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89.
In the ensuing summer the Peloponnesians and their allies, under the command of Agis
the1 son of Archidamus, the
Lacedaemonian king, came as far as the2 isthmus.
They intended to invade Attica, but were deterred from proceeding by numerous
earthquakes3, and no invasion took place in
this year.
[2]
About the time when these earthquakes prevailed, the sea at Orobiae in Euboea, retiring
from what was then the line of coast and rising in a great wave, overflowed a part of
the city; and although it subsided in some places, yet in others the
inundation was permanent, and that which was formerly land is now sea.
All the people who could not escape to the high ground perished.
[3]
A similar inundation occurred in the neighbourhood of Atalantè, an island on
the coast of the Opuntian Locri, which carried away a part of the Athenian fort4, and dashed in pieces
one of two ships which were drawn up on the beach.
[4]
At Peparethus also the sea retired, but no inundation followed; an earthquake, however,
overthrew a part of the wall, the Prytaneum, and a few houses.
[5]
I conceive that, where the force of the earthquake was greatest, the sea was driven
back, and the suddenness of the recoil made the inundation more violent; and I am of
opinion that this was the cause of the phenomenon, which would never have taken place if
there had been no earthquake.
Thucydides translated into English; with introduction, marginal analysis, notes, and indices. Volume 1. Thucydides. Benjamin Jowett. translator. Oxford. Clarendon Press. 1881.
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