History of the Peloponnesian War

Thucydides

Thucydides. The history of the Peloponnesian War, Volume 1-2. Dale, Henry, translator. London: Heinemann and Henry G. Bohn, 1851-1852.

Now the Plataeans had previously carried out of the town to Athens their children, and wives, and oldest men, and the mass of the inhabitants that would be of no service; but the men themselves who were left in the place and stood the siege, amounted to four hundred, with eighty Athenians, and one hundred and ten women to make bread for them.

This was the total number of them when they began to be besieged, and there was no one else within the walls, either bond or free. Such was the provision made for the siege of Plataea.

The same summer, and at the same time as the expedition was made against the Plataeans, the Athenians marched with two thousand heavy-armed of their own, and two hundred horse, against the Thrace-ward Chalcidians, and the Bottiaeans, when the corn was ripe, under the command of Xenophon son of Euripides, and two colleagues.

On arriving under the walls of Spartolus in Bottiaea, they destroyed the corn; and expected that the town would also surrender to them, through the intrigues of a party within. Those, however, who did not wish this, having sent to Olynthus, a body of heavy-armed and other troops came as a garrison for the place;

and on their making a sally from it, the Athenians met them in battle close to the town. The heavy-armed of the Chalcidians, and some auxiliaries with them, were defeated by the Athenians, and retired into Spartolus; but the Chalcidian horse and light-armed defeated the horse and light-armed of the Athenians.

They had [from the first] some few targeteers from the district of Crusis, as it is called; and when the battle had just been fought, others joined them from Olynthus.