370 HISTORY OF GREECE. self. His other great qualities, apart from personal valor, had not yet been shown, for he had never been in any supreme com- mand. But he burned with impatience to undertake the opera- tion destined for him by the envoys ; although at this time it must have appeared so replete with difficulty and danger, that proba- bly no other Spartan except himself would have entered upon it with the smallest hopes of success. To raise up embarrassments for Athens, in Thrace, was an object of great consequence to Sparta, while she also obtained an opportunity, of sending away another large detachment of her dangerous Helots. Seven hun- dred of these latter were armed as hoplites and placed under the orders of Brasidas, but the Lacedaemonians would not assign to him any of their own proper forces. With the sanction of the Spartan name, with seven hundred Helot hoplites, and with such other hoplites as he could raise in Peloponnesus by means of the funds furnished from the Chalkidians, Brasidas prepared to undertake this expedition, alike adventurous and important. Had the Athenians entertained any suspicion of his design, they could easily have prevented him from ever reaching Thrace. But they knew nothing of it until he had actually joined Perdikkas, nor did they anticipate any serious attack from Sparta, in this moment of her depression, much less an enter- prise far bolder than any which she had ever been known to undertake. They were now elate with hopes of conquests to come on their own part, their affairs being so prosperous and promising that parties favorable to their interests began to revive, both in Megara and in Bceotia ; while Hippokrates and Demos- thenes, the two chief strategi for the year, were men of energy, well qualified both to project and execute military achievements. The first opportunity presented itself in regard to Megara. The inhabitants of that city had been greater sufferers by the war than any other persons in Greece : they had been the chief cause of bringing down the war upon Athens, and the Athenians revenged upon them all the hardships which they themselves endured from the Lacedaemonian invasion. Twice in every year they laid waste the Megarid, which bordered upon their own territory ; and that too with such destructive hands through- out its limited extent, that they intercepted all subsistence from
the lands near the town, at the same time keeping the harboi
