History of the Peloponnesian War

At the same time, the Boeotians, while they furnished their contingent and their cavalry to join the Peloponnesians in their expedition, went to Plataea with the remainder of their force, and laid waste their land.

While the Peloponnesians were still assembling at the Isthmus, and were on their march, before they invaded Attica, Pericles, son of Xanthippus, who was general of the Athenians with nine colleagues, when he found that the invasion would take place, suspected that either Archidamus, because he happened to be his friend, might frequently pass over his lands, and not ravage them, from a personal wish to oblige him; or that this might be done at the command of the Lacedaemonians for the purpose of raising a slander against him —as it was also with reference to him that they had charged them to drive out the accursed; and therefore he publicly declared to the Athenians in the assembly, that though Archidamus was his friend, he had not been admitted into his friendship for any harm to the state; should, then, the enemy not lay waste his lands and houses, like those of the rest, he gave them up to be public property, and that no suspicion might arise against him on these grounds.