History of the Peloponnesian War

They also placed a garrison in Pylos, and the Messenians at Naupactus, regarding this territory as their fatherland—for Pylos belongs to the country that was once Messenia—sent thither such of their own number as were best fitted for the task and proceeded to ravage the Laconian territory, and they did a great deal of damage, since they were men of the same speech as the inhabitants.

As for the Lacedaemonians, they had never before experienced predatory warfare of this kind, and therefore, when the Helots began to desert and there was reason to fear that the revolutionary movement might gain still further headway in their territory, they were uneasy, and, in spite of their desire not to betray their alarm to the Athenians, kept sending envoys to them in the endeavour to recover Pylos and the prisoners.

But the Athenians constantly made greater demands and the envoys, although they came again and again, were always sent home unsuccessful. Such were the events at Pylos.

During the same summer and directly after these events the Athenians made an expedition into Corinthian territory with eighty ships and two thousand Athenian hoplites, together with two hundred cavalry on board horse-transports; allied forces also went with them, namely Milesian, Andrian, and Carystian troops, the whole being under the command of Nicias son of Niceratus and two others.

These sailed and at day-break landed midway between the peninsula Chersonesus and the stream Rheitus, at a point on the beach over which rises the Solygeian hill-the hill where the Dorians in olden times[*](At the time when the Dorians, under the leadership of the Heracleidae, got possession of the Peloponnesus (cf. 1.12.3). See Busolt, Gr. Gesch. i. 208, ed. 2.) established themselves when they made war upon the Corinthians in the city, who were Aeolians; and there is still on the hill a village called Solygeia. From this point on the beach where the ships put in to shore this village is twelve stadia distant, the city of Corinth sixty, and the Isthmus twenty.

But the Corinthians, having previous information from Argos that the Athenian army would come, had long before occupied the Isthmus with all their forces, except those who dwelt north of the Isthmus and five hundred Corinthians who were away doing garrison duty in Ambracia[*](Three hundred of these had been sent the previous winter to Ambracia, which was a Corinthian colony; cf. 3.114.4.) and Leucas; all the rest to a man were now there, watching to see where the Athenians would land.