History of the Peloponnesian War

The following spring, at its very commencement, the Lacedaemonians and their allies made a very early incursion into Attica, under the command of Agis son of Archidamus, king of the Lacedaemonians. In the first place, then, they ravaged the parts of the country about the plain, and then proceeded to fortify Decelea, dividing the work amongst the contingents of the different states.

The place is distant from the city of Athens about a hundred and twenty stades, and about the same, or not much more, from Boeotia. Now the fortress was raised for the annoyance of the plain and the richest parts of the country, being visible as far as Athens.

Thus, then, the Peloponnesians in Attica, and their allies, were engaged with their building. Those in the Peloponnese, about the same time, were sending off their heavy-armed troops to Sicily in the merchantmen, the Lacedaemonians having picked for the purpose the best of the Helots and Neodamodes, amounting both together to seven hundred, with Eccritus, a Spartan, in command of them, and the Boeotians, three hundred heavy-armed, under the command of Xeno and Nico. Thebans, and Hegesander, a Thespian.

These started amongst the first from Taenarus, in Laconia, and put out into the open sea. Not long after them, the Corinthians despatched five hundred heavy-armed, some from Corinth itself, and some hired from Arcadia besides, having appointed Alexarchus, a Corinthian, to the command of them. The Sicyonians also sent off, at the same time with the Corinthians, two hundred heavy-armed under the command of Sargeus, a Sicyonian.

In the mean time the five and twenty ships of the Corinthians, which had been manned in the winter, were stationed in opposition to the twenty Athenian vessels at Naupactus, till they had got these heavy-armed on board the merchantmen out to sea: for which purpose, indeed, they had been originally manned, that the Athenians might not attend to the merchantmen so much as to the triremes.