Book 2
Many also furnished the turrets of the walls and whatsoever other place they could any of them get. For when they were come in, the city had not place for them all; but afterwards they had the long walls divided amongst them and inhabited there and in most parts of Piraeus.
Withal they applied themselves to the business of the war, levying their confederates and making ready a hundred galleys to send about Peloponnesus.
Thus were the Athenians preparing.
The army of the Peloponnesians marching forward came first to Oenoe, a town of Attica, the place where they intended to break in, and encamping before it, prepared with engines and by other means to assault the wall.
For Oenoe, lying on the confines between Attica and Boeotia, was walled about; and the Athenians kept a garrison in it for defence of the country when at any time there should be war.
For which cause they made preparation for the assault of it, and also spent much time about it otherwise. And Archidamus for this was not a little taxed as thought to have been both slow in gathering together the forces for the war and also to have favoured the Athenians in that he encouraged not the army to a forwardness in it. And afterwards likewise his stay in the isthmus and his slowness in the whole journey was laid to his charge, but especially his delay at Oenoe.
For in this time the Athenians retired into the city: whereas it was thought that the Peloponnesians, marching speedily, might but for this delay have taken them all without.
So passionate was the army of Archidamus for his stay before Oenoe. But expecting that the Athenians, whilst their territory was yet unhurt, would relent and not endure to see it wasted, for that cause (as it is reported) he held his hand.
But after, when they had assaulted Oenoe and tried all means but could not take it, and seeing the Athenians sent no herald to them, then at length arising from thence—about eighty days after that which happened to the Thebans that entered Plataea, the summer and corn being now at the highest—they fell into Attica, led by Archidamus the son of Zeuxidamus, king of the Lacedaemonians.
And when they had pitched their camp, they fell to wasting of the country, first about Eleusis and then in the plain of Thriasia, and put to flight a few Athenian horsemen at the brooks called Rheiti. After this, leaving the Aegaleon on the right hand, they passed through Cecropia till they came unto Acharnas, which is the greatest town in all Attica of those that are called Demoi, and pitching there, both fortified their camp and stayed a great while wasting the country thereabout.
Archidamus was said to have stayed so long at Acharnas with his army in battle array and not to have come down all the time of his invasion into the champaign with this intention.
He hoped that the Athenians, flourishing in number of young men and better furnished for war than ever they were before, would perhaps have come forth against him and not endured to see their fields cut down and wasted;
and, therefore, seeing they met him not in Thriasia, he thought good to try if they would come out against him lying now at Acharnas.
Besides, the place seemed unto him commodious for the army to lie in; and it was thought also that the Acharnans, being a great piece of the city (for they were three thousand men of arms), would not have suffered the spoiling of their lands, but rather have urged the rest to go out and fight. And if they came not out against him at this invasion, they might hereafter more boldly both waste the champaign country and come down even to the walls of the city. For the Acharnans, after they should have lost their own, would not be so forward to hazard themselves for the goods of other men; but there would be the thoughts of sedition in one towards another in the city.
These were the cogitations of Archidamus, whilst he lay at Acharnas.
The Athenians, as long as the army of the enemy lay about Eleusis and the fields of Thrius and as long as they had any hope it would come on no farther, remembering that also Pleistoanax the son of Pausanias, king of Lacedaemon, when fourteen years before this war he entered Attica with an army of the Peloponnesians as far as Eleusis and Thriasia, retired again and came no farther (for which he was also banished Sparta as thought to have gone back for money), they stirred not. But when they saw the army now at Acharnas but sixty furlongs from the city, then they thought it no longer to be endured;
and when their fields were wasted (as it was likely) in their sight, which the younger sort had never seen before nor the elder but in the Persian war, it was taken for a horrible matter and thought fit by all, especially by the youth, to go out and not endure it any longer.
And holding councils apart one from another, they were at much contention, some to make a sally and some to hinder it. And the priests of the oracles giving out prophecies of all kinds, everyone made the interpretation according to the sway of his own affection. But the Acharnians, conceiving themselves to be no small part of the Athenians, were they that, whilst their own lands were wasting, most of all urged their going out. Insomuch as the city was every way in tumult and in choler against Pericles, remembering nothing of what he had formerly admonished them, but reviled him for that being their general he refused to lead them into the field, and imputing unto him the cause of all their evil.
But Pericles, seeing them in passion for their present loss and ill advised and being confident he was in the right touching not sallying, assembled them not nor called any council for fear lest being together they might upon passion rather than judgment commit some error, but looked to the guarding of the city and as much as he could to keep it in quiet.
Nevertheless he continually sent out horsemen to keep the scouts of the army from entering upon and doing hurt to the fields near the city. And there happened at Phrygii a small skirmish between one troop of horse of the Athenians, with whom were also the Thessalians, and the horsemen of the Boeotians. Wherein the Athenians and Thessalians had not the worse till such time as the Boeotians were aided by the coming in of their men of arms; and then they were put to flight and a few of the Athenians and Thessalians slain, whose bodies, notwithstanding, they fetched off the same day without leave of the enemy.
And the Peloponnesians the next day erected a trophy. This aid of the Thessalians was upon an ancient league with the Athenians and consisted of Larissaeans, Pharsalians, Parasians, Cranonians, Pyrasians, Gyrtonians, Pheraeans. The leaders of the Larissaeans were Polymedes and Aristonus, men of contrary factions in their city; of the Pharsalians, Meno; and of the rest, out of the several cities several commanders.
The Peloponnesians, seeing the Athenians would not come out to fight, dislodging from Acharnas wasted certain other villages between the hills Parnethus and Brelissus.
Whilst these were in Attica, the Athenians sent the hundred galleys which they had provided, and in them one thousand men of arms and four hundred archers, about Peloponnesus, the commanders whereof were Charcinus the son of 23enotimus, Proteus the son of Epicles, and Socrates the son of Antigenes, who thus furnished weighed anchor and went their way.
The Peloponnesians, when they had stayed in Attica as long as their provision lasted, went home through Boeotia, not the way they came in, but passing by Oropus, wasted the country called Peiraice, which is of the tillage of the Oropians, subjects to the people of Athens. And when they were come back into Peloponnesus, they disbanded and went every man to his own city.
When they were gone, the Athenians ordained watches both by sea and land, such as were to continue to the end of the war, and made a decree to take out a thousand talents of the money in the citadel and set it by so as it might not be spent, but the charges of the war be borne out of other money, and made it capital for any man to move or give his vote for the stirring of this money for any other use, but only if the enemy should come with an army by sea to invade the city for necessity of that defence.
Together with this money they likewise set apart one hundred galleys, and those to be every year the best and captains to be appointed over them, which were to be employed for no other use than the money was and for the same danger if need should require.
The Athenians that were with the hundred galleys about Peloponnesus and with them the Corcyraeans with the aid of fifty sail more and certain others of the confederates thereabout amongst other places which they infested in their course landed at Methone, a town of Laconia, and assaulted it as being but weak and few men within.
But it chanced that Brasidas the son of Tellis, a Spartan, had a garrison in those parts, and hearing of it, succoured those of the town with one hundred men of arms. Wherewith running through the Athenian army, dispersed in the fields, directly towards the town, he put himself into Methone; and with the loss of few of his men in the passage he saved the place, and for this adventure was the first that was praised at Sparta in this war.
The Athenians putting off from thence sailed along the coast and put in at Pheia of Elis, where they spent two days in wasting the country and in a skirmish overthrew three hundred choice men of the Lower Elis together with other Eleians thereabouts that came forth to defend it.
But the wind arising and their galleys being tossed by the weather in a harbourless place, the most of them embarked and sailed about the promontory called Icthys into the haven of Pheia. But the Messenians and certain others that could not get aboard went by land to the town of Pheia and rifled it.
And when they had done, the galleys that now were come about took them in and, leaving Pheia, put forth to sea again. By which time a great army of Eleians was come to succour it, but the Athenians were now gone away and wasting some other territory.
About the same time the Athenians sent likewise thirty galleys about Locris, which were to serve also for a watch about Euboea.
Of these Cleopompus the son of Clinias had the conduct and, landing his soldiers in divers parts, both wasted some places of the sea coast and won the town of Thronium, of which he took hostages, and overcame in fight at Alope the Locrians that came out to aid it.
The same summer, the Athenians put the Aeginetae, man, woman, and child, out of Aegina, laying to their charge that they were the principal cause of the present war. And it was also thought the safer course to hold Aegina, being adjacent to Peloponnesus, with a colony of their own people; and not long after they sent inhabitants into the same.
When the Aeginetae were thus banished, the Lacedaemonians gave them Thyrea to dwell in and the occupation of the lands belonging unto it to live on, both upon hatred to the Athenians, and for the benefits received at the hands of the Aeginetae in the time of the earthquake and insurrection of the Helotes. This territory of Thyrea is in the border between Argolica and Laconica, and reacheth to the seaside. So some of them were placed there, and the rest dispersed into other parts of Greece.
Also the same summer, on the first day of the month according to the moon (at which time it seems only possible), in the afternoon happened an eclipse of the sun. The which, after it had appeared in the form of a crescent and withal some stars had been discerned, came afterwards again to the former brightness.
The same summer also, the Athenians made Nymphodorus the son of Pythos, of the city of Abdera (whose sister was married to Sitalces and that was of great power with him), their host, though before they took him for an enemy, and sent for him to Athens, hoping by his means to bring Sitalces the son of Teres, king of Thrace, into their league.
This Teres, the father of Sitalces, was the first that advanced the kingdom of the Odrysians above the power of the rest of Thrace.
For much of Thrace consisteth of free states. And Tereus that took to wife out of Athens Procne the daughter of Pandion was no kin to this Teres nor of the same part of Thrace. But that Tereus was of the city of Daulia in the country now called Phocis, then inhabited by the Thracians. And the fact of the women concerning Itys was done there; and by the poets, where they mention the nightingale, that bird is also called Daulias. And it is more likely that Pandion matched his daughter to this man, for vicinity and mutual succour, than with the other that was so many days' journey off as Odrysae. And Teres (which is also another name) was the first that seized on the kingdom of Odrysae.
Now Sitalces, this man's son, the Athenians got into their league that they might have the towns lying on Thrace and Perdiccas to be of their party.