could invest the place. The Athenians stormed the hill,
defeated and dislodged its occupants, and, having encamped and set up
a trophy, prepared for the work of circumvallation. Not long after they
had begun their operations, the auxiliaries besieged in the citadel of
Mende forced the guard by the sea-side and arrived by night at Scione,
into which most of them succeeded in entering, passing through the
besieging army.

While the investment of Scione was in progress, Perdiccas sent a herald
to the Athenian generals and made peace with the Athenians, through
spite against Brasidas for the retreat from Lyncus, from which moment
indeed he had begun to negotiate. The Lacedaemonian Ischagoras was just
then upon the point of starting with an army overland to join Brasidas;
and Perdiccas, being now required by Nicias to give some proof of the
sincerity of his reconciliation to the Athenians, and being himself
no longer disposed to let the Peloponnesians into his country, put in
motion his friends in Thessaly, with whose chief men he always took
care to have relations, and so effectually stopped the army and its
preparation that they did not even try the Thessalians. Ischagoras
himself, however, with Ameinias and Aristeus, succeeded in reaching
Brasidas; they had been commissioned by the Lacedaemonians to inspect
the state of affairs, and brought out from Sparta (in violation of all
precedent) some of their young men to put in command of the towns,
to guard against their being entrusted to the persons upon the spot.
Brasidas accordingly placed Clearidas, son of Cleonymus, in Amphipolis,
and Pasitelidas, son of Hegesander, in Torone.

The same summer the Thebans dismantled the wall of the Thespians on the
charge of Atticism, having always wished to do so, and now finding it
an easy matter, as the flower of the Thespian youth had perished in the
battle with the Athenians. The same summer also the temple of Hera at
Argos was burnt down, through Chrysis, the priestess, placing a lighted
torch near the garlands and then falling asleep, so that they all caught
fire and were in a blaze before she observed it. Chrysis that very night
fled to Phlius for fear of the Argives, who, agreeably to the law in
such a case, appointed another priestess named Phaeinis. Chrysis at the
time of her flight had been priestess for eight years of the present war
and half the ninth. At the close of the summer the investment of Scione
was completed, and