(4.98) Upon the delivery of this message the Athenians sent to the Boeotians a herald of their own, who on their behalf declared 'that they had done no wilful injury to the temple, and would not damage it if they could help it; they had not originally entered it with any injurious intent, but in order that from it they might defend themselves against those who were really injuring them. According to Hellenic practice, they who were masters of the land, whether much or little, invariably had possession of the temples, to which they were bound to a show the customary reverence, but in such ways only as were possible.61
There was a time when the Boeotians themselves and most other nations, including all who had driven out the earlier inhabitants of the land which they now occupied, attacked the temples of others, and these had in time become their own. So the Boeotian temples would have become theirs if they had succeeded in conquering more of Boeotia. So much of the country as they did occupy was their own, and they did not mean to leave it until compelled. As to meddling with the water, they could not help themselves; the use of it was a necessity which they had not incurred wantonly; they were resisting the Boeotians who had begun by attacking their territory. When men were constrained by war, or by some other great calamity, there was every reason to think that their offence was forgiven by the God himself. He who has committed an involuntary misdeed finds a refuge at the altar, and men are said to transgress, not when they presume a little in their distress, but when they do evil of their own free will. The Boeotians, who demanded a sacred place as a ransom for the bodies of the dead, were guilty of a far greater impiety than the Athenians who refused to make such an unseemly exchange. They desired the Boeotians to let them take away their dead, not adding the condition "if they would quit Boeotia," for in fact they were in a spot which they had fairly won by arms and not in Boeotia, but simply saying, "if they would make a truce according to ancestral custom."'
(4.99) The Boeotians replied that if they were in Boeotia they might take what belonged to them, but must depart out of it; if they were in their own land they could do as they pleased. They knew that the territory of Oropus, in which the dead lay (for the battle took place on the border), was actually in the possession of Athens, but that the Athenians could not take them away without their leave, and they were unwilling as they pretended to make a truce respecting a piece of ground which did not belong to them.62 And to say in their reply 'that if they would quit Boeotian ground they might take what they asked for,' sounded plausible. Thereupon the Athenian herald departed, leaving his purpose unaccomplished.
(4.100) The Boeotians immediately sent for javelin-men and slingers from the Malian Gulf. They had been joined after the battle by the Corinthians with two thousand hoplites, and by the Peloponnesian garrison which had evacuated Nisaea,63 as well as by some Megarians. They now marched against Delium and attacked the rampart, employing among other military devices an engine, with which they succeeded in taking the place; it was of the following description. They sawed in two and hollowed out a great beam, which they joined together again very exactly, like a flute, and suspended a vessel by chains at the end of the beam; the iron mouth of a bellows directed downwards into the vessel was attached to the beam, of which a great part was itself overlaid with iron. This machine they brought up from a distance on carts to various points of the rampart where vine stems and wood had been most extensively used, and when it was quite near the wall they applied a large bellows to their own end of the beam, and blew through it. The blast, prevented from escaping, passed into the vessel which contained burning coals and sulphur and pitch; these made a huge flame, and set fire to the rampart, so that no one could remain upon it. The garrison took flight, and the fort was taken. Some were slain; two hundred were captured; but the greater number got on board their ships and so reached home.
(4.101) Delium was captured seventeen days after the battle. The Athenian herald came shortly afterwards in ignorance of its fate to ask again for the dead, and now the Boeotians, instead of repeating their former answer, gave them up. In the battle the Boeotians lost somewhat less than five hundred; the Athenians not quite a thousand, and Hippocrates their general; also a great number of light-armed troops and baggage-bearers.
Shortly after the battle of Delium, Demosthenes, on the failure of the attempt to betray Siphae, against which he had sailed with forty ships,64 employed the Agraean and Acarnanian troops together with four hundred Athenian hoplites whom he had on board in a descent on the Sicyonian coast. Before all the fleet had reached the shore the Sicyonians came out against the invaders, put to flight those who had landed, and pursued them to their ships, killing some, and making prisoners of others. They then erected a trophy, and gave back the dead under a flag of truce.
While the affair of Delium was going on, Sitalces the Odrysian king died; he had been engaged in an expedition against the Triballi, by whom he was defeated in battle. Seuthes the son of Sparadocus,65 his nephew, succeeded him in the kingdom of the Odrysians and the rest of his Thracian dominions.
(4.102) During the same winter, Brasidas and his Chalcidian allies made an expedition against Amphipolis upon the river Strymon, the Athenian colony. The place where the city now stands is the same which Aristagoras of Miletus in days of old, when he was fleeing from King Darius, attempted to colonise; he was driven out by the Edonians.66 Two and thirty years afterwards the Athenians made another attempt; they sent a colony of ten thousand, made up partly of their own citizens, partly of any others who liked to join; but these also were attacked by the Thracians at Drabescus, and perished.67 Twenty-nine years later the Athenians came again, under the leadership of Hagnon the son of Nicias, drove out the Edonians, and built a town on the same spot, which was formerly called `The Nine Ways.' Their base of operations was Eion, a market and seaport which they already possessed, at the mouth of the river, about three miles from the site of the present town. Wanting to enclose the newly-founded city, which on two sides is surrounded by the river Strymon, Hagnon cut it off by a long wall reaching from the upper part of the river to the lower, and called the place Amphipolis, because it strikes the eye both by sea and land.
JOWETT'S FOOTNOTES
61.(From 4.98) Or, ' were bound to show reverence in such ways as they could in addition to the customary observances.'
62.(From 4.99) Or, taking dêthen with hyper tês ekein ôn: land they were unwilling to make a truce respecting a piece of ground which was claimed by the Athenians.'
63.(From 4.100) Cp. iv. 69 fin.
64.(From 4.101) Cp. iv. 77 init., 89.
65.(From 4.101) Cp, ii. 101 fin.