History of the Peloponnesian War

For the former invasions, having been short, hindered them not from reaping the benefit of the earth for the rest of the time. But now, the enemy continually lying upon them, and sometimes with greater forces, sometimes of necessity with the ordinary garrison making incursions and fetching in booty, Agis, the king of Lacedaemon, being always there in person and diligently prosecuting the war, the Athenians were thereby very grievously afflicted.

For they were not only deprived of the fruit of the land, but also above twenty thousand of their slaves fled over to the enemy, whereof the greatest part were artificers; besides they lost all their sheep and oxen. And by the continual going out of the Athenian horsemen, making excursions to Deceleia and defending the country, their horses became partly lamed through incessant labour in rugged grounds and partly wounded by the enemy.

And their provision, which formerly they used to bring in from Euboea by Oropus the shortest way, through Deceleia by land, they were now forced to fetch in by sea at great cost about the promontory of Sunium. And whatsoever the city was wont to be served withal from without, it now wanted, and instead of a city was become as it were a fort.

And the Athenians, watching on the battlements of the wall, in the day time by turns, but in the night, both winter and summer, all at once (except the horsemen), part at the walls and part at the arms, were quite tired.

But that which pressed them most was that they had two wars at once. And yet their obstinacy was so great as no man would have believed till now they saw it. For being besieged at home from the fortification of the Peloponnesians, no man would have imagined that they should not only not have recalled their army out of Sicily, but have also besieged Syracuse there, a city of itself no less than Athens; and therein so much have exceeded the expectation of the rest of the Grecians both in power and courage (who in the beginning of this war conceived that if the Peloponnesians invaded their territory, some of them, that they might hold out two years, others three, no man more), as that in the seventeenth year after they were first invaded they should have undertaken an expedition into Sicily, and being every way weakened already by the former war, have undergone another, not inferior to that which they had before with the Peloponnesians.