for reinforcements, and so never engaged; but forty-four ships under
the command of Pericles with nine colleagues gave battle, off the
island of Tragia, to seventy Samian vessels, of which twenty were
transports, as they were sailing from Miletus. Victory remained with
the Athenians. Reinforced afterwards by forty ships from Athens, and
twenty-five Chian and Lesbian vessels, the Athenians landed, and
having the superiority by land invested the city with three walls;
it was also invested from the sea. Meanwhile Pericles took sixty ships
from the blockading squadron, and departed in haste for Caunus and
Caria, intelligence having been brought in of the approach of the
Phoenician fleet to the aid of the Samians; indeed Stesagoras and
others had left the island with five ships to bring them. But in the
meantime the Samians made a sudden sally, and fell on the camp,
which they found unfortified. Destroying the look-out vessels, and
engaging and defeating such as were being launched to meet them,
they remained masters of their own seas for fourteen days, and carried
in and carried out what they pleased. But on the arrival of
Pericles, they were once more shut up. Fresh reinforcements afterwards
arrived- forty ships from Athens with Thucydides, Hagnon, and
Phormio; twenty with Tlepolemus and Anticles, and thirty vessels
from Chios and Lesbos. After a brief attempt at fighting, the Samians,
unable to hold out, were reduced after a nine months' siege and
surrendered on conditions; they razed their walls, gave hostages,
delivered up their ships, and arranged to pay the expenses of the
war by instalments. The Byzantines also agreed to be subject as
before.
CHAPTER V.

Second Congress at Lacedaemon - Preparations
for War and Diplomatic Skirmishes - Cylon -
Pausanias - Themistocles

AFTER this, though not many years later, we at length come to what
has been already related, the affairs of Corcyra and Potidaea, and the
events that served as a pretext for the present war. All these actions
of the Hellenes against each other and the barbarian occurred in the
fifty years' interval between the retreat of Xerxes and the
beginning of the present war. During this interval the Athenians
succeeded in placing their empire on a firmer basis, and advanced
their own home power to a very great height. The Lacedaemonians,
though fully aware of it, opposed it only for a little while, but
remained inactive during most of the period, being of old slow to go
to war except under the pressure of necessity, and in the present
instance being hampered by wars at home; until the growth of the
Athenian power could be no longer ignored, and their own confederacy
became the object of its encroachments. They then felt that they could
endure it no longer, but that the time had come for them to throw
themselves heart and soul upon the hostile power, and break it, if
they could, by commencing the present war. And though the
Lacedaemonians had made up their own minds on the fact of the breach
of the treaty and the guilt of the Athenians, yet they sent to
Delphi and inquired of the God whether it would be well with them if
they went to war; and, as it is reported, received from him the answer
that if they put their whole strength into the war, victory would be
theirs, and the promise that he himself would be with them, whether
invoked or uninvoked. Still they wished to summon their allies
again, and to take their vote on the propriety of making war. After
the ambassadors from the confederates had arrived and a congress had
been convened, they all spoke their minds, most of them denouncing the
Athenians and demanding that the war should begin. In particular the
Corinthians. They had before on their own account canvassed the cities
in detail to induce them to vote for the war, in the fear that it
might come too late to save Potidaea; they were present also on this
occasion, and came forward the last, and made the following speech: