Page:Thucydides, translated into English Vol 1.djvu/234

 Il8 PERICLES RESTRAINS THE ATHENIANS [ll and so there would be a division in the Athenian counsels. Such was the motive of Archidamus in remaining at Acharnae. 21 The Athenians, so long as the Lacedaemonians were in. Ra^e and excitement the neighbourhood of Eleusis and the of the Athenians. Un- plain of Thria, entertained a hope that popularity of Pericles. ^^^^ ^^^jj ^^^^ ^^ further. They remembered how, fourteen years before % the Lacedae- monian king, Pleistoanax the son of Pausanias, invaded Attica with a Peloponnesian army, and how after advancing as far as Eleusis and Thria he came no further, but re- treated. And indeed this retreat was the cause of his exile ; for he was thought to have been bribed. But when they saw the army in the neighbourhood of Acharnae, and barely seven miles from the city, they felt the presence of the invader to be intolerable. The devastation of their country before their eyes, which the younger men had never seen at all, nor the elder except in the Persian in- vasion, naturally appeared to them a horrible thing, and the whole people, the young men especially, were anxious to go forth and put a stop to it. Knots were formed in the streets, and there were loud disputes, some eager to go out, a minority resisting. Soothsayers were repeating oracles of the most different kinds, which all found in some one or other enthusiastic listeners. The Acharnians, who in their own estimation were no small part of the Athenian state, seeing their land ravaged, strongly in- sisted that they should go out and fight. The excitement in the city was universal ; the people were furious with Pericles, and, forgetting all his previous warnings, they abused him for not leading them to battle, as their general should, and laid all their miseries to his charge. 22 But he, seeing that they were overcome by the irritation of the moment and inclined to evil counsels, and con- fident that he was right in refusing to go out, would not
 * Cp. i. 1 14 fin.