Page:History of Greece Vol V.djvu/356

332 fflSTORY OF GREECE, of Methone and of Gythium. He took Chalkis, a possession of the Corinthians, and Naupaktus belonging to the Ozolian Lo- krians, near the mouth of the Corinthian gulf, — disembarked troops near Sikyon with some advantage in a battle against op- ponents from that town, — and either gained or forced into the Athenian alliance not only Zakynthus and Kephallenia, but also some of the towns of Achaia ; for we afterwards find these latter attached to Athens without knowing when the connection began.i During the ensuing year the Athenians renewed their attack upon Sikyon, with a force of one thousand hoplites under Peri- kles himself, sailing from the Megarian harbor of Pegae in the Krissajan gulf. This eminent man, however, gained no greater advantage than Tolmides, — defeating the Sikyonian forces in the field and driving them within their walls : he afterwards made an expedition into Akamania, taking the Achsean allies in addi- tion to his own forces, but miscarried in his attack on OEniadas and accomplished nothing. Nor were the Athenians more successful in a march undertaken this same year against Thessaly, for the purpose of restoring Orestes, one of the exiled princes or nobles of Pharsalus. Though they took with them an imposing force, including their Boeotian and Phocian allies, the powerful Thes-, salian cavalry forced them to keep in a compact body and con- fined them to the ground actually occupied by their hoplites ; while all their attempts against the city failed, and their hopes of internal rising were disappointed.^ Had the Athenians succeeded in Thessaly, they would have acquired to their alliance nearly the whole of extra-Peloponne- sian Greece : but even without Thessaly their power was pro- digious, and had now attained a maximum height, from which it never varied except to decline. As a counterbalancing loss against so many successes, we have to reckon their ruinous defeat in Egypt, after a war of six years against the Persians (b.c. 460 -455). At first, they had gained brilliant advantages, in con- junction with the insurgent piince Inaros; expelling the Per- sians from all Memphis except the strongest part, called the White Fortress : and such was the alarm of the Persian king, ' Thncyd. i, 108-115; Diodor. xi, 84. 2 Thucjd. i, 111 J Diodor. xi, 85.