The want of enthusiasm on the part of the Spartan king, his multiplied delays, first at the isthmus, next in the march, and lastly before Œnoe, were all offensive to the fiery impatience of the army, who were loud in their murmurs against him. He acted upon the calculation already laid down in his discourse at Sparta—that the highly cultivated soil of Attica was to be looked upon as a hostage for the pacific dispositions of the Athenians, who would be more likely to yield when devastation, though not yet inflicted, was nevertheless impending and at their doors. In this point of view, a little delay at the border was no disadvantage; and perhaps the partisans of peace at Athens may have encouraged him to hope that it would enable them to prevail.
After having spent several days before Œnoe without either taking the fort or receiving any message from the Athenians, Archidamus marched onward to Eleusis and the Thriasian plain—about the middle of June, eighty days after the surprise of Platæa. His army was of irresistible force, not less than sixty thousand hoplites, according to the statement of Plutarch, or of one hundred thousand, according to others. Considering the number of constituent allies, the strong feeling by which they were prompted, and the shortness of the expedition combined with the chance of plunder, even the largest of these two numbers is not incredibly great, if we take it to include not hoplites only, but cavalry and light armed also. But as Thucydides, though comparatively full in his account of this march, has stated no general total, we may presume that he had heard none upon which he could rely.
As the Athenians had made no movement towards peace, Archidamus anticipated that they would come forth to meet him in the fertile plain of Eleusis and Thria, which was the first portion of territory that he sat down to ravage. Yet no Athenian force appeared to oppose him, except a detachment of cavalry, who were repulsed in a skirmish near the small lakes called Rheiti. Having laid waste this plain without any serious opposition, Archidamus did not think fit to pursue the straight road which from Thria conducted directly to Athens across the ridge of Mount Ægaleos, but turned off to the eastward, leaving that mountain on his right hand until he came to Cropia, where he crossed a portion of the line of Ægaleos over to Acharnæ.
He was here about seven miles from Athens, on a declivity sloping down into the plain which stretches westerly and northwesterly from Athens, and visible from the city walls; and here he encamped, keeping his army in perfect order for battle, but at the same time intending to damage and ruin the place and its neighbourhood. Acharnæ was the largest and most populous of all the demes in Attica, furnishing no less than three thousand hoplites to the national line, and flourishing as well by its corn, vines, and olives, as by its peculiar abundance of charcoal burning from the forests of ilex on the neighbouring hills. Moreover, if we are to believe Aristophanes, the Acharnian proprietors were not merely sturdy “hearts of oak,” but peculiarly vehement and irritable. It illustrates the condition of a Grecian territory under invasion, when we find this great deme, which could not have contained less than twelve thousand free inhabitants of both sexes and all ages, with at least an equal number of slaves, completely deserted. Archidamus calculated that when the Athenians actually saw his troops so close to their city, carrying fire and sword over their wealthiest canton, their indignation would become uncontrollable, and they would march out forthwith to battle. The Acharnian proprietors especially (he thought) would be foremost in inflaming this temper, and insisting upon protection to their own properties—or if the remaining citizens refused to march out along with them, they would, after having been thus left undefended to ruin, become discontented and indifferent to the general weal.
Though his calculation was not realised, it was nevertheless founded upon most rational grounds. What Archidamus anticipated was on the point of happening, and nothing prevented it except the personal ascendency of Pericles, strained to its very utmost. So long as the invading army was engaged in the Thriasian plain, the Athenians had some faint hope that it might (like Plistoanax fourteen years before) advance no farther into the interior. But when it came to Acharnæ within sight of the city walls—when the ravagers were actually seen destroying buildings, fruit trees, and crops, in the plain of Athens, a sight strange to every Athenian eye except to those very old men who recollected the Persian invasion—the exasperation of the general body of citizens rose to a pitch never before known. The Acharnians first of all—next the youthful citizens, generally—became madly clamorous for arming and going forth to fight. Knowing well their own great strength, but less correctly informed of the superior strength of the enemy, they felt confident that victory was within their reach. Groups of citizens were everywhere gathered together, angrily debating the critical question of the moment; while the usual concomitants of excited feeling—oracles and prophecies of diverse tenor, many of them doubtless promising success against the enemy at Acharnæ—were eagerly caught up and circulated.
In this inflamed temper of the Athenian mind, Pericles was naturally the great object of complaint and wrath. He was denounced as the cause of all the existing suffering: he was reviled as a coward for not leading out the citizens to fight, in his capacity of general: the rational convictions as to the necessity of the war and the only practical means of carrying it on, which his repeated speeches had implanted, seemed to be altogether forgotten. This burst of spontaneous discontent was of course fomented by the numerous political enemies of Pericles, and particularly by Cleon,[47] now rising into importance as an opposition-speaker; whose talent for invective was thus first exercised under the auspices of the high aristocratical party, as well as of an excited public.
But no manifestations, however violent, could disturb either the judgment or the firmness of Pericles. He listened unmoved to all the declarations made against him, resolutely refusing to convene a public assembly, or any meeting invested with an authorised character, under the present irritated temper of the citizens. It appears that he as general, or rather the board of ten generals among whom he was one, must have been invested constitutionally with the power not only of calling the ecclesia when they thought fit, but also of preventing it from meeting, and of postponing even those regular meetings which commonly took place at fixed times, four times in the prytany. No assembly accordingly took place, and the violent exasperation of the people was thus prevented from realising itself in any rash public resolution. That Pericles should have held firm against this raging force, is but one among the many honourable points in his political character; but it is far less wonderful than the fact that his refusal to call the ecclesia was efficacious to prevent the ecclesia from being held. The entire body of Athenians were now assembled within the walls, and if he refused to convoke the ecclesia, they might easily have met in the Pnyx without him; for which it would not have been difficult at such a juncture to provide plausible justification. The inviolable respect which the Athenian people manifested on this occasion for the forms of their democratical constitution—assisted doubtless by their long-established esteem for Pericles, yet opposed to an excitement alike intense and pervading, and to a demand apparently reasonable, in so far as regarded the calling of an assembly for discussion—is one of the most memorable incidents in their history.
While Pericles thus decidedly forbade any general march out for battle he sought to provide as much employment as possible for the compressed eagerness of the citizens. The cavalry were sent forth, together with the Thessalian cavalry their allies, for the purpose of restraining the excursions of the enemy’s light troops, and protecting the lands near the city from plunder. At the same time he fitted out a powerful expedition, which sailed forth to ravage Peloponnesus, even while the invaders were yet in Attica. Archidamus, after having remained engaged in the devastation of Acharnæ long enough to satisfy himself that the Athenians would not hazard a battle, turned away from Athens in a northwesterly direction towards the demes between Mount Brilessus and Mount Parnes, on the road passing through Decelea. The army continued ravaging these districts until their provisions were exhausted, and then quitted Attica by the northwestern road near Oropus, which brought them into Bœotia. As the Oropians, though not Athenians, were yet dependent upon Athens—the district of Græa, a portion of their territory, was laid waste; after which the army dispersed and retired back to their respective homes. It would seem that they quitted Attica towards the end of July, having remained in the country between thirty and forty days.
Meanwhile, the Athenian expedition, under Caranus, Proteas, and Socrates, joined by fifty Corcyræan ships and by some other allies, sailed round Peloponnesus, landing in various parts to inflict damage, and among other places at Methone (Modon), on the southwestern peninsula of the Lacedæmonian territory. The place, neither strong nor well-garrisoned, would have been carried with little difficulty, had not Brasidas, the son of Tellis—a gallant Spartan now mentioned for the first time, but destined to great celebrity afterwards—who happened to be on guard at a neighbouring post, thrown himself into it with one hundred men by a rapid movement, before the dispersed Athenian troops could be brought together to prevent him. He infused such courage into the defenders of the place that every attack was repelled, and the Athenians were forced to re-embark—an act of prowess which procured for him the first public honours bestowed by the Spartans during this war. Sailing northward along the western coast of Peloponnesus, the Athenians landed again on the coast of Elis, a little south of the promontory called Cape Ichthys: they ravaged the territory for two days, defeating both the troops in the neighbourhood and three hundred chosen men from the central Elean territory. Strong winds on a harbourless coast now induced the captains to sail with most of the troops round Cape Ichthys, in order to reach the harbour of Phea on the northern side of it; while the Messenian hoplites, marching by land across the promontory, attacked Phea and carried it by assault. When the fleet arrived, all were re-embarked—the full force of Elis being under march to attack them. They then sailed northward, landing on various other spots to commit devastation, until they reached Sollium, a Corinthian settlement on the coast of Acarnania. They captured this place, which they handed over to the inhabitants of the neighbouring Acarnanian town of Palærus, as well as Astacus, from whence they expelled the despot Euarchus, and enrolled the town as a member of the Athenian alliance. From hence they passed over to Cephallenia, which they were fortunate enough also to acquire as an ally of Athens without any compulsion—with its four distinct towns or districts, Pale, Cranii, Same, and Proni. These various operations took up near three months from about the beginning of July, so that they returned to Athens towards the close of September—the beginning of the winter half of the year, according to the distribution of Thucydides.
This was not the only maritime expedition of the summer. Thirty more triremes, under Cleopompus, were sent through the Euripus to the Locrian coast opposite to the northern part of Eubœa. Some disembarkations were made, whereby the Locrian towns of Thronium and Alope were sacked, and further devastation inflicted; while a permanent garrison was planted, and a fortified post erected, in the uninhabited island of Atalante opposite to the Locrian coast, in order to restrain privateers from Opus and the other Locrian towns in their excursions against Eubœa. It was further determined to expel the Æginetan inhabitants from Ægina, and to occupy the island with Athenian colonists. This step was partly rendered prudent by the important position of the island midway between Attica and Peloponnesus. But a concurrent motive, and probably the stronger motive, was the gratification of ancient antipathy and revenge against a people who had been among the foremost in provoking the war and in inflicting upon Athens so much suffering. The Æginetans, with their wives and children, were all put on ship-board and landed in Peloponnesus, where the Spartans permitted them to occupy the maritime district and town of Thyrea, their last frontier towards Argos; some of them, however, found shelter in other parts of Greece. The island was made over to a detachment of Athenian cleruchs, or citizen proprietors, sent hither by lot.