ard what is future as more certain than what is before
your eyes, and what is out of sight, in your eagerness, as already
coming to pass; and as you have staked most on, and trusted most in,
the Lacedaemonians, your fortune, and your hopes, so will you be most
completely deceived."

The Athenian envoys now returned to the army; and the Melians showing
no signs of yielding, the generals at once betook themselves to
hostilities, and drew a line of circumvallation round the Melians,
dividing the work among the different states. Subsequently the Athenians
returned with most of their army, leaving behind them a certain number
of their own citizens and of the allies to keep guard by land and sea.
The force thus left stayed on and besieged the place.

About the same time the Argives invaded the territory of Phlius and lost
eighty men cut off in an ambush by the Phliasians and Argive exiles.
Meanwhile the Athenians at Pylos took so much plunder from the
Lacedaemonians that the latter, although they still refrained from
breaking off the treaty and going to war with Athens, yet proclaimed
that any of their people that chose might plunder the Athenians. The
Corinthians also commenced hostilities with the Athenians for private
quarrels of their own; but the rest of the Peloponnesians stayed
quiet. Meanwhile the Melians attacked by night and took the part of the
Athenian lines over against the market, and killed some of the men, and
brought in corn and all else that they could find useful to them, and
so returned and kept quiet, while the Athenians took measures to keep
better guard in future.

Summer was now over. The next winter the Lacedaemonians intended to
invade the Argive territory, but arriving at the frontier found
the sacrifices for crossing unfavourable, and went back again. This
intention of theirs gave the Argives suspicions of certain of their
fellow citizens, some of whom they arrested; others, however, escaped
them. About the same time the Melians again took another part of
the Athenian lines which were but feebly garrisoned. Reinforcements
afterwards arriving from Athens in consequence, under the command of
Philocrates, son of Demeas, the siege was now pressed vigorously;
and some treachery taking place inside, the Melians surrendered at
discretion to the Athenians, who put to death all the grown men whom
they took, and sold the women and children for slaves, and subsequently
sent out five hundred colonists and i