History of the Peloponnesian War

They begged, then, that they would simply tell them to take up their dead, not

after evacuating the territory of the Boeotians

on making a truce according to the custom of their fathers.

The Boeotians replied, that

if they were in Boeotia, they might take up their dead after evacuating their country; but if in Athenian territory, then [*]( i. e. they might take them away when they pleased. But, as Arnold remarks, the Boeotians knew all the time that this was merely vexatious; for the Athenians would not bury their dead without their leave, whether the ground which they occupied belonged to Attica or to Boeotia. ) they knew themselves what to do:

when they had evacuated the Boeotian territory, they might then recover what they asked.

The Boeotians immediately sent for dartmen and slingers from the Malian gulf, and having been reinforced since the battle by two thousand Corinthian heavy-armed, and the Peloponnesian garrison which had evacuated Nisaea, and some Megareans with them, they marched against Delium and assaulted the fortress, both attempting it in other ways, and bringing against it an engine of the following description, which was the means of taking it.

Having sawn a great beam in two, they hollowed out the whole of it, and fitted it nicely together again, like a pipe, and hung by chains at the end of it a caldron, into which was placed an iron bellows-pipe, inclining from the beam, the timber also being for a considerable distance covered with iron.

This they brought up from a distance on carts to that part of the wall where it had been chiefly built of the vines and timber; and when it was near, they applied great bellows to the end of the beam next themselves, and blew them.

The blast passing closely confined into the caldron, which held lighted coals, sulphur, and pitch, produced a great flame, and set fire to a part of the wall; so that no one could any longer stand upon it, but they left it and took to flight; and in this way the fortress was taken.

Of the garrison some were killed, and two hundred taken: of the rest the greater part got on board their ships, and returned home.

Delium having thus been taken on the fifteenth day after the battle, and the Athenian herald, without knowing any thing that had happened, having soon after come again respecting the bodies, the Boeotians restored them, and no longer made the same answer as before.

There fell in the engagement, of the Boeotians, not quite five hundred; of the Athenians, not quite a thousand, and Hippocrates the general; but of light-armed and camp-followers a great number.

A short time after this battle, Demosthenes, having had no success with regard to Siphae being betrayed to him, when he sailed thither at that time, and having still on board his ships the Acarnanian and Agraean forces, with four hundred Athenian heavy-armed, made a descent on the territory of

Sicyon. But before all his ships reached the shore, the Sicyonians came against them, and routed those that had landed, and drove them back to their vessels, killing some, and taking others prisoners. Having erected a trophy, they restored the dead under

truce. It was also about the same time as the affair at Delium, that Sitalces, king of the Odrysse, died, after making an expedition against the Triballi, and being defeated in battle; and Seuthes son of Sparadocus, his nephew, succeeded to the kingdom of the Odrysae, and the other parts of Thrace, over which Sitalces had reigned.

The same winter, Brasidas with his allies Thrace-ward marched against Amphipolis, the Athenian colony on the river Strymon.

On the site on which the town now stands a settlement was before attempted by Aristagoras the Milesian, when flying from king Darius; but he was driven away by the Edonians: and then by the Athenians, two-and-thirty years later, who sent ten thousand settlers of their own citizens, and whoever else would go; who were cut off by the Thracians at Drabescus.