History of the Peloponnesian War

Thucydides

Thucydides, Vol. 1-4. Smith, Charles Foster, translator. London and Cambridge, MA: Heinemann and Harvard University Press, 1919-1923.

Thus this undertaking of the Hellenes came to naught after a war of six years;[*](454 B.C.)and but few out of many, making their way through Libya into Cyrene, escaped with their lives;

the most of them perished. And all Egypt again came under the King's dominion, except Amyrtaeus, the king of the marshes[*](cf. Hdt. 2.140; 3. 15.); for the Persians were unable to capture him, both on account of the extent of the marsh and because the marsh people are the best fighters among the Egyptians.

Inaros, however, the king of the Libyans, who had been the originator of the whole movement in Egypt, was taken by treachery and impaled.

And when fifty triremes, which sailed to Egypt from Athens and the rest of the confederacy to relieve the fleet there, put in at the Mendesian mouth of the Nile, quite unaware of what had happened, the infantry fell upon them from the shore and a Phoenician fleet from the sea and destroyed most of the ships, a small number only escaping. So ended the great expedition against Egypt of the Athenians and their allies.