliance, and by the novelty of his speech he filled the Athenians, who are by nature clever and fond of dialectic, with wonder.

§ 12.53.4 For he was the first to use the rather unusual and carefully devised structures of space, such as antithesis, sentences with equal members or balanced clauses or similar endings, and the like, all of which at that time was enthusiastically received because the advice was exotic, but is now looked upon as laboured and to be ridiculed when employed too frequently and tediously.

§ 12.53.5 In the end he won the Athenians over to an alliance with the Leontines, and after having been admired in Athens for his rhetorical skill he made his return to Leontini.

§ 12.54.1 For some time past the Athenians had been covetous of Sicily because of the fertility of its land, and so at the moment, gladly accepting the proposals of Gorgias, they voted to send an allied force to the Leontines, offering as their excuse the need and request of their kinsmen, whereas in fact they were eager to get possession of the island.

§ 12.54.2 And indeed not many years previously, when the Corinthians and Cercyraeans were at war with one another and both were bent upon getting the Athenians allies, the popular Assembly chose the alliance with the Cercyraeans for the reason that Cercyra was advantageously situated on the sea route to Sicily.

§ 12.54.3 For, speaking generally, the Athenians, having won the supremacy of the sea and accomplished great deeds, not only enjoyed the aid of many allies and possessed powerful armaments, but also had taken over a great sum of ready money, since they had transferred from Delos to Athens the funds of the confederacy of the Greeks, which amounted to more than ten thousand talents; they also enjoyed the services of great commanders who had stood the test of actual leadership; and by means of all these assets it was their hope not only to defeat the Lacedemonians but also, after they had won the supremacy over all Greece, to lay hands on Sicily.

§ 12.54.4 These, then, were the reasons why the Athenians voted to give aid to the Leontines, and they sent twenty ships to Sicily and as generals Laches and Charoeades. These sailed to Rhegium, where they added to their force twenty ships from the Rhegians and the other Chalcidian colonists. Making Rhegium their base they first of all overran the islands of the Liparaeans because they were allies of the Syracusans, and after this they sailed to Locri, where they captured five ships of the Locrians, and then laid siege to the stronghold of Mylae.

§ 12.54.5 When the neighbouring Sicilian Greeks came to the aid of the Mylaeans, a battle developed in which the Athenians were victorious, slaying more than a thousand men and taking prisoner not less than six hundred; and at once they captured and occupied the stronghold.

§ 12.54.6 While these events were taking place there arrived forty ships which the Athenian people had sent, deciding to push the war more vigorously; the commanders were Eurymedon and Sophocles. When all the triremes were gathered into one place, a fleet of considerable strength had been fitted out, consisting as it did of eighty triremes.

§ 12.54.7 But since the war was dragging on, the Leontines entered into negotiations with the Syracusans and came to terms with them. Consequently the Athenian triremes sailed back home, and the Syracusans, granting the Leontines the right of citizenship, made them all Syracusans and their city a stronghold of the Syracusans. Such were the affairs in Sicily at this time.

§ 12.55.1 In Greece the Lesbians revolted from the Athenians; for they harboured against them the complaint that, when they wished to merge all the cities of Lesbos with the city of the Mytilenaeans, the Athenians had prevented it.

§ 12.55.2 Consequently, after dispatching ambassadors to the Peloponnesians and concluding an alliance with them, they advised the Spartans to make an attempt to seize the supremacy at sea, and toward this design they promised to supply many triremes for the war.

§ 12.55.3 The Lacedemonians were glad to accept this offer, but while they were busied with the building of the triremes, the Athenians forestalled their completion by sending forthwith a force against Lesbos, having manned forty ships and chosen Cleinippides as their commander. He gathered reinforcements from the allies and put in at Mytilene.

§ 12.55.4 In a naval battle which followed the Mytilenaeans were defeated and enclosed within a siege of their city. Meanwhile the Lacedemonians had voted to send aid to the Mytilenaeans and were making ready a strong fleet, but the Athenians forestalled them by sending to Lesbos additional ships along with a thousand hoplites.

§ 12.55.5 Their commander, Paches the son of Epiclerus, upon arriving at Mytilene, took over the force already there, threw a wall about the city, and kept launching continuous assaults upon it not only by land but by sea as well.

§ 12.55.6 The Lacedemonians sent forty-five triremes to Mytilene under the command of Alcidas, and they also invaded Attica which they had passed by before, ravaged the countryside, and then returned home.

§ 12.55.7 And the Mytilenaeans, who were distressed by lack of food and the war and were also quarrelling among themselves, formally surrendered the city to the besiegers.

§ 12.55.8 While in Athens the people were deliberating on what action they should take against the Mytilenaeans, Cleon, the leader of the populace and a man of cruel and violent nature, spurred on the people, declaring that they should slay all the male Mytilenaeans from the youth upward and sell into slavery the children and women.

§ 12.55.9 In the end the Athenians were won over and voted as Cleon had proposed, and messengers were dispatched to Mytilene to make known to the general the measures decreed by the popular assembly.

§ 12.55.10 Even as Paches had finished reading the decree a second decree arrived, the opposite of the first. Paches was glad when he learned that the Athenians had changed their minds, and gathering the Mytilenaeans in assembly he declared them free of the charges as well as of the greatest fears. The Athenians pulled down the walls of Mytilene and portioned out in allotments the entire island of Lesbos with the exception of the territory of the Methymnaeans. Such, then, was the end of the revolt of the Lesbians from the Athenians.

§ 12.56.1 About the same time the Lacedemonians who were besieging Plataea threw a wall about the city and kept a guard over it of many soldiers. And as the siege dragged on and the Athenians still sent them no help, the besieged not only were suffering from lack of food but had also lost many of their fellow citizens in the assaults.

§ 12.56.2 While they were thus at a loss and were conferring together how they could be saved, the majority were of the opinion that they should make no move, but the rest, some two hundred in number, decided to force a passage through the guards by night and make their way to Athens.

§ 12.56.3 And so, on a moonless night for which they had waited, they persuaded the rest of the Plataeans to make an assault upon one side of the encircling wall; they themselves then made ready ladders, and when the enemy rushed to defend the opposite parts of the walls, they managed by means of the ladders to get up on the wall, and after slaying the guards they made their escape to Athens.

§ 12.56.4 The next day the Lacedemonians, provoked at the flight of the men who had got away from the city, made an assault upon the city of the Plataeans and strained every nerve to subdue the besieged by storm; and the Plataeans in dismay sent envoys to the enemy and surrendered to them both themselves and the city.

§ 12.56.5 The commanders of the Lacedemonians, summoning the Plataeans one by one, asked what good deed he had ever performed for the Lacedemonians, and when each confessed that he had done them no good turn, they asked further if he had ever done the Spartans any harm; and when not a man could deny that he had, they condemned all of them to death.

§ 12.56.6 Consequently they slew all who still remained, razed the city to the ground, and farmed out its territory. So the Plataeans, who had maintained with the greatest constancy their alliance with the Athenians, fell unjust victims to the most tragic fate.

§ 12.57.1 While these events were taking place, in Cercyra bitter civil strife and contentiousness arose for the feeling reasons. In the fighting about Epidamnus many Cercyraeans had been taken prisoner and cast into the state prison, and these men promised the Corinthians that, if the Corinthians set them free, they would hand Cercyra over to them.

§ 12.57.2 The Corinthians gladly agreed to the proposals, and the Cercyraeans, after going through the pretence of paying a ransom, were released on bail of a considerable sum of talents furnished by the proxeni.

§ 12.57.3 Faithful to their promises the Cercyraeans, as soon as they had returned to their native land, arrested and put to death the men who had always been popular leaders and had acted as champions of the people. They also put an end to the democracy; but when, a little after this time, the Athenians came to the help of the popular party, the Cercyraeans, who had now recovered their liberty, undertook to mete out punishment to the men responsible for the revolt against the established government. These, in fear of the usual punishment, fled for refuge to the altars of the gods and became suppliants of the people and of the gods.

§ 12.57.4 And the Cercyraeans, out of reverence for the gods, absolved them from that punishment but expelled them from the city. But these exiles, undertaking a second revolution, fortified a strong position on the island, and continued to harass the Cercyraeans. These, then, were the events of this year.

§ 12.58.1 When Euthynes was archon in Athens, the Romans elected in place of consuls three military tribunes, Marcus Fabius, Marcus Falinius, and Lucius Servilius. In this year the Athenians, who had enjoyed a period of relief from the plague, became involved again in the same misfortunes;

§ 12.58.2 for they were so seriously attacked by the disease that of their soldiers they lost more than four thousand infantry and four hundred cavalry, and of the rest of the population, both free and slave, more than ten thousand. And since history seeks to ascertain the cause of the malignancy of this disease, it is our duty to explain these matters.

§ 12.58.3 As a result of heavy rains in the previous winter the ground had become soaked with water, and many low-lying regions, having received a vast amount of water, turned into shallow pools and held stagnant water, very much as marshy regions do; and when these waters became warm in the summer and grew putrid, thick foul vapours were formed, which, rising up in fumes, corrupted the surrounding air, the very thing which may be seen taking place in marshy grounds which are by nature pestilential.

§ 12.58.4 Contributing also to the disease was the bad character of the food available; for the crops which were raised that year were altogether watery and their natural quality was corrupted. And a third cause of the disease proved to be the failure of the etesian winds to blow, by with normally most of the heat in summer is cooled; and when the heat intensified and the air grew fiery, the bodies of the inhabitants, being without anything to cool them, wasted away.

§ 12.58.5 Consequently all the illnesses which prevailed at that time were found to be accompanied by fever, the cause of which was the excessive heat. And this was the reason why most of the sick threw themselves into the cisterns and springs in their craving to cool their bodies.

§ 12.58.6 The Athenians, however, because the disease was so severe, ascribed the causes of their misfortune to the deity. Consequently, acting upon the command of a certain oracle, they purified the island of Delos, which was sacred to Apollo and had been defiled, as men thought, by the burial there of the dead.

§ 12.58.7 Digging up, therefore, all the graves on Delos, they transferred the remains to the island of Rheneia, as it is called, which lies near Delos. They also passed a law that neither birth nor burial should be allowed on Delos. And they also celebrated the festival assembly, the Delia, which had been held in former days but had not been observed for a long time.

§ 12.59.1 While the Athenians were busied with these matters, the Lacedemonians, taking with them the Peloponnesians, pitched camp at the Isthmus with the intention of invading Attica again; but when great earthquakes took place, they were filled with superstitious fear and returned to their native lands.

§ 12.59.2 And so severe in fact were the shocks in many parts of Greece that the sea actually swept away and destroyed some cities lying on the coast, while in Locris the strip of land forming a peninsula was torn through and the island known as Atalante was formed.

§ 12.59.3 While these events were taking place, the Lacedemonians colonized Trachis, as it was called, and renamed it Heracleia, for the following reasons.

§ 12.59.4 The Trachinians had been at war with the neighbouring Oetaeans for many years and had lost the larger number of their citizens. Since the city was deserted, they thought it proper that the Lacedemonians, who were colonists from Trachis, should assume the care of it. And the Lacedemonians, both because of their kinship and because Heracles, their ancestor, in ancient times had made his home in Trachis, decided to make it a great city.

§ 12.59.5 Consequently the Lacedemonians and the Peloponnesians sent forth four thousand colonists and accepted any other Greeks who wished to have a part in the colony; the latter numbered not less than six thousand. The result was that they made Trachis a city of ten thousand inhabitants, and after portioning out the territory in allotments they named the city Heracleia.

§ 12.60.1 When Stratocles was archon in Athens, in Rome in place of consuls three military tribunes were elected, Lucius Furius, Spurius Pinarius, and Gaius Metellus. This year the Athenians chose Demosthenes general and sent him forth with thirty ships and an adequate body of soldiers. He added to his force fifteen ships from the Cercyraeans and soldiers from the Cephallenians, Acarnanians, and the Messenians in Naupactus, and then sailed to Leucas. After ravaging the territory of the Leucadians he sailed to Aetolia and plundered many of its villages. But the Aetolians rallied to oppose him and there was a battle in which the Athenians were defeated, whereupon they withdrew to Naupactus.

§ 12.60.2 The Aetolians, elated by their victory, after adding to their army three thousand Lacedemonian soldiers, marched upon Naupactus, which was inhabited at the time by Messenians, but were beaten off.

§ 12.60.3 After this they marched upon the city called Molycria and captured it. But the Athenian general, Demosthenes, being concerned lest the Aetolians should reduce by siege Naupactus also, summoned a thousand hoplites from Acarnania and sent them to Naupactus.

§ 12.60.4 And Demosthenes, while tarrying in Acarnania, fell in with a thousand Ambraciotes, who were encamped there, and joining battle with them he destroyed nearly the entire force. And when the men of Ambracia came out against him en masse, again Demosthenes slew the larger number of them, so that their city became almost uninhabited.

§ 12.60.5 Demosthenes then believed that he should take Ambracia by storm, hoping that he would have an easy conquest because the city had none to defend it. But the Acarnanians, fearing lest, if the Athenians became masters of the city, they should be harder neighbours to deal with than the Ambraciotes, refused to follow him.

§ 12.60.6 And since they were thus in disagreement, the Acarnanians came to terms with the Ambraciotes and concluded with them a peace of one hundred years, while Demosthenes, being left in the lurch by the Acarnanians, sailed back with his twenty ships to Athens. The Ambraciotes, who had experienced a great disaster, sent for a garrison of Lacedemonians, since they stood in fear of the Athenians.

§ 12.61.1 Demosthenes now led an expedition against Pylos, intending to fortify this stronghold as a threat to the Peloponnesus; for it is an exceptionally strong place, situated in Messenia and four hundred stades distant from Sparta. Since he had at the time both many ships and an adequate number of soldiers, in twenty days he threw a wall about Pylos. The Lacedemonians, when they learned that Pylos had been fortified, gathered together a large force, both infantry and ships.

§ 12.61.2 Consequently, when they set sail for Pylos, they not only had a fleet of forty-five fully equipped triremes but also marched with an army of twelve thousand soldiers; for they considered it to be a disgraceful thing that men who were not brave enough to defend Attica while it was being ravaged should fortify and hold a fortress in the Peloponnesus.

§ 12.61.3 Now these forces under the command of Thrasymedes pitched their camp in the neighbourhood of Pylos. And since the troops were seized by an eager desire to undergo any and every danger and to take Pylos by storm, the Lacedemonians stationed the ships with their prows facing the entrance to the harbour in order that they might use them for blocking the enemy's attempt to enter, and assaulting the walls with the infantry in successive waves and displaying all possible rivalry, they put up contests of amazing valour.

§ 12.61.4 Also to the island called Sphacteria, which extends lengthwise to the harbour and protects it from the winds, they transported the best troops of the Lacedemonians and their allies This they did in their desire to forestall the Athenians in getting control of the island before them, since its situation was especially advantageous to the prosecution of the siege.

§ 12.61.5 And though they were engaged every day in the fighting before the fortifications and were suffering wounds because of the superior height of the wall, they did not relax the violence of their fighting; as a consequence, many of them were slain and not a few were wounded as they pressed upon a position which had been fortified.

§ 12.61.6 The Athenians, who had secured beforehand a place which was also a natural stronghold and possessed large supplies of missiles and a great abundance of everything else they might need, kept defending their position with spirit; for they hoped that, if they were successful in their design, they could carry the whole war to the Peloponnesus and ravage, bit by bit, the territory of the enemy.

§ 12.62.1 Both sides displayed unsurpassable energy in the siege, and as for the Spartans in their assaults upon the walls, while many others were objects of wonder for their deeds of valour, the greatest acclaim was won by Brasidas.

§ 12.62.2 For when the captains of the triremes lacked the courage to bring the ships to land because of the rugged nature of the shore, he, being himself the commander of a trireme, called out in a loud voice to the pilot, ordering him not to spare the vessel but to drive the trireme at full speed to the land; for it would be disgraceful, he cried, for Spartans to be unsparing of their lives as they fought for victory, and yet to spare their vessels and to endure the sight of Athenians holding the soil of Laconia.

§ 12.62.3 And finally he succeeded in forcing the pilot to drive the ship forward and, when the trireme struck the shore, Brasidas, taking his stand on the gangway, fought off from there the multitude of Athenians who converged upon him. And at the outset he slew many as they came at him, but after a while, as numerous missiles assailed him, he suffered many wounds on the front of his body.

§ 12.62.4 In the end he suffered much loss of blood from the wounds, and as he lost consciousness his arm extended over the side of the ship and his shield, slipping off and falling into the sea, came into the hands of the enemy.

§ 12.62.5 After this Brasidas, who had built up a heap of many corpses of the enemy, was himself carried off half-dead from the ship by his men, having surpassed to such a degree all other men in bravery that, whereas in the case of all other men those who lose their shields are punished with death, he for that very reason won for himself glory.

§ 12.62.6 Now the Lacedemonians, although they kept making continuous assaults upon Pylos and had lost many soldiers, remained steadfast in the fierce struggles. And one may well be amazed at the strange perversity of Fortune and at the singular character of her ordering of what happened at Pylos.

§ 12.62.7 For the Athenians, defending themselves from a base on Laconian soil, were gaining the mastery over the Spartans, whereas the Lacedemonians, regarding their own soil as the enemy's, were assaulting the enemy from the sea as their base; and, as it happened, those who were masters of the land in this case controlled the see, and those who held first place on the sea were beating off an attack on land which they held.

§ 12.63.1 Since the siege dragged on and the Athenians, after their victory with their ships, were preventing the conveyance of food to the land, the soldiers caught on the island were in danger of death from starvation. Consequently the Lacedemonians, fearing for the men left on the island, sent an embassy to Athens to discuss the ending of the war. When no agreement was being reached, they asked for an exchange of men, the Athenians to get back and equal number of their soldiers now held prisoner; but not even to this would the Athenians agree. Whereupon the ambassadors spoke out frankly in Athens, that by their unwillingness to effect an exchange of prisoners the Athenians acknowledged that Lacedemonians were better men than they. 3 Meanwhile the Athenians wore down the bodily strength of the Spartans on Sphacteria through their lack of provisions and accepted their formal surrender. Of the men who gave themselves up have and twenty were Spartans and one hundred and eighty were of their allies. 4 These, then, were brought by Cleon the leader of the populace, since he held the office of general when this took place, in chains to Athens; and the people voted to keep them in custody in case the Lacedemonians should be willing to end the war, but to slay all the captives if they should decide to continue it. 5 After this they sent for select troops from the Messenians who had been settled in Naupactus, joined to them an adequate force from their other allies, and turned over to them the garrisoning of Pylos; for they believed that the Messenians, by reason of their hatred of the Spartans, would show the greatest zeal in harrying Laconia by forays, once they were operating from a strong position as their base. Such were the events about Pylos in this year.

§ 12.64.1 Artaxerxes, the king of the Persians, died after a reign of forty years, and Xerxes succeeded to the throne and ruled for a year. In Italy, when the Aequi revolted from the Romans, in the war which followed Aulus Postumius was made Dictator and Lucius Julius was named Master of the Horse.

§ 12.64.2 And the Romans, having marched against the territory of the rebels with a large and strong army, first of all plundered their possessions, and when the Aequi later drew up against them, a battle ensued in which the Romans were victorious, slaying many of the enemy, taking not a few captive, and capturing great quantities of by.

§ 12.64.3 After the battle the revolters, being broken in spirit because of the defeat, submitted themselves to the Romans, and Postumius, because he had conducted the war brilliantly, as the Romans thought, celebrated the customary triumph. And Postumius, we are told, did a peculiar thing and altogether unbelievable; for in the battle his own son in his eagerness leaped forward from the station assigned him by his father, and his father, preserving the ancient discipline, had his son executed as one who had left his station.

§ 12.65.1 At the close of the year, in Athens the archon was Isarchus and in Rome the consuls elected were Titus Quinctius and Gaius Julius, and among the Eleians the Eighty-ninth Olympiad was celebrated, that in which Symmachus won the “stadion” for the second time.

§ 12.65.2 This year the Athenians chose as general Nicias, the son of Niceratus, and assigning to him sixty triremes and three thousand hoplites, they ordered him to plunder the allies of the Lacedemonians. He sailed to Melos as the first place, where he ravaged their territory and for a number of days laid siege to the city; for it was the only island of the Cyclades which was maintaining its alliance with the Lacedemonians, being a Spartan colony.

§ 12.65.3 Nicias was unable to take the city, however, since the Melians defended themselves gallantly, and he then sailed to Oropus in Boeotia. Leaving his ships there, he advanced with his hoplites into the territory of the Tanagraeans, where he fell in with another Athenians force which was commanded by Hipponicus, the son of Callias.

§ 12.65.4 When the two armies had united, the generals pressed forward, plundering the land; and when the Thebans sallied forth to the rescue, the Athenians offered them battle, in which they inflicted heavy casualties and were victorious.

§ 12.65.5 After the battle the soldiers with Hipponicus made their way back to Athens, but Nicias, returning to his ships, sailed along the coast to Locris, and when he had laid waste the country on the coast, he added to his fleet forty triremes from the allies, so that he possessed in all one hundred ships. He also enrolled no small number of soldiers and gathered together a strong armament, whereupon he sailed against Corinth.

§ 12.65.6 There he disembarked the soldiers, and when the Corinthians drew up their forces against them, the Athenians gained the victory in two battles, slew many of the enemy, and set up a trophy. There perished in the fighting eight Athenians and more than three hundred Corinthians.

§ 12.65.7 Nicias then sailed to Crommyon, ravaged its territory, and seized its stronghold. Then he immediately removed from there and built a stronghold near Methone, in which he left a garrison for the twofold purpose of protecting the place and ravaging the neighbouring countryside; then Nicias plundered the coast and returned to Athens.

§ 12.65.8 After these events the Athenians sent sixty ships and two thousand hoplites to Cythera, the expedition being under the command of Nicias and certain other generals. Nicias attacked the island, hurled assaults upon the city, and received its formal surrender. And leaving a garrison behind on the island he sailed off to the Peloponnesus and ravaged the territory along the coast.

§ 12.65.9 And Thyreae, which lies on the border between Laconia and Argolis, he took by siege, making slaves of its inhabitants, and razed it to the ground; and the Aeginetans, who inhabited the city, together with the commander of the garrison, Tantalus the Spartan, he took captive and carried off to Athens. And the Athenians fettered Tantalus and kept him under guard together with the other prisoners, as well as the Aeginetans.

§ 12.66.1 While these events were taking place the Megarians were finding themselves in distress because of the war with the Athenians on the one hand and with their exiles on the other hand. And while representatives were exchanging opinions regarding the exiles, certain citizens who were hostile to the exiles approached the Athenian generals with the offer to deliver the city to them.

§ 12.66.2 The generals, Hippocrates and Demosthenes, agreeing to this betrayal, sent by night six hundred soldiers to the city, and the conspirators admitted the Athenians within the walls. When the betrayal became known throughout the city and while the multitude were divided according to party, some being in favour of fighting on the side of the Athenians and others of aiding the Lacedemonians, a certain man, acting on his own initiative, made the proclamation that any who so wished could take up arms on the side of the Athenians and Megarians.