The Fifth Book.

CHAPTER XV.

Tenth Year of the War - Death of Cleon and
Brasidas - Peace of Nicias

THE next summer the truce for a year ended, after lasting until
the Pythian games. During the armistice the Athenians expelled the
Delians from Delos, concluding that they must have been polluted by
some old offence at the time of their consecration, and that this
had been the omission in the previous purification of the island,
which, as I have related, had been thought to have been duly
accomplished by the removal of the graves of the dead. The Delians had
Atramyttium in Asia given them by Pharnaces, and settled there as they
removed from Delos.
Meanwhile Cleon prevailed on the Athenians to let him set sail at
the expiration of the armistice for the towns in the direction of
Thrace with twelve hundred heavy infantry and three hundred horse from
Athens, a large force of the allies, and thirty ships. First
touching at the still besieged Scione, and taking some heavy
infantry from the army there, he next sailed into Cophos, a harbour in
the territory of Torone, which is not far from the town. From
thence, having learnt from deserters that Brasidas was not in
Torone, and that its garrison was not strong enough to give him
battle, he advanced with his army against the town, sending ten
ships to sail round into the harbour. He first came to the
fortification lately thrown up in front of the town by Brasidas in
order to take in the suburb, to do which he had pulled down part of
the original wall and made it all one city. To this point Pasitelidas,
the Lacedaemonian commander, with such garrison as there was in the
place, hurried to repel the Athenian assault; but finding himself hard
pressed, and seeing the ships that had been sent round sailing into
the harbour, Pasitelidas began to be afraid that they might get up
to the city before its defenders were there and, the fortification
being also carried, he might be taken prisoner, and so abandoned the
outwork and ran into the town. But the Athenians from the ships had
already taken Torone, and their land forces following at his heels
burst in with him with a rush over the part of the old wall that had
been pulled down, killing some of the Peloponnesians and Toronaeans in
the melee, and making prisoners of the rest, and Pasitelidas their
commander amongst them. Brasidas meanwhile had advanced to relieve
Torone, and had only about four miles more to go when he heard of
its fall on the road, and turned back again. Cleon and the Athenians
set up two trophies, one by the harbour, the other by the
fortification and, making slaves of the wives and children of the
Toronaeans, sent the men with the Peloponnesians and any Chalcidians
that were there, to the number of seven hundred, to Athens; whence,
however, they all came home afterwards, the Peloponnesians on the
conclusion of peace, and the rest by being exchanged against other
prisoners with the Olynthians. About the same time Panactum, a
fortress on the Athenian border, was taken by treachery by the
Boeotians. Meanwhile Cleon, after placing a garrison in Torone,
weighed anchor and sailed around Athos on his way to Amphipolis.
About the same time Phaeax, son of Erasistratus, set sail with two
colleagues as ambassador from Athens to Italy and Sicily. The
Leontines, upon the departure of the Athenians from Sicily after the
pacification, had placed a number of new citizens upon the roll, and
the commons had a design for redividing the land; but the upper
classes, aware of their intention, called in the Syracusans and
expelled the commons. These last were scattered in various directions;
but the upper classes came to an agreement with the Syracusans,
abandoned and laid waste their city, and went and lived at Syracuse,
where they were made citizens. Afterwards some of them were