History of the Peloponnesian War

And so the winter ended, and the ninth year of this war, of which Thucydides wrote the history.

END OF THE FOURTH BOOK.

THE following summer, the truce for a year [*]( For the arguments with which Arnold establishes, as I think, this interpretation of the passage, see his Appendix. All the later German editors adopt, with little or no variety, the view of Heilmann, Böckh, and others, who suppose it to mean, that in the following summer the truce was broken, and war renewed until the time of the Pythian games. In addition to what Arnold has observed respecting the unsuitableness of the pluperfect tense to such a mode of interpretation, it may be remarked that Thucydides applies the term τὴν ἐκεχειρίαν to the year's truce in the last chapter but one of the preceding book; and therefore it is much more natural that the same armistice should be intended by the same term in this and the following chapters. It seems evident too that there is an opposition expressed by the μέν here and the δέ in the first line of the next chapter:— the one sentence stating how long the truce continued, viz. until the Pythian games, and the other, what military measure was first executed after its expiration; while the chief event which occurred during its continuance is mentioned parenthetically between the two. Nor, again, does it seem at all like the style of Thucydides to allude so cursorily, and by anticipation, to the Pythian games, as the cause which put a final stop to hostilities, and to make no subsequent mention of them at all in what would be the natural place for doing so; but to lead his readers to conclude that the proposals for peace originated solely in the difficulties of both the great belligerent powers, and their natural anxiety to be released from them; which is the sum and substance of his history from chap. 13 to 17.) continued till the Pythian games, and then ended. During the suspension of arms, the Athenians expelled the Delians from their island, thinking that they had been consecrated when in a state of impurity from some crime of ancient date; and, moreover, that this had been the deficiency in their former purification of it; in which case I have before explained that they considered themselves to have performed it rightly by taking up the coffins of the dead. The Delians found a residence at Atramyttium in Asia, given to them by Pharnaces, as each of them arrived there.

After the armistice had expired, Cleon, having persuaded the Athenians to the measure, led an expedition against the Thrace-ward towns, with twelve hundred heavy-armed, and three hundred cavalry of the Athenians, a larger force of the allies, and thirty ships.

After landing in the first place at Scione, which was still being besieged, and taking thence some heavy-armed from the garrison, he sailed into the port of the Colophonians, belonging to the Toronaeans, and at no great distance from their city.

Thence, having learned from deserters both that Brasidas was not in Torone, and that those who were in it were not strong enough to give him battle, with his land forces he marched against the city, while he sent ten ships to sail round into the harbour.

First, then, he came to the fortifications which Brasidas had raised anew round the city, from a wish to include the suburb, and so by taking down a part of the original wall had made it one city.