History of the Peloponnesian War

As for the Thracians,[*](cf. xxvii. 1.) then, who had come too late for Demosthenes, the Athenians immediately sent them back, being unwilling on account of the present shortage of money to incur expense; and they commissioned Dieitrephes to conduct them, giving him instructions to use them, as he sailed along the coast (for they would go by way of the Euripus), in doing whatever damage he could to the enemy.

So he disembarked them in the territory of Tanagra and made a hasty raid; then he sailed immediately after nightfall from Chalcis in Euboea across the Euripus and landing the Thracians in Boeotian territory led them against Mycalessus.

During the night he bivouacked unobserved near the sanctuary of Hermes, about sixteen stadia distant from Mycalessus, but at daybreak assaulted the town, which was not large, and took it; for he fell upon the people off their guard and not expecting that anybody would ever march so far inland from the sea and attack them; furthermore, their wall was weak, and at some points had even fallen down, while elsewhere it had been built low, and at the same time the gates were open because of their feeling of security.

So the Thracians burst into Mycalessus and fell to plundering the houses and the temples and butchering the people, sparing neither old nor young, but killing all whom they met just as they came, even children and women, aye, pack-animals also and whatever other living things they saw. For the Thracian race, like the worst barbarians, is most bloodthirsty whenever it has nothing to fear. And so on this occasion:

in addition to the general confusion, which was great, every form of destruction ensued, and in particular they fell upon a boys' school, the largest in the town, which the children had just entered, and cut down all of them. And this was a calamity inferior to none that had ever fallen upon a whole city, and beyond any other unexpected and terrible.