e masters of Boeotia and Phocis. They dismantled the walls of the
Tanagraeans, took a hundred of the richest men of the Opuntian Locrians
as hostages, and finished their own long walls. This was followed by the
surrender of the Aeginetans to Athens on conditions; they pulled down
their walls, gave up their ships, and agreed to pay tribute in future.
The Athenians sailed round Peloponnese under Tolmides, son of
Tolmaeus, burnt the arsenal of Lacedaemon, took Chalcis, a town of the
Corinthians, and in a descent upon Sicyon defeated the Sicyonians in
battle.

Meanwhile the Athenians in Egypt and their allies were still there,
and encountered all the vicissitudes of war. First the Athenians were
masters of Egypt, and the King sent Megabazus a Persian to Lacedaemon
with money to bribe the Peloponnesians to invade Attica and so draw off
the Athenians from Egypt. Finding that the matter made no progress, and
that the money was only being wasted, he recalled Megabazus with the
remainder of the money, and sent Megabuzus, son of Zopyrus, a Persian,
with a large army to Egypt. Arriving by land he defeated the Egyptians
and their allies in a battle, and drove the Hellenes out of Memphis, and
at length shut them up in the island of Prosopitis, where he besieged
them for a year and six months. At last, draining the canal of its
waters, which he diverted into another channel, he left their ships high
and dry and joined most of the island to the mainland, and then marched
over on foot and captured it. Thus the enterprise of the Hellenes came
to ruin after six years of war. Of all that large host a few travelling
through Libya reached Cyrene in safety, but most of them perished. And
thus Egypt returned to its subjection to the King, except Amyrtaeus, the
king in the marshes, whom they were unable to capture from the extent
of the marsh; the marshmen being also the most warlike of the Egyptians.
Inaros, the Libyan king, the sole author of the Egyptian revolt, was
betrayed, taken, and crucified. Meanwhile a relieving squadron of fifty
vessels had sailed from Athens and the rest of the confederacy for
Egypt. They put in to shore at the Mendesian mouth of the Nile, in total
ignorance of what had occurred. Attacked on the land side by the
troops, and from the sea by the Phoenician navy, most of the ships were
destroyed; the few remaining being saved by retreat. Such was the end of
the great expedition of the Athenians and their allies to Egyp