History of the Peloponnesian War

When they had retired, the Athenians set guards by land and by sea, as they intended to keep them through the whole war. And they resolved to take out and set apart a thousand talents from the money in the Acropolis, and not to spend them, but to carry on the war with their other resources; and if any one should move or put to the vote a proposition for applying that money to any other purpose, except in case of the enemy sailing against the city with a naval armament, and its being necessary to defend themselves, they declared it a capital offence.

Together with this sum of money, they also laid by a hundred triremes, the best they had each year, and trierarchs for them; none of which were they to use except with the money, and in the same peril [as that was reserved for], should any such necessity arise.

The Athenians on board the hundred ships around Peloponnese, and the Corcyraeans with them, who had come to their aid with fifty ships, and some others of the allies in those parts, ravaged other places as they cruised round, and landed at Methone in Laconia, and assaulted the wall, which was weak and had no [*]( i. e. no garrison for its defence.) men within it.