Mediterranean Hegemon of Ancient Greece

Callistratus brought back Dionia’s prerequisites for agreeing to the peace talks, and read them at the citizens’ assembly held on Prix Hill, which immediately aroused the anger of the citizens. According to Isocrates’ words, “Vicious Dionia wants to destroy Athens!".

So the citizens were brave and agreed that they would fight to the death against the Dionians who were about to destroy Athens.

The Athenians were ready for a comprehensive defense, and after the two Dionian armies joined forces, the self-aware Klotokatax took the initiative to cede the unified military command to Patroclus.

Patroclus did not decline, but he did not immediately attack the city of Athens. Instead, he ordered the 100,000 troops to build strong camps around the city (the 100,000 troops not only included Croto Kataks and Pa The Dionian army led by Trocoros, as well as the Allied armies of Thebes, Mandinia, Argos, Corinth, and Megara).

At the same time, he also divided up troops to sweep the entire Attica area. After capturing the villages and towns, all the villagers and towns who could not escape into the city of Athens in time were rushed to the city, and then the army immediately moved away.

These people were wailing outside the city. Seeing that there was no danger, the soldiers in the city immediately opened the city gate and let them inside.

Kallistatus and Iphikrates could not stop them at all, because these people were all Athenians, relatives or relatives of the citizens of the city, so the city of Athens contained the entire Atti within a few days. The population of the Qatar area has reached nearly 300,000.

Although Athens is the largest city in mainland Greece, plus the port of Piraeus, the entire urban area is more than 20 square kilometers, but such a large population still brings great pressure to the whole city: many escapes The residents of Attica in the city have no place to live, so they slept directly in the courtyards and squares of public buildings. Even the temporary shelters built by the people can be seen everywhere on both sides of the road from Piraeus to the Acropolis. Naturally, the city cannot be guaranteed. It is clean and tidy, there are excreta everywhere, few people clean it, and it is still at the end of September, the temperature is still high, flies and mosquitoes fly around everywhere, smelling odor.

For the generals, this is still a small problem, and the main thing that gives them a headache is food.Although a lot of food was hoarded in the city in order to organize the coalition to fight against Dionia, in the face of such a large population pressure, it still felt tight.Callistratus and others had to spend some time to persuade the 500-member council, and then organize the manpower to strictly control the consumption of food.

In addition, drinking water is also a problem.There were originally several rivers in the Athens area, but they are all outside the city and under the control of the Dionian army. Therefore, the people in the city can only rely on the wells in the city. Residents and refugees outside the city often fight for the wells. There were disputes and even conflicts over the right to use, and the Athens government had to send more people to maintain the order of water intake for each well.

During this period, several Athens doctors who have participated in the Greek Medical Forum organized by Dionian Academy of Medicine for many times together warned the Athens government: we must try our best to keep the city clean, otherwise the environment will be too dirty. Lead to the occurrence of the plague.

Their suggestions attracted the attention of the General Executive Committee. After the Peloponnesian War began, the Spartan forces attacked Athens by land. At the time, Athens was also defending the city. The situation is not much different from today. Soon there was a great plague in the city, and Pericles died.Although these doctors claimed that "the knowledge they learned was all learned from the Dionian School of Medicine", the generals of Athens did not ignore it because of this. After all, the high level of Dionian medicine has gradually gained over the years. Some city-states in the Eastern Mediterranean agree, and the nightmare caused by the plague to the Athenians is too terrible. Therefore, even if it is the enemy, Callistratus and others still decided to adopt their suggestions and send a large number of people to clean the streets every day. Try to keep the city clean.

Before the official battle, the top Athenian leaders headed by Calistratus had been exhausted due to the explosion of administrative affairs in the city, and the people were also struggling to spend their days in tension, panic and busy.

However, Dionian’s army still did not launch an attack. Only the ballista teams of each legion were evenly distributed around the city of Athens under the order of Patroclus, and began to launch a large number of small stone bullets into the city. Constantly crossing the city wall, smashing nearby houses, causing panic among the people of Athens, forcing them to stay away from the city wall, and causing crowding in the center of the city.

In order to ensure that the soldiers went up and down the city wall were not hindered, the Athenian officials had to arrange for slaves to clean up the rubble caused by stone bombing near the city wall. Before long, people kept secretly reporting to the city hall, saying, "The slaves in the family repeatedly Go out quietly and gather secretly with other slaves. His whereabouts are secret."

The city hall immediately dispatched a patrol and arrested some slaves for interrogation. The results were shocking. The slaves who were responsible for cleaning up the ruins near the city wall found that almost all the stone bullets shot into the city were inscribed with Greek characters. The main meaning was "As long as the slaves dare Rise up against their masters and city-states and assist the Dionian army to break through the city. Dionian will not only give them freedom, but will even give them land..."

Athens’ culture was prosperous and commerce was developed. Many slaves were not only literate, but were also trained by their masters to be their business assistants. In their dealings with Gentile merchants, they knew something about "Comparison of the treatment of slaves by the Dionian Kingdom in the west." Tolerance, so some slaves were a little tempted and began to contact and discuss privately. As a result, the news spread quickly among the slaves in Athens...

When the general executive committee learned about it, they were all in a cold sweat, because the population of slaves in the city of Athens was as high as 100,000, almost the same as the number of the people of Athens, and the living conditions of the slaves in Athens were not all better than those of the Spartan Black Laos, such as The number of mining slaves in the Lauriang Silver Mine is not only extremely large, but also has a very poor life. Many slaves die in the mine every year...Of course, these slaves are full of resentment towards the slave owners who exploited them, and there have been many groups rebelling against their masters. event.The most famous one is that during the Peloponnesian War, more than 40,000 Athenian slaves united and escaped from the city of Athens, causing a major blow to the national power of Athens.

In the previous military meeting, Ifekratus also proposed: organize young and strong male officials, distribute weapons, and assist in defending the city.

Although this proposal was not passed immediately, it did make some people moved, so it has been under discussion, but now that this kind of thing has happened, it will naturally not be considered again.And under their orders, the city patrol immediately took action and arrested hundreds of slaves who had previously cleaned the ruins.

At the same time, the 500-member assembly passed a resolution asking the people in the city to take good care of their slaves and prohibit them from going out, and report to the city hall immediately if they find any abnormalities.The city hall also organized a group of soldiers to take care of the city-state slaves.

Just as the General Executive Committee was very busy, another bad news came: the main city built high on the island of Aegina finally fell after being stubbornly defended against several attacks by the Dionian army.

Since then, the ships of Dionian’s First Fleet and Third Fleet have stationed in the port of Aegina, Ismia in Corinth, and Mekala, so that they can transport Piraeus in Athens 24 hours a day. Shamrock blockade Demi impermeable.

On the land, Patroclus gave another order: let the soldiers who have built the camp begin to build the siege platform 100 meters away from the city.

At the same time, they ordered: Let each legion engineering battalion build super siege towers.

After the order was issued, 100,000 soldiers immediately began to be busy, and the surrounding areas outside Athens became construction sites, and the dust was flying every day.The transport fleet of Dionia was also busy. They transported the trees felled by the Messenians and Laconians from Mount Tagettos to Megara, and then transported to Diony by the pack team. In the sub-camp, engineers will lead craftsmen to make siege equipment. (On the entire Peloponnese and Central Greece, there are dense forests in Sparta where navigation is not important, and the trees on Mount Tigetos They are very stout and tall).

Standing on the top of the 10-meter-high Athens city, the Athenian citizen soldiers were getting nervous day by day, because they saw mounds rising on the flat ground outside the city, and they were getting higher day by day, almost surpassing the walls of Athens. Up.

Iphikratus did not have a passive defense. He led the Thracian light shields and the mercenaries of Jason out of the city to carry out raids several times. At the beginning, he achieved some results and killed some enemy soldiers, even once. During the night attack, the camp of the Megara army was broken, but due to fear of alerting the enemy, not many soldiers participated in the night attack, and the Dionian army was reinforced in time and failed to expand the results.

But after that, the Dionian coalition forces learned their lesson. Under the strict requirements of Patroclus, the various barracks not only strengthened their defenses, but also strengthened their ties, and the Dionian soldiers also The dirt ditches in front of each siege platform (formed by the construction of the siege platform and the excavation) were connected and expanded into trenches, which made it difficult for the Athenian army to even raid the construction site.Therefore, after several raids that damaged soldiers and lost generals, Iphikratus had to temporarily stop this risky approach.

Therefore, the construction speed of the Dionian soldiers was greatly accelerated, and finally a siege platform more than 10 meters high towered outside the city of Athens. Looking up at these mounds higher than the city wall, the Athenian soldiers felt panic.But what made them more panicked was that stone bullets roared from these mounds, crossed the city wall, and landed in the city of Athens.