History of the Peloponnesian War

After this, when the Athenian succours arrived, consisting of a thousand heavy-armed and three hundred cavalry, commanded by Laches and Nicostratus, the Argives being loath, notwithstanding their arrival, to break the truce with the Lacedaemonians, commanded them to go back, though they wished to make a communication to them, and did not grant them a public audience, until the Mantineans and Eleans, (for they were still there,) by their entreaties, constrained them to do so.

The Athenians then—Alcibiades being sent as ambassador—spoke before the Argives and their allies to this effect; that it was not right for the truce [*](καὶ γένοιντο.] Arnold and Poppo agree with Bauer in thinking that καί ought to have been put before αἱ σπονδαί; but may it not be intended to qualify γένοιντο alone, as I have taken it? in which case it stands just as it ought) even to have been made, without the consent of the other allies; and that now, since their force had come so seasonably, they ought to proceed to hostilities.

And having persuaded the allies by their arguments, they immediately marched against Orchomenus, all but the Argives, who, though persuaded to the measure, still stayed behind at first; afterwards, however, they also went.

Thus they all sat down before Orchomenus, and besieged it, and made assaults upon it; being for other reasons desirous to get possession of it, and especially as some hostages from Arcadia were deposited there by the Lacedaemonians.

The Orchomenians, alarmed at the weakness of their wall and the number of the hostile forces, and fearing, since no succours had arrived, that they might perish before they did, surrendered on condition of joining the confederacy, giving hostages of their own to the Mantineans, and delivering up those whom the Lacedaemonians had deposited with them.