History of the Peloponnesian War

The Lacedaemonians, not having in times past been acquainted with robberies and such war as that, and because their Helotes ran over to the enemy, fearing also some greater innovation in the country, took the matter much to heart; and though they would not be known of it to the Athenians, yet they sent ambassadors and endeavoured to get the restitution both of the fort of Pylus and of their men.

But the Athenians aspired to greater matters; and the ambassadors, though they came often about it, yet were always sent away without effect. These were the proceedings at Pylus.

Presently after this, the same summer, the Athenians, with eighty galleys, two thousand men of arms of their own city, and two hundred horse in boats built for transportation of horses, made war upon the territory of Corinth. There went also with them Milesians, Andrians, and Carystians, of their confederates. The general of the whole army was Nicias, the son of Niceratus, with two others in commission with him.

Betimes in a morning they put in at a place between Chersonesus and Rheitus on that shore above which standeth the hill Solygeius, whereon the Dorians in old time sat down to make war on the Corinthians in the city of Corinth, that were then Aeolians, and upon which there standeth now a village, called also Solygeia. From the shore where the galleys came in, this village is distant twenty furlongs, and the city of Corinth sixty, and the isthmus twenty.