important offices. Indeed, the old
fashion of using the water before marriage and for other sacred purposes
is still kept up. Again, from their old residence in that quarter, the
citadel is still known among Athenians as the city.

The Athenians thus long lived scattered over Attica in independent
townships. Even after the centralization of Theseus, old habit still
prevailed; and from the early times down to the present war most
Athenians still lived in the country with their families and households,
and were consequently not at all inclined to move now, especially
as they had only just restored their establishments after the Median
invasion. Deep was their trouble and discontent at abandoning their
houses and the hereditary temples of the ancient constitution, and at
having to change their habits of life and to bid farewell to what each
regarded as his native city.

When they arrived at Athens, though a few had houses of their own to
go to, or could find an asylum with friends or relatives, by far the
greater number had to take up their dwelling in the parts of the city
that were not built over and in the temples and chapels of the heroes,
except the Acropolis and the temple of the Eleusinian Demeter and such
other Places as were always kept closed. The occupation of the plot of
ground lying below the citadel called the Pelasgian had been forbidden
by a curse; and there was also an ominous fragment of a Pythian oracle
which said:

Leave the Pelasgian parcel desolate, Woe worth the day that men inhabit
it!

Yet this too was now built over in the necessity of the moment. And in
my opinion, if the oracle proved true, it was in the opposite sense to
what was expected. For the misfortunes of the state did not arise from
the unlawful occupation, but the necessity of the occupation from the
war; and though the god did not mention this, he foresaw that it would
be an evil day for Athens in which the plot came to be inhabited. Many
also took up their quarters in the towers of the walls or wherever else
they could. For when they were all come in, the city proved too small
to hold them; though afterwards they divided the Long Walls and a
great part of Piraeus into lots and settled there. All this while great
attention was being given to the war; the allies were being mustered,
and an armament of a hundred ships equipped for Peloponnese. Such was
the state of preparation at Athens.

Meanwhile the army of the Peloponnesians