History of the Peloponnesian War

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.