History of the Peloponnesian War

The Athenians the same summer, with sixty galleys, two thousand men of arms, and a few horsemen, taking with them also the Milesians and some other of their confederates, made war upon Cythera, under the conduct of Nicias, the son of Niceratus, Nicostratus, the son of Diotrephes, and Autocles, the son of Tolmaeus.

This Cythera is an island upon the coast of Laconia, over against Malea. The inhabitants be Lacedaemonians, of the same that dwell about them. And every year there goeth over unto them from Sparta a magistrate called Cyther- odikes. They likewise sent over men of arms from time to time to lie in the garrison there, and took much care of the place.

For it was the place where their ships used to put in from Egypt and Libya, and by which Laconia was the less infested by thieves from the sea, being that way only subject to that mischief. For the island lieth wholly out into the Sicilian and Cretic seas.