88.
During the same winter the Athenians in Sicily and the Rhegians made an expedition
with1 thirty ships against the islands of Aeolus, as they are called, which in summer
time cannot be attacked owing to the want of water.
[2]
These islands belong to the Liparaeans, who are colonists of the Cnidians: they inhabit
one of them, which is not large, and is called Lipara; from this they go and cultivate
the rest, Didymè, Strongylè, and Hiera.
[3]
The inhabitants believe that the forge of Hephaestus is in Hiera, because the island
sends up a blaze of fire in the night-time and clouds of smoke by day.
The Aeolian islands lie off the territory of the Sicels and Messenians; they were in
alliance with Syracuse.
[4]
The Athenians wasted the country, but finding that the inhabitants would not yield,
sailed back to Rhegium.
And so ended the winter, and with it the fifth year in the Peloponnesian War of which
Thucydides wrote the history.
1 Fruitless expedition against the Aeolian islands.
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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