History of the Peloponnesian War

The Corinthians, being overcome, went their way; but a good part of them, being hard followed and missing their way, lighted into the enclosed ground of a private man, which fenced with a great ditch had no passage through.

Which the Athenians perceiving, opposed them at the place by which they entered with their men of arms and, encompassing the ground with their light armed soldiers, killed those that were entered with stones. This was a great loss to the Corinthians, but the rest of their army got home again.

About this time the Athenians began the building of their long walls from the city down to the sea, the one reaching to the haven called Phaleron, the other to Piraeus.

The Phoceans also making war upon Boeum, Cytinium, and Erineus, towns that belonged to the Dorians of whom the Lacedaemonians are descended, and having taken one of them, the Lacedaemonians, under the conduct of Nicomedes the son of Cleombrotus in the place of Pleistoanactes son of king Pausanias who was yet in his minority, sent unto the aid of the Dorians fifteen hundred men of arms of their own, and of their confederates ten thousand.

And when they had forced the Phoceans upon composition to surrender the town they had taken, they went their ways again. Now if they would go home by sea through the Crisaean Gulf, the Athenians going about with their fleet would be ready to stop them; and to pass over Geraneia they thought unsafe because the Athenians had in their hands Megara and Pegae. For Geraneia was not only a difficult passage of itself but was also always guarded by the Athenians.

They thought good, therefore, to stay amongst the Boeotians and to consider which way they might most safely go through. Whilst they were there, there wanted not some Athenians that privily solicited them to come to the city, hoping to have put the people out of government and to have demolished the long walls then building.