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Chapter 1231

Callistratus brought back the preconditions of Diónia's agreement to the peace talks and read them out to the citizens' assembly on Mount Priscus. The citizens were immediately enraged. In the words of Aesocrates, "The evil Diónia wants to destroy Athens!"

The citizens, full of fighting spirit, unanimously agreed to fight to the death against the Dionians, who were ready to destroy Athens.

The people of Athens were ready for a full defense. After the two Dionysian Armies met, the self-aware Cloto Catax took the initiative to hand over the unified military command to Patroclus.

Patroclus did not refuse, but he did not immediately attack the city of Athens. Instead, he ordered the 100,000 troops to build a strong camp around the city of Athens. The 100,000 troops included not only the Dionysian Army led by Cloto Catax and Patroclus, but also the Thebes, Mandinia, Agos, Corinth, Megara, and other allied armies.

At the same time, he also sent troops to sweep through the entire Attica region. After capturing the villages and towns, he chased all the people in the villages and towns who could not escape into the city of Athens to the city of Athens. After that, the troops immediately left.

These people were wailing outside the city. When the soldiers in the city saw that there was no danger, they immediately opened the city gates and let them in.

Callistratus, Iphicrates, and the others could not stop them at all. Because these people were all people of Athens, they were relatives or relatives of the citizens in the city. So within a few days, the city of Athens accommodated the entire population of the Attica region, reaching nearly 300,000 people.

Although Athens was the largest city in Greece, including the port of Piraeus, the entire urban area was more than 20 square kilometers, such a large population still brought a lot of pressure to the entire city. Many of the Attica residents who escaped into the city did not have a place to live, so they slept directly in the courtyards and squares of public buildings. Even the road from Piraeus to the Acropolis of Athens was full of temporary shacks. Naturally, it was impossible to ensure that the city was clean and tidy. There was excrement everywhere, and few people cleaned it up. Moreover, it was the end of September, and the temperature was still relatively high. Flies and mosquitoes were everywhere, and the stench was overwhelming.

For the generals, this was still a small problem. What gave them a headache was food. Although they had stockpiled a lot of food in the city in order to organize the Allied Forces to fight against Diónia, they still felt the pressure of such a large population. Callistratus and the others had no choice but to spend a lot of effort to convince the 500-member council. Then, they organized manpower and strictly controlled the consumption of food.

In addition, drinking water was also an issue. There were several rivers in Athens, but they were all outside the city and under the control of the Dionysian Army. Therefore, the people in the city could only rely on the wells in the city. The residents and the refugees outside the city often fought over the right to use the wells. The government of Athens had to send more people to maintain the order of the wells.

During this period, several Athens doctors who had participated in the Greek Medical Forum organized by the Academy of Diónia issued a warning to the government of Athens that they must do their best to ensure the cleanliness of the city. Otherwise, the dirty environment would lead to the outbreak of the plague.

Their advice attracted the attention of the General Executive Committee. After the start of the War of Peloponnesus, the Sparta Allied Forces attacked Athens by land. At that time, the city of Athens was also defending itself, and the situation was not much different from today. However, it did not take long for a plague to break out in the city, and Pericles died of the disease. Although the doctors claimed that "all the knowledge they had learned from the Academy of Diónia", the generals of Athens did not ignore them. After all, the medical standards of Diónia had gradually been recognized by some city-states in the eastern Mediterranean Sea. The plague had caused a terrible nightmare for the people of Athens. Therefore, even though they were enemies, Callistratus and the others decided to take their advice and sent a large number of people to clean the streets every day to ensure the cleanliness of the city.

Before the official war, the leaders of Athens, led by Callistratus, were already mentally and physically exhausted by the sudden increase in administrative affairs in the city. The people were also struggling to get through the day in a state of anxiety, panic, and busyness.

However, the army of Diónia still did not launch an attack. Under the orders of Patroclus, the ballista teams of the various legions were evenly distributed around the city of Athens and began to fire a large number of small stone bombs into the city of Athens. These stone bombs constantly flew over the city wall and smashed the houses nearby, 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 could go up and down the city wall without hindrance, the officials of Athens had to arrange for slaves to clean up the ruins near the city wall. It did not take long for people to report to the City Hall that "the slaves in the house have secretly gone out many times to meet with other slaves in secret. Their whereabouts are unknown."

The City Hall immediately sent out patrols to arrest some slaves for interrogation. The result was shocking. It turned out that the slaves who were responsible for cleaning up the ruins near the city wall found that almost all the stone bombs that were shot into the city were engraved with Greek characters. The main meaning was: "As long as the slaves dare to rise up against their masters and the city-state, and assist the Dionysian Army in breaching the city, not only will Diónia grant them freedom, but they will also be given land …"

The culture of Athens was prosperous and commercial. Not only were many slaves literate, but they were also trained by their masters to be their assistants in doing business. In their dealings with foreign merchants, they more or less knew something about how the Western Kingdom of Diónia treated slaves more leniently. Therefore, some slaves were a little tempted and began to contact each other in private. As a result, the news quickly spread among the slaves of Athens …

When the General Executive Committee learned about this, they broke out in a cold sweat. Because the slave population in the city of Athens was as high as 100,000, almost the same as the population of Athens, and the living conditions of the slaves in Athens were not better than the Black Rogues of Sparta. For example, the number of mining slaves in the Roleion silver mine was not only very large, but their living conditions were also very poor. Many slaves died in the mines every year … These slaves, of course, were full of resentment towards the slave owners who exploited them, and there were many incidents of group revolting against their masters. The most famous incident was during the Peloponnesus War, when more than 40,000 slaves of Athens united and escaped from the city of Athens, causing a major blow to the national power of Athens.

In the previous military meeting, Iphicrates also proposed to organize young and strong male slaves, equip them with weapons, and assist in defending the city.

Although this proposal was not immediately adopted, it did indeed move some people, so it had been under discussion. But now that this had happened, naturally, this matter was no longer under consideration. And under their orders, the city patrol immediately took action and arrested hundreds of slaves who were previously cleaning the ruins.

At the same time, the 500-member council passed a resolution, asking the people in the city to look after their own slaves, prohibit them from going out, and immediately report to the City Hall if they found any abnormalities. The City Hall also organized a group of soldiers to be responsible for looking after the slaves in the city.

Just when the General Executive Committee was busy, another bad news came: the main city built on the high ground of Eyna Island, after tenaciously defending against several strong attacks by the Dionysian Army, finally fell.

Since then, the warships of the First and Third Fleets of Diónia were stationed at the port of Eyna, the port of Ismya in Corinth, and the port of Megara respectively, so that the port of Piraeus in Athens could be sealed off 24 hours a day.

On land, Patroclus issued another order: the soldiers who had built the camp began to build siege platforms 100 meters away from the city.

At the same time, he also ordered the engineering battalions of each legion to build super siege towers.

After the order was issued, the 100,000 soldiers immediately began to work, and the surrounding area outside the city of Athens became a construction site, with dust flying everywhere. The transport fleet of Diónia was also busy, they transported the trees that the Mercenians and Laconians had cut down from Mount Tegetos to Megara, then transported them to the camp of Diónia, where the engineers led the craftsmen to build siege weapons. (In the entire land of Peloponnesus and Central Greece, only Sparta, which did not pay much attention to navigation, still had dense forests, and the trees on Mount Tegetos were unusually tall.)

Standing on the top of the 10-meter-high wall of Athens, the militia of Athens was getting more and more nervous, because they saw that the originally flat land outside the city was bulging with mounds, and they were getting taller by the day, almost taller than the wall of Athens.

Iphicrates did not passively defend. He had led the light shieldmen of Thrace and the mercenaries of Iazon out of the city several times to carry out surprise attacks. In the beginning, they achieved some results, killing some enemy soldiers, and even breaching the camp of Megara's army in a night attack. However, because they were afraid of alerting the enemy, not many soldiers participated in the night attack, and the Dionysian Army's reinforcements came in time, so they were not able to increase their results.

However, after that, the allied forces of Diónia learned their lesson. Under the strict requirements of Patroclus, not only did the various military camps strengthen their defense, but they also strengthened the communication between each other. The soldiers of Diónia also connected the trenches in front of each siege platform (formed by the excavation of the siege platforms) and expanded them into trenches, so that the army of Athens could not even raid the construction site. Therefore, after a few raids that resulted in casualties, Iphicrates had to temporarily stop this risky practice.

Therefore, the speed of the construction of the Diónia soldiers was greatly increased, and finally, siege platforms more than 10 meters high towered outside the city of Athens. The soldiers of Athens looked up at the mounds that were taller than the city walls, and all of them were terrified. But what made them even more frightened was that stone shells whistled from these mounds, over the city walls, and landed in the city of Athens.