296 HISTORY OF GREECE. etor'a field ;' and the former ultimately entailed upon Athens ftis heaviest of all losses, a deed of blood which deeply dishonored her annals. On this occasion, Nikias visited the island with his fleet, and after vainly summoning the inhabitants, ravaged the lands, but retired without undertaking a siege. He then sailed away,^ad came to Oropus, on the northeast frontier of Attica, bordermg on Brcotia : the hoplites on board his ships landed in the night, and marched into the interior of Bceotia, to the vicinity of Tanagra. They were here met, according to signal raised, by a military force from Athens, which marched thither by land ; and the joint Athenian army ravaged the Tanagraean territory, gain- ing an insignificant advantage over its defenders. On retiring, Nikias reassembled his armament, sailed northward along the coast of Lokris with the usual ravages, and returned home with- out effecting anything farther. 2 About the same time that he started, thirty other Athenian triremes, under Demosthenes and Prokles, had been sent round Peloponnesus to act upon the coast of Akarnania. In conjunc- tion with the whole Akarnanian force, except the men of QEniade, with fifteen triremes from Korkyra, and some troops from Keph- allenia and Zakynthus, they ravaged the whole territory of Leukas, both within and without the isthmus, and confined the inhabitants to their town, which was too strong to be taken by anything but a wall of circumvallation and a tedious blockade. And the Akarnanians, to whom the city was especially hostile, were urgent with Demosthenes to undertake this measure forth- with, since the opportunity might not again recur, and success was nearly certain. But this enterprising officer committed the grave imprudence of offending them on a matter of great importance, in order to attack a country of all others the most impracticable, the interior of .^Etolia. The Messenians of Naupaktus, who suffered from the depredations of the neighboring -^Etolian tribes, inflamed his imagination by suggesting to him a grand scheme of opera- 1 Horat. Sat. ii, 6, 8 : O ! si angulus iste Proximns accedat, qui nunc denormat agellum !
- Thucyd. iii, 91.
