Page:Thucydides, translated into English Vol 2.djvu/83

I 99-101] DELIUAI TAKEN BY THE BOEOTIANS 75 up from a distance on carts to various points of the rampart where vine stems and wood had been most extensively used, and when it was quite near the wall they applied a large bellows to their own end of the beam, and blew through it. The blast, prevented from escaping, passed into the vessel which contained burning coals and sulphur and pitch ; these made a huge flame, and set fire to the rampart, so that no one could remain upon it. The garrison took flight, and the fort was taken. Some were slain; two hundred were captured; but the greater number got on board their ships and so reached home. Delium was captured seventeen days after the battle. loi The Athenian herald came shortly A 1 • • r •, r , X They now give up the aiterwards m ignorance of its fate to 1 j , ■ , , » dead, ntiiitbenng about ask again for the dead, and now the a thousand; among Boeotians, instead of repeating their (hem is Hippocrates the former answer, gave them up. In the ^"^^*^ ' battle the Boeotians lost somewhat less than five hundred; the Athenians not quite a thousand, and Hippocrates their general ; also a great number of light-armed troops and baggage-bearers. Shortly after the battle of Delium, Demosthenes, on the failure of the attempt to betray p„,i„,, ^f a descent Siphae, against which he had sailed vmde by Demosthenes with forty ships », employed the Agr- on Sicyonia. aean and Acarnanian troops together with four hundred Athenian hoplites whom he had on board in a descent on the Sicyonian coast. Before all the fleet had reached the shore the Sicyonians came out against the invaders, put to flight those who had landed, and pursued them to their ships, killing some, and making prisoners of others. They then erected a trophy, and gave back the dead under a flag of truce. While the affair of Delium was going on, Sitalces the Odrysian king died ; he had been engaged in an ex- " Cp. iv. 77 init., 89.