History of the Peloponnesian War

Thucydides

Thucydides, Vol. 1-4. Smith, Charles Foster, translator. London and Cambridge, MA: Heinemann and Harvard University Press, 1919-1923.

This treasure they might use for selfpreservation, but they must replace as much as they took. As to their resources in money, then, he thus sought to encourage them;

and as to heavv-armed infantry, he told them that there were thirteen thousand, not counting the sixteen thousand men who garrisoned the forts and manned the city walls. For this was the number engaged in garrison duty at first, when the enemy were invading Attica, and they were composed of the oldest and the youngest[*](The age limits were eighteen to sixty, those from eighteen to twenty (peri/poloi) being called on only for garrison duty within the bounds of Attica. The age of full citizenship was twenty.) citizens and of such metics as were heavily armed. For the length of the Phalerian wall was thirty-five stadia to the circuit-wall of the city, and the portion of the circuit-wall itself which was guarded was fortythree stadia (a portion being left unguarded, that between the Long Wall and the Phalerian); and the Long Walls to the Peiraeus were forty stadia in extent, of which only the outside one was guarded; and the whole circuit of the Peiraeus including Munichia was sixty stadia, half of it being under guard.

The cavalry, Pericles pointed out, numbered twelve hundred, including mounted archers, the bow-men sixteen hundred, and the triremes that were seaworthy three hundred.

For these were the forces, and not less than these in each branch, which the Athenians had on hand when the first invasion of the Peloponnesians was impending and they found themselves involved in the war. And Pericles used still other arguments, as was his wont, to prove that they would be victorious in the war.

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.