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.

About the same time in this summer, the Lacedaemonians and their allies invaded Argos and ravaged most of the country. And the Athenians brought succour to the Argives with thirty ships, an act which violated their treaty with the Lacedaemonians in the most overt manner.

For before this they waged the war, in cooperation with the Argives and Mantineans, by predatory excursions from Pylos and by making landings round the rest of the Peloponnesus rather than in Laconia; and although the Argives frequently urged them only to make a landing with arms on Laconian territory, devastate in concert with them even the least part, and then go away, they refused. But at this time, under the command of Pythodorus, Laespodias, and Demaratus, they landed at Epidaurus Limera, Prasiae, and other places, and laid waste some of their territory, and so gave the Lacedaemonians from now on a more plausible excuse for defending themselves against the Athenians.

After the Athenians had withdrawn from Argos with their ships, and the Lacedaemonians also had retired, the Argives made an incursion into Phliasia, ravaging part of their land and killing some of the inhabitants, and then returned home.