Kitap 2
Many, too, quartered themselves in the towers of the walls, and in whatever way each could: for the city did not hold them when they were come all together; but subsequently they occupied the long walls, partitioning them out amongst them, and the greater part of the Piraeus.
At the same time they also applied themselves to matters connected with the war; mustering their allies, and equipping an armament of a hundred ships for the Peloponnese.
The Athenians then were in this state of preparation.
As for the army of the Peloponnesians, on the other hand, the first town it came to in Attica was Oenoe, at which point they intended to make their inroad.
And having sat down before it, they prepared to make assaults on the wall, both with engines and in every other way. For Oenoe, as lying on the frontiers of Attica and Boeotia, had been surrounded with a wall, and the Athenians used it as a garrisoned fort, whenever any war befell them.
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.
For the Athenians during this time were carrying in their property, and the Peloponnesians thought that by advancing against them quickly they would have found every thing still out, but for his dilatoriness.
Such resentment did the army feel towards Archidamus during the siege. But he, it is said, was waiting in expectation that the Athenians would give in, while their land was still unravaged, and would shrink from enduring to see it wasted.
When, however, after assaulting Oenoe, and trying every method, they were unable to take the place, and the Athenians sent no herald to them, then indeed they set out from before it, and about eighty days after the events at Plataea, caused by the Thebans who had entered it, when the summer was at its height, and the corn ripe, they made their incursion into Attica; Archidamus son of Zeuxidamus, king of the Lacedaemonians, being their commander.
After pitching their camp there, they first ravaged Eleusis and the Thriasian plain, and put to flight some Athenian cavalry near a place called Rheiti [or the brooks ]. Afterwards they continued their march, keeping Mount Aegaleos on their right through Cropaea, till they came to Acharnae, a place which is the largest of the demes, [or townships,] as they are called, of Attica. And sitting down before it they formed an encampment, and stayed a long time in the place, and continued ravaging it.
It was with the following views that Archidamus is said to have remained in order of battle at Acharnae, and not to have gone down to the plain during that incursion.
He hoped that the Athenians, abounding as they were in numbers of young men, and prepared for war as they had never before been, would perhaps come out against him, and not stand still and see their land ravaged.
Since, then, they had not met him at Eleusis and the Thriasian plain, he pitched his camp at Acharnae, and tried whether they would now march out against him.
For he thought the post a favourable one for encamping in, and moreover that the Acharnians, forming as they did a large part of the state, (for they amounted to three thousand heavy-armed,) would not overlook the destruction of what belonged to them, but would stir up the whole army also to an engagement. If, on the other hand, the Athenians should not come out against him during that incursion, he would then lay waste the plain with less fear in future, and advance to the city itself; for the Acharnians, after losing their own property, would not be so forward to run into danger for that of other people, but there would be a division in their counsels.
It was with this view of the case that Archidamus remained at Acharnae.
As for the Athenians, so long as the army was in the neighbourhood of Eleusis and the Thriasian plain, they had some hope of its not advancing nearer; remembering the case of Pleistoanax, the son of Pausanias, the king of the Lacedaemonians, when with a Peloponnesian army he made an inroad into Attica, as far as Eleusis and Thria, fourteen years before this war, and retired again without advancing any further (for which reason indeed he was banished from Sparta, as he was thought to have been bribed to make the retreat).
When, however, they saw the army at Acharnae, only sixty stades from the city, they considered it no longer bearable, and, as was natural, when their land was being ravaged before their eyes—a thing which the younger men had never yet seen, nor even the elder, except in the Persian wars—it was thought a great indignity, and all of them, especially the young men, determined to go out against them, and not to put up with it.
They met therefore in knots and were in a state of great dissension, some urging them to go out, others dissuading them from it. Prophets too were repeating all kinds of oracles, to which The construction seems to be, that the finite verb ὤργηντο is in sense repeated: ' which they were eager to listen to, as each was eager: which they were severally eager to listen to.' He adds ὡς ἕκαστος ὤργητο, because different persons ran to listen to different prophecies, each choosing those which encouraged his own opinions or feelings. —Arnold. they eagerly listened, as they were severally disposed. The Acharnians especially, thinking that no considerable part of the Athenian forces was in their ranks, urged them to march out, while their land was being ravaged. Nay, in every way the city was excited; and they were angry with Pericles, and remembered none of the advice which he had before given them, but abused him for not leading them out, as their general; and they regarded him as the author of all that they were suffering.
He, in the mean time, seeing them angry at the present state of things, and not in the best mind; and being confident that he took a right view in not wishing to march out against the enemy, did not call them to an assembly, or any other meeting (that they might not commit themselves by coming together with more anger than judgment);
but looked to the defence of the city and kept it quiet, as far as possible. He was, however, continually sending out cavalry, to prevent the advanced guard of the army from falling on the estates near the city and ravaging them. There was also a skirmish of cavalry at Phrygia, between one squadron of the Athenian horse, joined by some Thessalians, and the cavalry of the Boeotians, in which the Athenians and Thessalians had rather the advantage, until, on the heavy-armed coming to the succour of the Boeotians, they were routed, and some few of them killed: they took up their bodies however on the same day without a truce;
and the Peloponnesians erected a trophy the day after. This assistance on the part of the Thessalians was given to the Athenians on the ground of their ancient alliance; and those who came to them consisted of Larissaeans, Pharsalians, [Parasians,] Cranonians, Pyrasians, Gyrtonians, and Pheraeans. Their commanders were Polymedes and Aristonus, each from his own faction, and Menon from Pharsalus. The rest also had their commanders according to their respective cities.
The Peloponnesians, when the Athenians did not come out against them to battle, broke up from before Acharnae, and proceeded to ravage some others of the townships between Mount Parnes and Brilessus.
While they were in the country, the Athenians despatched round the Peloponnese the hundred ships they were preparing, [when I last mentioned them,] with a thousand heavy-armed on board, and four hundred bowmen under the command of Caranus son of Xenotimus, Proteas son of Epicles, and Socrates son of Antigenes.
So they weighed anchor, and were cruising round with this armament; while the Peloponnesians, after staying in Attica the time for which they had provisions, retired through Boeotia, (not by the same way they had made their inroad,) and passing by Oropus ravaged the Piraic territory, as it is called, which the Oropians inhabit as subjects of the Athenians. On arriving at the Peloponnese, they were disbanded, and returned to their several cities.
When they had retired, the Athenians set guards by land and by sea, as they intended to keep them through the whole war. And they resolved to take out and set apart a thousand talents from the money in the Acropolis, and not to spend them, but to carry on the war with their other resources; and if any one should move or put to the vote a proposition for applying that money to any other purpose, except in case of the enemy sailing against the city with a naval armament, and its being necessary to defend themselves, they declared it a capital offence.
Together with this sum of money, they also laid by a hundred triremes, the best they had each year, and trierarchs for them; none of which were they to use except with the money, and in the same peril [as that was reserved for], should any such necessity arise.
The Athenians on board the hundred ships around Peloponnese, and the Corcyraeans with them, who had come to their aid with fifty ships, and some others of the allies in those parts, ravaged other places as they cruised round, and landed at Methone in Laconia, and assaulted the wall, which was weak and had no i. e. no garrison for its defence. men within it.
Now Brasidas, son of Tellis, a Spartan, happened to be in command of a guard for the defence of those parts; and, on hearing of the attack, he came to the assistance of those in the place with a hundred heavy-armed. Dashing, therefore, through the army of the Athenians, which was scattered over the country, and had its attention directed towards the wall, he threw himself into Methone; and having lost a few of his own men in entering it, both saved the city, and from this daring deed was the first that received praise at Sparta in the course of the war.
Upon this the Athenians weighed anchor, and coasted along; and landing at Pheia in Elis, they ravaged the territory for two days, and conquered in battle three hundred picked men, who had come to the rescue from the inhabitants of Or the valley of the Peneus, in which Elis itself was situated. This, as the richest of the whole territory, was naturally occupied by the conquering Aetolians, when they came in with the Dorians at what is called the return of the Heraclidae. The neighbourhood of Pheia, on the other hand, was inhabited by the descendants of the older people, who were conquered by the Aetolians, and now formed, as in so many Peloponnesian states, the subordinate class called περίοικοι. —Arnold. the Vale of Elis, and from the Eleans in the immediate neighbourhood.
But a violent wind coming down upon them, being exposed to the storm in a harbourless place, the greater part of them went on board their ships, and sailed round the promontory called Ichthys, into the port at Pheia; but the Messenians, and some others who would not go on board, went in the mean time by land, and took Pheia.
Afterwards the fleet sailed round and picked them up, and they evacuated the place and put out to sea; the main army of the Eleans having by this time come to its rescue. The Athenians then coasted along to other places and ravaged them.
About the same time they sent out thirty ships to cruise about Locris, and also to serve as a guard for Euboea.
Their commander was Cleopompus, son of Clinias, who, making descents, ravaged certain places on the sea-coast, and captured Thronium, and took hostages from them; defeating also, in a battle at Alope, those of the Locrians who had come to the rescue.
This summer the Athenians also expelled the Aeginetans from their island, themselves, their children, and wives, charging them with being the chief authors of the war they were engaged in; besides Which, it appeared safer to send settlers of their own to hold Aegina, lying so near as it does to the Peloponnese. No long time after therefore they sent the colonists to it;
while to the Aeginetans who were expelled the Lacedaemonians gave Thyrea to live in, and the territory to occupy, as well on the ground of their quarrel with the Athenians, as because they had been benefactors to themselves at the time of the earthquake and the insurrection of the Helots. The territory of Thyrea is on the frontier of Argolis and Laconia, stretching down to the sea. So some of them dwelt there, while others were scattered through the rest of Greece.
The same summer, at the beginning of a new lunar month, (the only time at which it appears possible,) the sun was eclipsed after mid-day, and became full again after it had assumed a crescent form, and after some of the stars had shone out.
It was also in the course of the same summer that Nymphodorus son of Pythes, a man of Abdera, whose sister was the wife of Sitalces, and who had great influence with that monarch, was made their i. e. was publicly appointed by them to show hospitality to any of their citizens going to that country, and to look after their interests there; very nearly like a consul of modern Europe. See note, III. 70. 5. proxenus by the Athenians, who had before considered him hostile to them, and was sent for by them, because they wished Sitalces, son of Teres, king of the Thracians, to become their ally.
Now this Teres, the father of Sitalces, was the first who founded the great kingdom of the Odrysae on a larger scale than those in the rest of Thrace;
for indeed a large part of the Thracians are independent. This Teres is not at all connected with Tereus who married from Athens Procne, the daughter of Pandion; nor were they of the same part of Thrace. The latter lived in Daulis, a part of what is now called Phocis, which was then inhabited by Thracians. It was in this land that the women perpetrated the [cruel] deed to Itys, and by many of the poets, when they mention the nightingale, it is called the Daulian bird. Besides, it is probable that Pandion should have formed the connexion for his daughter [with one who lived] at that distance, with a view to mutual succour, rather than at the distance of several days' journey, [as it is] to the Odrysae. On the other hand, Teres, besides not having the same name, was the first king of the Odrysae that attained to any power.
Sitalecs then, being this man's son, the Athenians made their ally, wishing him to join them in conquering the Thrace-ward towns and Perdiccas.