Page:History of Greece Vol VI.djvu/485

 KLEON TAKES TORONE. 403 tcliaas, tLe Peloponnesian commander, resisted the attack of the Athenians as long as he could ; but when already beginning tc give way, he saw the ten Athenian triremes sailing into the harbor, which was hardly guarded at all. Abandoning the defence of the suburb, he hastened to repel these new assailants, but came too late, so that the town was entered from both sides at once. Brasidas, who was not far off, rendered aid with the utmost celerity, but was yet at five miles' distance from the city when he learned the capture, and was obliged to retire unsuccess- fully. Pasitelidas the commander, with the Peloponnesian gar- rison and the Toronaean male population, were despatched as prisoners to Athens ; while the Toronasan women and children, by a fate but too common in those days, were sold as slaves. 1 After this not unimportant success, Kleon sailed round the promontory of Athos to Eion at the mouth of the Strymon, within three miles of Amphipolis. From hence, in execution of his original scheme, he sent envoys to Perdikkas, urging him to lend effective aid as the ally of Athens in the attack of Amphipolis, with his whole forces ; and to Polles the king of the Thracian Odomantes, inviting him also to come with as many Thracian mercenaries as could be levied. The Edonians, the Thracian tribe nearest to Amphipolis, took part with Brasidas : and the local influence of the banished Thucydides would no longer be at the service of Athens, much less at the service of Kleon. Awaiting the expected reinforcements, Kleon employed himself, first in an attack upon Stageirus in the Strymonic gulf, which was repulsed ; next upon Galepsus, on the coast opposite the island of Thasos, which was successful. But the reinforcements did not at once arrive, and being too weak to attack Amphipolis without them, he was obliged to remain inactive at Eion ; while Brasidas on his side made no movement out of Amphipolis, but contented himself with keeping constant watch over the forces of Kleon, the view of which he commanded from his station on thi hill of Kerdylion, on the western bank of the river-communication with Amphipolis by the bridge. Some days elapsed in such inaction on both sides ; but the Athenian hoplites, becoming impatient of doing nothing, soon began to give vent to those feelings of 1 Thucyd. v 3.