History of the Peloponnesian War

The Athenians, finding that they no longer advanced to engage them, spoiled the dead, and took up their own, and immediately erected a trophy.

But to that half of the Corinthians which had been posted at Cenchreae for protection, lest the enemy should sail against Crommyon, the battle was not visible, owing to [an intervening ridge of] Mount Oneum; but when they saw dust, and were aware of it, they immediately went to the scene of action; as also did the older Corinthians from the city, when they found what had been done.

The Athenians, seeing them coming all together against them, and thinking that reinforcements were being brought by the neighbouring Peloponnesians, retreated with all speed to their ships, with the spoils and their own dead, except two whom they had left on the field because they could not find them.

Having gone on board their ships, they crossed over to the islands that lie off the coast, and from them sent a herald, and took up under truce the bodies they had left behind them. There were killed in the battle, on the side of the Corinthians, two hundred and twelve; of the Athenians, rather less than fifty.

Putting out from the islands, the Athenians sailed the same day to Crommyon in the Corinthian territory, distant from the city one hundred and twenty stades, and having come to their moorings, ravaged the land, and passed the night there.

The next day, having first coasted along to the Epidaurian territory and made a descent upon it, they came to Methone, which stands between Epidaurus and Troezen; and cutting off the isthmus of the peninsula in which Methone is situated, they fortified it, and having made it a post for a garrison, continued afterwards to lay waste the land of Troezen, Haliae, and Epidaurus. After cutting off this spot by a wall, they sailed back home with their ships.

At the same time that these things were being done, Eurymedon and Sophocles, after weighing from Pylus for Sicily with an Athenian squadron, came to Corcyra, and with the Corcyraeans in the city carried on war upon those that had established themselves on Mount Istone, and who at that time, after crossing over subsequently to the insurrection, commanded the country, and were doing them much damage.

They attacked their strong-hold and took it, but the men, having escaped in a body to a higher eminence, surrendered on condition of giving up their auxiliaries, and letting the Athenian people decide their own fate, after they had given up their arms. So the generals carried them across under truce to the island of Ptychia, to be kept in custody until they were sent to Athens;

with an understanding that if any one were caught running away, the treaty would be void in the case of all.

But the leaders of the popular party at Corcyra, fearing. that the Athenians might not put to death those that were sent to them, contrive the following stratagem.

They persuade some few of the men in the island, by secretly sending friends to them, and instructing them to say, as though with a kind motive, that it was best for them to make their escape as quickly as possible, and that they would themselves get a vessel ready, for that the Athenian generals intended to give them up to the Corcyraean populace.

So when they had persuaded them, and through their own arrangements about the vessel the men were caught sailing away, the treaty was declared void, and the whole party given up to the Corcyraeans.