History of the Peloponnesian War

For these nations were bordering on, and hostile to, their city; as it was against no other country but theirs that the place was fortified. Accordingly they opposed the city on its first settlement, by annoying it as far as they could; and at this time they defeated the Heracleans in the engagement, Xenares son of Cnidis, a Lacedaemonians, being slain, and others of the Heracleans also cut off. And thus the winter ended, and the twelfth year of the war.

At the very commencement of the following summer, the Boeotians seized on Heraclea, when it was miserably reduced after the battle, and sent away Hegesippidas the Lacedaemonian, on the charge of governing it ill. They occupied the place through fear that, while the Lacedaemonians were distracted with the affairs of the Peloponnese, the Athenians might take it. The Lacedaemonians, however, were offended with them for what they had done.

The same summer, Alcibiades son of Clinias, being one of the generals at Athens, having the co-operation of the Argives and the allies, went into the Peloponnese with a few Athenian heavy-armed and bowmen; and taking with him some of the allies in those parts, both proceeded to settle in concert with them other matters connected with the alliance, marching about the Peloponnese with his troops, and persuaded the Patreans to carry their walls down to the sea; intending also himself to build a fort beside the Achaean Rhium. But the Corinthians and Sicyonians, and all to whose injury it would have been built, came against him, and prevented his doing it.

The same summer a war broke out between the Epidaurians and Argives; nominally, about the offering to Apollo Pythaeus, which the Epidaurians were bound to make, but did not, for [*]( I have adopted Poppo's reading, παραποταμίων, as Arnold himself confesses that the common one, ποταμίων, is perfectly inexplicable. Of Bloomfield's conjecture, βοτανόμων, pastures, Poppo says, refutatione non indiget ) certain lands by the river side; (the Argives had the chief management of the temple;) but even independently of this charge, Alcibiades and the Argives thought it desirable to get possession of Epidaurus, if they could; both to insure the neutrality of Corinth, and thinking that the Athenians would find it a shorter passage for their succours through Aegina, than by sailing round Scyllaeum. The Argives therefore prepared to invade Epidaurus by themselves, in order to exact the offering.