g the road
leading to Thebes, keeping the chapel of the hero Androcrates upon their
right; considering that the last road which the Peloponnesians would
suspect them of having taken would be that towards their enemies'
country. Indeed they could see them pursuing with torches upon the
Athens road towards Cithaeron and Druoskephalai or Oakheads. After going
for rather more than half a mile upon the road to Thebes, the Plataeans
turned off and took that leading to the mountain, to Erythrae and
Hysiae, and reaching the hills, made good their escape to Athens, two
hundred and twelve men in all; some of their number having turned back
into the town before getting over the wall, and one archer having been
taken prisoner at the outer ditch. Meanwhile the Peloponnesians gave up
the pursuit and returned to their posts; and the Plataeans in the town,
knowing nothing of what had passed, and informed by those who had turned
back that not a man had escaped, sent out a herald as soon as it was day
to make a truce for the recovery of the dead bodies, and then, learning
the truth, desisted. In this way the Plataean party got over and were
saved.

Towards the close of the same winter, Salaethus, a Lacedaemonian,
was sent out in a galley from Lacedaemon to Mitylene. Going by sea to
Pyrrha, and from thence overland, he passed along the bed of a torrent,
where the line of circumvallation was passable, and thus entering
unperceived into Mitylene told the magistrates that Attica would
certainly be invaded, and the forty ships destined to relieve them
arrive, and that he had been sent on to announce this and to superintend
matters generally. The Mitylenians upon this took courage, and laid
aside the idea of treating with the Athenians; and now this winter
ended, and with it ended the fourth year of the war of which Thucydides
was the historian.

The next summer the Peloponnesians sent off the forty-two ships for
Mitylene, under Alcidas, their high admiral, and themselves and their
allies invaded Attica, their object being to distract the Athenians by
a double movement, and thus to make it less easy for them to act against
the fleet sailing to Mitylene. The commander in this invasion was
Cleomenes, in the place of King Pausanias, son of Pleistoanax, his
nephew, who was still a minor. Not content with laying waste whatever
had shot up in the parts which they had before devastated, the invaders
now extended their ravages to lands passed over i