History of the Peloponnesian War, Thucydides [best free ebook reader TXT] 📗

with a long defence of themselves upon matters outside the

present inquiry and not even the subject of accusation, and with

praise of what no one finds fault with. However, since they have

done so, we must answer their charges and refute their self-praise, in

order that neither our bad name nor their good may help them, but that

you may hear the real truth on both points, and so decide.

 

“The origin of our quarrel was this. We settled Plataea some time

after the rest of Boeotia, together with other places out of which

we had driven the mixed population. The Plataeans not choosing to

recognize our supremacy, as had been first arranged, but separating

themselves from the rest of the Boeotians, and proving traitors to

their nationality, we used compulsion; upon which they went over to

the Athenians, and with them did as much harm, for which we

retaliated.

 

“Next, when the barbarian invaded Hellas, they say that they were

the only Boeotians who did not Medize; and this is where they most

glorify themselves and abuse us. We say that if they did not Medize,

it was because the Athenians did not do so either; just as

afterwards when the Athenians attacked the Hellenes they, the

Plataeans, were again the only Boeotians who Atticized. And yet

consider the forms of our respective governments when we so acted. Our

city at that juncture had neither an oligarchical constitution in

which all the nobles enjoyed equal rights, nor a democracy, but that

which is most opposed to law and good government and nearest a

tyranny—the rule of a close cabal. These, hoping to strengthen their

individual power by the success of the Mede, kept down by force the

people, and brought him into the town. The city as a whole was not its

own mistress when it so acted, and ought not to be reproached for

the errors that it committed while deprived of its constitution.

Examine only how we acted after the departure of the Mede and the

recovery of the constitution; when the Athenians attacked the rest

of Hellas and endeavoured to subjugate our country, of the greater

part of which faction had already made them masters. Did not we

fight and conquer at Coronea and liberate Boeotia, and do we not now

actively contribute to the liberation of the rest, providing horses to

the cause and a force unequalled by that of any other state in the

confederacy?

 

“Let this suffice to excuse us for our Medism. We will now endeavour

to show that you have injured the Hellenes more than we, and are

more deserving of condign punishment. It was in defence against us,

say you, that you became allies and citizens of Athens. If so, you

ought only to have called in the Athenians against us, instead of

joining them in attacking others: it was open to you to do this if you

ever felt that they were leading you where you did not wish to follow,

as Lacedaemon was already your ally against the Mede, as you so much

insist; and this was surely sufficient to keep us off, and above all

to allow you to deliberate in security. Nevertheless, of your own

choice and without compulsion you chose to throw your lot in with

Athens. And you say that it had been base for you to betray your

benefactors; but it was surely far baser and more iniquitous to

sacrifice the whole body of the Hellenes, your fellow confederates,

who were liberating Hellas, than the Athenians only, who were

enslaving it. The return that you made them was therefore neither

equal nor honourable, since you called them in, as you say, because

you were being oppressed yourselves, and then became their accomplices

in oppressing others; although baseness rather consists in not

returning like for like than in not returning what is justly due but

must be unjustly paid.

 

“Meanwhile, after thus plainly showing that it was not for the

sake of the Hellenes that you alone then did not Medize, but because

the Athenians did not do so either, and you wished to side with them

and to be against the rest; you now claim the benefit of good deeds

done to please your neighbours. This cannot be admitted: you chose the

Athenians, and with them you must stand or fall. Nor can you plead the

league then made and claim that it should now protect you. You

abandoned that league, and offended against it by helping instead of

hindering the subjugation of the Aeginetans and others of its members,

and that not under compulsion, but while in enjoyment of the same

institutions that you enjoy to the present hour, and no one forcing

you as in our case. Lastly, an invitation was addressed to you

before you were blockaded to be neutral and join neither party: this

you did not accept. Who then merit the detestation of the Hellenes

more justly than you, you who sought their ruin under the mask of

honour? The former virtues that you allege you now show not to be

proper to your character; the real bent of your nature has been at

length damningly proved: when the Athenians took the path of injustice

you followed them.

 

“Of our unwilling Medism and your wilful Atticizing this then is our

explanation. The last wrong wrong of which you complain consists in

our having, as you say, lawlessly invaded your town in time of peace

and festival. Here again we cannot think that we were more in fault

than yourselves. If of our own proper motion we made an armed attack

upon your city and ravaged your territory, we are guilty; but if the

first men among you in estate and family, wishing to put an end to the

foreign connection and to restore you to the common Boeotian

country, of their own free will invited us, wherein is our crime?

Where wrong is done, those who lead, as you say, are more to blame

than those who follow. Not that, in our judgment, wrong was done

either by them or by us. Citizens like yourselves, and with more at

stake than you, they opened their own walls and introduced us into

their own city, not as foes but as friends, to prevent the bad among

you from becoming worse; to give honest men their due; to reform

principles without attacking persons, since you were not to be

banished from your city, but brought home to your kindred, nor to be

made enemies to any, but friends alike to all.

 

“That our intention was not hostile is proved by our behaviour. We

did no harm to any one, but publicly invited those who wished to

live under a national, Boeotian government to come over to us; which

as first you gladly did, and made an agreement with us and remained

tranquil, until you became aware of the smallness of our numbers.

Now it is possible that there may have been something not quite fair

in our entering without the consent of your commons. At any rate you

did not repay us in kind. Instead of refraining, as we had done,

from violence, and inducing us to retire by negotiation, you fell upon

us in violation of your agreement, and slew some of us in fight, of

which we do not so much complain, for in that there was a certain

justice; but others who held out their hands and received quarter, and

whose lives you subsequently promised us, you lawlessly butchered.

If this was not abominable, what is? And after these three crimes

committed one after the other—the violation of your agreement, the

murder of the men afterwards, and the lying breach of your promise not

to kill them, if we refrained from injuring your property in the

country—you still affirm that we are the criminals and yourselves

pretend to escape justice. Not so, if these your judges decide aright,

but you will be punished for all together.

 

“Such, Lacedaemonians, are the facts. We have gone into them at some

length both on your account and on our own, that you may fed that

you will justly condemn the prisoners, and we, that we have given an

additional sanction to our vengeance. We would also prevent you from

being melted by hearing of their past virtues, if any such they had:

these may be fairly appealed to by the victims of injustice, but

only aggravate the guilt of criminals, since they offend against their

better nature. Nor let them gain anything by crying and wailing, by

calling upon your fathers’ tombs and their own desolate condition.

Against this we point to the far more dreadful fate of our youth,

butchered at their hands; the fathers of whom either fell at

Coronea, bringing Boeotia over to you, or seated, forlorn old men by

desolate hearths, with far more reason implore your justice upon the

prisoners. The pity which they appeal to is rather due to men who

suffer unworthily; those who suffer justly as they do are on the

contrary subjects for triumph. For their present desolate condition

they have themselves to blame, since they wilfully rejected the better

alliance. Their lawless act was not provoked by any action of ours:

hate, not justice, inspired their decision; and even now the

satisfaction which they afford us is not adequate; they will suffer by

a legal sentence, not as they pretend as suppliants asking for quarter

in battle, but as prisoners who have surrendered upon agreement to

take their trial. Vindicate, therefore, Lacedaemonians, the Hellenic

law which they have broken; and to us, the victims of its violation,

grant the reward merited by our zeal. Nor let us be supplanted in your

favour by their harangues, but offer an example to the Hellenes,

that the contests to which you invite them are of deeds, not words:

good deeds can be shortly stated, but where wrong is done a wealth

of language is needed to veil its deformity. However, if leading

powers were to do what you are now doing, and putting one short

question to all alike were to decide accordingly, men would be less

tempted to seek fine phrases to cover bad actions.”

 

Such were the words of the Thebans. The Lacedaemonian judges decided

that the question whether they had received any service from the

Plataeans in the war, was a fair one for them to put; as they had

always invited them to be neutral, agreeably to the original

covenant of Pausanias after the defeat of the Mede, and had again

definitely offered them the same conditions before the blockade.

This offer having been refused, they were now, they conceived, by

the loyalty of their intention released from their covenant; and

having, as they considered, suffered evil at the hands of the

Plataeans, they brought them in again one by one and asked each of

them the same question, that is to say, whether they had done the

Lacedaemonians and allies any service in the war; and upon their

saying that they had not, took them out and slew them, all without

exception. The number of Plataeans thus massacred was not less than

two hundred, with twenty-five Athenians who had shared in the siege.

The women were taken as slaves. The city the Thebans gave for about

a year to some political emigrants from Megara and to the surviving

Plataeans of their own party to inhabit, and afterwards razed it to

the ground from the very foundations, and built on to the precinct

of Hera an inn two hundred feet square, with rooms all round above and

below, making use for this purpose of the roofs and doors of the

Plataeans: of the rest of the materials in the wall, the brass and the

iron, they made couches which they dedicated to Hera, for whom they

also built a stone