History of the Peloponnesian War

The Lacedaemonians and their confederates made war the same summer with one hundred galleys against Zacynthus, an island lying over against Elis. The inhabitants whereof were a colony of Achaeans of Peloponnesus but confederates of the people of Athens.

There went in this fleet a thousand men of arms and Cnemus a Spartan for admiral, who, landing, wasted the greatest part of the territory. But they of the island not yielding, they put off again and went home.

In the end of the same summer, Aristeus of Corinth and Aneristus, Nicolaus, Stratodemus, and Timagorus of Tegea, ambassadors of the Lacedaemonians, and Pollis of Argos, a private man, as they were travelling into Asia to the king to get money of him and to draw him into their league, took Thrace in their way and came unto Sitalces the son of Teres with a desire to get him also, if they could, to forsake the league with Athens and to send his forces to Potidaea, which the Athenian army now besieged, and not to aid the Athenians any longer, and withal to get leave to pass through his country to the other side of the Hellespont to go, as they intended, to Pharnabazus the son of Pharnaces, who would convoy them to the king.

But the ambassadors of Athens, Learchus the son of Callimachus and Ameiniades the son of Philemon, then resident with Sitalces, persuaded Sadocus the son of Sitalces, who was now a citizen of Athens, to put them into their hands that they might not go to the king and do hurt to the city whereof he himself was now a member.

Whereunto condescending, as they journeyed through Thrace to take ship to cross the Hellespont, he apprehended them before they got to the ship by such others as he sent along with Learchus and Ameiniades with command to deliver them into their hands.

And they, when they had them, sent them away to Athens. When they came thither, the Athenians, fearing Aristeus, lest escaping he should do them further mischief (for he was manifestly the author of all the business of Potidaea and about Thrace), the same day put them all to death, unjudged and desirous to have spoken, and threw them into the pits, thinking it but just to take revenge of the Lacedaemonians that began it and had slain and thrown into pits the merchants of the Athenians and their confederates whom they took sailing in merchant ships about the coast of Peloponnesus. For in the beginning of the war, the Lacedaemonians slew as enemies whomsoever they took at sea, whether confederates of the Athenians or neutral, all alike.

About the same time, in the end of summer, the Ambraciotes, both they themselves and divers barbarian nations by them raised, made war against Argos of Amphilochia and against the rest of that territory.

The quarrel between them and the Argives arose first from hence.

This Argos and the rest of Amphilochia was planted by Amphilochus the son of Amphiaraus after the Trojan war, who, at his return, misliking the then state of Argos, built this city in the Gulf of Ambracia and called it Argos after the name of his own country.

And it was the greatest city and had the most wealthy inhabitants of all Amphilochia.

But many generations after, being fallen into misery, they communicated their city with the Ambraciotes, bordering upon Amphilochia; and then they first learned the Greek language now used from the Ambraciotes that lived among them.

For the rest of the Amphilochians were barbarians.

Now the Ambraciotes in process of time drave out the Argives and held the city by themselves. Whereupon the Amphilochians submitted themselves to the Acarnanians, and both together called in the Athenians who sent thirty galleys to their aid and Phormio for general. Phormio, being arrived, took Argos by assault and, making slaves of the Ambraciotes, put the town into the joint possessions of the Amphilochians and Acarnanians.