Mycalessus, and
at daybreak assaulted and took the town, which is not a large one; the
inhabitants being off their guard and not expecting that any one would
ever come up so far from the sea to molest them, the wall too being
weak, and in some places having tumbled down, while in others it had
not been built to any height, and the gates also being left open through
their feeling of security. The Thracians bursting into Mycalessus sacked
the houses and temples, and butchered the inhabitants, sparing neither
youth nor age, but killing all they fell in with, one after the other,
children and women, and even beasts of burden, and whatever other
living creatures they saw; the Thracian race, like the bloodiest of the
barbarians, being even more so when it has nothing to fear. Everywhere
confusion reigned and death in all its shapes; and in particular they
attacked a boys' school, the largest that there was in the place, into
which the children had just gone, and massacred them all. In short, the
disaster falling upon the whole town was unsurpassed in magnitude, and
unapproached by any in suddenness and in horror.

Meanwhile the Thebans heard of it and marched to the rescue, and
overtaking the Thracians before they had gone far, recovered the plunder
and drove them in panic to the Euripus and the sea, where the vessels
which brought them were lying. The greatest slaughter took place while
they were embarking, as they did not know how to swim, and those in
the vessels on seeing what was going on on on shore moored them out
of bowshot: in the rest of the retreat the Thracians made a very
respectable defence against the Theban horse, by which they were first
attacked, dashing out and closing their ranks according to the tactics
of their country, and lost only a few men in that part of the affair. A
good number who were after plunder were actually caught in the town and
put to death. Altogether the Thracians had two hundred and fifty killed
out of thirteen hundred, the Thebans and the rest who came to the rescue
about twenty, troopers and heavy infantry, with Scirphondas, one of
the Boeotarchs. The Mycalessians lost a large proportion of their
population.

While Mycalessus thus experienced a calamity for its extent as
lamentable as any that happened in the war, Demosthenes, whom we left
sailing to Corcyra, after the building of the fort in Laconia, found
a merchantman lying at Phea in Elis, in which the Corinthian heavy
infantr