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But the Peloponnesians who were in Attica, when they heard that Pylos had been occupied, returned home in haste; for King Agis and the Lacedaemonians thought that the Athenian operations at Pylos were a matter of deep concern to them. And at the same time, since they had made their invasion early in the season when the grain was still green, most of themEach division had its own commissariat, and some were better provisioned than the main body. Classen explains, “were short of food for so large an army” (τοῖς πολλοῖς). were short of food, and bad weather, which came on with storms of greater violence than was to be expected so late in the spring, distressed the army.
Consequently there were many reasons why they hastened their retirement from Attica and made this the shortest of their invasions; for they remained there only fifteen days.
About the same time Simonides, an Athenian general, getting together a few Athenians from the garrisons in Thrace and a large force from the allies in that neighbourhood, got, by the treachery of its inhabitants, possession of Eion in Thrace, a colony of the Mendaeans and hostile to Athens. But succour came promptly from the Chalcidians and the Bottiaeans and he was driven out with the loss of many of his soldiers.