History of The Peloponnesian War - Book I   

during the battle.
The battle was fought at Tanagra in Boeotia. After heavy loss on
both sides, victory declared for the Lacedaemonians and their
allies. After entering the Megarid and cutting down the fruit trees,
the Lacedaemonians returned home across Geraneia and the isthmus.
Sixty-two days after the battle the Athenians marched into Boeotia
under the command of Myronides, defeated the Boeotians in battle at
Oenophyta, and became masters of Boeotia and Phocis. They dismantled
the walls of the Tanagraeans, took a hundred of the richest men of the
Opuntian Locrians as hostages, and finished their own long walls. This
was followed by the surrender of the Aeginetans to Athens on
conditions; they pulled down their walls, gave up their ships, and
agreed to pay tribute in future. The Athenians sailed round
Peloponnese under Tolmides, son of Tolmaeus, burnt the arsenal of
Lacedaemon, took Chalcis, a town of the Corinthians, and in a
descent upon Sicyon defeated the Sicyonians in battle.
Meanwhile the Athenians in Egypt and their allies were still
there, and encountered all the vicissitudes of war. First the
Athenians were masters of Egypt, and the King sent Megabazus a Persian
to Lacedaemon with money to bribe the Peloponnesians to invade
Attica and so draw off the Athenians from Egypt. Finding that the
matter made no progress, and that the money was only being wasted,
he recalled Megabazus with the remainder of the money, and sent
Megabuzus, son of Zopyrus, a Persian, with a large army to Egypt.
Arriving by land he defeated the Egyptians and their allies in a
battle, and drove the Hellenes out of Memphis, and at length shut them
up in the island of Prosopitis, where he besieged them for a year
and six months. At last, draining the canal of its waters, which he
diverted into another channel, he left their ships high and dry and
joined most of the island to the mainland, and then marched over on
foot and captured it. Thus the enterprise of the Hellenes came to ruin
after six years of war. Of all that large host a few travelling
through Libya reached Cyrene in safety, but most of them perished. And
thus Egypt returned to its subjection to the King, except Amyrtaeus,
the king in the marshes, whom they were unable to capture from the
extent of the marsh; the marshmen being also the most warlike of the
Egyptians. Inaros, the Libyan king, the sole author of the Egyptian
revolt, was betrayed, taken, and crucified. Meanwhile a relieving
squadron of fifty vessels had sailed from Athens and the rest of the
confederacy for Egypt. They put in to shore at the Mendesian mouth
of the Nile, in total ignorance of what had occurred. Attacked on
the land side by the troops, and from the sea by the Phoenician
navy, most of the ships were destroyed; the few remaining being
saved by retreat. Such was the end of the great expedition of the
Athenians and their allies to Egypt.
Meanwhile Orestes, son of Echecratidas, the Thessalian king, being
an exile from Thessaly, persuaded the Athenians to restore him. Taking
with them the Boeotians and Phocians their allies, the Athenians
marched to Pharsalus in Thessaly. They became masters of the
country, though only in the immediate vicinity of the camp; beyond
which they could not go for fear of the Thessalian cavalry. But they
failed to take the city or to attain any of the other objects of their
expedition, and returned home with Orestes without having effected
anything. Not long after this a thousand of the Athenians embarked
in the vessels that were at Pegae (Pegae, it must be remembered, was
now theirs), and sailed along the coast to Sicyon under the command of
Pericles, son of Xanthippus. Landing in Sicyon and defeating the
Sicyonians who engaged them, they immediately took with them the
Achaeans and, sailing across, marched against and laid siege to
Oeniadae in Acarnania. Failing however to take it, they returned home.
Three years afterwards a truce was made between the Peloponnesians
and Athenians for five years. Released from Hellenic war, the
Athenians made an expedition to Cyprus with two hundred vessels of
their own and their allies, under the command of Cimon. Sixty of these