103.
In the1 tenth year of the siege the
defenders of Ithomè were unable to hold out any longer,2 and capitulated to the Lacedaemonians. The terms were as follows: They were3 to leave Peloponnesus under a safeconduct, and were never again to return;
if any of them were taken on Peloponnesian soil, he was to be the slave of his captor.
[2]
Now an ancient oracle of Delphi was current among the Lacedaemonians, bidding them let
the suppliant of Ithomaean Zeus go free.
[3]
So the Messenians left Ithomè with their wives and children;
and the
Athenians, who were now the avowed enemies of Sparta, gave them a home at Naupactus,
a
place which they had lately taken from the Ozolian Locrians.
[4]
The Athenians obtained the alliance of the Megarians,4 who revolted from the Lacedaemonians because the
Corinthians were pressing5 them hard in a war arising out of a question of frontiers.
Thus they gained both Megara and Pegae; and they built for the Megarians the long
walls, extending from the city to the port of Nisaea, which they garrisoned themselves.
This was the original and the main cause of the intense hatred which the Corinthians
entertained towards the Athenians.
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.
An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.