Page:History of Greece Vol VI.djvu/404

 582 HISTORY OF GREECE. custom, had begun to organize a regiment of archers. 1 Th effective manner in which Demosthenes had employed the light- armed in Sphakteria against the Lacedaemonian hoplites, was well calculated to teach an instructive lesson as to the value of the former description of troops. The Boeotian Delium, 2 which Hippokrates now intended to occupy and fortify, was a temple of Apollo, strongly situated and overhanging the sea, about five miles from Tanagra, and some- what more than a mile from the border territory of Oropus, a territory originally Boeotian, but at this time dependent on Athens, and even partly incorporated in the political community of Athens, under the name of the Deme of Grasa. 3 Oropus itself was about a day's march from Athens, by the road which led through Dekeleia and Sphendale, between the mountains Parnes and Phelleus : so that as the distance to be traversed was so inconsiderable, and the general feeling of the time was that of confidence, it is probable that men of all ages, arms, and dis- positions crowded to join the march, in part from mere curiosity and excitement. Hippokrates reached Delium on the day after he had started from Athens : on the succeeding day he began his work of fortification, which was completed, all hands aiding, and tools as well as workmen having been brought along with the army from Athens, in two days and a half. Having dug a ditch all round the sacred ground, he threw up the earth in a bank alongside of the ditch, planting stakes, throwing in fascines," and adding layers of stone and brick, to keep the work together, and make it into a rampart of tolerable height and firmness. The vines 4 round the temple, together with the stakes which served 1 Thucyd. ir, 55. 2 Thucyd. iv, 90 ; Livy, xxxv, 51. 2 ; Aristotle ap. Stephan. Byz. v, 'Qpuirof. See also Col. Leakc, Athens and the Demi of Attica, vol. ii, sect, iv, p. 123 ; Mr. Finlay, Oropus and the Diakria, p. 38 ; Boss, Die Demen von Attika, p. 6, where the Deme of Graea is verified by an inscription, and explained for the first time. The road taken by the army of Hippokrates in the march to Delium, was the same as that by which the Lacedaemonian army in their first inva- sion of Attica had retired from Attica into Boeotia (Thucyd. ii, 23).
 * Dikaearch. Btof 'E/Uudof. Fragm. ed. Fuhr, pp. 142-230 ; Pausan. i, 34,
 * Dikoearchus (B/of 'EM.udof, p. 142, ctl Fuh:) is full of encomiums on