12.
Having thus spoken, Archidamus dismissed the assembly.
His first step was to send Melesippus,1 the son of Diacritus, a Spartan, to Athens in the hope that the Athenians might
after all give way, when they saw their enemies actually on the march.
[2]
But they would not admit him to the assembly, nor even into the city.
For Pericles had already carried a motion to the effect that they would have nothing to
do with herald or embassy while the Lacedaemonians were in the field.
So Melesippus was sent away without a hearing and told that he must cross the frontier
before sunset; if the Lacedaemonians wanted to hold any parley with the Athenians, they
must go home first.
He was attended by an escort in order to prevent his communieating with
any one.
[3]
When he arrived at the Athenian2
frontier, and was about to leave them, he uttered these words: 'This day will be to the
Hellenes the beginning of great sorrows.'
[4]
On the return of the herald to the camp Archidamus learned that the Athenians were not
as yet at all in the mood to yield; so at last he moved forward his army and prepared to
enter Attica.
[5]
The Boeotians who had sent their contingent of two-thirds, including their cavalry, to
the Peloponnesian army, marched to Plataea with the remainder of their forces and wasted
the country.
Thucydides translated into English; with introduction, marginal analysis, notes, and indices. Volume 1. Thucydides. Benjamin Jowett. translator. Oxford. Clarendon Press. 1881.
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