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1

At the end of the year in Athens Aristocrates entered the office of archon and in Rome the consular magistracy was taken over by six military tribunes, Gaius Servilius, Lucius Verginius, Quintus Sulpicius, Aulus Mutilius, and Manius Sergius.2 [2] After these magistrates had entered office the Lacedaemonians, learning that Thibron was conducting the war inefficiently, dispatched Dercylidas as general to Asia; and he took over the army and advanced against the cities in the Troad. [3] Now Hamaxitus and Colonae and Arisba he took at the first assault, then Ilium and Cerbenia and all the rest of the cities of the Troad, occupying some by craft and conquering the others by force. After this he concluded an armistice of eight months with Pharnabazus and advanced against the Thracians who were dwelling at that time in Bithynia; and after laying waste their territory he led his army off into winter quarters. [4]

In Trachinian Heracleia civil discord had arisen and the Lacedaemonians sent Herippidas there to restore order. As soon as Herippidas arrived in Heracleia he called an assembly of the people, and surrounding them with his hoplites, he arrested the authors of the discord and put them all to death, some five hundred in number. [5] And since the inhabitants about Oete had revolted, he made war on them, subjected them to many hardships, and forced them to leave their land. The majority of them, together with their children and wives, fled into Thessaly, from where they were restored to their homes five years later by the Boeotians. [6]

While these events were taking place, the Thracians invaded the Chersonesus in great multitudes, laid waste the whole region, and held its cities beleaguered. The inhabitants of the Chersonesus, being hard pressed in the war, sent for the Lacedaemonian Dercylidas to come from Asia. [7] He, crossing over with his army, drove the Thracians out of the country and shut off the Chersonesus by a wall which he ran from sea to sea.3 By this act he prevented any future descent of the Thracians; and after being honoured with great gifts he transported his army to Asia.

1 399 B.C.

2 There are only five names and the MSS. vary greatly. Livy (Livy 5.8) lists Gaius Servilius Ahala, Quintus Servilius, Lucius Verginius, Quintus Sulpicius, Aulus Manlius, and Manius Sergius.

3 Xen. Hell. 3.2.10 says that the isthmus was only thirty-seven stades (some five miles) wide where the wall was built; cp. Pliny Hist. Nat. 4.43.

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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