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1

When this year had come to an end, in Athens the archon was Antiphon, and in Rome in place of consuls four military tribunes were elected, Gaius Furius, Titus Quinctius, Marcus Postumius, and Aulus Cornelius. During this year the Argives and Lacedaemonians, after negotiations with each other, concluded a peace and formed an alliance. [2] Consequently the Mantineians, now that they had lost the help of the Argives, were compelled to subject themselves to the Lacedaemonians. And about the same time in the city of the Argives the Thousand who had been selected out of the total muster of citizens came to an agreement among themselves and decided to dissolve the democracy and establish an aristocracy from their own number. [3] And having as they did many to aid them, because of the prominent position their wealth and brave exploits gave them, they first of all seized the men who had been accustomed to be the leaders of the people and put them to death, and then, by terrorizing the rest of the citizens, they abolished the laws and were proceeding to take the management of the state into their own hands. They maintained this government for eight months and then were overthrown, the people having united against them; and so these men were put to death and the people got back the democracy. [4]

Another movement also took place in Greece. The Phocians also, having quarrelled with the Locrians, settled the issue in pitched battle by virtue of their own valour. For the victory lay with the Phocians, who slew more than one thousand Locrians. [5]

The Athenians under the command of Nicias seized two cities, Cythera and Nisaea2; and they reduced Melos by siege, slew all the males from the youth upward, and sold into slavery the children and women.3 [6]

Such were the affairs of the Greeks in this year. In Italy the Fidenates, when ambassadors came to their city from Rome, put them to death for trifling reasons. [7] Incensed at such an act, the Romans voted to go to war, and mobilizing a strong army they appointed Anius Aemilius Dictator and with him, following their custom, Aulus Cornelius Master of Horse. [8] Aemilius, after making all the preparations for the war, marched with his army against the Fidenates. And when the Fidenates drew up their forces to oppose the Romans, a fierce battle ensued which continued a long time; heavy losses were incurred on both sides and the conflict was indecisive.

1 418 B.C.

2 The loss of Cythera was a blow to the Spartans, that of Nisaea to the Megarians.

3 Melos was destroyed in 416 B.C.

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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