Book 2
Many also established themselves in the towers of the city walls, and whereever each one could find a place; for the city did not have room for them when they were all there together. But afterwards they distributed into lots and occupied the space between the Long Walls and the greater part of the Peiraeus.
And while all this was going on, the Athenians applied themselves to the war, bringing together allies and fitting out an expedition of one hundred ships against the Peloponnesus.
The Athenians then, were in this stage of their preparations.
Meanwhile the army of the Peloponnesians was advancing and the first point it reached in Attica was Oenoe, where they intended to begin the invasion. And while they were establishing their camp there, they prepared to assault the wall with engines and otherwise;
for Oenoe, which was on the border between Attica and Boeotia, was a walled town, and was used as a fortress by the Athenians whenever war broke out. So the Lacedaemonians went on with their preparations to assault the place, and in this and other ways wasted time.
And it was for his conduct here that Archidamus was most severely censured, though it was thought that in the levying of the war, too, he had been slack and had played into the hands of the Athenians when he did not advise the Peloponnesians to make war with vigour. Again, when the army was being collected, he was criticized for the delay which occurred at the Isthmus, and afterwards for the leisurely way in which the march was made, but most of all for the halt at Oenoe.
For in the interval the Athenians continued to bring their property into the city and the Peloponnesians believed that but for his procrastination they could have advanced quickly and found everything still outside.
Such was the resentment felt by the army toward Archidamus while they were sitting still. But the reason, it is said, whiy he kept holding back was that he expected the Athenians would make some concession while their territory was still unravaged and would be loath to see it laid waste.
When, however, after assaulting Oenoe and trying in every way to take it they were not able to do so, the Athenians meanwhile making no overtures, then at length they set off from there, about eighty days after the events at Plataea, when it was midsummerThe reference is to the Attic summer, which included spring. The date was about the end of May, the average time for cutting grain in Attica. and the corn was ripe, and invaded Attica, under the command of Arehidamus son of Zeuxidamus, king of the Lacedaemonians.
Making a halt they proceeded to ravage, first of all, the territory of Eleusis and the Thriasian plain, and they routed the Athenian cavalry near the streams called Rheiti; then they advanced, keeping Mount Aegaleos on their right through Cropia,A deme between Aegaleos and Parnes. until they came to Acharnae, the largest of the demes of Attica, as they are called. Halting in the town they made a camp, where they remained for a long time ravaging the country.
And it is said that the motive of Archidamus in waiting about Acharnae with his troops ready for battle, instead of descending into the plain during this invasion, was as follows:
He cherished the hope that the Athenians, who were at their very best as regards the multitude of their youth and prepared for war as never before, would perhaps come out against him and not look on and see their land ravaged.
So when they did not come to meet him at Eleusis and in the Thriasian plain, he settled down in the neighbourhood of Acharnae, to make a test whether they would come out;
for not only did that seem to him a suitable place for his camp, but also the Acharnians were an important part of the state, their hoplites numbering three thousand, and he thought that they would not look on and see their fields ravaged, but would urge the whole people also to fight. And even if the Athenians should not come out against him during this invasion, he would thenceforward proceed with less apprehension to ravage the plain and even advance to the very walls of the city; for the Acharnians, once stripped of their own possessions, would not be as eager to incur danger as before in behalf of the lands of the rest, and so a division would arise in the counsels of the Athenians.
It was with this design that Archidamus stayed at Acharnae.
Now so long as the Peloponnesian army remained in the neighbourhood of Eleusis and the Thriasian plain, the Athenians retained hope that they would not advance nearer; for they remembered that Pleistoanax son of Pausanias, king of the Lacedaemonians, when fourteen years before this war he had invaded Attica with an army of Peloponnesians and proceeded as far as Eleusis and Thria, had advanced no farther but had gone back again. (And indeed this was the cause of his banishment from Sparta, since he was thought to have been bribed to retreat.)
But when they saw the army in the neighbourhood of Acharnae, only sixty stadia from the city, they thought the situation no longer tolerable; on the contrary, it naturally appeared to them a terrible thing when their land was being ravaged before their eyes, a sight which the younger men had never seen, or even the older men except in the Persian war; and the general opinion, especially on the part of the younger men, was that they ought to go forth and put a stop to it.
They gathered in knots and engaged in hot disputes, some urging that they should go out, others opposing this course. Oracle-mongers were chanting oracles of every import, according as each man was disposed to hear them. And the Acharnians, thinking that no insignificant portion of the Athenian people lived at Acharnae, insisted most of all upon going out, as it was their land that was being devastated. Thus in every way the city was in a state of irritation; and they were indignant against Pericles, and remembering none of his earlier warnings they abused him because, though their general, he would not lead them out, and considered him responsible for all their sufferings.
Pericles, however, seeing them exasperated at the present moment and that their intentions were not for the best, and convinced that his judgment was right about refusing to go out, would not convoke a meeting of the assembly or any gathering whatever, for fear that if they got together there would be an outbreak of passion without judgment that would end in some serious mistake;
moreover he guarded the city, and as far as he could kept it free from disturbances. He did, however, constantly send out detachments of cavalry to prevent flying parties from the main army from raiding the fields near the city and ravaging them; and there was a cavalry skirmish at Phrygia between a company of Athenian horsemen, assisted by some Thessalians, and the Boeotian cavalry, in which the Athenians and Thessalians fully held their own, until their heavy infantry came to the support of the Boeotians, when they were routed. A few of the Thessalians and the Athenians were killed, but their bodies were recovered the same day without a truce;
and on the next day the Peloponnesians set up a trophy. This auxiliary force of the Thessalians was sent to the Athenians in accordance with an ancient alliance,1.102.4. and those who came were Larisaeans, Pharsalians, Crannonians, Pyrasians, Gyrtonians, and Pheraeans. And their leaders were, from Larissa, Polymedes and Aristonous, each representing his own faction, and from Pharsalus Menon; and the others had their own commander city by city.
The Peloponesians, on the other hand, when the Athenians did not come out to do battle with them broke up their camp at Acharnae and ravaged some of the demes which lie between Mt. Parnes and Mt. Brilessus.More generally known as Pentelicus, so called from the deme Pentele on its southern slope.
But while they were still in their territory the Athenians sent out on an expedition round the Peloponnesus the hundred ships2.17.4. which they had been equipping, and on them a thousand hoplites and four hundred archers; and the generals in command were Carcinus son of Xenotimus, Proteas son of Epicles, and Socrates son of Antigenes.
So they set sail with this force and began their cruise; the Peloponnesians, on the other hand, remained in Attica for as long a time as they were provisioned and then withdrew through Boeotia, taking a different route from that by which they had entered Attica. They passed by Oropus and laid waste the district called Graice,Named after the ancient town of Γραῖα (Hom. Il. 2.498). which the Oropians occupy as subjects of the Athenians.This was written before 412/11, when Oropus was captured by the Boeotians. Then on their return to the Peloponnesus they were dismissed to their several cities.
After the retreat of the Lacedaemonians, the Athenians set guards to keep watch both by land and sea, their purpose being to maintain a like guard throughout the war. They decided also to set apart one thousand talentsAbout £200,000, or $972,000. This was part of the 6,000 talents stored on the Acropolis (Thuc. 2.13.3). of the money stored on the Acropolis as a special reserve fund, and not to spend it, but to use the rest to carry on the war; and if anyone should make or put to vote a proposal to touch this money except in the one case that the enemy should attack the city with a fleet and they should have to defend it, death was to be the penalty.
And along with this sum of money they set apart for special service each year one hundred of the very best triremes, appointing trierarchs to command them, and no one of these ships was to be used in any other way than in connection with this particular fund in dealing with the same danger should the emergency arise.
Meanwhile the Athenians who had been despatched in the hundred ships around the Peloponnesus, together with the Corcyraeans, who had reinforced them with fifty ships, and some of their other allies in that quarter, were pillaging various places as they cruised about, and in particular disembarked at Methone in Laconia and assaulted its walls, which were weak and without adequate defenders.
But Brasidas, son of Tellis, a Spartan, happened to be in that neighbourhood with a guarding party, and seeing the situation he set out with one hundred hoplites to relieve the garrison. Dashing through the army of the Athenians, which was scattered over the country and was occupied solely with the fortress, he threw his force into Methone, losing a few of his men in the rush, and thus saved the city. This daring exploit, the first of the kind in the war, was acknowledged at Sparta by a vote of thanks.
The Athenians then weighed anchor and continued their cruise along the coast, and putting in at Pheia in Elis ravaged the land for two days, defeating in battle a rescue-party of three hundred picked men gathered from the lowlands of Elis and from the immediate neighbourhood of Pheia.
But a heavy gale of wind arose, and since they were exposed to the storm in a harbourless region, most of them embarked on their ships and sailed round the promontory called Ichthys into the harbour at Pheia. Meanwhile the Messenians and some others, who could not get on board, marched overland and took Pheia.
Afterwards, when the fleet had rounded the promontory, it took up these men, abandoned Pheia, and put out to sea, for meanwhile the main body of the Eleans had come to the rescue. The Athenians now resumed their voyage along the coast, and visiting other places made depredations.
About this same time the Athenians sent out thirty ships to operate around Locris and at the same time to serve as a guard for Euboea.
These were under the command of Cleopompus son of Clinias, who made descents upon various places along the seaboard and ravaged them, captured Thronium, some of whose inhabitants he took as hostages, and at Alope defeated in battle the Locrians who came to the defence of the town.
In the course of this summer the Athenians also expelled the Aeginetans from Aegina, together with their wives and children, making it their main charge against them that they were responsible for the war in which they were involved; besides Aegina lay close to the Peloponnesus, and it was clearly a safer policy to send colonists of their own to occupy it. And indeed they soon afterwards sent thither the settlers.
As for the Aeginetan refugees, the Lacedaemonians gave them Thyrea to dwell in and its territory to cultivate, moved to do this not only by the hostility of the Aeginetans towards the Athenians but also because the Aeginetans had done them a service at the time of the earthquake and the revolt of the Helots.1.101.2. Now the district of Thyrea is the border country between Argolis and Laconia, extending down to the sea. There some of the Aeginetans settled, while some were scattered over the rest of Hellas.
During the same summer at the beginning of a lunar monthAugust 3rd, 431 B.C.(the only time, it seems, when such an occurrence is possible) the sun was eclipsed after midday; it assumed the shape of a crescent and became full again, and during the eclipse some stars became visible.
In this summer, too, Nymphodorus son of Pythes, a man of Abdera, whose sister Sitalces had to wife, and possessing great influence with Sitalces, the Athenians made their proxenusi.e., their representative to look after Athenian interests in the country of Sitalces and Tereus. The latter had violated Philomela, sister of Procne, and cut out her tongue to prevent her telling of it; but she revealed it by weaving the story into a piece of tapestry. with that king, although they had hitherto regarded him as an enemy; and they summoned him to Athens, wishing to gain Sitalces, son of Teres and king of the Thracians, as their ally.
Now this Teres, the father of Sitalces, was the first to found the great kingdom of the Odrysians, which extended over the larger part of Thrace;
for a considerable portion of the Thracians are independent. This Teres is not in any way connected with Tereus who took from Athens to be his wife Procne the daughter of Pandion, nor indeed did they come from the same Thrace. Tereus dwelt at Daulia in the land now called Phocis, which was then occupied by Thracians, and it was in that land that the womenThe women, i.e. Procne and Philomela, who murdered Itys, son of Procne. perpetrated their deed upon Itys. In fact many of the poets, when they refer to the nightingale, call it the bird of Daulia. Besides it was natural for Pandion to contract the marriage alliance for his daughter at so short a distance as Daulia with a view to mutual protection, rather than among the Odrysians, who are many days' journey distant. Teres, however, whose name was not the same as the other's, was the first king to attain great power among the Odrysians.
And it was his son, Sitalces, whom the Athenians wanted to make their ally, wishing him to help in subduing the places on the coast of Thrace and Perdiccas.