After the Athenians had heard his words they were won to his view, and they began to bring in from the fields their children and wives, and also their household furniture, pulling down even the woodwork of the houses themselves;
 but sheep and draught-animals they sent over to Euboea and the adjacent islands.

 And the removal was a hard thing for them to accept, because most of them had always been used to live in the country.

 And this kind of life had been the characteristic of the Athenians, more than of any other Hellenes, from the very earliest times.
 For in the time of Cecrops and the earliest kings down to Theseus, Attica had been divided into separate towns, each with its town hall and magistrates, and so long as they had nothing to fear they did not come together to consult with the king, but separately administered their own affairs and took counsel for themselves.
 Sometimes they even made war upon the king, as, for example, the Eleusinians with Eumolpus did upon Erechtheus.

 But when Theseus became king and proved himself a powerful as well as a prudent ruler, he not only re-organized the country in other respects, but abolished the councils and magistracies of the minor towns and brought all their inhabitants into union with what is now the city, establishing a single council and town hall, and compelled them, while continuing to occupy each his own lands as before, to use Athens as the sole capital.
 This became a great city, since all were now paying their taxes to it, Others render: since all were now counted as belonging to it. and was such when Theseus handed it down to his successors.

 And from his time even to this day the Athenians have celebrated at the public expense a festival called the Synoecia, "Feast of the Union," celebrated on the sixteenth of the month Hecatombaeon. in honour of the goddess.
 Before this i.e. before the Synoecismus, or union of Attica under Theseus. what is now the Acropolis was the city, together with the region at the foot of the Acropolis toward the south.

 And the proof of this is as follows: On the Acropolis itself are the sanctuaries It is taken for granted that these temples were ancient foundations. of the other gods as well as of Athena, A lacuna in the text is generally assumed; Classen would supply καὶ τὰ τῆς Ἀθηνᾶς after θεῶν ἐστι , and I translate this. and the sanctuaries which are outside the Acropolis are situated more in that quarter of the city, namely those of Olympian Zeus, of Pythian Apollo, of Earth, and of Dionysus in Limnae, in whose honour are celebrated the more ancient Dionysia The Anthesteria, contrasted with the Lenaea, which was also an ancient festival, but of less antiquity. The city Dionysia was of comparatively recent origin. the twelfth of the month Anthesterion, just as the Ionian descendants of the Athenians also are wont even now to celebrate it.
 In that quarter are also situated still other ancient sanctuaries.

 And the fountain now called Enneacrunus, Enneacrunus, Nine Conduits ; Callirrhoe, Fair Stream. from the fashion given it by the tyrants, but which anciently, when the springs were uncovered, was named Callirrhoe, was used by people of those days, because it was close by, for the most important ceremonials;
 and even now, in accordance with the ancient practice, it is still customary to use its waters in the rites preliminary to marriages and other sacred ceremonies.

 And, finally, the Acropolis, because the Athenians had there in early times a place of habitation, is still to this day called by them Polis or city.

 Because, then, of their long-continued life of independence in the country districts, most of the Athenians of early times and of their descendants down to the time of this war, from force of habit, even after their political union with the city, continued to reside, with their households, in the country where they had been born;
 and so they did not find it easy to move away, especially since they had only recently finished restoring their establishments after the Persian war.

 They were dejected and aggrieved at having to leave their homes and the temples which had always been theirs,—relics, inherited from their fathers, of their original form of government—and at the prospect of changing their mode of life, and facing what was nothing less for each of them than forsaking his own town.

 And when they came to the capital, only a few of them were provided with dwellings or places of refuge with friends or relatives, and most of them took up their abode in the vacant places of the city and the sanctuaries and the shrines of heroes, all except the Acropolis and the Eleusinium and any other precinct that could be securely closed.
 And the Pelargicum, A fortification built by the "Pelasgians " on the west side of the Acropolis, the only side accessible to an enemy. It was to the space below and above this fortification that the curse attached. as it was called, at the foot of the Acropolis, although it was under a curse that forbade its use for residence, and this was also prohibited by a verse-end of a Pythian oracle to the following effect: The Pelargicum unoccupied is better, nevertheless under stress of the emergency was completely filled with buildings.
 And the oracle, as it seems to me, came true, but in a sense quite the opposite of what was expected;

 for it was not on account of the unlawful occupation of the place that the city was visited by the calamities, but it was on account of the war that there was the necessity of its occupation, and the oracle, although it did not mention the war, yet foresaw that the place would never be occupied for any good.

 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 midsummer The 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 ships 2.17.4 . 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 talents About £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.