Book 3
But the Athenians and their confederates both put to flight those that were in ambush with the slaughter of the most of them and also, assaulting their fortification, forced them on composition both to render the citadel and to go along with them against Messana.
After this, upon the approach of the Athenians and their confederates, the Messanians compounded likewise and gave them hostages and such other security as was requisite.
The same summer the Athenians sent thirty galleys about Peloponnesus under the command of Demosthenes the son of Alkisthenes and Proclus the son of Theodorus and sixty galleys more with two thousand men of arms, commanded by Nicias the son of Niceratus, into Melos.
For the Athenians, in respect that the Melians were islanders and yet would neither be their subjects nor of their league, intended to subdue them.
But when upon the wasting of their fields they still stood out, they departed from Melos and sailed to Oropus in the opposite continent. Being there arrived within night, the men of arms left the galleys and marched presently by land to Tanagra in Boeotia.
To which place, upon a sign given, the Athenians that were in the city of Athens came also forth with their whole forces, led by Hipponnicus the son of Callias and Eurymedon the son of Thucles, and joined with them and, pitching their camp, spent the day in wasting the territory of Tanagra and lay there the night following.
The next day, they defeated in battle such of the Tanagrians as came out against them and also certain succours sent them from Thebes; and when they had taken up the arms of those that were slain and erected a trophy, they returned back, the one part to Athens, the other to their fleet.
And Nicias with his sixty galleys, having first sailed along the coast of Locris and wasted it, came home likewise.
About the same time the Peloponnesians erected the colony of Heracleia in Trachinia with this intention. The Melians in the whole contain these three parts:
Paralians, Hierans, and Trachinians. Of these the Trachinians, being afflicted with war from the Oetaeans their borderers, thought at first to have joined themselves to the Athenians; but fearing that they would not be faithful to them, they sent to Lacedaemon, choosing for their ambassador Tisamenus.
And the Dorians, who are the mother nation to the Lacedaemonians, sent their ambassadors likewise with him with the same requests; for they also were infested with war from the same Oetaeans.
Upon audience of these ambassadors the Lacedaemonians concluded to send out a colony, both intending the reparation of the injuries done to the Trachinians and to the Dorians and conceiving withal that the town would stand very commodiously for their war with the Athenians, inasmuch as they might thereby have a navy ready, where the passage was but short, against Euboea; and it would much further their conveyance of soldiers into Thrace. And they had their mind wholly bent to the building of the place. First, therefore, they asked counsel of the oracle in Delphi.
And the oracle having bidden them do it, they sent inhabitants thither, both of their own people and of the neighbours about them, and gave leave also to any that would to go thither out of the rest of Greece, save only to the Ionians, Achaeans, and some few other nations. The conductors of the colony were three Lacedaemonians, Leon, Alcidas, and Damagon.
Who, taking it in hand, built the city which is now called Heracleia from the very foundation, being distant from Thermopylae forty furlongs and from the sea twenty. Also they made houses for galleys to lie under, beginning close to Thermopylae against the very strait, to the end to have them the more defensible.
The Athenians, when this city was peopled, were at first afraid and thought it to be set up especially against Euboea; because from thence to Cenaeum, a promontory of Euboea, the passage is but short. But it fell out afterwards otherwise than they imagined; for they had no great harm by it, the reason whereof was this.
That the Thessalians, who had the towns of those parts in their power and upon whose ground it was built, afflicted these new planters with a continual war till they had worn them out, though they were many indeed in the beginning. For being the foundation of the Lacedaemonians, everyone went thither boldly, conceiving the city to be an assured one. And chiefly the governors themselves, sent hither from Lacedaemon, undid the business and dispeopled the city by fighting most men away, for that they governed severely and sometimes also unjustly, by which means their neighbours more easily prevailed against them.
The same summer, and about the same time that the Athenians stayed in Melos, those other Athenians that were in the thirty galleys about Peloponnesus slew first certain garrison soldiers in Ellomenus, a place of Leucadia, by ambush. But afterwards with a greater fleet and with the whole power of the Acarnanians, who followed the army, all (but the Oeniades) that could bear arms, and with the Zacynthians and Cephalonians and fifteen galleys of the Corcyraeans, made war against the city itself of Leucas.
The Leucadians, though they saw their territory wasted by them both without the isthmus and within where the city of Leucas standeth and the temple of Apollo, yet they durst not stir because the number of the enemy was so great. And the Acarnanians entreated Demosthenes, the Athenian general, to wall them up, conceiving that they might easily be expugned by a siege and desiring to be rid of a city their continual enemy.
But Demosthenes was persuaded at the same time by the Messenians that, seeing so great an army was together, it would be honourable for him to invade the Aetolians, principally as being enemies to Naupactus; and that if these were subdued, the rest of the continent thereabouts would easily be added to the Athenian dominion.
For they alleged that though the nation of the Aetolians were great and warlike, yet their habitation was in villages unwalled and those at great distances, and were but light-armed and might, therefore, with no great difficulty be all subdued before they could unite themselves for defense.
And they advised him to take in hand first the Apodotians, next the Ophionians, and after them the Eurytanians (which are the greatest part of Aetolia, of a most strange language, and that are reported to eat raw flesh); for these being subdued, the rest would easily follow.
But he, induced by the Messenians whom he favoured, but especially because he thought without the forces of the people of Athens with the confederates only of the continent and with the Aetolians to invade Boeotia by land, going first through the Locri Ozolae and so to Cytinium of Doris, having Parnassus on the right hand till the descent thereof into the territory of the Phoceans, which people, for the friendship they ever bore to the Athenians, would, he thought, be willing to follow his army, and if not, might be forced; and upon the Phoceans bordereth Boeotia; putting off therefore with his whole army, against the minds of the Acarnanians, from Leucas, he sailed unto Solium by the shore.
And there, having communicated his conceit with the Acarnanians, when they would not approve of it because of his refusal to besiege Leucas, he himself with the rest of his army, Cephalonians, Zacynthians, and three hundred Athenians, the soldiers of his own fleet (for the fifteen galleys of Corcyra were now gone away), warred on the Aetolians, having Oeneon, a city of Locris, for the seat of his war.
Now these Locrians called Ozolae were confederates of the Athenians and were to meet them with their whole power in the heart of the country. For being confiners on the Aetolians and using the same manner of arming, it was thought it would be a matter of great utility in the war to have them in their army for that they knew their manner of fight and were acquainted with the country.
Having lain the night with his whole army in the temple of Jupiter Nemeius (wherein the poet Hesiodus is reported by them that dwell thereabout to have died, foretold by an oracle that he should die in Nemea), in the morning betimes he dislodged and marched into Aetolia.
The first day he took Potidania; the second day, Crocyleium; the third, Teichium. There he stayed and sent the booty he had gotten to Eupalium in Locris. For he purposed, when he had subdued the rest, to invade the Ophionians afterwards (if they submitted not) in his return to Naupactus.
But the Aetolians knew of this preparation when it was first resolved on. And afterwards, when the army was entered, they were united into a mighty army to make head, insomuch as that the farthest off of the Ophionians that reach out to the Melian Gulf, the Bomians and Callians, came in with their aids.
The Messenians gave the same advice to Demosthenes that they had done before and, alleging that the conquest of the Aetolians would be but easy, willed him to march with all speed against them, village after village, and not to stay till they were all united and in order of battle against him but to attempt always the place which was next to hand.
He, persuaded by them and confident of his fortune because nothing had crossed him hitherto, without tarrying for the Locrians that should have come in with their aids (for his greatest want was of darters light-armed), marched to Aegitium, which approaching he won by force, the men having fled secretly out and encamped themselves on the hills above it; for it stood in a mountainous place and about eighty furlongs from the sea.
But the Aetolians (for by this time they were come with their forces to Aegitium) charged the Athenians and their confederates and, running down upon them, some one way and some another, from the hills, plied them with their darts. And when the army of the Athenians assaulted them, they retired; and when it retired, they assaulted. So that the fight for a good while was nothing but alternate chase and retreat, and the Athenians had the worst in both.
Nevertheless, as long as their archers had arrows and were able to use them (for the Aetolians, by reason they were not armed, were put back still with the shot), they held out. But when upon the death of their captain the archers were dispersed and the rest were also wearied, having a long time continued the said labour of pursuing and retiring, and the Aetolians continually afflicting them with their darts, they were forced at length to fly and, lighting into hollows without issue and into places they were not acquainted withal, were destroyed. For Chromon a Messenian, who was their guide for the ways, was slain.
And the Aetolians, pursuing them still with darts, slew many of them quickly whilst they fled, being swift of foot and without armour. But the most of them missing their way and entering into a wood which had no passage through, the Aetolians set it on fire and burnt it about them.
All kinds of shifts to fly and all kinds of destruction were that day in the army of the Athenians. Such as remained with much ado got to the sea and to Oeneon, a city of Locris, from whence they first set forth.
There died very many of the confederates and a hundred and twenty men of arms of the Athenians; that was their number, and all of them able men; these men of the very best died in this war. Procles also was there slain, one of the generals.
When they had received the bodies of their dead from the Aetolians under truce and were gotten again to Naupactus, they returned with the fleet to Athens. But they left Demosthenes about Naupactus and those parts because he was afraid of the Athenian people for the loss that had happened.
About the same time the Athenians that were on the coast of Sicily sailed unto Locris and, landing, overcame such as made head and took in Peripolium, situated on the river Halex.
The same summer, the Aetolians, having sent their ambassadors, Tolophus, an Ophionian, Boryades, an Eurytanian, and Tisander, an Apodotian, to Corinth and Lacedaemon, persuaded them to send an army against Naupactus for that it harboured the Athenians against them.
And the Lacedaemonians, towards the end of autumn, sent them three thousand men of arms of their confederates of which five hundred were of Heracleia, the new-built city of Trachinia. The general of the army was Eurylochus, a Spartan, with whom Macarius and Menedaeus went also along, Spartans likewise.
When the army was assembled at Delphi, Eurylochus sent a herald to the Locrians of Ozolae both because their way lay through them to Naupactus, and also because he desired to make them revolt from the Athenians.
Of all the Locrians the Amphissians co-operated with him most, as standing most in fear for the enmity of the Phoceans. And they first giving hostages induced others who likewise were afraid of the coming in of the army to do the like: the Myoneans first, being their neighbours, for this way is Locris of most difficult access; then the Ipneans, Messapians, Tritaeans, Chalaeans, Tolophonians, Hessians, and the Oeantheans. All these went with them to the war. The Olpaeans gave them hostages but followed not the army. But the Hyaeans would give them no hostages till they had taken a village of theirs called Polis.