History of the Peloponnesian War

Accordingly the Athenian envoys were despatched to Sicily. But during the same winter the Lacedaemonians and their allies, except the Corinthians, invaded the Argive territory, ravaged a small part of the land and carried off some corn in wagons which they had brought with them; then having settled the Argive fugitives at Orneae, leaving with them also a small body of troops, after they had made a truce for a certain time, on condition that the Orneates and Argives were not to injure one another's land, they went home with the rest of their force.

When the Athenians came not long afterwards with thirty ships and six hundred hoplites, the Argives, in company with the Athenians, went out in full force and besieged the garrison at Orneae for a single day; but under cover of night, when the besieging army had bivouacked at a distance, the garrison of Orneae escaped.

The next day the Argives, on learning this, razed Orneae to the ground and withdrew, and later the Athenians also went home with their ships. The Athenians also conveyed by sea some of their own cavalry and the Macedonian exiles that were with them to Methone, which borders on Macedonia, and ravaged the country of Perdiccas.

And the Lacedaemonians sent to the Chalcidians in Thrace, who were observing a truce renewable every ten days with the Athenians, and urged them to join Perdiccas in the war; but they were unwilling. So the winter ended, and with it the sixteenth year of this war of which Thucydides wrote the history.