History of the Peloponnesian War

In the mean time the Athenians landed, and advanced straightway with all their forces, and took Thyrea. The town they burnt down, and plundered the property in it, and took the Aeginetans with them to Athens, excepting those that had fallen in battle, and the Lacedaemonian commander who was amongst them, Tantalus the son of Patrocles; for he was taken prisoner after being wounded.

They also took with them some few individuals from Cythera, whom they thought best to remove for security. These the Athenians determined to deposit in the islands; to order the rest of the Cytherians, while they retained their own country, to pay a tribute of four talents; to put to death all the Aeginetans that had been taken, for their former perpetual hostility; and to throw Tantalus into prison with the other Lacedaemonians taken in the island.

The same summer, the inhabitants of Camarina and Gela in Sicily first made an armistice with one another; and then all the rest of the Sicilians also assembled at Gela, with embassies from all the cities, and held a conference together on the subject of a reconciliation. And many other opinions were expressed on both sides of the question, while they stated their differences and urged their claims, as they severally thought themselves injured; and Hermocrates son of Hermon, a Syracusan, the man who had the greatest influence with them, addressed the following words to the assembly:

"It is not because I am of a city that is either the least powerful, or the most distressed by hostilities, that I shall address you, Sicilians, but in order publicly to state what appears to me the best policy for the whole of Sicily.