History of the Peloponnesian War

Thucydides

Thucydides. The English works of Thomas Hobbes of Malmesbury. Hobbes, Thomas. translator. London: John Bohn, 1843.

So ended this winter, and the ninth year of this war written by Thucydides.

[*](THE PRINCIPAL CONTENTSThe former year's truce ended, Cleon warreth on the Chalcidic cities, and recovereth Torone.Phaeax is sent by the Athenians to move a war amongst the Sicilians.Cleon and Brasidas, who were on both sides the principal maintainers of the war, are both slain at Amphipolis.Presently after their death a peace is concluded; and after that again, a league between the Lacedaemonians and Athenians.Divers of the Lacedaemonian confederates, hereat discontented, seek the confederacy of the Argives.These make league, first with the Corinthians, Eleians, and Mantineans, then with the Lacedaemonians, and then again, by the artifice of Alcibiades, with the Athenians.After this the Argives make war upon the Epidaurians; and the Lacedaemonians upon the Argives.The Athenian captains and the Melians treat by way of dialogue touching the yielding of Melos, which the Athenians afterwards besiege and win.These are the acts of almost six years more of the same war.)

The summer following, the truce for a year, which was to last till the Pythian holidays, expired. During this truce, the Athenians removed the Delians out of Delos, because [though they were consecrated, yet] for a certain crime committed of old they esteemed them polluted persons; because also they thought there wanted this part to make perfect the purgation of the island, in the purging whereof, as I declared before, they thought they did well to take up the sepulchres of the dead. These Delians seated themselves afterwards, every one as he came, in Adramyttium in Asia, a town given unto them by Pharnaces.

After the truce was expired, Cleon prevailed with the Athenians to be sent out with a fleet against the cities lying upon Thrace. He had with him of Athenians twelve hundred men of arms and three hundred horsemen, of confederates more, and thirty galleys.

And first arriving at Scione, which was yet besieged, he took aboard some men of arms of those that kept the siege and sailed into the haven of the Colophonians, not far distant from the city of Torone.

And there, having heard by fugitives that Brasidas was not in Torone nor those within sufficient to give him battle, he marched with his army to the city and sent ten of his galleys about into the haven.

And first he came to the new wall, which Brasidas had raised about the city to take in the suburbs, making a breach in the old wall that the whole might be one city.