History of the Peloponnesian War

​While the Peloponnesians were still gathering at the Isthmus and were on their way, before they invaded Attica, Pericles son of Xanthippus, who was one of the ten Athenian generals, when he realized that the invasion was going to take place, suspected that Archidamus, who happened to be his guest-friend, might perhaps, either out of a personal desire to do him a favor, pass by his lands and leave them unravaged, or that this might happen by order of the Lacedaemonians for the purpose of bringing slander upon him, just as they had previously ordered the expulsion of the accursed on his account. He therefore declared to the Athenians in the assembly that while Archidamus was indeed his guest-friend, it was not to the detriment of the city, and that if the enemy should not ravage his estates and houses as they did those of others, he would give them up to be public property, so that no suspicion might fall upon him on this account.

​He also gave them advice on their present circumstances, just as before: to prepare for war and bring in their property from the country, not to go out to battle, but to come into the city and guard it, to equip their navy, in which their strength lay, and to keep a tight hand over their allies, saying that their strength came from the revenue of this money, and that major successes in war are won by wisdom and abundance of money.

​He urged them to be of good courage, since there was an annual revenue of about six hundred talents of tribute coming in from the allies to the city, apart from the other sources of income, and since there were still at that time in the acropolis six thousand talents of coined silver (for the treasury had once reached its highest point with only three hundred talents short of ten thousand, from which expenditures had been made for the Propylaea of the acropolis and the other buildings, and for the siege of Potidaea). ​Apart from this, there was uncoined gold and silver in private and public offerings, sacred vessels used in processions and games, Persian spoils, and other things of like nature, amounting to no less than five hundred talents.

​Furthermore, he added the considerable amount of money from the other temples, which they could use, and if they should be absolutely cut off from all other resources, they could even use the gold with which the goddess herself was clad. He pointed out that the statue held forty talents’ weight of refined gold, and that it was all removable. He said that if they used it for their preservation, they must replace no less an amount afterwards.

​In this way he encouraged them as to their finances, and he showed that they had thirteen thousand hoplites, besides those in the garrisons and the sixteen thousand who manned the battlements.

​For that was the number of those who kept guard at first whenever the enemy invaded, chosen from the oldest and the youngest, and from such of the resident aliens as were hoplites. For the Phaleric wall was thirty-five stades long to the circuit of the city, and of the circuit itself the part guarded was forty-three stades (there was also a part of it unguarded, namely that between the Long Wall and the Phaleric wall), and the Long Walls to the Piraeus were forty stades long, of which the outer wall was guarded; and the whole circuit of the Piraeus with Munychia was sixty stades, of which the half was under guard.

​He also showed that they had twelve hundred cavalry, including mounted archers, sixteen hundred archers, and three hundred seaworthy triremes.

​These forces the Athenians possessed, and no less than these in each category, when the first invasion of the Peloponnesians was about to take place and they were entering the war. Pericles also spoke other things such as he was accustomed to say in order to demonstrate that they would triumph in the war.