Peloponnesian war preferred their fields, villages, and small towns to the attractions of the city. The statement of the historian is confirmed by the great comic poet of the time. Aristophanes, with a wholesome hatred of unjust and unnecessary wars, frequently sets before the spectators how much the worse they were for dwelling within walls, and for leaving their oliveyards and vineyards, their meadows and cornland, where informers ceased from troubling, and booted and bearded soldiers were at rest.
The enforced removal of the country population into the capital can hardly have failed to produce a change, and that not a salutary one, in the character of the Athenians, even if the pestilence had not sapped the foundations of morals by loosening domestic ties, by rendering the sick and even the strong reckless of the morrow, and thousands at once irreligious and superstitious. Such levity and despair as were exhibited by the Parisians under the Reign of Terror, prevailed in Athens during the worst days of the plague. Even the general breaking up of homes, and the want of customary occupations, had evil results for the peasant turned townsman. For some hundreds of farmers and labourers the small towns and hill-forts of the country may have afforded shelter during the almost yearly inroads of the Peloponnesian host; yet the bulk of the rural population was compelled to move, with such goods and chattels as were portable, into the narrow space of the city—the Long Walls or the harbours; where, if they did not suffer from want of food, they were indifferently lodged. War is ever "work of waste
