History of the Peloponnesian War

When the Athenians had heard him, they approved of his words and fetched into the city their wives and children and the furniture of their houses, pulling down the very timber of the houses themselves. Their sheep and oxen they sent over into Euboea and into the islands over against them.

Nevertheless this removal, in respect they had most of them been accustomed to the country life, grieved them very much.

This custom was from great antiquity more familiar with the Athenians than any other of the rest of Greece. For in the time of Cecrops and the first kings down to Theseus the inhabitants of Attica had their several boroughs and therein their common halls and their governors, and, unless they were in fear of some danger, went not to the king for advice; but every city administered their own affairs and deliberated by themselves.