History of the Peloponnesian War

But the Plataeans had previously had their children and wives, as well as the oldest men and the unserviceable part of the population, removed to Athens, and the men left behind to undergo the siege were only four hundred of their own number and eighty Athenians, besides one hundred and ten women to prepare the food.

This was the number all told when the siege began, and there was no one else within the walls, slave or freeman. Such were the conditions under which the siege of the Plataeans was established.

During the same summer, when the corn was in full ear,[*](In the month of May.) while the expedition against Plataea was in progress, the Athenians with two thousand hoplites of their own and two hundred cavalry marched against the Chalcidians in Thrace and the Bottiaeans, under the command of Xenophon son of Euripides and two others.

And coming to Spartolus in Bottice they destroyed the grain. It was believed, moreover, that the city would be delivered over to them by a party inside the town which was negotiating with them; but the opposite faction forestalled this by sending word to Olynthus, and some hoplites and other troops arrived to garrison the place.