lying (the battle having
been fought on the borders) was subject to Athens, yet the Athenians
could not get them without their leave. Besides, why should they grant a
truce for Athenian ground? And what could be fairer than to tell them
to evacuate Boeotia if they wished to get what they asked? The
Athenian herald accordingly returned with this answer, without having
accomplished his object.

Meanwhile the Boeotians at once sent for darters and slingers from the
Malian Gulf, and with two thousand Corinthian heavy infantry who had
joined them after the battle, the Peloponnesian garrison which had
evacuated Nisaea, and some Megarians with them, marched against Delium,
and attacked the fort, and after divers efforts finally succeeded in
taking it by an engine of the following description. They sawed in two
and scooped out a great beam from end to end, and fitting it nicely
together again like a pipe, hung by chains a cauldron at one extremity,
with which communicated an iron tube projecting from the beam, which
was itself in great part plated with iron. This they brought up from
a distance upon carts to the part of the wall principally composed of
vines and timber, and when it was near, inserted huge bellows into their
end of the beam and blew with them. The blast passing closely confined
into the cauldron, which was filled with lighted coals, sulphur and
pitch, made a great blaze, and set fire to the wall, which soon became
untenable for its defenders, who left it and fled; and in this way the
fort was taken. Of the garrison some were killed and two hundred made
prisoners; most of the rest got on board their ships and returned home.

Soon after the fall of Delium, which took place seventeen days after
the battle, the Athenian herald, without knowing what had happened, came
again for the dead, which were now restored by the Boeotians, who no
longer answered as at first. Not quite five hundred Boeotians fell in
the battle, and nearly one thousand Athenians, including Hippocrates the
general, besides a great number of light troops and camp followers.

Soon after this battle Demosthenes, after the failure of his voyage to
Siphae and of the plot on the town, availed himself of the Acarnanian
and Agraean troops and of the four hundred Athenian heavy infantry
which he had on board, to make a descent on the Sicyonian coast. Before
however all his ships had come to shore, the Sicyonians came up and
routed and chased to their shi