Page:Thucydides, translated into English Vol 2.djvu/290

 282 DISTRESS OF ATHENIANS AT HOME [vil they were dispossessed of their entire territory ; more than twenty thousand slaves had deserted ", most of them workmen ; all their sheep and cattle had perished, and now that the cavalry had to go out every day and make descents upon Decelea or keep guard all over the coun- try, their horses were either wounded by the enemy, or lamed by the roughness of the ground and the incessant fatigue. 28 Provisions, which had been formerly conveyed by the Pyovisioits brought a shorter route from Euboea to Oropus long way round. Citi- and thence Overland through Decelea, zens on guard by turns • j l i -1 in the day, and the ^^^''e "^^^ ^^'""'^^ ^y SCa rOUnd the whole population by promontory of Sunium at great cost. night, summer ami Athens was obliged to import every- winter. Two wars in. ^, . c u j j lit stead 0/ one; the be- ^^mg from abroad, and resembled a siegers besieged. The fort rather than a city. In the day- great paradox. time the citizens guarded the battle- ments by relays ; during the night every man was on service except the cavalry ; some at their places of arms, others on the wall'', summer and winter alike, until they were quite worn out. But worse than all was the cruel necessity of maintaining two wars at once; and they carried on both with a determination which no one would have believed unless he had actually seen it. That, blockaded as they were by the Peloponnesians, who had raised a fort in their country, they should refuse to let go Sicily, and, themselves besieged, persevere in the siege of Syracuse, which as a mere city might rank with Athens, and — whereas the Hellenes generally were expecting at the beginning of the war, some that they would survive a year, others two or perhaps three years, certainly not more, if the Peloponnesians invaded Attica — that in the seventeenth year from the first invasion, after so exhausting a struggle, the Athenians should have been strong enough and bold enough to go to Sicily at all, and to plunge into a fresh Cp. viii. 40 med. •• Cp. ii. 13 fin. ; viii. 69 init.