Page:Thucydides, translated into English Vol 2.djvu/47

 5r-54] CAPTURE OF CYTHERA 39 two thousand Phocaean staters'*, they restored the town uninjured. They then made an expedition against Antan- drus and took the city, which was betrayed into their hands. They hoped to liberate the other so-called ' cities of the coast,' which had been formerly in the possession of the Mytilenaeans and were now held by the Athenians^', but their principal object was Antandrus itself, which they intended to strengthen and make their head-quarters. Mount Ida was near and would furnish timber for ship- building, and by the help of a fleet and by other means they could easily harass Lesbos which was close at hand, and reduce the Aeolian towns on the continent. Such were their designs. During the same summer the Athenians with sixty ships, 53 two thousand hoplites, and a few -rr a.i ■ j t^ ' _ I lie Afheiuans send cavalry, taking also certain Milesian an expedition agmnst and other allied forces, made an Cythera. hnpoiiameof expedition against Cythera, under the "^'^^" • command of Nicias the son of Niceratus, Nicostratus the son of Diotrephes, and Autocles the son of Tolmaeus. Cythera is an island which lies close to Laconia off Cape Malea ; it is inhabited by Lacedaemonian Perioeci, and a Spartan officer called the Judge of Cythera was sent thither every year. The Lacedaemonians kept there a garrison of hoplites, which was continually relieved, and took great care of the place. There the merchant vessels coming from Egypt and Libya commonly put in ; the island was a great protection to the Lacedaemonians against depredation by sea, on which element, though secure by land, they were exposed to attack, for the whole of Laconia runs out towards the Sicilian and Cretan seas *^. The Athenian fleet appeared off Cythera, and with a 54 " The value of the Phocaean stater is not precisely known : it was somewhat less than that of the Attic stater (about i65. '' Cp. iii. 50 fin. "= Cp. Herod, vii. 235. VOL. II. E