109.
The Athenians and their allies were still in Egypt,
where they carried on the war
with1 varying fortune.
[2]
At first they were masters of the country.
The King sent to Lacedaemon Megabazus a Persian, who was well supplied with money, in
the hope that he might persuade the Peloponnesians to invade Attica, and so draw off the
Athenians from Egypt.
[3]
He had no success; the money was being spent and nothing done; so, with what remained
of it, he found his way back to Asia.
The King then sent into Egypt Megabyzus the son of Zopyrus, a Persian,
[4]
who marched
overland with a large army and defeated the Egyptians and their allies.
He drove the Hellenes out of Memphis,
and finally shut them up in the island of
Prosopitis,
where he blockaded them for eighteen months.
At length he drained the canal and diverted the water, thus leaving their ships high
and dry and joining nearly the whole island to the mainland.
He then crossed over with a land force, and took the island.
1 After an ineffectual attempt to obtain assistance from Lacedaemon, the Persian King at length succeeds in driving the Athenians out of Memphis.
Thucydides translated into English; with introduction, marginal analysis, notes, and indices. Volume 1. Thucydides. Benjamin Jowett. translator. Oxford. Clarendon Press. 1881.
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