16.
The Athenians, perceiving that the activity of the Lacedaemonians was due to a
conviction of1 their weakness, determined to show them their mistake, and to prove that,
without moving the fleet from Lesbos, they were fully able to repel this new force which
threatened them.
They manned a hundred ships, in which they embarked, both metics and citizens2, all but the highest class and the Knights; they then set sail,
and, after displaying their strength along the shores of the isthmus, made descents upon
the Peloponnesian coast wherever they pleased.
[2]
The Lacedaemonians were astounded, and thought that the Lesbians had told them what was
not true.
Their allies too had not yet arrived, and they heard that the Athenians in the thirty
ships3 which had been sent to cruise around Peloponnesus were wasting their country
districts; and so, not knowing what else to do, they returned home.
[3]
However, they afterwards prepared a fleet to go to Lesbos, and ordered the allies to
equip forty ships: these they placed under the command of Alcidas, who was to take them
out.
[4]
When the Athenians saw that the Peloponnesians had gone home, they and their fleet of a
hundred ships did the same.
1 The Lacedaemonians for the first time prepare to attack Attica by sea, but the Athenians man a hundred ships, and the attempt is given up.
2 Cp. 1.143 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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