History of the Peloponnesian War

The ambassadors of the Athenians, then, were thus sent to Sicily. The same winter, the Lacedaemonians and their allies, except the Corinthians, having made an expedition into the Argive territory, ravaged a small part of the land, and took some yokes of oxen, and carried off some corn. They also settled the Argive exiles at Orneae; and having left them a few men from the rest of their forces also, and made a truce for some time, on condition of the Orneatae and the Argives not injuring each other's land, they returned home with their army.

But the Athenians having come no long time after with thirty ships and six hundred heavy—armed, the Argives, in conjunction with the Athenians, taking the field with all their force, besieged the men in Orneae one day; but at night, the army having bivouacked at some distance, they escaped out of it. The next day, the Argives, on finding this, razed Orneae and returned, and the Athenians afterwards went home with their ships.

Moreover, the Athenians took by sea some of their own cavalry, and the Macedonian exiles who were with them, to Methone, the country bordering on Macedonia, and ravaged the territory of Perdiccas.

The Lacedaemonian. therefore sent to the Chalcidians Thrace-ward, who had a truce with the Athenians from one ten days to another, and urged then to join Perdiccas in the war; but they would not. And so the winter ended, and the sixteenth year of this war, of which Thucydides wrote the history.