They prepared then for assaulting it, and wasted their time about it to no purpose. And from this delay, Archidamus incurred the greatest censure: though he had, even By the expression, ἐν τῆ ξυναγωγῇ τοῦ πολέμου, he refers to the gradual maturing of their hostile intentions, and especially to the efforts of the Corinthians to induce a positive declaration of hostilities, as narrated in the first book; and so to precipitate that storm of war (to use a common metaphor) which had long been gathering. Bloomfield is correct in saying that it cannot signify, as the translators render, ' in gathering the forces together,' which would be a strange Hysteron proteron. But I do not think that either of the passages he quotes can warrant his rendering ξυναγωγῇ by congress: for in one of them ξυνάγειν is followed by its proper accusative case, and in the other ξυναγωγή has its proper genitive, as it evidently has here: though, were it otherwise, such an absolute use of the word by Polybius would by itself be no authority for supposing that Thucydides used it in the same way. while the war was gathering, been thought to show a want of spirit, and to favour the Athenians, by not heartily recommending hostilities. And again, after the army was mustered, the stay that was made at the Isthmus, and his slowness on the rest of the march, gave occasion for charges against him, but most of all his stopping at Oenoe.
