109.
On the next day Menedaeus took the command, for Eurylochus and Macarius, the two1 other generals, had been slain2.
He knew not what to do after so serious a defeat.
He could not hope, if he remained, to stand a siege, hemmed in as he was by land, and
at sea blockaded by the Athenian ships; neither could he safely retire;
[2]
so entering into a parley with Demosthenes and the Acarnanian generals about the burial
of the dead, he tried to negotiate with them at the same time for a retreat.
The Athenians gave back to the enemy their dead, erected a trophy, and took up their
own dead, in number about three hundred.
They would not openly agree to the proposal for a general retreat, but Demosthenes and
his Acarnanian colleagues made a secret treaty with the Mantineans, and Menedaeus, and
the other Peloponnesian generals and chief persons, allowing their army to depart.
He wanted partly to isolate the Ambraciots and their foreign mercenary troops, but much
more to take away the character of the Lacedaemonians and Peloponnesians among the
Hellenes in those parts and convict them of selfishness and treachery.
[3]
Accordingly the Peloponnesians took up their dead, and burying them quickly as well as
they could, consulted secretly how those who had permission could best depart.
1 Difficulties of the Lacedaemonian commander who negotiates with Demosthenes a secret treaty for the Peloponnesians only.
2 Cp. 4.38 init.
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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