Calistratus brought back Dionys's preconditions for agreeing to the peace, which was read out at a citizens' assembly on Mount Prix, and immediately aroused the anger of the citizens, who, in the words of Isocrates, "Dionyas the wicked wants to destroy Athens!" ”。

The citizens then became warlike and agreed to fight to the death against the Ionians, who were preparing to destroy Athens.

The Athenians were ready for a total defense, and after the two Dionian armies met, the self-aware Crotocátarchs took the initiative to cede unified military command to Patroclus.

Patroclus did not refuse, but did not immediately attack the city of Athens, but ordered the 100,000 troops to build a fortified camp around the city of Athens (these 100,000 troops included not only the Dionian army led by Crotocatax and Patroclus, but also the allied armies of Thebes, Mandinia, Argos, Corinth, and Megara).

At the same time, he also sent his troops to sweep through the entire region of Attica, and after capturing the villages and towns, he drove all the people who could not escape into the city of Athens in time, and then the army immediately moved away.

The people wailed outside the city, and the soldiers in the city, seeing that there was no danger, immediately opened the gates and let them in.

Calistratus and Iphiclates could not be stopped, because these people were Athenians, relatives or relatives of the citizens of the city, so in a few days the city of Athens contained the population of the entire region of Attica, reaching nearly 300,000 people.

Although Athens is the largest city in Greece, plus the port of Piraeus, the entire urban area exceeds 20 square kilometers, but such a large population still brings a lot of pressure to the survival of the whole city: many residents of Attica who fled into the city have no place to live, so they sleep directly in the courtyards and squares of public buildings, and even the road from Piraeus to the Acropolis is full of temporary shacks built by the people, which naturally cannot ensure the hygiene and cleanliness of the city, and there is excrement everywhere, and few people clean it upAnd it's still the end of September, the temperature is still high, flies and mosquitoes are flying everywhere, and the smell is stinking.

For the generals, this is still a minor problem, and the main thing that gives them a headache is food. Although he had stockpiled a lot of food in the city in order to organize a coalition war against Dionia, he still felt tight in the face of such a large population pressure. Callistratus and others had to spend some time convincing the 500-member parliament and then organizing the manpower to strictly control the consumption of food.

In addition, drinking water is also an issue. There were several rivers in the Athens area, but they were all outside the city and under the control of the Dionian army, so the people in the city could only rely on the wells in the city, and the residents and refugees outside the city often had disputes and even conflicts over the use of the wells, and the Athenian government had to send additional personnel to maintain the order of water intake from each well.

During this period, several Athenian doctors, who had participated in several Greek medical forums held by the Lyceum of Dionia, warned the Athenian government that the city must be kept clean as much as possible, otherwise too filthy conditions would lead to plagues.

Their suggestion attracted the attention of the Generals' Executive Committee, knowing that after the start of the Peloponnesian War, the Spartan coalition attacked Athens by land, and Athens was also a defense of the city at that time, and the situation was not much different from today, but it was not long before a great plague broke out in the city, and Pericles also fell ill and died. Although these doctors claimed that "all they learned was learned from the Dionian Medical School", the Athenian generals did not ignore this, after all, the high level of Dionian medicine has gradually been recognized by some city-states in the Eastern Mediterranean over the years, and the nightmare caused by the plague to the Athenians is so terrible that even the enemies, Callistratus and others still decided to take their advice and send a large number of men to clean the streets every day to ensure the cleanliness of the city.

Before the official battle, the Athenian leadership, led by Calistratus, was already exhausted by the city's surging administrative affairs, and the people were struggling to get through each day in tension, panic, and busyness.

However, Dionia's army still did not attack, only the ballistae of the various legions, under the command of Patroclus, were evenly distributed around the city of Athens, and began to fire a large number of small stone shells into the city, which constantly crossed the city walls, smashed nearby houses, caused panic among the Athenian people, forced them to stay away from the city walls, and caused congestion in the center of the city.

In order to ensure that the soldiers were not hindered from ascending and descending the city walls, the Athenian officials also had to arrange for slaves to clean up the ruins caused by the stone bombardment near the city walls. ”

The town hall immediately sent a patrol to capture some of the slaves for interrogation, and the results were shocking, it turned out that the slaves who were in charge of clearing the ruins near the city walls found that almost all the stone bullets fired into the city were engraved with Greek characters, the main meaning of which was "as long as the slaves dared to rise up against their masters and the city-state, and assisted the Dionian army in breaking through the city, Dionya would not only give them freedom, but also give them land......"

Athenian culture was prosperous, commerce and trade developed, many slaves were not only literate, but also trained by their masters to become their business assistants, and in their dealings with foreign merchants, they knew something about "the western kingdom of Dionya was more tolerant of slaves", so some slaves were a little tempted, and began to contact and discuss privately, and the news quickly spread among Athenian slaves......

When the general's executive committee found out, they were all scared into a cold sweat, because the slave population in Athens was as high as more than 100,000, almost the same as the number of Athenian people, and the living conditions of Athenian slaves were not all better than those of Sparta's black laborers...... These slaves, of course, were full of resentment towards the slave owners who exploited them, and there were many incidents of group rebellion against their masters. The most famous was during the Peloponnesian War, when more than 40,000 Athenian slaves united to escape from the city, causing a major blow to the national power of Athens.

Prior to this, at the military council, Iphicrates had also made a suggestion: young and strong men should be organized, and weapons would be distributed to assist in defending the city.

Although this proposal was not immediately adopted, it did make some people feel uneasy, so it has been discussed, but now that this has happened, it is natural that it will not be considered again. And under their orders, the city patrol immediately sprang into action, capturing hundreds of slaves who had been cleaning the ruins.

At the same time, the 500-member council passed a resolution asking the people in the city to take good care of their slaves, forbid them to go out, and report to the city hall as soon as they found any abnormalities. The town hall also organized a group of soldiers to guard the slaves of the city-state.

While the General's Executive Committee was busy with the bells, another piece of bad news came: the main city, built high on the island of Aegina, had finally fallen after stubbornly defending itself against several strong attacks by the Dionian army.

From then on, the ships of the First and Third Fleets of Dionya were stationed in the ports of Aegina, Ismia in Corinth, and Megara respectively, making it possible to blockade the port of Piraeus in Athens 24 hours a day.

On land, Patroclus gave another order: let the soldiers who had built the camp start building siege platforms a hundred meters away from the city.

At the same time, it was also ordered that the engineering battalions of each legion should build super siege towers.

As soon as the order was given, 100,000 soldiers began to get busy, and all around the city of Athens became a construction site, and every day was dusty. The Dionian convoys were also busy, transporting the trees cut down by the Messenians and Laconians from Mount Tegtos to Megara, where they were transported by pack caravans to the Dionian camp, where engineers led craftsmen to make siege engines (in the Peloponnese and Central Greece, only the non-seafaring Sparta had dense forests, and the trees on Mount Tegetos were unusually thick and tall).

Standing on the top of the 10-meter-high city of Athens, the Athenian citizens and soldiers became more and more nervous day by day, because they saw that the originally flat land outside the city was rising one after another, and they were getting higher and higher day by day, almost surpassing the Athenian walls.

Iphiclates did not defend passively, he led the Thracian light shields and Iazon's mercenaries out of the city several times for surprise attacks, at first achieved some success, killed and wounded some enemy soldiers, and even broke through the camp of the Megara army in a night raid, but because of the fear of arousing the alarm of the enemy army, not too many soldiers participated in the night attack, and the timely reinforcement of the Dionian army failed to expand the results.

However, the Dionian coalition learned its lesson, and under Patroclus's strict requirements, the various military camps not only strengthened their defenses, but also strengthened their connections with each other, and the Dionian soldiers also connected the ditches in front of each siege platform (formed by the excavation of the siege platform) and expanded them into trenches, making it difficult for the Athenian army to even raid the construction site. So after several raids with lost troops, Iphiclates had to temporarily stop this risky practice.

As a result, the construction of the Dionian soldiers was greatly accelerated, and finally a siege platform more than 10 meters high towered outside the city of Athens, and the Athenian soldiers looked up at these mounds higher than the city walls, and all felt panic. But what frightened them even more was the stone bullets whizzing from the mounds, over the city walls, and landing on the city of Athens.