Page:Thucydides, translated into English Vol 2.djvu/13

 4-8] absence of their army in Attica. In six days the Athenians finished the wall on the land side, and in places towards the sea where it was most required; they then left Demosthenes with five ships to defend it, and with the rest hastened on their way to Corcyra and Sicily.

The Peloponnesian army in Attica, when they heard that Pylos had been occupied, quickly

returned home, Agis and the Lacedaemonians thinking that this matter touched them very nearly. The invasion had been made quite early in the year while the corn was yet green, and they were in want of food for their soldiers; moreover the wet and unseasonable weather had distressed them, so that on many grounds they were inclined to return sooner than they had intended. This was the shortest of all the Peloponnesian invasions; they only remained fifteen days in Attica.

About the same time Simonides, an Athenian general,

collecting a few troops from the Athenian garrisons, and a larger force from their allies in that neighbourhood, took Eion in Chalcidicè, a colony of Mende, which had been hostile to Athens; the place was betrayed to him. But the Chalcidians and Bottiaeans quickly came to the rescue and he was driven out with considerable loss.

On the return of the Peloponnesians from Attica, the

Spartans and the Perioecia in the neighbourhood of the city went at once to attack Pylos, but the other Lacedaemonians, having only just returned from an expedition, were slower in arriving. A message was sent round the Peloponnesus bidding the allies come without a moment's delay and meet at Pylos; another message summoned the sixty Peloponnesian ships from Corcyra. These were carried over the