Histories

They had taken seven hundred of the people alive; as they led these out for slaughter one of them escaped from his bonds and fled to the temple gate of Demeter the Lawgiver, where he laid hold of the door-handles and clung to them. They could not tear him away by force, so they cut off his hands and carried him off, and those hands were left clinging fast to the door-handles.

Thus the Aeginetans dealt with each other. When the Athenians came, they fought them at sea with seventy ships; the Aeginetans were defeated in the sea-fight and asked for help from the Argives, as they had done before. But this time the Argives would not aid them, holding a grudge because ships of +Aegina [23.433,37.75] (inhabited place), Aegina, Attica, Central Greece and Euboea, Greece, Europe Aegina had been taken by force by Cleomenes and put in on the +Nomos Argolidhos [22.833,37.666] (department), Peloponnese, Greece, Europe Argolid coast, where their crews landed with the Lacedaemonians; men from ships of Sikyon [22.725,37.9833] (Perseus)Sicyon also took part in the same invasion.

The Argives laid on them the payment of a fine of a thousand talents, five hundred each. The Sicyonians confessed that they had done wrong and agreed to go free with a payment of a hundred talents, but the Aeginetans made no such confession and remained stubborn. For this cause the Argive state sent no one to aid them at their request, but about a thousand came voluntarily, led by a captain whose name was Eurybates, a man who practiced the pentathlon.[*](The ‘Pentathlon’ consisted of jumping, discus-throwing, spear-throwing, running, and wrestling.)

Most of these never returned, meeting their death at the hands of the Athenians in +Aegina [23.433,37.75] (inhabited place), Aegina, Attica, Central Greece and Euboea, Greece, Europe Aegina; Eurybates himself, their captain, fought in single combat and thus killed three men, but was slain by the fourth, Sophanes the son of Deceles.

The Aeginetan ships found the Athenians in disarray and attacked and overcame them, taking four Athenian ships and their crews.