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Such were the doings of the Eginetans among themselves. When the
Athenians arrived, they went out to meet them with seventy ships; and
a battle took place, wherein the Eginetans suffered a defeat.
Hereupon they had recourse again to their old allies, the Argives;
but these latter refused now to lend them any aid, being angry because
some Eginetan ships, which Cleomenes had taken by force, accompanied
him in his invasion of Argolis, and joined in the disembarkation.
The same thing had happened at the same time With certain vessels of
the Sicyonians; and the Argives had laid a fine of a thousand talents
upon the misdoers, five hundred upon each: whereupon they of Sicyon
acknowledged themselves to have sinned, and agreed with the Argives to
pay them a hundred talents, and so be quit of the debt; but the
Eginetans would make no acknowledgment at all, and showed themselves
proud and stiffnecked. For this reason, when they now prayed the
Argives for aid, the state refused to send them a single soldier.
Notwithstanding, volunteers joined them from Argos to the number of a
thousand, under a captain, Eurybates, a man skilled in the
pentathlic contests. Of these men the greater part never returned,
but were slain by the Athenians in Egina. Eurybates, their
captain, fought a number of single combats, and, after killing three
men in this way, was himself slain by the fourth, who was a
Decelean, named Sophanes.
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