Page:History of Greece Vol VI.djvu/457

 REVOLT OF SKIONE. 435 just than these, come to Lacedaemon and tell us: for neither the Spartans nor their allies will resist any just suggestions. But let those who come, bring with them full powers to conclude, in the same manner as you desire of us. The truce shall be for one year." By the resolution which Laches proposed in the Athenian public assembly, ratifying the truce, the people farther decreed that negotiations should be open for a definitive treaty, and directed the strategi to propose to the next ensuing assembly, a scheme and principles for conducting the negotiations. But at the very moment when the envoys between Sparta and Athens were bringing the truce to final adoption, events happened in Thrace which threatened to cancel it altogether. Two days ' after the important fourteenth of Elaphebolion, but before the truce could be made known in Thrace, Skione revolted from Athens to Brasidas. Skione was a town calling itself Achaean, one of the numerous colonies which, in the want of an acknowledged mother city, traced its origin to warriors returning from Troy. It was situated in the peninsula of Pallene (the westernmost of those three narrow tongues of land into which Chalkidike branches out) ; conterminous with the Eretrian colony Mende. The Skionzeans, not without considerable dissent among themselves, proclaimed their revolt from Athens, under concert with Brasidas. He im- mediately crossed the gulf into Pallene, himself in a little boat, but with a trireme close at his side ; calculating that she would protect him against any small Athenian vessel, while any Athenian trireme which he might encounter would attack his trireme, paying no attention to the little boat in which he himself was. The revolt of Skion was, from the position of the town, a more striking defiance of Athens than any of the preceding events. For the isthmus connecting Pallene with the mainland was occupied by the town of Potidrea, a town assigned at the period of its capture seven years before to Athenian settlers, (hough probably containing some other residents besides. More- over, the isthmus was so narrow, that the wall of Potidaa barred 1 Thucyd. iv, 122.
 * If there be any provision which occurs to you, more honorable 01