Page:Thucydides, translated into English Vol 1.djvu/185

 102-104] they felt keenly that such a slight ought not to have been offered them by the Lacedaemonians; and so, on their return home, they forthwith abandoned the alliance which they had made with them against the Persians and went over to their Argive enemies. At the same time both Argos and Athens bound themselves to Thessaly by a common oath of alliance.

In the tenth year of the siege the defenders of Ithomè were unable to hold out any longer, and capitulated to the Lacedaemonians. The terms were as follows : They were to leave reloponnesus under a safe-conduct, and were never again to return ; if any of them were taken on Peloponnesian soil, he was to be the slave of his captor. Now an ancient oracle of Delphi was current among the Lacedaemonians, bidding them let the suppliant of Ithomaean Zeus go free. So the Messenians left Ithome with their wives and children ; and the Athenians, who were now the avowed enemies of Sparta, gave them a home at Naupactus, a place which they had lately taken from the Ozolian Locrians.

The Athenians obtained the alliance of the Megarians, who revolted from the Lacedaemonians

because the Corinthians were pressing them hard in a war arising out of a question of frontiers. Thus they gained both Megara and Pegae ; and they built for the Megarians the long walls, extending from the city to the port of Nisaea, which they garrisoned themselves. This was the original and the main cause of the intense hatred which the Corinthians entertained towards the Athenians.

Meanwhile Inaros the son of Psammetichus, king of the

Libyans who border on Egypt, had induced the greater part of Egypt to revolt from King Artaxerxes. He began the rebellion