History of the Peloponnesian War

The following winter, when the Lacedaemonians were aware of their building the walls, they marched against Argos, both themselves and their allies, excepting the Corinthians; communication being also held with them from Argos itself. The leader of the army was Agis, son of Archidamus, king of the Lacedaemonians.

With regard, then, to the advantages which they thought they had secured in the city itself, nothing more came of them; but the walls that were being built, they took and demolished. And having taken Hysiae, a town in the Argive territory, and put to the sword all the free-men they got into their hands, they returned, and dispersed to their respective cities.

After this, the Argives, in their turn, marched against the Phliasian country, and laid it waste before they returned, because they harboured their exiles; for the greater part of them had settled there. [*]( All the editors agree in thinking different parts of this sentence corrupt, and propose various emendations of it; but none of them, in my humble opinion, has struck at the root of the evil, which lies, I think, in the verb κατέκλῃσαν. The idea of the Athenians blockading a whole country so extensive as Macedonia appears too extravagant to be admitted; particularly as no proof is adduced of κατακλέιειν being ever used in such a sense; but it always refers to men being shut up in particular places. Until Bloomfield therefore brings forward an instance of its being so employed, he must not assume that his reading of the passage yields an excellent sense, and one not open to any well-founded objection. Krüger's conjecture κατελήισαν would suit the passage admirably; but Poppo observes that the active form of the compound verb is never used, and that the simple verb would be going too far from the traces of the common text. To rectify this evil, I venture to propose καὶ ἐλήϊσαν; retaining μακεδονίας as a partitive genitive, and adopting Göller's punctuation, and reading of περδίκκᾳ; so that the whole passage would run thus: καὶ ἐλήϊσαν δὲ τοῦ αὐτοῦ χειμῶνος καὶ μακεδονίας ʼαθηναῖοι, περδίκκᾳ ἐπίκαλ. κ. τ. λ. Though δέ after καί is not used so frequently by Thucydides as by Xenophon and some other writers, it occurs in three other places, if not more; namely, I. 132. 2; II. 36. 1; and VII. 56. 3, at the beginning of a paragraph in the last instance, in a manner exactly similar to what is proposed here. καὶ ἦν δὲ ἄξιος ὁ ἀγὼν κατά τε ταῦτα, κ. τ. λ. I may add, that this reading is perhaps confirmed by, or at any rate agrees very well with, the next notice we have of Perdiccas, VI. 7. 4, where it is again mentioned that the Athenians ἐκακούργουν τὴν περδίκκου.)

The Athenians ravaged, too, during the same winter a part of Macedonia also, charging Perdiccas with the league he had entered into with the Argives and Lacedaemonians; and with the fact, that when they had prepared to lead an army against the Thrace-ward Chalcidians and Amphipolis, under the command of Nicias son of Niceratus, he had proved false to his allies, and the armament was chiefly broken up in consequence of his having deserted the cause. He was therefore proclaimed an enemy. And thus the winter ended, and the fifteenth year of the war.