History of the Peloponnesian War

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:

1. The Pelargicum unoccupied is better,

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.