Page:History of Greece Vol VI.djvu/237

 SECO>O AND THIRD YEARS OF THE WAR. 215 ready against the Peloponnesians ; but these latter, aware of the danger which menaced them, made haste to quit Salamis with their booty, and the three captured guard-ships. The lesson was salutary to the Athenians : from henceforward Peirasus was furnished with a chain across the mouth, and a regular guard, down to the end of the war. 1 Forty years afterwards, however, we shall find it just as negligently watched, and surprised with much more boldness and dexterity, by the Lacedaemonian captain Teleutias.2 As during the summer of this year, the Ambrakiots had brought down a numerous host of Epirotic tribes to the invasion of Akarnania, in conjunction with the Peloponnesians, so during the autumn, the Athenians obtained aid against the Chal kidians of Thrace from a still more powerful barbaric prince, Sitalkes, king of the Odrysian Thracians. Amidst the numerous tribes, between the Danube and the JEgean sea, who all bore the generic name of Thracians, though each had a special name besides, the Odrysians were at this time the most warlike and powerful. The Odrysian king Teres, father of Sitalkes, had made use of this power to subdue 3 and render tributary a great number of these different tribes, especially those whose residence was in the plain rather than in the mountains. His dominion, the largest existing between the Ionian sea and the Euxine, extended from Abdera, or the mouth of the Nestus, in the 2Egean sea, to the mouth of the Danube in the Euxine ; though it seems that this must be understood with deductions, since many inter- vening tribes, especially mountain tribes, did not acknowledge his authority. Sitalkes himself had invaded and conquered some of the Paeonian tribes who joined the Thracians on the west, between the Axius and the Strymon. 4 Dominion, in the sense of the Odrysian king, meant tribute, presents, and military force when required ; and with the two former, at least, we may con- clude that he was amply supplied, since his nephew and successor Seuthes, under whom the revenue increased and attained ita maximum, received four hundred talents annually in gold and silver as tribute, and the like sum in various presents, over and 1 Thucyd. ii, 94. Xenophon, Hellcn. v, 1, 19. 3 Thacyd. ii 29, 95, 96. * Thucyd. ii, 99.