History of the Peloponnesian War

This day will be the beginning of great evils for the Hellenes." When he came to the army, and Archidamus had learned that the Athenians would not as yet make any concession, then at length they broke camp and advanced into Athenian territory.

And the Boeotians not only supplied their contingent[*](i .e. two-thirds of their full appointment; cf. Thuc. 2.10.2.) and the cavalry to serve with the Peloponnesians, but also went to Plataea with their remaining troops and proceeded to ravage the country.

While the Peloponnesian forces were still collecting at the Isthmus and while they were on the march but had not yet invaded Attica, Pericles son of Xanthippus, who was one of the ten Athenian generals, when he realised that the invasion would be made, conceived a suspicion that perhaps Archidamus, who happened to be a guest-friend of his, might pass by his fields and not lay them waste, doing this either on his own initiative, in the desire to do him a personal favour, or at the bidding of the Lacedaemonians with a view to creating a prejudice against him, just as it was on his account that they had called upon the Athenians to drive out the pollution.[*](Thuc. 1.127.1.)So he announced to the Athenians in their assembly that while Archidamus was indeed a guest-friend of his, this relationship had certainly not been entered upon for the detriment of the state; and that in case the enemy might not lay waste his fields and houses like the rest, he now gave them up to be public property, and asked that no suspicion should arise against himself on that account.