Before daylight, while the savage horde were sleeping off the effects of the last night’s carouse, he, with his light-armed peltasts, or sharp-shooters, stole up the hill on its steepest side, towards the east, and, reaching the rough palisades which the rude warriors had thrown round their camp, suddenly broke in upon them. The barbarians, roused from their sleep by this unexpected assault, finding their fort broken at a point where, from the steepness of the hill, they thought themselves secure, and exaggerating in their fear the number of their assailants, who raised the most fearful shouts and yells as they rushed in, retreated from their high camp, after a faint resistance, and rushed, wherever they could find a way of escape, pell-mell down the hill. Those, the majority, who took the north side, as well as those who in their hurry chose the south, were despatched by the horsemen waiting for them on the plain below. Others, as the day broke, seeing the slaughter of their friends, made for the wood on the west, and were either taken prisoners or slain by the heavy-armed foot, who were there in ambush expecting them. Alkibiades found a camp deserted by all except the women, who were chiefly those whom they had carried off from the villages round about; though the chiefs had brought a few with them from their own country. He gave the camp up to pillage, and, gathering the women together, he and Agrestides stood guard over them. His rude soldiers could not understand this. Satiated with the plunder they found, they hoped for a further reward. It was only by the voice and sword of the leader and his faithful friend that the otherwise defenceless prisoners were protected. The women who were natives of the country he sent to their homes with gifts; the women of the chiefs of the invading ruffians he kept as hostages. The prisoners taken were found to be men of gigantic size, and so hardy that no fatigue seemed to affect them. He confessed they would have been indeed formidable foes if they had been well armed and disciplined. Thus he rescued Abdera from her terrible enemy. He also gave the people of that town some wise advice as to preparations for defending themselves, if others of that ferocious tribe, as was not improbable, should come at some future time upon them when he was not there to help them. This advice the citizens of Abdera remembered when it was too late. A few years afterwards the Treballi poured down again from their mountains in the north, and destroyed the effeminate inhabitants.