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The Athenians elected Phormio general and sent him to sea with twenty triremes. He sailed around the Peloponnesus and put in at Naupactus, and by gaining the mastery of the Crisaean Gulf1 prevented the Lacedaemonians2 from sailing in those parts. And the Lacedaemonians sent out a strong army under Archidamus their king, who marched into Boeotia and took up positions before Plataea. Under the threat of ravaging the territory of the Plataeans he called upon them to revolt from the Athenians, and when they paid no attention to him, he plundered their territory and laid waste their possessions everywhere. [2] After this he threw a wall about the city, in the hope that he could force the Plataeans to capitulate because of lack of the necessities of life; at the same time the Lacedaemonians continued bringing up engines with which they kept shattering the walls and making assaults without interruption. But when they found themselves unable to take the city through their assaults, they left an adequate guard before it and returned to the Peloponnesus. [3]

The Athenians appointed Xenophon and Phanomachus generals and sent them to Thrace with a thousand soldiers. When this force arrived at Spartolus3 in the territory of Bottice, it laid waste the land and cut the grain in the first growth. But the Olynthians came to the aid of the Bottiaeans and defeated them in battle; and there were slain of the Athenians both the generals and the larger part of the soldiers. [4] And while this was taking place, the Lacedaemonians, yielding to the request of the Ambraciotes, made a campaign against Acarnania. Their leader was Cnemus and he had a thousand foot-soldiers and a few ships. To these he added a considerable number of soldiers from their allies and entered Acarnania, pitching his camp near the city known as Stratus. [5] But the Acarnanians gathered their forces and, laying an ambush, slew many of the enemy, and they forced Cnemus to withdraw his army to the city called Oeniadae.4

1 At about the centre of the north side of the Gulf of Corinth.

2 Specifically the Corinthians, the leading naval allies of the Lacedaemonians.

3 In the Thracian Chalcidice near Olynthus.

4 In southern Acarnania.

Diodorus Siculus. Diodorus of Sicily in Twelve Volumes with an English Translation by C. H. Oldfather. Vol. 4-8. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press; London: William Heinemann, Ltd. 1989.

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Acarnania (Greece) (3)
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