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[2] During their term of office Philip, whose aim was to subdue the cities on the Hellespont, acquired without a battle Mecyberna1 and Torone2 by treasonable surrender, and then, having taken the field with a large army against the most important of the cities in this region, Olynthus, he first defeated the Olynthians in two battles and confined them to the defence of their walls; then in the continuous assaults that he made he lost many of his men in encounters at the walls, but finally bribed the chief officials of the Olynthians, Euthycrates and Lasthenes,3 and captured Olynthus through their treachery.

1 Mecyberna was the port of Olynthus, taken by Olynthus from Athens (cp. Book 12.77.5).

2 Torone was probably subject to Olynthus (cp. Book 15.81.6).

3 Euthycrates and Lasthenes became the stock examples of fifth columnists (see Dem. 8.40; Dem. 19.265, 342; also, on Olynthus, Philochorus fr. 132; Suidas, s.v. Κάρανος; Dem. 9.56-66; and Pickard-Cambridge, Cambridge Ancient History, 6.228-233).

Diodorus Siculus. Diodorus of Sicily in Twelve Volumes with an English Translation by C. H. Oldfather. Vol. 4-8. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press; London: William Heinemann, Ltd. 1989.

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