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[16]
However, since from the beginning they happen not to have lived on an island, they now do the following: they place their property on islands while trusting in the naval empire and they allow their land to be ravaged, for they realize that if they concern themselves with this, they will be deprived of other greater goods.1
1 At the beginning of the Peloponnesian War the Athenians certainly did move property to Euboea (Thuc. 2.14.1); and Attic land was ravaged by Spartans who were unopposed by the Athenians (Thuc. 2.23.1). But after the war began, it was impossible to say that the people ἀδεῶς ξἧ (cf. Thuc. 2.65.2); therefore, this passage is not persuasive evidence of a date of 431 or later. (One would be hard put to discover an apt moment within the year 431 after the land was ravaged but before the people felt discomfort.)
Xenophon. Xenophon in Seven Volumes, 7. E. C. Marchant. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA; William Heinemann, Ltd., London. 1984.
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