History of the Peloponnesian War

And he estimated, besides, the large amount of treasure to be found in the other temples. All this would be available for their use, and, if they should be absolutely cut off from all other resources, they might use even the gold plates with which the statue of the goddess herself was overlaid.[*](The chryselephantine statue of Athena by Phidias in the Parthenon.)The statue, as he pointed out to them, contained forty talents' weight of pure gold, and it was all removable.[*](According to Plut. Per. xxxi., Phidias, by the advice of Pericles, laid on the gold in such a way that it could all be removed and weighed.)

This treasure they might use for selfpreservation, but they must replace as much as they took. As to their resources in money, then, he thus sought to encourage them;

and as to heavv-armed infantry, he told them that there were thirteen thousand, not counting the sixteen thousand men who garrisoned the forts and manned the city walls. For this was the number engaged in garrison duty at first, when the enemy were invading Attica, and they were composed of the oldest and the youngest[*](The age limits were eighteen to sixty, those from eighteen to twenty (peri/poloi) being called on only for garrison duty within the bounds of Attica. The age of full citizenship was twenty.) citizens and of such metics as were heavily armed. For the length of the Phalerian wall was thirty-five stadia to the circuit-wall of the city, and the portion of the circuit-wall itself which was guarded was fortythree stadia (a portion being left unguarded, that between the Long Wall and the Phalerian); and the Long Walls to the Peiraeus were forty stadia in extent, of which only the outside one was guarded; and the whole circuit of the Peiraeus including Munichia was sixty stadia, half of it being under guard.

The cavalry, Pericles pointed out, numbered twelve hundred, including mounted archers, the bow-men sixteen hundred, and the triremes that were seaworthy three hundred.

For these were the forces, and not less than these in each branch, which the Athenians had on hand when the first invasion of the Peloponnesians was impending and they found themselves involved in the war. And Pericles used still other arguments, as was his wont, to prove that they would be victorious in the war.

After the Athenians had heard his words they were won to his view, and they began to bring in from the fields their children and wives, and also their household furniture, pulling down even the woodwork of the houses themselves; but sheep and draught-animals they sent over to Euboea and the adjacent islands.

And the removal was a hard thing for them to accept, because most of them had always been used to live in the country.

And this kind of life had been the characteristic of the Athenians, more than of any other Hellenes, from the very earliest times. For in the time of Cecrops and the earliest kings down to Theseus, Attica had been divided into separate towns, each with its town hall and magistrates, and so long as they had nothing to fear they did not come together to consult with the king, but separately administered their own affairs and took counsel for themselves. Sometimes they even made war upon the king, as, for example, the Eleusinians with Eumolpus did upon Erechtheus.

But when Theseus became king and proved himself a powerful as well as a prudent ruler, he not only re-organized the country in other respects, but abolished the councils and magistracies of the minor towns and brought all their inhabitants into union with what is now the city, establishing a single council and town hall, and compelled them, while continuing to occupy each his own lands as before, to use Athens as the sole capital. This became a great city, since all were now paying their taxes to it,[*](Others render: since all were now counted as belonging to it.) and was such when Theseus handed it down to his successors.