was advancing. The first town
they came to in Attica was Oenoe, where they to enter the country.
Sitting down before it, they prepared to assault the wall with engines
and otherwise. Oenoe, standing upon the Athenian and Boeotian border,
was of course a walled town, and was used as a fortress by the Athenians
in time of war. So the Peloponnesians prepared for their assault, and
wasted some valuable time before the place. This delay brought the
gravest censure upon Archidamus. Even during the levying of the war he
had credit for weakness and Athenian sympathies by the half measures he
had advocated; and after the army had assembled he had further injured
himself in public estimation by his loitering at the Isthmus and the
slowness with which the rest of the march had been conducted. But all
this was as nothing to the delay at Oenoe. During this interval the
Athenians were carrying in their property; and it was the belief of the
Peloponnesians that a quick advance would have found everything still
out, had it not been for his procrastination. Such was the feeling
of the army towards Archidamus during the siege. But he, it is said,
expected that the Athenians would shrink from letting their land be
wasted, and would make their submission while it was still uninjured;
and this was why he waited.

But after he had assaulted Oenoe, and every possible attempt to take it
had failed, as no herald came from Athens, he at last broke up his camp
and invaded Attica. This was about eighty days after the Theban attempt
upon Plataea, just in the middle of summer, when the corn was ripe, and
Archidamus, son of Zeuxis, king of Lacedaemon, was in command. Encamping
in Eleusis and the Thriasian plain, they began their ravages, and
putting to flight some Athenian horse at a place called Rheiti, or
the Brooks, they then advanced, keeping Mount Aegaleus on their right,
through Cropia, until they reached Acharnae, the largest of the Athenian
demes or townships. Sitting down before it, they formed a camp there,
and continued their ravages for a long while.

The reason why Archidamus remained in order of battle at Acharnae during
this incursion, instead of descending into the plain, is said to have
been this. He hoped that the Athenians might possibly be tempted by
the multitude of their youth and the unprecedented efficiency of their
service to come out to battle and attempt to stop the devastation
of their lands. Accordingly, as they had met