Page:Thucydides, translated into English Vol 2.djvu/82

 74 DELIUM TAKEN BY THE BOEOTIANS [iV which they had fairly won by arms and not in Boeotia, but simply saying, " if they would make a truce according to ancestral custom." * 99 The Boeotians replied that if they were in Boeotia they The Bocotiam quibble "I'ght take what belonged to ihcm, but about the spot in ivhich must depart out of it; if they were in the dead bodies lie. thcir owu land they could do as they pleased. They knew that the territory of Oropus, in which the dead lay (for the battle took place on the border), was actually in the possession of Athens, but that the Athenians could not take them away without their leave, "and they were unwilling as they pretended to make a truce respecting a piece of ground which did not belong to them ^ And to say in their reply ' that if they would quit Boeotian ground they might take what they asked for,' sounded plausible. Thereupon the Athenian herald departed, leaving his purpose unaccomplished. loo The Boeotians immediately sent for javelin-men and slingers from the Malian Gulf. They They attack, and, bv,. . . ., , , , , , , thchdpofaniusenious had been jomed after the battle by the machine, take Dclium Corinthians with two thousand hop- scveittecn days after the n^es, and by the Peloponncsian garrison which had evacuated Nisaca'', as well as by some Mcgarians. They now marched against Delium and attacked the rampart, employing among other military devices an engine, with which they succeeded in taking the place ; it was of the following description. They sawed in two and hollowed out a great beam, which they joined together again very exactly, like a flute, and suspended a vessel by chains at the end of the beam ; the iron mouth of a bellows directed downwards into the vessel was attached to the beam, of which a great part was itself overlaid with iron. This machine they brought " Or, taking 5^S«i' with vnlp rijj tKftta.'v : 'and they were unwilling to make a truce respecting a piece of ground which was claimed by the Athenians.' *" Cp. iv. 6g fin.