History of the Peloponnesian War

to Athens. When they arrived, the Athenians, in fear that Aristeus might escape and do them still more harm, because he had evidently been the prime mover in all the earlier intrigues at Potidaea and along the coast of Thrace, put them all to death on that very day without a trial, though they wished to say something in their own defence, and threw their bodies into a pit, thinking it justifiable to employ for their own protection the same measures as had in the first instance been used by the Lacedaemonians when they killed and cast into pits the traders of the Athenians and their allies whom they caught on board merchantmen on the coast of the Peloponnesus. For at the beginning of the war all persons whom the Lacedaemonians captured at sea they destroyed as enemies, whether they were fighting on the side of the Athenians or not even taking part on either side.

About the same time, as the summer was ending, the Ambraciots themselves, with many of the barbarians whom they had summoned to their standard, made an expedition against the Amphilochian Argos and the rest of Amphilochia.

And enmity between them and the Argives first began from the following circumstance.

Amphilochus son of Amphiaraus, when he returned home after the Trojan war, was dissatisfied with the state of affairs at Argos,[*](Alcmaeon, the elder brother of Amphilochus, had slain their mother Eriphyle (cf. Thuc. 2.102.5). The foundation of Amphilochian Argos is ascribed by other authors (Strabo, vii. 326 c; Apollod. 3. 7) to Alcmaeon or to his son Amphilochus.) and therefore founded Amphilochian Argos on the Ambracian gulf, and occupied the country of Amphilochia, calling the town Argos after the name of his own fatherland.

And this city was the largest in Amphilochia and had the wealthiest inhabitants.

But many generations later the Amphilochians, under the stress of misfortunes, invited in the Ambraciots, who bordered on Amphilochia, to share the place with them, and these first became Hellenes and adopted their present dialect in consequence of their union with the Ambraciots;