d be more inclined to submit on seeing the Peloponnesians actually
on the march. But the Athenians did not admit into the city or to their
assembly, Pericles having already carried a motion against admitting
either herald or embassy from the Lacedaemonians after they had once
marched out.

The herald was accordingly sent away without an audience, and ordered to
be beyond the frontier that same day; in future, if those who sent
him had a proposition to make, they must retire to their own territory
before they dispatched embassies to Athens. An escort was sent with
Melesippus to prevent his holding communication with any one. When he
reached the frontier and was just going to be dismissed, he departed
with these words: "This day will be the beginning of great misfortunes
to the Hellenes." As soon as he arrived at the camp, and Archidamus
learnt that the Athenians had still no thoughts of submitting, he at
length began his march, and advanced with his army into their territory.
Meanwhile the Boeotians, sending their contingent and cavalry to join
the Peloponnesian expedition, went to Plataea with the remainder and
laid waste the country.

While the Peloponnesians were still mustering at the Isthmus, or on the
march before they invaded Attica, Pericles, son of Xanthippus, one of
the ten generals of the Athenians, finding that the invasion was to
take place, conceived the idea that Archidamus, who happened to be his
friend, might possibly pass by his estate without ravaging it. This he
might do, either from a personal wish to oblige him, or acting under
instructions from Lacedaemon for the purpose of creating a prejudice
against him, as had been before attempted in the demand for the
expulsion of the accursed family. He accordingly took the precaution of
announcing to the Athenians in the assembly that, although Archidamus
was his friend, yet this friendship should not extend to the detriment
of the state, and that in case the enemy should make his houses and
lands an exception to the rest and not pillage them, he at once gave
them up to be public property, so that they should not bring him into
suspicion. He also gave the citizens some advice on their present
affairs in the same strain as before. They were to prepare for the war,
and to carry in their property from the country. They were not to go out
to battle, but to come into the city and guard it, and get ready their
fleet, in which their real strength lay. They were a