History of the Peloponnesian War, Thucydides [best free ebook reader TXT] 📗

while great attention was being given to the war; the

allies were being mustered, and an armament of a hundred ships

equipped for Peloponnese. Such was the state of preparation at Athens.

 

Meanwhile the army of the Peloponnesians was advancing. The first

town they came to in Attica was Oenoe, where they to enter the

country. Sitting down before it, they prepared to assault the wall

with engines and otherwise. Oenoe, standing upon the Athenian and

Boeotian border, was of course a walled town, and was used as a

fortress by the Athenians in time of war. So the Peloponnesians

prepared for their assault, and wasted some valuable time before the

place. This delay brought the gravest censure upon Archidamus. Even

during the levying of the war he had credit for weakness and

Athenian sympathies by the half measures he had advocated; and after

the army had assembled he had further injured himself in public

estimation by his loitering at the Isthmus and the slowness with which

the rest of the march had been conducted. But all this was as

nothing to the delay at Oenoe. During this interval the Athenians were

carrying in their property; and it was the belief of the

Peloponnesians that a quick advance would have found everything

still out, had it not been for his procrastination. Such was the

feeling of the army towards Archidamus during the siege. But he, it is

said, expected that the Athenians would shrink from letting their land

be wasted, and would make their submission while it was still

uninjured; and this was why he waited.

 

But after he had assaulted Oenoe, and every possible attempt to take

it had failed, as no herald came from Athens, he at last broke up

his camp and invaded Attica. This was about eighty days after the

Theban attempt upon Plataea, just in the middle of summer, when the

corn was ripe, and Archidamus, son of Zeuxis, king of Lacedaemon,

was in command. Encamping in Eleusis and the Thriasian plain, they

began their ravages, and putting to flight some Athenian horse at a

place called Rheiti, or the Brooks, they then advanced, keeping

Mount Aegaleus on their right, through Cropia, until they reached

Acharnae, the largest of the Athenian demes or townships. Sitting down

before it, they formed a camp there, and continued their ravages for a

long while.

 

The reason why Archidamus remained in order of battle at Acharnae

during this incursion, instead of descending into the plain, is said

to have been this. He hoped that the Athenians might possibly be

tempted by the multitude of their youth and the unprecedented

efficiency of their service to come out to battle and attempt to

stop the devastation of their lands. Accordingly, as they had met

him at Eleusis or the Thriasian plain, he tried if they could be

provoked to a sally by the spectacle of a camp at Acharnae. He thought

the place itself a good position for encamping; and it seemed likely

that such an important part of the state as the three thousand heavy

infantry of the Acharnians would refuse to submit to the ruin of their

property, and would force a battle on the rest of the citizens. On the

other hand, should the Athenians not take the field during this

incursion, he could then fearlessly ravage the plain in future

invasions, and extend his advance up to the very walls of Athens.

After the Acharnians had lost their own property they would be less

willing to risk themselves for that of their neighbours; and so

there would be division in the Athenian counsels. These were the

motives of Archidamus for remaining at Acharnae.

 

In the meanwhile, as long as the army was at Eleusis and the

Thriasian plain, hopes were still entertained of its not advancing any

nearer. It was remembered that Pleistoanax, son of Pausanias, king

of Lacedaemon, had invaded Attica with a Peloponnesian army fourteen

years before, but had retreated without advancing farther than Eleusis

and Thria, which indeed proved the cause of his exile from Sparta,

as it was thought he had been bribed to retreat. But when they saw the

army at Acharnae, barely seven miles from Athens, they lost all

patience. The territory of Athens was being ravaged before the very

eyes of the Athenians, a sight which the young men had never seen

before and the old only in the Median wars; and it was naturally

thought a grievous insult, and the determination was universal,

especially among the young men, to sally forth and stop it. Knots were

formed in the streets and engaged in hot discussion; for if the

proposed sally was warmly recommended, it was also in some cases

opposed. Oracles of the most various import were recited by the

collectors, and found eager listeners in one or other of the

disputants. Foremost in pressing for the sally were the Acharnians, as

constituting no small part of the army of the state, and as it was

their land that was being ravaged. In short, the whole city was in a

most excited state; Pericles was the object of general indignation;

his previous counsels were totally forgotten; he was abused for not

leading out the army which he commanded, and was made responsible

for the whole of the public suffering.

 

He, meanwhile, seeing anger and infatuation just now in the

ascendant, and of his wisdom in refusing a sally, would not call

either assembly or meeting of the people, fearing the fatal results of

a debate inspired by passion and not by prudence. Accordingly he

addressed himself to the defence of the city, and kept it as quiet

as possible, though he constantly sent out cavalry to prevent raids on

the lands near the city from flying parties of the enemy. There was

a trifling affair at Phrygia between a squadron of the Athenian

horse with the Thessalians and the Boeotian cavalry; in which the

former had rather the best of it, until the heavy infantry advanced to

the support of the Boeotians, when the Thessalians and Athenians

were routed and lost a few men, whose bodies, however, were

recovered the same day without a truce. The next day the

Peloponnesians set up a trophy. Ancient alliance brought the

Thessalians to the aid of Athens; those who came being the Larisaeans,

Pharsalians, Cranonians, Pyrasians, Gyrtonians, and Pheraeans. The

Larisaean commanders were Polymedes and Aristonus, two party leaders

in Larisa; the Pharsalian general was Menon; each of the other

cities had also its own commander.

 

In the meantime the Peloponnesians, as the Athenians did not come

out to engage them, broke up from Acharnae and ravaged some of the

demes between Mount Parnes and Brilessus. While they were in Attica

the Athenians sent off the hundred ships which they had been preparing

round Peloponnese, with a thousand heavy infantry and four hundred

archers on board, under the command of Carcinus, son of Xenotimus,

Proteas, son of Epicles, and Socrates, son of Antigenes. This armament

weighed anchor and started on its cruise, and the Peloponnesians,

after remaining in Attica as long as their provisions lasted,

retired through Boeotia by a different road to that by which they

had entered. As they passed Oropus they ravaged the territory of

Graea, which is held by the Oropians from Athens, and reaching

Peloponnese broke up to their respective cities.

 

After they had retired the Athenians set guards by land and sea at

the points at which they intended to have regular stations during

the war. They also resolved to set apart a special fund of a

thousand talents from the moneys in the Acropolis. This was not to

be spent, but the current expenses of the war were to be otherwise

provided for. If any one should move or put to the vote a

proposition for using the money for any purpose whatever except that

of defending the city in the event of the enemy bringing a fleet to

make an attack by sea, it should be a capital offence. With this sum

of money they also set aside a special fleet of one hundred galleys,

the best ships of each year, with their captains. None of these were

to be used except with the money and against the same peril, should

such peril arise.

 

Meanwhile the Athenians in the hundred ships round Peloponnese,

reinforced by a Corcyraean squadron of fifty vessels and some others

of the allies in those parts, cruised about the coasts and ravaged the

country. Among other places they landed in Laconia and made an assault

upon Methone; there being no garrison in the place, and the wall being

weak. But it so happened that Brasidas, son of Tellis, a Spartan,

was in command of a guard for the defence of the district. Hearing

of the attack, he hurried with a hundred heavy infantry to the

assistance of the besieged, and dashing through the army of the

Athenians, which was scattered over the country and had its

attention turned to the wall, threw himself into Methone. He lost a

few men in making good his entrance, but saved the place and won the

thanks of Sparta by his exploit, being thus the first officer who

obtained this notice during the war. The Athenians at once weighed

anchor and continued their cruise. Touching at Pheia in Elis, they

ravaged the country for two days and defeated a picked force of

three hundred men that had come from the vale of Elis and the

immediate neighbourhood to the rescue. But a stiff squall came down

upon them, and, not liking to face it in a place where there was no

harbour, most of them got on board their ships, and doubling Point

Ichthys sailed into the port of Pheia. In the meantime the Messenians,

and some others who could not get on board, marched over by land and

took Pheia. The fleet afterwards sailed round and picked them up and

then put to sea; Pheia being evacuated, as the main army of the Eleans

had now come up. The Athenians continued their cruise, and ravaged

other places on the coast.

 

About the same time the Athenians sent thirty ships to cruise

round Locris and also to guard Euboea; Cleopompus, son of Clinias,

being in command. Making descents from the fleet he ravaged certain

places on the seacoast, and captured Thronium and took hostages

from it. He also defeated at Alope the Locrians that had assembled

to resist him.

 

During the summer the Athenians also expelled the Aeginetans with

their wives and children from Aegina, on the ground of their having

been the chief agents in bringing the war upon them. Besides, Aegina

lies so near Peloponnese that it seemed safer to send colonists of

their own to hold it, and shortly afterwards the settlers were sent

out. The banished Aeginetans found an asylum in Thyrea, which was

given to them by Lacedaemon, not only on account of her quarrel with

Athens, but also because the Aeginetans had laid her under obligations

at the time of the earthquake and the revolt of the Helots. The

territory of Thyrea is on the frontier of Argolis and Laconia,

reaching down to the sea. Those of the Aeginetans who did not settle

here were scattered over the rest of Hellas.

 

The same summer, at the beginning of a new lunar month, the only

time by the way at which it appears possible, the sun was eclipsed

after noon. After it had assumed the form of a crescent and some of

the stars had come out, it returned to its natural shape.

 

During the same summer Nymphodorus, son of Pythes, an Abderite,

whose sister Sitalces had married, was made their proxenus by the

Athenians and sent for to Athens. They had hitherto considered him

their enemy; but he had great influence with Sitalces, and they wished