History of the Peloponnesian War

So, then, as soon as due preparations, both in word and act, had been made by both parties, the Athenians sailed under cover of night to Minoa, the island which lies off Megara, taking six hundred hoplites under the command of Hippocrates, and took cover in a ditch, not far from the town, where bricks had been made for the walls.

A second company consisting of light-armed Plataeans and frontier-patrols under the command of the other general, Demosthenes, set an ambuscade at Enyalius, which is somewhat nearer. And all that night no one perceived what was going on except the men whose business it was to know.

Then, at the approach of dawn, these would-be Megarian traitors began their work as follows. For a long time before this they had been carefully preparing for the opening of the gates by regularly assuming the guise of pirates and taking a sculling boat, drawn on a cart, through the ditch and down to the sea, where they would put out. This they did every night, first securing the consent of the commander.[*](i.e., of the Peloponnesian garrison.) Then before daybreak they would cart the boat back into the fortifications, taking it in by way of the gates, their object being, as they pretended, to keep the Athenian garrison, which was stationed at Minoa, in the dark, as no boat would be visible in the harbour.

On the night in question the cart was already at the gates, and when these were opened as usual as if to let the boat pass through, the Athenians, who were acting throughout in accordance with an agreement, seeing it, ran at top speed from their ambush, wishing to get there before the gates were closed again and while the cart was still in the passage, thus forming an obstacle to the shutting of the gates; and at the same time their Megarian accomplices killed the guards at the gates.

And first the Plataeans and the patrols under Demosthenes' command rushed into the place where the trophy now stands, and as soon as they were inside the gates the Plataeans engaged with the reinforcements which came up—for the nearest Peloponnesians had become aware of what was going on—and defeated them, thus securing the gates for the onrushing Athenian hoplites.