History of the Peloponnesian War

and about afternoon of the next day the wall was all but completed, when the garrison in Nisaea, in despair of provisions, (for they used to receive daily rations from the upper city,) not thinking that the Peloponnesians would soon relieve them, and supposing the Megareans to be their enemies, capitulated to the Athenians, on condition that after surrendering their arms they should each be ransomed for a stipulated sum; but that the Lacedaemonians, both the commander and all others in the place, should be treated by the Athenians according to their pleasure. On these conditions they surrendered and went out;

and the Athenians, having broken down the long walls at their abutment on Megara, and having taken possession of Nisaea, proceeded with their other preparations.

Now Brasidas son of Tellis, the Lacedaemonian, happened at this time to be in the neighbourhood of Sicyon and Corinth, preparing an army for Thrace. And when he heard of the capture of the walls, fearing both for the Peloponnesians in Nisaea, and lest Megara should be taken, he sent to the Boeotians with orders to meet him with a body of troops as quickly as possible at Tripodiscus, (it is a village in the Megarean territory that has this name, under Mount Gerania,) and went himself with two thousand seven hundred Corinthian heavy-armed, four hundred Phliasian, six hundred Sicyonian, and all his own forces that had been already raised, thinking that he should still find Nisaea untaken.

But when he heard of its capture, (for he happened to have gone out to Tripodiscus by night,) picking out three hundred men from his army, before he was heard of, he advanced to Megara unobserved by the Athenians, who were about the shore; wishing nominally, and really too, if he could, to make an attempt on Nisaea; but, above all, to effect an entrance into Megara, and secure it. Accordingly he begged them to receive his forces, telling them that he was in hope of recovering Nisaea.

But the Megarean factions were afraid, on the one side, that he might introduce the exiles, and expel them; on the other, that the popular party, through fear of this very thing, might attack them, and so the city be ruined by their fighting with each other, while the Athenians were close at hand in ambush against them; and therefore they did not receive him, but both parties determined to remain quiet, and wait to see the result.