History of The Peloponnesian War - Book VII   

decayed.
Accordingly, not wishing to incur expense in their present want of
money, they sent back at once the Thracians who came too late for
Demosthenes, under the conduct of Diitrephes, who was instructed, as
they were to pass through the Euripus, to make use of them if possible
in the voyage alongshore to injure the enemy. Diitrephes first
landed them at Tanagra and hastily snatched some booty; he then sailed
across the Euripus in the evening from Chalcis in Euboea and
disembarking in Boeotia led them against Mycalessus. The night he
passed unobserved near the temple of Hermes, not quite two miles
from Mycalessus, and at daybreak assaulted and took the town, which is
not a large one; the inhabitants being off their guard and not
expecting that any one would ever come up so far from the sea to
molest them, the wall too being weak, and in some places having
tumbled down, while in others it had not been built to any height, and
the gates also being left open through their feeling of security.
The Thracians bursting into Mycalessus sacked the houses and
temples, and butchered the inhabitants, sparing neither youth nor age,
but killing all they fell in with, one after the other, children and
women, and even beasts of burden, and whatever other living
creatures they saw; the Thracian race, like the bloodiest of the
barbarians, being even more so when it has nothing to fear. Everywhere
confusion reigned and death in all its shapes; and in particular
they attacked a boys' school, the largest that there was in the place,
into which the children had just gone, and massacred them all. In
short, the disaster falling upon the whole town was unsurpassed in
magnitude, and unapproached by any in suddenness and in horror.
Meanwhile the Thebans heard of it and marched to the rescue, and
overtaking the Thracians before they had gone far, recovered the
plunder and drove them in panic to the Euripus and the sea, where
the vessels which brought them were lying. The greatest slaughter took
place while they were embarking, as they did not know how to swim, and
those in the vessels on seeing what was going on on on shore moored
them out of bowshot: in the rest of the retreat the Thracians made a
very respectable defence against the Theban horse, by which they
were first attacked, dashing out and closing their ranks according
to the tactics of their country, and lost only a few men in that
part of the affair. A good number who were after plunder were actually
caught in the town and put to death. Altogether the Thracians had
two hundred and fifty killed out of thirteen hundred, the Thebans
and the rest who came to the rescue about twenty, troopers and heavy
infantry, with Scirphondas, one of the Boeotarchs. The Mycalessians
lost a large proportion of their population.
While Mycalessus thus experienced a calamity for its extent as
lamentable as any that happened in the war, Demosthenes, whom we
left sailing to Corcyra, after the building of the fort in Laconia,
found a merchantman lying at Phea in Elis, in which the Corinthian
heavy infantry were to cross to Sicily. The ship he destroyed, but the
men escaped, and subsequently got another in which they pursued
their voyage. After this, arriving at Zacynthus and Cephallenia, he
took a body of heavy infantry on board, and sending for some of the
Messenians from Naupactus, crossed over to the opposite coast of
Acarnania, to Alyzia, and to Anactorium which was held by the
Athenians. While he was in these parts he was met by Eurymedon
returning from Sicily, where he had been sent, as has been
mentioned, during the winter, with the money for the army, who told
him the news, and also that he had heard, while at sea, that the
Syracusans had taken Plemmyrium. Here, also, Conon came to them, the
commander at Naupactus, with news that the twenty-five Corinthian
ships stationed opposite to him, far from giving over the war, were
meditating an engagement; and he therefore begged them to send him
some ships, as his own eighteen were not a match for the enemy's
twenty-five. Demosthenes and Eurymedon, accordingly, sent ten of their
best sailers with Conon to reinforce the squadron at Naupactus, and