History of the Peloponnesian War

When he had thus said and put them again into heart, the truce being expired, he made divers assaults upon Lecythus. The Athenians fought against them from the wall, though a bad one, and from the houses such as had battlements, and for the first day kept them off.

But the next day, when the enemies were to bring to the wall a great engine, out of which they intended to cast fire upon their wooden fences, and that the army was now coming up to the place where they thought they might best apply the engine, and which was easiest to be assaulted, the Athenians, having upon the top of the building erected a turret of wood, and carried up many buckets of water, and many men being also gone up into it, the building overcharged with weight fell suddenly to the ground, and that with so huge a noise that though those which were near and saw it were grieved more than afraid, yet such as stood further off, especially the furthest of all, supposing the place to be in that part already taken, fled as fast as they could towards the sea and went aboard their galleys.

Brasidas, when he perceived the battlements to be abandoned and saw what had happened, came on with his army and presently got the fort and slew all that he found within it.

But the rest of the Athenians, which before abandoned the place, with their boats and galleys put themselves into Pallene. There was in Lecythus a temple of Minerva. And when Brasidas was about to give the assault, he had made proclamation that whosoever first scaled the wall should have thirty minae of silver for a reward. Brasidas now, conceiving that the place was won by means not human, gave those thirty minae to the goddess to the use of the temple. And then pulling down Lecythus, he built it anew and consecrated unto her the whole place.