Page:History of Greece Vol VI.djvu/213

 SECOND AND THIRD YEARS OF THE WAP ^j Hnct walls were constructed, with sixteen feet of v./4:iv,diate space all covered in, so as to look like one very thic& wall : there were, moreover, two ditches, out of which the bricks for the wall had been taken, one on the inside towards Plataea, and the other on the outside against any foreign relieving force. The interior ccvered space between the walls was intended to serve as permanent quarters for the troops left on guard, consisting half of Boeotians and half of Peloponnesians. 1 At the same time that Archidamus began the siege of Plataea, the Athenians on their side despatched a force of two thousand hoplites and two hundred horsemen, to the Chalkidic peninsula, under Xenophon son of Euripides (with two colleagues), the same who had granted so recently the capitulation of Potidaea. It was necessary doubtless, to convoy and establish the new colo- nists who were about to occupy the deserted site of Potidaea : moreover, the general had acquired some knowledge of the posi- tion and parties of the Chalkidic towns, and hoped to be able to act against them with effect. They first invaded the territory be- longing to the Bottiaean town of Spartolus, not without hopes that the city itself would be betrayed to them by intelligences within : but this was prevented by the arrival of an additional force from Olynthus, partly hoplites, partly peltasts. These pel- tasts, a species of troops between heavy-armed and light-armed, furnished with a pelta (or light shield), and short spear, or javelin, appear to have taken their rise among these Chalkidic Greeks, being equipped in a manner half Greek and half Thracian : we shall find them hereafter much improved and turned to account by some of the ablest Grecian generals. The Chalkidic hoplites are generally of inferior merit : on the other hand, their cavalry names of months, as well as the practice of intercalation to rectify the cal cndar, varied from city to city ; so that if Thucydides had specified the day of the Attic month Boedromion (instead of specifying the rising of Arctu- rus) on which this work was finished, many of his readers would not have distinctly understood him. Hippokrates also, in indications of time for medical purposes, employs the appearance of Arcturus and other stars. 1 Thucyd. ii, 78 ; iii, 21. From this description of the double wall and covered quarters provided for what was foreknown as a long blockade, wo may understand the sufferings of the Athenian troops (who probably had no double wall), in the two years' blockade of Potidaea, and their readi- ness to grant an easy capitulation to the besieged : see a few pages above