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While the Athenians were busied with these matters, the Lacedaemonians, taking with them the Peloponnesians, pitched camp at the Isthmus1 with the intention of invading Attica again; but when great earthquakes took place, they were filled with superstitious fear and returned to their native lands. [2] And so severe in fact were the shocks in many parts of Greece that the sea actually swept away and destroyed some cities lying on the coast, while in Locris the strip of land forming a peninsula was torn through and the island known as Atalante2 was formed. [3]

While these events were taking place, the Lacedaemonians colonized Trachis, as it was called, and renamed it Heracleia,3 for the following reasons. [4] The Trachinians had been at war with the neighbouring Oetaeans for many years and had lost the larger number of their citizens. Since the city was deserted, they thought it proper that the Lacedaemonians, who were colonists from Trachis, should assume the care of it. And the Lacedaemonians, both because of their kinship and because Heracles, their ancestor, in ancient times had made his home in Trachis, decided to make it a great city. [5] Consequently the Lacedaemonians and the Peloponnesians sent forth four thousand colonists and accepted any other Greeks who wished to have a part in the colony; the latter numbered not less than six thousand. The result was that they made Trachis a city of ten thousand inhabitants, and after portioning out the territory in allotments they named the city Heracleia.

1 Of Corinth.

2 Opposite Opus in Opuntian Locris.

3 At the head of the Malian Gulf.

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