History of the Peloponnesian War

The same winter the Megarians took and razed to the ground their long walls[*](cf. 4.69.4.) which the Athenians had held; and Brasidas, after the capture of Amphipolis, made an expedition with his allies against the district called Acte.

It is a promontory projecting from the King's canal[*](Xerxes' canal; cf. Hdt. vii. 22 ff.) on the inner side of the isthmus, and its terminus at the Aegean Sea is the lofty Mt.

Athos. Of the cities it contains, one is Sane, an Andrian colony close to the canal, facing the sea which is toward Euboea; the others are Thyssus, Cleonae, Acrothoi, Olophyxus and Dium, which are inhabited by mixed barbarian tribes speaking two languages.

There is in it also a small Chalcidic element; but the greatest part is Pelasgic—belonging to those Etruscans that once inhabited Lemnos and Athens[*](According to Herodotus (vi. 137 ff.), they were expelled from Attica, and afterwards, by Miltiades, from Lemnos.)—Bisaltic, Crestonic, and Edonian; and they live in small towns.

Most of these yielded to Brasidas, but Sane and Dium held out against him; so he waited there with his army and laid waste their territory.

Since, however, they would not yield he marched at once against Torone,[*](The chief town on the Sithonian peninsula.) in Chalcidice, which was held by the Athenians; for a few men, who were ready to betray the town, had invited him over. Arriving with his army toward dawn, but while it was still dark, he encamped near the temple of the Dioscuri, which is about three stadia distant from the city.

The rest of the town of Torone and the Athenians of the garrison were unaware of his approach, but his partisans, knowing that he would come, and some few of them having secretly gone forward to meet him, were watching for his approach; and when they perceived that he was there, they introduced into the town seven light-armed men with daggers, under the command of Lysistratus an Olynthian, these men alone of the twenty first assigned to the task not being afraid to enter. These slipped through the seaward wall and escaping the notice of the guard at the uppermost watch-post of the town, which is on the slope of a hill, went up and slew these sentinels, and broke open the postern on the side towards the promontory of Canastraeum.