Page:Thucydides, translated into English Vol 2.djvu/282

 274 FORTIFICATION OF DECKLE A [vil former war the transgression had rather been on their own side. For the Thebans had entered Plataca in time of peace ", and they themselves had refused arbitration when offered by the Athenians, although the former treaty for- bade war in case an adversary was willing to submit to arbitration ^'. They felt that their ill success was deserved, and they took seriously to heart the disasters which had befallen them at Pylos and elsewhere. But now the Athenians with a fleet of thirty ships had gone forth from Argive territory and ravaged part of the lands of Epidaurus and Prasiae, besides other places''; marauding expeditions from Pylos were always going on ; and whenever quarrels arose about disputed points in the treaty and the Lacedae- monians proposed arbitration, the Athenians refused it. Reflecting upon all this, the Lacedaemonians concluded that the guilt of their former transgression was now shifted to the Athenians, and they were full of warlike zeal. During the winter they bade their allies provide iron, and themselves got tools in readiness for the fortification of Decelea. They also prepared, and continually urged the other Peloponnesians to prepare, the succours which they intended to send in merchant-vessels to the Syracusans. And so the winter ended, and with it the eighteenth year in the Peloponnesian War of which Thucydides wrote the history. 19 At the very beginning of the next spring, and earlier The Lacedaemonians than ever before, the Lacedaemonians enter Attica and fortify and thcir allies entered Attica under ^^"l^"- the command of Agis the son of Archi- damus the Lacedaemonian king. They first devastated the plain and its neighbourhood. They then began to fortify Decelea, dividing the work among the cities of the confederacy. Decelea is distant about fourteen miles from Athens, and not much further from Boeotia. The fort was Cp. ii. 2 foil.; iii. 56 init. '' Cp. i. 78 fin, 85, 140 med. c Cp. vi. 105.