History of the Peloponnesian War

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.