History of the Peloponnesian War

The Athenians, as long as the army of the enemy lay about Eleusis and the fields of Thrius and as long as they had any hope it would come on no farther, remembering that also Pleistoanax the son of Pausanias, king of Lacedaemon, when fourteen years before this war he entered Attica with an army of the Peloponnesians as far as Eleusis and Thriasia, retired again and came no farther (for which he was also banished Sparta as thought to have gone back for money), they stirred not. But when they saw the army now at Acharnas but sixty furlongs from the city, then they thought it no longer to be endured;

and when their fields were wasted (as it was likely) in their sight, which the younger sort had never seen before nor the elder but in the Persian war, it was taken for a horrible matter and thought fit by all, especially by the youth, to go out and not endure it any longer.

And holding councils apart one from another, they were at much contention, some to make a sally and some to hinder it. And the priests of the oracles giving out prophecies of all kinds, everyone made the interpretation according to the sway of his own affection. But the Acharnians, conceiving themselves to be no small part of the Athenians, were they that, whilst their own lands were wasting, most of all urged their going out. Insomuch as the city was every way in tumult and in choler against Pericles, remembering nothing of what he had formerly admonished them, but reviled him for that being their general he refused to lead them into the field, and imputing unto him the cause of all their evil.

But Pericles, seeing them in passion for their present loss and ill advised and being confident he was in the right touching not sallying, assembled them not nor called any council for fear lest being together they might upon passion rather than judgment commit some error, but looked to the guarding of the city and as much as he could to keep it in quiet.

Nevertheless he continually sent out horsemen to keep the scouts of the army from entering upon and doing hurt to the fields near the city. And there happened at Phrygii a small skirmish between one troop of horse of the Athenians, with whom were also the Thessalians, and the horsemen of the Boeotians. Wherein the Athenians and Thessalians had not the worse till such time as the Boeotians were aided by the coming in of their men of arms; and then they were put to flight and a few of the Athenians and Thessalians slain, whose bodies, notwithstanding, they fetched off the same day without leave of the enemy.