With the profligate siege platform closer to the city, the attack distance of all the ballistae was greatly increased, covering almost half the area of the city of Athens, and the ballistas not only fired stone projectiles, but also threw burning oil canisters into the city, causing fire and chaos everywhere in the city of Athens.

Immediately afterwards, the Dionian army launched nine more super siege towers, which slowly advanced towards the western wall of Athens, guarded by siege equipment such as arrow retaining wagons and wooden box wagons, as well as light and heavy infantry that followed closely behind.

The defenders at the head of the city were terrified when they saw these behemoths higher than the city walls approaching them. Iphiclates and Kabulias, who arrived after hearing the news, were also dumbfounded.

At this moment, the super siege tower, which was still 50 meters away from the city wall, stopped advancing, and the light infantry on the top floor began to fire arrows at the defenders at the head of the city, and the next layer of the siege tower also lifted the baffle, revealing the hideous face of the belly bow, and the huge iron arrows roared towards the city head, like piercing meat skewers, which could knock down several soldiers at a time, and the death was terrifying.

If it weren't for the timely rescue of the guards, Iphiclates would have been nearly stabbed by an iron arrow and died. He looked at the towering siege platform not far away and the huge siege equipment in front of him, and a strong helplessness suddenly rose in his heart......

For several days, Patroclus launched an attack on the city of Athens in this way, although before he launched a full-scale siege, he had already caused a lot of damage to the defenders at the head of the city, and even caused panic and chaos in the city. He not only showed the Athenians the terrible siege ability of the Dionian army, but also implicitly told the Athenian high-level that the Dionian Holy Kingdom was strong enough to guarantee the huge consumption of 100,000 troops, and it was completely capable of continuous siege warfare.

And for Athens, these days were a complete disaster, 1/5 of the city was attacked by Dionian ballistas, a small half was burned to the ground, and even the citizens' assembly ground on the hill of Pnyx was damaged (the hill of Prix, very close to the southern wall, near the avenue leading to the port of Piraeus, was completely within the range of the ballistae on the nearest siege platform outside the city, and was the target that Patroclus highlighted, so it did not cause much damage, Nearly 1,000 families lost their homes, crying day and night, begging for the help of the city hall, which also caused a great shock to the rest of the Athenian people.

The Athenian government sent a large number of men to deal with the aftermath of these attacked cities, while also strengthening the defense of the walls to prevent the Ionian army from taking advantage of the turmoil in the city to launch a siege. However, the sheer size of the city of Athens, combined with the long walls and the port of Piraeus, required a large number of citizen soldiers, which greatly reduced the number of patrols to maintain order in the city. However, the destruction of the urban area by ballistas led to a greater shortage of food and water supplies, and the contradictions between the residents of the urban area and the displaced people outside the city were intensified, triggering many conflicts.

When the patrol was exhausted, more than 2,000 miners took advantage of the turmoil in the city and the weakening of supervision, secretly contacted them, suddenly launched a riot, killed the foreman and guards who supervised them, rushed out of the prison-like slave camp, collected weapons, and destroyed the mine owner's estate. Then, on the way to the city gate, they killed the Athenians in the houses along the way and freed the slaves, and by the time they reached the west gate, the number of slaves had increased to more than 6,000.

Receiving the news, Iphiclates urgently mobilized his army at the gate of the western city to stop the slave team that was trying to escape, and the two sides started a fierce battle.

Although the Iphiclates had few soldiers, the soldiers were heavily armed and full of physical strength. Although the slave team was numerous, it was poorly equipped, and many of them were even bare-handed, and due to the abuse of the mine owners, most of the mine slaves were sick and weak, and the streets were narrow, so they could not give full play to the advantages of being numerous, and it didn't take long for the slave team to resist the attack of the Athenian soldiers.

At this time, Cabrias led another army from the rear, and under the front and rear attacks, the slave army quickly collapsed and scattered in all directions.

Since the Ionian coalition outside the city was still using siege engines to attack the defenders from a distance as before, the light infantry on the siege towers noticed something unusual inside the city and rushed to inform the commander in the rear camp.

Patroclus quickly made a decision: to launch a formal assault on the western wall.

But just as the Dionian soldiers gathered in formation and sounded the trumpet of attack, the riot in the western gate had subsided, and Patroclus, who got the news, hesitated for a moment, and finally canceled the order to attack, so to speak, missing a great opportunity to capture the city of Athens.

But this slave revolt had a great impact on the city of Athens. Although the rioting slaves only killed less than 300 Athenians in two blocks, it caused panic among many Athenians, especially those citizens with more slaves at home, who either asked the city hall to send a patrol to help them take care of the slaves, or simply gave the male ** subordinate to the city-state for free, and even a small number of Athenian citizens killed the slaves at home because of excessive fear, and naturally they were desperately resisted by the slaves, so scenes of family tragedies were staged in the city of Athens from time to time, The contradiction between slaves and slave owners was dramatically exacerbated......

Surrounded by enemy forces and full of internal contradictions, the city of Athens is like sitting on a volcanic crater about to erupt, and it may be destroyed at any time. Finally, at the emergency meeting of the 500-member assembly at the town hall, most of the councillors rushed to accept Dionia's demands and negotiate an armistice with them.

The next meeting of the citizens had to be temporarily moved to the Dionysus Theater due to the threat of Dionian ballistas on Pnix Mountain.

The citizens of Athens, who had unanimously expressed their indignation that they would rather die with the city than surrender to Dionia, were under great mental stress after suffering from a lack of food and water, the transformation of their countrymen into enemies, slave riots, fires, and the constant threat of Dionian bows and arrows and stone bullets...... After all these hardships, most of them were relieved to hear Callistratus' proposal to announce the 500-member parliament.

Only a handful of citizens, led by Isocrates, expressed resolute opposition, and Isocrates even made an impassioned speech from the pulpit, in which he exclaimed in his hoarse voice: "...... Sons and grandsons of Theseus, your ancestors were the best and bravest citizens in the world, and when hundreds of thousands of Persian armies invaded Greece and the other city-states were afraid and retreated, your ancestors bravely stepped forward and created a powerful Persian navy in the few victories of Salamika, and finally won the Greco-Persian War. Through this great victory, the other city-states saw the greatness of Athens and saw Athens as a savior, and since then Athens has created great splendour! Remember Pericles who said, 'Athens is the school of all Greeks!' Yes, it was the golden age that all of us here aspired to!

And today, history repeats itself, and another powerful invader invaded Greece, and they even killed the city of Athens! Citizens, it's time! It is time to do as our forefathers do, and when the other Greek city-states are afraid to surrender, we should stand up and fight the Dionian army for your freedom and dignity!

Athena favors heroes, she will only protect us who fight unyieldingly, and eventually we will repel the Dionian army, and then we will be the savior of all Greece, and without the elbow of Sparta, we will create a more brilliant future than the previous golden age! ……

And if you choose to surrender, to these barbarians, who do not speak even fluent in Greek, you will have to abandon the democracy of which we were once proud, and leave it to a king to call the shots; The witty and humorous plays that you love will be replaced by their seemingly large-scale, but in fact comical square dances; The athletic sports of strength and skill, to which you reveal, will be replaced by the terrible races of savage rushes; What's more, we can't worship the beautiful and wise Athena and other Greek gods as we used to, but have to bow down to the heretics they believe in; In the end, the glorious culture and history of Athens will also be forcibly erased, and only their conquests will be flaunted to future generations!

Citizens, by that time the great Athens will be dead! It's gone! ……”

In the end, Isocrates burst into tears.

The deathly silence in the theater gradually sounded choking, and finally there was a cry.

However, the ideal is beautiful, the reality is cruel, and when the time came to the vote, the resolution was still adopted by an absolute majority.

Athens surrendered!! When the Athenian messenger entered the camp of the Dionian army with a look of loss and despair, the good news quickly spread throughout the Dionian coalition, and there was thunderous joy everywhere.

Patroclus repeatedly asked Crotokataxs to preside over the surrender of Athens, but Crotokataxis postponed and had to accept. The two army commanders were humble and cooperative with each other throughout the war in Greece, and it was a good story for a while.

And when the Athenian envoys painfully signed the armistice, a fishing boat quietly rowed out of the harbor while the Dionians were celebrating and the blockade outside the harbor had become lax, and nimbly turned west into the Gulf of Salamika.

Just then, a tall, burly man emerged from the humble shed.

"Hey, what are you doing here, hide in there, if you get bumped into by the Dionian patrol boat, you'll be in trouble!" The ship's owner shouted eagerly.

"Don't worry, you Athens have already surrendered, I'm afraid the Dionians are celebrating in a big way, who cares about your little fishing boat." The man said nonchalantly.