previous next
1

When Ameinias was archon in Athens, the Romans elected as consuls Gaius Papirius and Lucius Junius. In this year the people of Scione, holding the Athenians in contempt because of their defeat at Delium, revolted to the Lacedaemonians and delivered their city into the hands of Brasidas, who was in command of the Lacedaemonian forces in Thrace. [2]

In Lesbos, after the Athenian seizure of Mytilene, the exiles, who had escaped the capture in large numbers, had for some time been trying to return to Lesbos, and they succeeded at this time in rallying and seizing Antandrus,2 from which as their base they then carried on war with the Athenians who were in possession of Mytilene. [3] Exasperated by this state of affairs the Athenian people sent against them as generals Aristeides and Symmachus with an army. They put in at Lesbos and by means of sustained assaults took possession of Antandrus, and of the exiles some they put to death and others they expelled from the city; then they left a garrison to guard the place and sailed away from Lesbos. [4] After this Lamachus the general sailed with ten triremes into the Pontus and anchored at Heracleia,3 on the river Cales, as it is called, but he lost all his ships; for when heavy rains fell, the river brought down so violent a current that his vessels were driven on certain rocky places and broken to pieces on the bank. [5]

The Athenians concluded a truce with the Lacedaemonians for a year, on the terms that both of them should remain in possession of the places of which they were masters at the time. They held many discussions and were of the opinion that they should stop the war and put an end to their mutual rivalry; and the Lacedaemonians were eager to recover their citizens who had been taken captive at Sphacteria. [6] When the truce had been concluded on the terms here mentioned, they were in entire agreement on all other matters, but both of them laid claim to Scione.4 And so bitter a controversy followed that they renounced the truce and continued their war against each other over the issue of Scione. [7]

At this time the city of Mende5 also revolted to the Lacedaemonians and made the quarrel over Scione the more bitter. Consequently Brasidas removed the children and women and all the most valuable property from Mende and Scione and safeguarded the cities with strong garrisons, [8] whereupon the Athenians, being incensed at what had taken place, voted to put to the sword all the Scionaeans from the youth upward, when they should take the city, and sent a naval force of fifty triremes against them, the command of which was held by Nicias and Nicostratus. [9] They sailed to Mende first and conquered it with the aid of certain men who betrayed it; then they threw a wall about Scione, settled down to a siege, and launched unceasing assaults upon it. [10] But the garrison of Scione, which was strong in numbers and abundantly provided with missiles and food and all other supplies, had no difficulty in repulsing the Athenians and, because they held a higher position, in wounding many of their men.

Such, then, were the events of this year.

1 423 B.C.

2 On the south coast of the Troad, some fifteen miles from Lesbos.

3 More accurately, with Thuc. 4.75.2, "in the territory of Heracleia," since the city lay on the Lycus, not the Cales, River.

4 This city, on the promontory of Pallene, revolted to Brasidas before it had learned of the signing of the truce, but in fact two days, as was later reckoned, after its signing (Thuc. 4.120 ff.).

5 On the Thermaic Gulf west of Scione.

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.

The Annenberg CPB/Project provided support for entering this text.

Purchase a copy of this text (not necessarily the same edition) from Amazon.com

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.

An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.

load focus Greek (1989)
hide Places (automatically extracted)

View a map of the most frequently mentioned places in this document.

Sort places alphabetically, as they appear on the page, by frequency
Click on a place to search for it in this document.
Scione (8)
Lesbos (Greece) (5)
Mytilene (Greece) (2)
Cales (2)
Troad (Turkey) (1)
Thrace (Greece) (1)
Sphacteria (Greece) (1)
Pontus (1)
Pallene (1)
Delium (Greece) (1)
Athens (Greece) (1)

Download Pleiades ancient places geospacial dataset for this text.

hide Dates (automatically extracted)
Sort dates alphabetically, as they appear on the page, by frequency
Click on a date to search for it in this document.
423 BC (1)
hide References (6 total)
  • Cross-references to this page (3):
  • Cross-references in notes from this page (2):
    • Thucydides, Histories, 4.120
    • Thucydides, Histories, 4.75.2
  • Cross-references in general dictionaries to this page (1):
hide Display Preferences
Greek Display:
Arabic Display:
View by Default:
Browse Bar: