History of the Peloponnesian War

But the Amphilochians, when this happened, placed themselves under the protection of the Acarnanians, and together they called in the Athenians, who sent to them Phormio as general with thirty ships. On the arrival of Phormio they took Argos by storm and reduced the Ambraciots to slavery, and Amphilochians and Acarnanians settled there together.

It was after this that the alliance between the Athenians and the Acarnanians was first established.

The Ambraciots first conceived their enmity toward the Argives from this enslavement of their own countrymen; and afterwards in the course of the war they made this expedition, which consisted, besides themselves, of Chaonians and some of the other barbarian tribes of the neighbourhood. And when they came to Argos, although they dominated the country, they were unable to take the city by assault; they therefore went home and the several tribes disbanded. Such were the events of the summer.

During the ensuing winter the Athenians sent twenty ships round the Peloponnesus under the command of Phormio, who, making Naupactus his base, kept watch there, so that no one might sail either out of Corinth and the Crisaean Gulf or in; and six other ships were sent to Caria and Lycia, under Melesander as general, to collect arrears of tribute in these places and to prevent the Peloponnesian privateers from establishing a base in these regions and molesting the merchantmen sailing from Phaselis and Phoenicia and the mainland in that quarter.

But Melesander, going inland into Lycia with a force of Athenians from the ships and of allied troops, was defeated in battle and slain, losing a number of his troops.

During the same winter the Potidaeans found themselves no longer able to endure the siege; and the raids which the Peloponnesians made into Attica did not cause the Athenians to raise the siege any more than before.[*](Thuc. 1.58.1.)Their grain had given out, and in addition to many other things which by this time had befallen them in their efforts to get bare subsistence some had even eaten their fellows. In this extremity they made proposals for a capitulation to the Athenian generals who were in charge of the operations against them, namely Xenophon son of Euripides, Hestiodorus son of Aristocleides, and Phanomachus son of Callimachus.

And the generals accepted their proposals, seeing the distress which the army was suffering in an exposed place, and taking into consideration that Athens had already spent two thousand talents[*](£400,000, $1,944,000.) on the siege.

So a capitulation was made on the following terms, that the Potidaeans, with their children and wives and the mercenary troops,[*](Thuc. 1.60.1.) were to leave the city with one garment apiece—the women, however, with two—retaining a fixed sum of money for the journey.