Attica

Attica, at any rate, having through the poverty of the soil been for the longest period free from factions, was always inhabited by the same people.

and that afterwards still greater power fell to the lot of his descendants, as Eurystheus was killed in Attica by the Heraclidae, and Atreus was his mother's brother, and Eurystheus, when going on the expedition, intrusted Mycenae and the government to Atreus, on the ground of their connexion;

and when, after long negotiating, they obtained no favourable answer from the Athenians, but the ships commissioned against Macedonia were sailing just as much against them and when the authorities at Lacedaemon promised them, that should the Athenians go against Potidaea, they would make an incursion into Attica;

This was the fourth time that Dorians had come into Attica.

The Athenians, who were now caught in a ring of foes, decided to oppose the Spartans at Eleusis and to deal with the Boeotians and Chalcidians later.

While the Aeginetans were laying waste to the seaboard of Attica, the Athenians were setting out to march against them, but an oracle from Delphi came to them bidding them to restrain themselves for thirty years after the wrongdoing of the Aeginetans, and in the thirty-first to mark out a precinct for Aeacus and begin the war with Aegina.

I cried aloud, You are bringing war into Attica, Aeschines, an Amphictyonic war;

In your presence, men of Athens, I now invoke all the gods and goddesses whose domain is the land of Attica.

But when our merchantmen had been openly plundered, when the Chersonese was being ravaged, when the man was advancing upon Attica, when there could no longer be any doubt about the position, but war had already begun—even after that this malignant mumbler of blank verse can point to no patriotic act.

namely, if anyone shall be a traitor to the state or shall steal sacred property, he shall be tried before a court, and if he be convicted, he shall not be buried in Attica, and his property shall be confiscated.

But when the ships of Eunomus were close to the shore near Cape Zoster in Attica, Gorgopas gave the order by the trumpet to sail against them.

Meanwhile Eteonicus was again in Aegina, and although previously the Aeginetans had been maintaining commercial intercourse with the Athenians, still, now that the war was being carried on by sea openly, he, with the approval of the ephors, urged on everybody who so wished, to plunder Attica.

Plutarch says that when Demetrius had invested Attica, and taken the neighbouring towns of Eleusis and Rhamnus, he ordered the master and pilot of a ship, attempting to convey provisions into Athens, to be hanged, as he designed to reduce that city by famine:

And describing an incursion of the Acarnanians into Attica, and their ravaging the country, he says that “those acts of irritation ended in a declaration of just and regular war on both sides.

In the next place, it is unnecessary to destroy an enemy’s country, when he has other sources, from which he can draw his supplies, as for instance, the sea or any adjoining territory.

He can count upon a livelihood sufficient for all his needs, if he does no more than withdraw from Attica;

Well, did you lay Attica waste and pillage your fellow Athenians by land or by sea?

They gave back Greece her freedom, and they delivered Attica, the land of their birth.

For Hippias, having revolted from the Athenians, brought the barbarians into Attica, and, having seized beforehand the opportune places, kept guard, because he had experience of the country.

Besides these, Apollo, the most oracular, witnessing to the glory of God, is constrained to speak concerning Athena, at the time when the Medes were marching against Hellas, how she besought and supplicated Zeus on behalf of Attica.

But for myself, O Fortune—for it is to you, perhaps, that the speech might justly be addressed—if someone were to raise me on high and carry me aloft upon the back of some Pegasus, or upon the winged chariot of Pelops, spreading out beneath me the whole earth and its cities, I would not choose the luxury of the Lydians, nor the frugality of Attica, nor the poverty of Laconia, nor Croton—for they a …

And so, having sailed there, they not only failed of Sicily, but were stripped of Attica too, and looked on while their very city came into the power of the enemy.

Since we have lost our foreign property, and my father left me nothing in Attica, I am forced to settle down here now and work for my living with my hands.

and now the Boeotians, who formerly would not venture, even in their own country, to face the Athenians without help from Sparta and the rest of the Peloponnese, threaten to invade Attica by themselves, and the Athenians, who formerly overran Boeotia, fear that the Boeotians may plunder Attica.

and that final act of folly, when, outmatched in the war, and offered terms of peace by the Lacedaemonians, with the agreement that we should hold not only Attica, but Lemnos, Imbros, and Scyros also, and retain the constitutional democracy, the people would have none of it, but chose to go on with a war that was beyond their powers.

Then we went to war again on account of Megara, and allowed Attica to be laid waste;

They proposed, did they not, to sell our citizens as slaves and make Attica a waste.

'tis these Englottogastorian Philippi who introduced the custom all over Attica of cutting out the tongue separately at sacrifices.

for when this man settled in Attica, as Aristotle says, the Athenians were called Ionians, and Apollo was named Patroös to them.

At Athens it cast down the temple of Dionysus Eleuthereus;

But the mysteries at Agra and those at Halimous in Attica are confined to Athens;

and at Athens, on the acropolis, the tomb of Cecrops, as Antiochus says in the ninth book of his Histories.

It is shown that he lived such and such a number of years here in Attica and that he was never in any place brought under scrutiny as being an alien, but that he found a refuge with these persons as his relatives, and that they both received him and gave him a share of their property as being one of themselves.

Seriously, is anyone here so foolish as not to see that our negligence will transfer the war from Chalcidice to Attica?

Why, if you were obliged to take the field yourselves for a bare month, drawing from Attica the necessary supplies—I am assuming that there is no enemy in this country—I suppose your farmers would lose more than the sum spent upon the whole of the previous war.

Again, Philip, seeing that these were overlooked and were receiving no help from you, proceeded to raze Porthmus to the ground and founded a tyranny in Euboea over against Attica as a menace to you.

Will it be better to make our stand here and let the war spread to Attica, or to contrive some employment for him away yonder?

Or perhaps they mean that if Philip keeps his hands off Attica and the Piraeus, he is neither injuring our city nor provoking hostilities.

On the other hand, while you stay at home, at leisure and in health —(if indeed they could say that men who behave thus are in health)— Philip has set up two despots in Euboea, entrenching one right over against Attica and the other as a menace to Sciathus;

Was it a commander who gave Philip an open road to Attica through the territory of friends and allies?

For if you had not been hoodwinked then, there would be no anxiety in Athens, because Philip could never, of course, have gained command of the sea and reached Attica with his fleet, nor could he have marched past Thermopylae and Phocis, but either he would have acted fairly and observed the Peace by keeping quiet, or he would have been instantly engaged in a war similar to that which made him so …

Now therefore, while the danger is in the future and is gathering head, while we can still hear one another speak, I want to remind each one of you, however clearly he knows it, who it is that persuaded you to abandon the Phocians and Thermopylae, the command of which gave Philip the command also of the road to Attica and the Peloponnesus, and who it is that has forced you to take counsel, not for …

For, quite apart from the disgrace that we should incur if we shirk our responsibilities, I see not a little danger, men of Athens, for the future, if the Thebans maintain their present attitude towards us, and the Phocians have come to the end of their money, and there is nothing to hinder Philip, when he has crushed his present foe, from turning his arms against Attica.

What fenced town in Attica will take you in?

the safest course for the city was to guard the money and the person of Harpalus, and to take up all the money, with which Harpalus had entered Attica, to the Acropolis on the following day, while Harpalus himself should announce then and there how much money there was.

And when you, who proposed a decree like that, were fined a mere twenty-five drachmas, is the man who lay down in the temple at the people’s request even to be refused a grave in Attica?