372 HISTORY OF GREECE. force, four thousand hoplites and six hundred cavalry, wa^ appointed to march at night by the high road through Eleusis to Megara: but Hippokrates and Demosthenes themselves went on ship-board from Peiraeus to the island of Minoa, which was close against Nisae, and had been for some time under occupation by an Athenian garrison. Here Hippokrates concealed himself with six hundred hoplites, in a hollow space out of which brick earth had been dug, on the mainland opposite to Minoa, and not far from the gate in the Long Wall which opened near the junc- tion of that wall with the ditch and wall surrounding Nisa-a ; while Demosthenes, with some light-armed Plateaus and a detachment of active young Athenians, called Peripoli, and serving as the movable guard of Attica, in their first or second year of military service, placed himself in ambush in the sacred precinct of Ares, still closer to the same gate. To procure that the gate should be opened, was the task of the conspirators within. Amidst the shifts to which the Mega- rians had been reduced in order to obtain supplies, especially since the blockade of Minoa, predatory exit by night was not omitted. Some of these conspirators had been in the habit, before the intrigue with Athens was projected, of carrying out a small sculler-boat by night upon a cart, through this gate, by permission of the Peloponnesian commander of Nissea and the Long Walls. The boat, when thus brought out, was carried down to the shore along the hollow of the dry ditch which sur- rounded the wall of Nisaea, then put to sea for some nightly enterprise, and was brought back again along the ditch before daylight in the morning ; the gate being opened, by permission, to let it in. This was the only way by which any Megarian vessel could get to sea, since the Athenians at Minoa were com- plete masters of the harbor. On the night fixed for the surprise, this boat was carried out and brought back at the usual hour. But the moment that the gate in the Long Wall was opened to readmit it, Demosthenes and his comrades sprang forward to force their way in ; the Megarians along with the boat at the same time setting upon and killing the guards, in order to facili- tate his entrance. This active and determined band were suc- cessful in mastering the gate, and keeping it open until the six
hundred hoplites under Hippokrates came up, and got into the
