previous next

While these events were happening, at Delium in Boeotia a pitched battle took place between the Athenians and the Boeotians for the following reasons. Certain Boeotians, who were restive under the form of government which obtained at the time and were eager to establish democracies in the cities, discussed their policy with the Athenian generals, Hippocrates and Demosthenes, and promised to deliver the cities of Boeotia into their hands. [2] The Athenians gladly accepted this offer and, having in view the arrangements for the attack, the generals divided their forces: Demosthenes, taking the larger part of the army, invaded Boeotia, but finding the Boeotians already informed of the betrayal he withdrew without accomplishing anything; Hippocrates led the popular levy of the Athenians against Delium, seized the place, and threw a wall about it before the approach of the Boeotians. The town lies near the territory of Oropus and the boundary of Boeotia.1 [3] Pagondas, who commanded the Boeotians, having summoned soldiers from all the cities of Boeotia, came to Delium with a great army, since he had little less than twenty thousand infantry and about a thousand cavalry. [4] The Athenians, although superior to the Boeotians in number, were not so well equipped as the enemy; for they had left the city hurriedly and on short notice, and in such haste they were unprepared.

1 Oropus was the last city of Attica on the coast before the border of Boeotia. Delium lay near the coast in the territory of Tanagra.

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.

The Annenberg CPB/Project provided support for entering this text.

Purchase a copy of this text (not necessarily the same edition) from Amazon.com

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.

An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.

load focus Greek (1989)
hide Places (automatically extracted)

View a map of the most frequently mentioned places in this document.

Sort places alphabetically, as they appear on the page, by frequency
Click on a place to search for it in this document.
Boeotia (Greece) (6)
Delium (Greece) (4)
Tanagra (Greece) (1)
Attica (Greece) (1)

Download Pleiades ancient places geospacial dataset for this text.

hide References (3 total)
hide Display Preferences
Greek Display:
Arabic Display:
View by Default:
Browse Bar: