Page:Thucydides, translated into English Vol 1.djvu/227

 12, is] the last envoy from SPARTA III eating with any one. When he arrived at the Athenian B.C. 431. frontier, and was about to leave them, he uttered these ^'- ^ • words : ' This day will be to the Hellenes the beginning of great sorrows.' On the return of the herald to the camp Archidamus learned that the Athenians were not as yet at all in the mood to yield ; so at last he moved forward his army and prepared to enter Attica. The Boeotians who had sent their contingent of two-thirds, in- cluding their cavalry, to the Peloponnesian army, marched to Plataea with the remainder of their forces and wasted the country. While the Peloponnesians were gathering at the Isthmus, 13 and were still on their way, but before Perkhs, suspecting they entered Attica, Pericles the son of ^'"'^ Archidamus will ■V ,, ., ~ , spare Ins lands, either Xanthippus, who was one of the ten y,.^,« friendship, or to Athenian generals, knowing that the prejudice him with the invasion was inevitable, and suspecting ^f^'""""^' promises to . , ^ A 1 • 1 • • 1 ^'^^ them to the public that Archidamus in wasting the country if they are uninjured by might very likely spare his lands, either the enemy. out of courtesy and because he happened to be his friend, or by the order of the Lacedaemonian authorities (who had already attempted to raise a prejudice against himf^ when they demanded the expulsion of the polluted family, and might take this further means of injuring him in the eyes of the Athenians), openly declared in the assembly that Archidamus was his friend, but was not so to the injury of the state, and that supposing the enemy did not destroy his lands and buildings like the rest, he would make a present of them to the public; and he desired that the Athenians would have no suspicion of him on that account. As to the general situation, he repeated his previous advice ; they must prepare for war and bring their property from the country into the city ; they must defend their. walls but not go out to battle ; they should also equip for i/ service the fleet in which lay their strength. Their allies Cp. i. 126 iiiit. and 127.