on even when in greater force than at present--or
wantonly compromise the safety of the town, and that if what they said
was not attended to, the battle would have to be fought in Megara. For
the rest, they gave no signs of their knowledge of the intrigue, but
stoutly maintained that their advice was the best, and meanwhile
kept close by and watched the gates, making it impossible for the
conspirators to effect their purpose.

The Athenian generals seeing that some obstacle had arisen, and that
the capture of the town by force was no longer practicable, at once
proceeded to invest Nisaea, thinking that, if they could take it
before relief arrived, the surrender of Megara would soon follow.
Iron, stone-masons, and everything else required quickly coming up from
Athens, the Athenians started from the wall which they occupied, and
from this point built a cross wall looking towards Megara down to the
sea on either side of Nisaea; the ditch and the walls being divided
among the army, stones and bricks taken from the suburb, and the
fruit-trees and timber cut down to make a palisade wherever this
seemed necessary; the houses also in the suburb with the addition of
battlements sometimes entering into the fortification. The whole of this
day the work continued, and by the afternoon of the next the wall was
all but completed, when the garrison in Nisaea, alarmed by the absolute
want of provisions, which they used to take in for the day from the
upper town, not anticipating any speedy relief from the Peloponnesians,
and supposing Megara to be hostile, capitulated to the Athenians on
condition that they should give up their arms, and should each be
ransomed for a stipulated sum; their Lacedaemonian commander, and any
others of his countrymen in the place, being left to the discretion of
the Athenians. On these conditions they surrendered and came out, and
the Athenians broke down the long walls at their point of junction
with Megara, took possession of Nisaea, and went on with their other
preparations.

Just at this time the Lacedaemonian Brasidas, son of Tellis, happened to
be in the neighbourhood of Sicyon and Corinth, getting ready an army for
Thrace. As soon as he heard of the capture of the walls, fearing for
the Peloponnesians in Nisaea and the safety of Megara, he sent to the
Boeotians to meet him as quickly as possible at Tripodiscus, a village
so called of the Megarid, under Mount Geraneia, and went himself, with
two th