Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War
Benjamin Jowett, Ed.

90. Hippocrates had called out the whole force of Athens, metics as well as citizens, and all the¹ strangers who were then in the city. But he did not arrive at Delium until after the Boeotians had quitted Siphae. He encamped and fortified Delium, which is a temple of Apollo. [2] His army dug a trench around the temple and the sacred precinct, the earth which they threw up out of the trench forming a rampart; along this rampart they drove in a double palisade, and cutting down the vines in the neighbourhood of the temple threw them in between. They made a like use of the stones and bricks of the houses near, which they pulled down, and by every means in their power strove to increase the height of the rampart. Where the temple buildings did not extend they erected wooden towers at convenient places; the cloister which had once existed had fallen down. [3] They began their work on the third day after their departure from Athens, and continued all this day and the next and the following day until the midday meal. [4] When it was nearly finished the army retired from Delium to a distance of a little more than a mile, intending to go home. The greater part of the light-armed troops proceeded on their march, but the hoplites piled their arms and rested. Hippocrates, who had remained behind, was occupied in placing the guards at their posts, and in superintending the completion of that part of the outworks which was still unfinished.