n on
the road to Thrace. In short, everything made the Lacedaemonians
eager to found the place. After first consulting the god at Delphi and
receiving a favourable answer, they sent off the colonists, Spartans,
and Perioeci, inviting also any of the rest of the Hellenes who might
wish to accompany them, except Ionians, Achaeans, and certain other
nationalities; three Lacedaemonians leading as founders of the colony,
Leon, Alcidas, and Damagon. The settlement effected, they fortified anew
the city, now called Heraclea, distant about four miles and a half from
Thermopylae and two miles and a quarter from the sea, and commenced
building docks, closing the side towards Thermopylae just by the pass
itself, in order that they might be easily defended.

The foundation of this town, evidently meant to annoy Euboea (the
passage across to Cenaeum in that island being a short one), at first
caused some alarm at Athens, which the event however did nothing to
justify, the town never giving them any trouble. The reason of this
was as follows. The Thessalians, who were sovereign in those parts, and
whose territory was menaced by its foundation, were afraid that it might
prove a very powerful neighbour, and accordingly continually harassed
and made war upon the new settlers, until they at last wore them out in
spite of their originally considerable numbers, people flocking from
all quarters to a place founded by the Lacedaemonians, and thus thought
secure of prosperity. On the other hand the Lacedaemonians themselves,
in the persons of their governors, did their full share towards ruining
its prosperity and reducing its population, as they frightened away the
greater part of the inhabitants by governing harshly and in some cases
not fairly, and thus made it easier for their neighbours to prevail
against them.

The same summer, about the same time that the Athenians were detained
at Melos, their fellow citizens in the thirty ships cruising round
Peloponnese, after cutting off some guards in an ambush at Ellomenus in
Leucadia, subsequently went against Leucas itself with a large armament,
having been reinforced by the whole levy of the Acarnanians except
Oeniadae, and by the Zacynthians and Cephallenians and fifteen ships
from Corcyra. While the Leucadians witnessed the devastation of their
land, without and within the isthmus upon which the town of Leucas and
the temple of Apollo stand, without making any movement on account
of the ov