(2.66) During the same summer the Lacedaemonians and their allies sent a fleet of a hundred ships against the island of Zacynthus, which lies opposite Elis. The Zacynthians are colonists of the Peloponnesian Achaeans, and were allies of the Athenians. There were on board the fleet a thousand Lacedaemonian hoplites, under the command of Cnemus the Spartan admiral. They disembarked and ravaged the greater part of the country; but as the inhabitants would not come to terms, they sailed away home.
(2.67) At the end of the same summer, Aristeus the Corinthian, the Lacedaemonian ambassadors Aneristus, Nicolaus, and Stratodemus, Timagoras of Tegea, and Pollis of Argos who had no public mission, were on their way to Asia in the hope of persuading the King to give them money and join in the war. They went first of all to Sitalces son of Teres, in Thrace, wishing if possible to detach him from the Athenians, and induce him to lead an army to the relief of Potidaea, which was still blockaded by Athenian forces; they also wanted him to convey them across the Hellespont on their intended journey to Pharnaces, the son of Pharnabazus, who was to send them on to the King. At the time of their arrival two Athenian envoys, Learchus the son of Callimachus, and Ameiniades the son of Philemon, chanced to be at the court of Sitalces; and they entreated his son Sadocus, who had been made an Athenian citizen,40 to deliver the envoys into their hands, that they might not find their way to the King and so injure a city which was in some degree his own. He consented, and, sending a body of men with Learchus and Ameiniades, before they embarked, as they were on their way through Thrace to the vessel in which they were going to cross the Hellespont, seized them; they were then, in accordance with the orders of Sadocus, handed over to the Athenian envoys, who conveyed them to Athens. On the very day of their arrival the Athenians, fearing that Aristeus, whom they considered to be the cause of all their troubles at Potidaea and in Chalcidicè, would do them still further mischief if he escaped, put them all to death without trial and without hearing what they wanted to say; they then threw their bodies down precipices. They considered that they had a right to retaliate on the Lacedaemonians, who had begun by treating in the same way the traders of the Athenians and their allies when they caught their vessels off the coast of Peloponnesus. For at the commencement of the war, all whom the Lacedaemonians captured at sea were treated by them as enemies and indiscriminately slaughtered, whether they were allies of the Athenians or neutrals.
(2.68) About the end of the same summer the Ambraciots, with a large Barbarian force which they had called out, made war upon the Amphilochian Argos and upon Amphilochia. The original cause of their enmity against the Argives was as follows:--The Amphilochian territory had been occupied and the city founded by Amphilochus the son of Amphiaraus, who on returning home after the Trojan War was dissatisfied at the state of Argos. He fixed the site on the shore of the Ambracian Gulf, and called the new city by the name of his native place; it was the greatest city in that region, and its inhabitants were the most powerful community. Many generations afterwards, these Amphilochians in a time of distress invited their neighbours the Ambraciots to join in the settlement, and from them they first learned the Hellenic language which they now speak; the other Amphilochians are Barbarians. After a while the Ambraciots drove out the Amphilochian Argives and themselves took possession of the city. The expelled Amphilochians placed themselves under the protection of the Acarnanians, and both together called in the Athenians, who sent them a fleet of thirty ships under the command of Phormio. When Phormio arrived, they stormed Argos, and sold the Ambraciots into slavery; and the Amphilochians and Acarnanians dwelt together in the place. The alliance between the Acarnanians and Athenians then first began. The hatred of the Ambraciots towards the Amphilochian Argives commenced with the enslavement of their countrymen; and now when the war offered an opportunity they invaded their territory, accompanied by the Chaonians and some others of the neighbouring Barbarians. They came as far as Argos and made themselves masters of the country; but not being able to take the city by assault they returned, and the several tribes dispersed to their own homes. Such were the events of the summer.
(2.69) In the following winter the Athenians sent twenty ships on an expedition round Peloponnesus. These were placed under the command of Phormio, who, stationing himself at Naupactus, guarded the straits and prevented any one from sailing either out of or into Corinth and the Crisaean Gulf. Six other vessels were sent to collect tribute in Lycia and Caria; they were under the command of Melesander, who was to see that Peloponnesian privateers did not establish themselves in those parts, and damage merchant vessels coming from Phaselis and Phoenicia and all that region. But he, going up the country into Lycia with an army composed of Athenians taken from the crews and of allied troops, was defeated, and himself and a part of his forces slain.
(2.70) In the same winter the Potidaeans, who were still blockaded, found themselves unable to hold out; for the Peloponnesian invasions of Attica did not make the Athenians withdraw; and they had no more food. When they had been reduced to such straits as actually in some cases to feed on human flesh, they entered into communications with the Athenian generals, Xenophon the son of Euripides, Hestiodorus the son of Aristocleides, and Phanomachus the son of Callimachus, to whom the siege had been entrusted. They, seeing that the army was suffering from the exposed situation, and considering that the city had already spent two thousand talents41 on the siege, accepted the terms proposed. The Potidaeans, with their wives and their children, and likewise the foreign troops,42 were to come out of the city, the men with one garment, the women with two, and they were allowed a certain fixed sum of money for their journey. So they came out under a safe-conduct, and went into Chalcidicè, or wherever they could find a home. But the Athenians blamed the generals for coming to terms without their authority, thinking that they could have made the city surrender at discretion. Soon afterwards they sent thither colonists of their own. Such were the events of the winter. And so ended the second year in the Peloponnesian War of which Thucydides wrote the history.