History of the Peloponnesian War

During the same summer, immediately after the Athenians retired from Megara, Demosthenes, the Athenian general, arrived with forty ships at Naupactus.

For he and Hippocrates were engaged in negotiations about affairs in Boeotia, at the instance of certain men in several cities who wished to bring about a change in their form of government and to transform it into a democracy, such as the Athenians had. The leading spirit in these transactions was Ptoeodorus, an exile from Thebes, through whom Demosthenes and Hippocrates had brought about the following state of affairs.

Siphae, a town on the shore of the Crisaean Gulf in the territory of Thespiae, was to be betrayed by certain men; and Chaeronea, a city which is tributary to Orchomenus—the city which was formerly called Minyan, but is now called Boeotian—was to be put into the hands of the Athenians by others, the fugitives from Orchomenus, who also took into their pay some Peloponnesians, being especially active in the conspiracy. Some Phocians also had a share in the plot, Chaeronea being on the borders of Boeotia, and adjacent to Phanotis, which is in Phocis.

The Athenians were to occupy Delium, the sanctuary of Apollo which is in the territory of Tanagra and opposite Euboea; and all these events were to take place simultaneously on an appointed day, in order that the Boeotians might not concentrate their forces at Delium, but that the several states might be occupied with their own disaffected districts.

And if the attempt should succeed and Delium should be fortified, they confidently expected, even if no immediate change occurred in the constitutions of the Boeotian states, nevertheless, so long as these places were in their possession, from which Boeotian territory could be ravaged and where everyone might find a convenient place of refuge, the situation would not remain as it was, but in time, when the Athenians should come to the support of the rebels and the forces of the oligarchs were scattered, they could settle matters to their own advantage.