ition with a hundred ships against Zacynthus, an island lying off
the coast of Elis, peopled by a colony of Achaeans from Peloponnese,
and in alliance with Athens. There were a thousand Lacedaemonian heavy
infantry on board, and Cnemus, a Spartan, as admiral. They made a
descent from their ships, and ravaged most of the country; but as the
inhabitants would not submit, they sailed back home.

At the end of the same summer the Corinthian Aristeus, Aneristus,
Nicolaus, and Stratodemus, envoys from Lacedaemon, Timagoras, a Tegean,
and a private individual named Pollis from Argos, on their way to
Asia to persuade the King to supply funds and join in the war, came
to Sitalces, son of Teres in Thrace, with the idea of inducing him, if
possible, to forsake the alliance of Athens and to march on Potidaea
then besieged by an Athenian force, and also of getting conveyed by his
means to their destination across the Hellespont to Pharnabazus, who was
to send them up the country to the King. But there chanced to be with
Sitalces some Athenian ambassadors--Learchus, son of Callimachus, and
Ameiniades, son of Philemon--who persuaded Sitalces' son, Sadocus, the
new Athenian citizen, to put the men into their hands and thus prevent
their crossing over to the King and doing their part to injure the
country of his choice. He accordingly had them seized, as they were
travelling through Thrace to the vessel in which they were to cross the
Hellespont, by a party whom he had sent on with Learchus and Ameiniades,
and gave orders for their delivery to the Athenian ambassadors, by whom
they were brought to Athens. On their arrival, the Athenians, afraid
that Aristeus, who had been notably the prime mover in the previous
affairs of Potidaea and their Thracian possessions, might live to do
them still more mischief if he escaped, slew them all the same day,
without giving them a trial or hearing the defence which they wished to
offer, and cast their bodies into a pit; thinking themselves
justified in using in retaliation the same mode of warfare which the
Lacedaemonians had begun, when they slew and cast into pits all the
Athenian and allied traders whom they caught on board the merchantmen
round Peloponnese. Indeed, at the outset of the war, the Lacedaemonians
butchered as enemies all whom they took on the sea, whether allies of
Athens or neutrals.

About the same time towards the close of the summer, the Ambraciot
forces, with a number of barbar