History of the Peloponnesian War

The same summer the Megareans in the city of Megara, pinched both by the war of the Athenians, who invaded their territory with their whole forces every year twice, and by their own outlaws from Pegae, who in a sedition driven out by the commons grievously afflicted them with robberies, began to talk one to another how it was fit to call them home again and not to let their city by both these means to be ruined.

The friends of those without, perceiving the rumour, they also, more openly now than before, required to have it brought to council.

But the patrons of the commons, fearing that they with the commons, by reason of the miseries they were in, should not be able to carry it against the other side, made an offer to Hippocrates, the son of Ariphon, and Demosthenes, the son of Alcisthenes, commanders of the Athenian army, to deliver them the city, as esteeming that course less dangerous for themselves than the reduction of those whom they had before driven out. And they agreed that first the Athenians should possess themselves of the long-walls (these were about eight furlongs in length, and reached from the city to Nisaea their haven), thereby to cut off the aid of the Peloponnesians in Nisaea, in which (the better to assure Megara to their side) there lay no other soldiers in garrison but they; and then afterwards, that these men would attempt to deliver them the city above, which would the more easily succeed if that were effected first.