History of the Peloponnesian War

Zancle was first built by pirates that came from Cume, a Chalcidean city in Opicia; but afterwards there came a multitude, and helped to people it, out of Chalcis and the rest of Euboea; and their conductors were Perieres and Crataemenes, one of Cume, the other of Chalcis. And the name of the city was at first Zancle, so named by the Sicilians because it hath the form of a sickle, and the Sicilians call a sickle zanclon. But these inhabitants were afterwards chased thence by the Samians and other people of Ionia that in their flight from the Medes fell upon Sicily.

After this, Anaxilas, tyrant of Rhegium, drave out the Samians, and peopling the city with a mixed people of them and his own, instead of Zancle called the place by the name of his own country from whence he was anciently descended, Messana.

After Zancle was built Himera, by Eucleides, Simus, and Sacon, the most of which colony were Chalcideans; but there were also amongst them certain outlaws of Syracuse, the vanquished part of a sedition, called the Myletidae. Their language grew to a mean between the Chalcidean and Doric; but the laws of the Chalcidean prevailed.

Acrae and Casmenae were built by the Syracusians, Acrae twenty years after Syracuse, and Casmenae almost twenty after Acrae.

Camarina was at first built by the Syracusians, very near the hundred and thirty-fifth year of their own city, Dascon and Menecolus being the conductors. But the Camarinaeans having been by the Syracusians driven from their seat by war for revolt, Hippocrates, tyrant of Gela, in process of time, taking of the Syracusians that territory for ransom of certain Syracusian prisoners, became their founder, and placed them in Camarina again. After this again, having been driven thence by Gelon, they were planted the third time in the same city.

These were the nations, Greeks and barbarians, that inhabited Sicily. And though it were thus great, yet the Athenians longed very much to send an army against it, out of a desire to bring it all under their subjection, which was the true motive, but as having withal this fair pretext of aiding their kindred and new confederates.

But principally they were instigated to it by the ambassadors of Egesta, who were at Athens and earnestly pressed them thereto. For bordering on the territory of the Selinuntians, they had begun a war about certain things concerning marriage and about a piece of ground that lay doubtfully between them. And the Selinuntians, having leagued themselves with the Syracusians, infested them with war both by sea and by land. Insomuch as the Egestaeans, putting the Athenians in mind of their former league with the Leontines made by Laches, prayed them to send a fleet thither in their aid, alleging, amongst many other things, this as principal: that if the Syracusians, who had driven the Leontines from their seat, should pass without revenge taken on them, and so proceed, by consuming the rest of the allies of the Athenians there, to get the whole power of Sicily into their hands, it would be dangerous lest hereafter some time or other, being Dorians, they should with great forces aid the Dorians for affinity, and being a colony of the Peloponnesians join with the Peloponnesians that sent them out, to pull down the Athenian empire; that it were wisdom, therefore, with those confederates they yet retain, to make head against the Syracusians; and the rather, because for the defraying of the war the Egestaeans would furnish money sufficient of themselves.

Which things when the Athenians had often heard in their assemblies from the mouths of the Egestaean ambassadors and of their advocates and patrons, they decreed to send ambassadors to Egesta to see, first, whether there were in their treasury and temples so much wealth as they said there was, and to bring word in what terms the war stood between that city and the Selinuntians. And ambassadors were sent into Sicily accordingly.

The same winter the Lacedaemonians and their confederates, all but the Corinthians, having drawn out their forces into the territory of the Argives, wasted a small part of their fields and carried away certain cart-loads of their corn. Thence they went to Orneae, and having placed there the Argive outlaws, left with them a few others of the rest of the army; and then making a composition for a certain time, that they of Orneae and those Argives should not wrong each other, they carried their army home.