Page:Thucydides, translated into English Vol 2.djvu/105

 138-130] SIEGE AND CAPTURE OF MENDE 97 Torone. While he was engaged with the Lyncestians, the Athenians, having completed their preparations, had sailed against Mende and Scione with fifty ships, of which ten were Chian, conveying a thousand hoplltes of their own, six hundred archers, a thousand Thracian mercenaries, and targeteers furnished by their allies in the neighbour- hood. They were under the command of Nicias the son of Niceratus, and Nicostratus the son of Diitrephes. Sailing from Potidaea and putting in near the temple of Poseidon they marched against the Mendaeans. Now they and three hundred Scionaeans who had come to their aid, and their Peloponnesian auxiliaries, seven hundred hoplites in all, with Polydamidas their commander, had just encamped outside the city on a steep hill. Nicias, taking with him for the assault a hundred and twenty Methonaean light-armed troops, sixty select Athenian hoplites and all the archers, made an attempt to ascend the hill by a certain pathway, but he was wounded and failed to carry the position. Nicostratus with the remainder of his troops approaching the hill, which was hard of access, by another and more circuitous route was thrown into utter confusion, and the whole army of the Athenians were nearly defeated. So on this day the Athenians, finding that the Mendaeans and their allies refused to give way, retreated and en- camped ; and when night came on, the Mendaeans likewise returned to the city. On the following day the Athenians sailed round to the 130 side of Mende looking towards Scione; S0071, in conscquewe they took the suburb, and during the of intamil divisions, the ,. /-,i, 1 1 ^,j,i place falls into the hands whole ot that day devastated the r,, ,,1 ti •J of the Athenians. 1 he country. No one came out to meet Pdoponncsians are shut them ; for a division had arisen in the "/" "' '^'^ citadel. city, and on the following night the three hundred Scionaeans returned home. On the next day Nicias with half his army went as far as the Scionaean frontier and devastated the country on his march, while Nicostratus with the other half sat down before the upper gates of