History of the Peloponnesian War

going, as they now were, to change their mode of life, and [*]( Literally, doing nothing else but leaving, etc. Compare III. 39. 2. τί ἄλλο οὗτοι, ἢ ἐπεβούλευσαν; and IV. 14. 3. οὐδεν ἢ ἐκ γῆς ἐναυμάχουν. See Jelf's Gr. Gr. 895. c.) each of them doing what was equivalent to leaving his native city.

When they came into the city, some few indeed had residences, and a place of refuge with some of their friends or relations; but the great bulk of them dwelt in the unoccupied parts of the city, and in all the temples and hero-chapels, except the Acropolis, and the temple of the Eleusinian Ceres, and any other that was kept constantly locked up. The Pelasgium also, as it is called, under the Acropolis, which it was even forbidden by a curse to inhabit, and prohibited by the end of a Pythian oracle, to this effect,

the Pelasgium is better unoccupied,

For it was not, I think, because of their unlawfully inhabiting this spot, that such misfortunes befell the city; but it was owing to the war that the necessity of inhabiting it arose; which war though the god did not mention, he foreknew that [owing to it] the Pelasgium would hereafter be inhabited for no good.

Many, too, quartered themselves in the towers of the walls, and in whatever way each could: for the city did not hold them when they were come all together; but subsequently they occupied the long walls, partitioning them out amongst them, and the greater part of the Piraeus.

At the same time they also applied themselves to matters connected with the war; mustering their allies, and equipping an armament of a hundred ships for the Peloponnese.

The Athenians then were in this state of preparation.

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.