History of the Peloponnesian War

During the ensuing winter the Athenians sent twenty ships round the Peloponnesus under the command of Phormio, who, making Naupactus his base, kept watch there, so that no one might sail either out of Corinth and the Crisaean Gulf or in; and six other ships were sent to Caria and Lycia, under Melesander as general, to collect arrears of tribute in these places and to prevent the Peloponnesian privateers from establishing a base in these regions and molesting the merchantmen sailing from Phaselis and Phoenicia and the mainland in that quarter.

But Melesander, going inland into Lycia with a force of Athenians from the ships and of allied troops, was defeated in battle and slain, losing a number of his troops.

During the same winter the Potidaeans found themselves no longer able to endure the siege; and the raids which the Peloponnesians made into Attica did not cause the Athenians to raise the siege any more than before.[*](Thuc. 1.58.1.)Their grain had given out, and in addition to many other things which by this time had befallen them in their efforts to get bare subsistence some had even eaten their fellows. In this extremity they made proposals for a capitulation to the Athenian generals who were in charge of the operations against them, namely Xenophon son of Euripides, Hestiodorus son of Aristocleides, and Phanomachus son of Callimachus.

And the generals accepted their proposals, seeing the distress which the army was suffering in an exposed place, and taking into consideration that Athens had already spent two thousand talents[*](£400,000, $1,944,000.) on the siege.

So a capitulation was made on the following terms, that the Potidaeans, with their children and wives and the mercenary troops,[*](Thuc. 1.60.1.) were to leave the city with one garment apiece—the women, however, with two—retaining a fixed sum of money for the journey.

So they left Potidaea under a truce and went into Chalcidice or wherever each was able to go. The Athenians, however, blamed the generals for granting terms without consulting them—for they thought they could have become masters of the place on their own terms; and afterwards sent settlers of their own into Potidaea and colonized it. These things happened in the winter, and so ended the second[*](430 B.C.) year of this war of which Thucydides wrote the history.

In the ensuing summer the Peloponnesians and their allies did not invade Attica, but made an expedition against Plataea. Their leader was Archidamus son of Zeuxidamus, king of the Lacedaemonians, and when he had encamped his army he was about to ravage the land; but the Plataeans straightway sent envoys to him, who spoke as follows: "

Archidamus and Lacedaemonians, you are acting unjustly, and in a manner unworthy either of yourselves or of the fathers from whom you are sprung, when you invade the territory of the Plataeans. For Pausanias son of Cleombrotus, the Lacedaemonian, when he had freed Hellas from the Persians, together with such of the Hellenes as chose to share the danger of the battle that took place in our territory, offered sacrifice in the market-place of the Plataeans to Zeus Eleutherius, and calling together all the allies restored to the Plataeans their land and city to hold and inhabit in independence, and no one was ever to march against them unjustly or for their enslavement; but in that case the allies then present were to defend them with all their might.

These privileges your fathers granted to us on account of the valour and zeal we displayed amid those dangers, but you do the very contrary; for with the Thebans, our bitterest enemies, you are come to enslave us.