Book 3
When everything was ready and he had sent the hostages away to Cytinium in Doris, he marched with his army towards Naupactus through the territory of the Locrians. And as he marched, he took Oeneon, a town of theirs, and Eupalium because they refused to yield unto him.
When they were come into the territory of Naupactus, the Aetolians being there already to join with them, they wasted the fields about and took the suburbs of the city, being unfortified. Then they went to Molycreium, a colony of the Corinthians but subject to the people of Athens, and took that.
Now Demosthenes, the Athenian (for ever since the Aetolian business he abode about Naupactus), having been pre-advertised of this army and being afraid to lose the city, went amongst the Acarnanians and with much ado, because of his departure from before Leucas, persuaded them to relieve Naupactus;
and they sent along with him in his galleys a thousand men of arms. Which entering were the preservation of the city;
for there was danger, the walls being of a great compass and the defendants few, that else they should not have been able to make them good. Eurylochus and those that were with him, when they perceived that those forces were entered and that it was impossible to take the city by assault, departed thence not into Peloponnesus but to Aeolis, now called Calydon, and to Pleuron and other places thereabouts, and also to Proschion in Aetolia.
For the Ambraciotes coming to them persuaded them to undertake, together with themselves, the enterprise against Argos and the rest of Amphilochia, and Acarnania, saying withal that if they could overcome these, the rest of that continent would enter into the league of the Lacedaemonians.
Whereunto Eurylochus assented and, dismissing the Aetolians, lay quiet in those parts with his army till such time as the Ambraciotes being come with their forces before Argos he should have need to aid them. And so this summer ended.
The Athenians that were in Sicily in the beginning of winter, together with the Grecians of their league and as many of the Siculi as having obeyed the Syracusans by force, or being their confederates before, had now revolted, warred jointly against Nessa, a town of Sicily, the citadel whereof was in the hands of the Syracusans. And they assaulted the same;
but when they could not win it, they retired. In the retreat, the Syracusans that were in the citadel sallied out upon the confederates that retired later than the Athenians, and charging, put a part of the army to flight and killed not a few.
After this, Laches and the Athenians landed some time at Locris and overcame in battle by the river Caicinus about three hundred Locrians, who with Proxenus, the son of Capaton, came out to make resistance; and when they had stripped them of their arms, departed.
The same winter also the Athenians hallowed the isle of Delos, by the admonition indeed of a certain oracle. For Pisistratus also, the tyrant, hallowed the same before; not all, but only so much as was within the prospect of the temple. But now they hallowed it all over in this manner.
They took away all sepulchres whatsoever of such as had died there before, and for the future made an edict that none should be suffered to die nor any woman to bring forth child in the island; but [when they were near the time, either of the one or the other] they should be carried over into Rheneia. This Rheneia is so little a way distant from Delos that Polycrates, the tyrant of Samos, who was once of great power by sea and had the dominion of the other islands, when he won Rheneia dedicated the same to Apollo of Delos, tying it unto Delos with a chain.
And now after the hallowing of it, the Athenians instituted the keeping, every fifth year, of the Delian games. There had also in old time been great concourse in Delos, both of Ionians and of the islanders round about. For they then came to see the games, with their wives and children, as the Ionians do now the games at Ephesus.
There were likewise matches set of bodily exercise and of music; and the cities did severally set forth dances. Which things to have been so, is principally declared by Homer in these verses of his hymn to Apollo:
That there were also matches of music and that men resorted thither to contend therein he again maketh manifest in these verses of the same hymn. For after he hath spoken of the Delian dance of the women, he endeth their praise with these verses, wherein also he maketh mention of himself:
So much hath Homer witnessed touching the great meeting and solemnity celebrated of old in the isle of Delos. And the islanders and the Athenians, since that time, have continued still to send dancers along with their sacrificers; but the games and things of that kind were worn out, as is likely, by adversity till now that the Athenians restored the games and added the horse race, which was not before.
The same winter the Ambraciotes, according to their promise made to Eurylochus when they retained his army, made war upon Argos in Amphilochia with three thousand men of arms, and invading Argeia, they took Olpae, a strong fort on a hill by the sea-side, which the Acarnanians had fortified and used for the place of their common meetings for matters of justice, and is distant from the city of Argos, which stands also on the sea-side, about twenty-five furlongs.
The Acarnanians, with part of their forces, came to relieve Argos; and with the rest they encamped in that part of Amphilochia which is called Crenae to watch the Peloponnesians that were with Eurylochus that they might not pass through to the Ambraciotes without their knowledge;
and sent to Demosthenes, who had been leader of the Athenians in the expedition against the Aetolians, to come to them and be their general. They sent also to the twenty Athenian galleys that chanced to be then on the coast of Peloponnesus under the conduct of Aristoteles, the son of Timocrates, and Hierophon, the son of Antimnestus.
In like manner the Ambraciotes that were at Olpae sent a messenger to the city of Ambracia, willing them to come to their aid with their whole power, as fearing that those with Eurylochus would not be able to pass by the Acarnanians, and so they should be either forced to fight alone or else have an unsafe retreat.
But the Peloponnesians that were with Eurylochus, as soon as they understood that the Ambraciotes were come to Olpae, dislodging from Proschion went with all speed to assist them; and passing over the river Achelöus, marched through Acarnania, which, by reason of the aids sent to Argos, was now disfurnished. On their right hand they had the city of Stratus and that garrison; on the left, the rest of Acarnania.
Having passed the territory of the Stratians, they marched through Phytia, and again by the utmost limits of Medeon; then through Limnaea; then they went into the territory of the Agraeans, which are out of Acarnania, and their friends:
and getting to the hill Thiamus, which is a desert hill, they marched over it and came down into Argeia when it was now night; and passing between the city of the Argives and the Arcarnanians that kept watch at [the] Wells, came unseen and joined with the Ambraciotes at Olpae.
When they were all together, they sat down about break of day at a place called Metropolis and there encamped. And the Athenians not long after with their twenty galleys arrived in the Ambracian gulf to the aid of the Argives, to whom also came Demosthenes with two hundred Messenian men of arms and threescore Athenian archers.
The galleys lay at sea before the hill upon which the fort of Olpae standeth. But the Acarnanians, and those few Amphilochians (for the greatest part of them the Ambraciotes kept back by force) that were come already together at Argos, prepared themselves to give the enemy battle, and chose Demosthenes, with their own commanders, for general of the whole league. He, when he had brought them up near unto Olpae, there encamped.
There was between them a great hollow. And for five days together they stirred not; but the sixth day both sides put themselves into array for the battle. The army of the Peloponnesians reached a great way beyond the other, for indeed it was much greater; but Demosthenes, fearing to be encompassed, placed an ambush in a certain hollow way and fit for such a purpose, of armed and unarmed soldiers, in all to the number of four hundred; which, in that part where the number of the enemies overreached, should in the heat of the battle rise out of ambush and charge them on their backs.
When the battles were in order on either side, they came to blows. Demosthenes, with the Messenians and those few Athenians that were there, stood in the right wing; and the Acarnanians (as they could one after another be put in order) and those Amphilochian darters which were present, made up the other. The Peloponnesians and Ambraciotes were ranged promiscuously, except only the Mantineans, who stood together most of them in the left wing, but not in the utmost part of it; for Eurylochus and those that were with him made the extremity of the left wing, against Demosthenes and the Messenians.
When they were in fight, and that the Peloponnesians with that wing overreached and had encircled the right wing of their enemies, those Acarnanians that lay in ambush, coming in at their backs, charged them and put them to flight in such sort as they endured not the first brunt, and besides, caused the greatest part of the army through affright to run away. For when they saw that part of it defeated which was with Eurylochus, which was the best of their army, they were a great deal the more afraid. And the Messenians that were in that part of the army with Demosthenes, pursuing them, dispatched the greatest part of the execution.
But the Ambraciotes that were in the right wing, on that part had the victory, and chased the enemy unto the city of Argos.
But in their retreat, when they saw that the greatest part of the army was vanquished, the rest of the Acarnanians setting upon them, they had much ado to recover Olpae in safety. And many of them were slain, whilst they ran into it out of array and in disorder, save only the Mantineans, for these made a more orderly retreat than any part of the army. And so this battle ended, having lasted till the evening.
The next day, Menedaius (Eurylochus and Macarius being now slain), taking the command upon him and not finding how, if he stayed, he should be able to sustain a siege, wherein he should both be shut up by land and also with those Attic galleys by sea, or if he should depart, how he might do it safely, had speech with Demosthenes and the Acarnanian captains, both about a truce for his departure and for the receiving of the bodies of the slain.
And they delivered unto them their dead, and having erected a trophy took up their own dead, which were about three hundred. But for their departure they would make no truce openly [nor] to all; but secretly Demosthenes with his Acarnanian fellow-commanders made a truce with the Mantineans, and with Menedaius and the rest of the Peloponnesian captains and men of most worth, to be gone as speedily as they could, with purpose to disguard the Ambraciotes and multitude of mercenary strangers, and withal to use this as a means to bring the Peloponnesians into hatred with the Grecians of those parts as men that had treacherously advanced their particular interest.
Accordingly they took up their dead, and buried them as fast as they could; and such as had leave consulted secretly touching how to be gone.
Demosthenes and the Acarnanians had now intelligence that the Ambraciotes from the city of Ambracia, according to the message sent to them before from Olpae [which was that they should bring their whole power through Amphilochia to their aid], were already on their march (ignorant of what had passed here) to join with those at Olpae.
And hereupon he sent a part of his army presently forth to beset the ways with ambushment and to pre-occupy all places of strength, and prepared withal to encounter with the rest of his army.
In the meantime, the Mantineans and such as had part in the truce, going out on pretence to gather potherbs and firewood, stole away by small numbers, and as they went, did indeed gather such things as they pretended to go forth for;
but when they were gotten far from Olpae, they went faster away. But the Ambraciotes and others that came forth in the same manner, but in greater troops, seeing the others go quite away, were eager to be gone likewise, and ran outright, as desiring to overtake those that were gone before.
The Acarnanians at first thought they had gone all without a truce alike and pursued the Peloponnesians and threw darts at their own captains for forbidding them and for saying that they went away under truce, as thinking themselves betrayed.
But at last they let go the Mantineans and Peloponnesians, and slew the Ambraciotes only. And there was much contention and ignorance of which was an Ambraciote and which a Peloponnesian. So they slew about two hundred of them, and the rest escaped into Agrais, a bordering territory, where Salynthius, king of the Agraeans and their friend, received them.
The Ambraciotes out of the city of Ambracia were come as far as Idomene. Idomene are two high hills, to the greater whereof came first undiscovered that night they whom Demosthenes had sent afore from the camp and seized it; but the Ambraciotes got first to the lesser and there encamped the same night.