would be immediately evacuated by the enemy or
easily taken by force; the absence of their army before Athens having
also something to do with their delay. The Athenians fortified the
place on the land side, and where it most required it, in six days, and
leaving Demosthenes with five ships to garrison it, with the main body
of the fleet hastened on their voyage to Corcyra and Sicily.

As soon as the Peloponnesians in Attica heard of the occupation of
Pylos, they hurried back home; the Lacedaemonians and their king Agis
thinking that the matter touched them nearly. Besides having made their
invasion early in the season, and while the corn was still green, most
of their troops were short of provisions: the weather also was unusually
bad for the time of year, and greatly distressed their army. Many
reasons thus combined to hasten their departure and to make this
invasion a very short one; indeed they only stayed fifteen days in
Attica.

About the same time the Athenian general Simonides getting together a
few Athenians from the garrisons, and a number of the allies in those
parts, took Eion in Thrace, a Mendaean colony and hostile to Athens, by
treachery, but had no sooner done so than the Chalcidians and Bottiaeans
came up and beat him out of it, with the loss of many of his soldiers.

On the return of the Peloponnesians from Attica, the Spartans themselves
and the nearest of the Perioeci at once set out for Pylos, the other
Lacedaemonians following more slowly, as they had just come in from
another campaign. Word was also sent round Peloponnese to come up as
quickly as possible to Pylos; while the sixty Peloponnesian ships were
sent for from Corcyra, and being dragged by their crews across the
isthmus of Leucas, passed unperceived by the Athenian squadron at
Zacynthus, and reached Pylos, where the land forces had arrived before
them. Before the Peloponnesian fleet sailed in, Demosthenes found time
to send out unobserved two ships to inform Eurymedon and the Athenians
on board the fleet at Zacynthus of the danger of Pylos and to summon
them to his assistance. While the ships hastened on their voyage in
obedience to the orders of Demosthenes, the Lacedaemonians prepared to
assault the fort by land and sea, hoping to capture with ease a work
constructed in haste, and held by a feeble garrison. Meanwhile, as they
expected the Athenian ships to arrive from Zacynthus, they intended, if
they failed to take the place before,