Book 9
32.3
Nothing would prevent the plain between the mountains becoming a lake owing to the volume of the water, had they not made a strong dyke right through it. So every other year they divert the water to the farther side of the dyke, and farm the other side. Thisbe, they say, was a nymph of the country, from whom the city has received its name.
32.4
Sailing from here you come to Tipha, a small town by the sea. The townsfolk have a sanctuary of Heracles and hold an annual festival. They claim to have been from of old the best sailors in Boeotia, and remind you that Tiphys, who was chosen to steer the Argo, was a fellow-townsman. They point out also the place before the city where they say Argo anchored on her return from Colchis.
32.5
As you go inland from Thespiae you come to Haliartus. The question who became founder of Haliartus and Coroneia I cannot separate from my account of Orchomenus.See Paus. 9.24.6-7. At the Persian invasion the people of Haliartus sided with the Greeks, and so a division of the army of Xerxes overran and burnt both their territory and their city. In Haliartus is the tomb of Lysander the Lacedaemonian. For having attacked the walls of Haliartus, in which were troops from Thebes and Athens, he fell in the fighting that followed a sortie of the enemy.
32.6
Lysander in some ways is worthy of the greatest praise, in others of the sharpest blame. He certainly showed cleverness in the following ways. When in command of the Peloponnesian triremes he waited till Alcibiades was away from the fleet, and then led on Antiochus, the pilot of Alcibiades, to believe that he was a match for the Lacedaemonians at sea, and when in the rashness of vainglory he put out to sea, Lysander overcame him not far from the city of Colophon.
