History of the Peloponnesian War

The following winter, the Athenians sent twenty ships round the Peloponnese, with Phormio as commander, who, making Naupactus his station, kept watch that no one either sailed out from Corinth and the Crisaean Bay, or into it. Another squadron of six they sent towards Caria and Lycia, with Melesander as commander, to raise money from those parts, and to hinder the privateers of the Peloponnesians from making that their rendezvous, and interfering with the navigation of the merchantmen from Phaselis and Phoenice, and the continent in that direction.

But Melesander, having gone up the country into Lycia with a force composed of the Athenians from the ships and the allies, and being defeated in a battle, was killed, and lost a considerable part of the army.

The same winter, when the Potidaeans could no longer hold out against their besiegers, the inroads of the Peloponnesians into Attica having had no more effect towards causing the Athenians to withdraw, and their provisions being exhausted, and many other horrors having befallen them in their straits for food, and some having even eaten one another; under these circumstances, I say, they make proposals for a capitulation to the generals of the Athenians who were in command against them, Xenophon son of Euripides, Histiodorus son of Aristoclides, and Phanomachus son of Callimachus;

who accepted them, seeing the distress of their army in so exposed a position, and the state having already expended 2000 talents on the siege. On these terms therefore they came to an agreement;

that themselves, their children, wives, and auxiliaries, should go out of the place with one dress each-but the women with two-and with a fixed sum of money for their journey.

According to this treaty, they went out to Chalcidice, or where each could: but the Athenians blamed the generals for having come to an agreement without consulting them; for they thought they might have got possession of the place on their own terms; and afterwards they sent settlers of their own to Potidaea and colonized it. These were the transactions of the winter; and so ended the second year of this war of which Thucydides wrote the history.

The following summer the Peloponnesians and their allies did not make an incursion into Attica, but marched against Plataea, being led by Archidamus, the son of Zeuxidamus, king of the Lacedaemonians. Having encamped his army, he was going to ravage the land; but the Plataeans immediately sent ambassadors to him, and spoke as follows:

Archidamus and Lacedaemonians, you are not doing what is right, or worthy either of yourselves or of the fathers from whom you are sprung, in marching against the territory of the Plataeans. For Pausanias son of Cleombrotus, the Lacedaemonian, when he had liberated Greece from the Medes, in conjunction with those Greeks who had been willing to incur with him the peril of the battle that was fought near our city, after sacrificing in the market-place of Plataea to Jupiter the Deliverer, and assembling all the allies, proceeded to grant to the Plataeans to live in independent possession of their land and city, and that no one should ever make war upon them unjustly, or to enslave them else that the allies then present should assist them to their utmost.

These rewards your fathers gave us for our valour and zeal, shown in those scenes of danger; but you are doing the very contrary; for in conjunction with the Thebans, our bitterest enemies, you are come to enslave us.