Page:History of Greece Vol VI.djvu/146

 124 HISTORY OF GREECE. federates had never been got together, not even to resist Xerx-25. Not only the entire strength of Peloponnesus except Argdans and Achseans, both of whom were neutral at first, thou/h the Achaean town of Pellene joined even at the begin- ning. und all the rest subsequently was brought together, but also he Mogarians, Boeotians, Phocians, Opuntian Lokrians, Amb akiots, Leukadians, and Anaktorians. Among these, Cor- inth, Megara, Sikyon, Pellene, Elis, Ambrakia, and Leukas, furn/ hed maritime force, while the Boeotians, Phocians, and Lokr ans supplied cavalry. Many of these cities, however, sup- plied hoplites besides ; but the remainder of the confederates furni bed hoplites only. It was upon this latter force, not omi^ ng the powerful Boeotian cavalry, that the main reliance was flaced ; especially for the first and most important opera- tion of the war, the devastation of Attica. Bound together by the strongest common feeling of active antipathy to Athens, the whole confederacy was full of hope and confidence for this immediate forward march, so gratifying at once both to their hatred and to their love of plunder, by the hand of destruction laid upon the richest country in Greece, and presenting a chance even of terminating the war at once, if the pride of the Athenians should be so intolerably stung as to provoke them to come out and fight. Certainty of immediate success, at the first outset, a common purpose to be accomplished and a common enemy to be put down, and favorable sympathies throughout Greece, all these crcumstances filled the Peloponnesians with sanguine hopes at the beginning of the war : and the general persuasion was, that Athens, even if not reduced to submission by the first invasion, could not possibly hold out more than two or three summers against the repetition of this destructive pro- cess. 1 Strongly did this confidence contrast with the proucr and res- olute submission to necessity, not without desponding anticipa- tions of the result, which reigned among the auditois of Periklcs. 9 1 Thucyd. vii, 28. uaov /car' upxuc TOV TroXe/zov, ol p.ev tviavrbv, ol 6t ivo, ol de rpiuv ye STUV, o i> 6 e I f frXetw ^povov, tv6piov trepioiaciv a v TO vg (the Athenians), el oi nehoirovvTicrioi la(3uXoisv ef TJJV upav: compare Y, 14.
 * ThuoyJ vi, 11. 6i& -o{3 EIO&I