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1

When Diotimus was archon in Athens, the Romans elected as consuls Gaius Julius and Proculus Verginius Tricostus, and the Eleians celebrated the Eighty-eighth Olympiad, that in which Symmachus of Messene in Sicily won the "stadion." [2] In this year Cnemus, the Lacedaemonian admiral, who was inactive in Corinth, decided to seize the Peiraeus. He had received information that no ships in the harbour had been put into the water for duty and no soldiers had been detailed to guard the port; for the Athenians, as he learned, had become negligent about guarding it because they by no means expected any enemy would have the audacity to seize the place. [3] Consequently Cnemus, launching forty triremes which had been hauled up on the beach at Megara, sailed by night to Salamis, and falling unexpectedly on the fortress on Salamis called Boudorium, he towed away three ships and overran the entire island. [4] When the Salaminians signalled by beacon-fires to the inhabitants of Attica, the Athenians, thinking that the Peiraeus had been seized, quickly rushed forth in great confusion to its succour; but when they learned what had taken place, they quickly manned a considerable number of warships and sailed to Salamis. [5] The Peloponnesians, having been disappointed in their main design, sailed away from Salamis and returned home. And the Athenians, after the retreat of the enemy, in the case of Salamis gave it a more vigilant guard and left on it a considerable garrison, and the Peiraeus they strengthened here and there with booms2 and adequate guards.

1 428 B.C.

2 Used to block the entrance; cp. Book 18.64.4.

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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