Page:History of Greece Vol VI.djvu/140

 118 HISTORY OF 'GREECE. flagrantly violated the truce, and especially to warn them not to do any wrong without the walls. If they retired without inflict- ing farther mischief, their prisoners within should be given up to them ; if otherwise, these prisoners would be slain immediately. A convention having been concluded and sworn to on this basis, tie Thebans retired without any active measures. Such at least was the Theban account of what preceded their retirement : but the Plataeans gave a very different statement ; denying that they had made any categorical promise or sworn any oath, and affirming that they had engaged for nothing, except to suspend any decisive step with regard to the prisoners until dis- cussion had been entered into to see if a satisfactory agreement, could be concluded. As Thucydides records both of these statements, without inti- mating to which of the two he himself gave the preference, we may presume that both of them found credence with respectable persons. The Theban story is undoubtedly the most probable : but the Plataeans appear to have violated the understanding, even upon their own construction of it. For no sooner had the Thebans retired, than they (the Plataeans) hastily brought in their citizens and the best of their movable property within the walls, and then slew all their prisoners forthwith ; without even entering into the formalities of negotiation. The prisoners thus put to death, among whom was Eurymachus himself, were one hundred and eighty in number. 1 1 Thucyd. ii, 5, 6 ; Herodot. vii, 233. Demosthenes (cont. Neaeram, c. 25, p. 1379) agrees with Thucydides in the statement that the Platssana slew their prisoners. From whom Diodorns borrowed his inadmissible story, that the Plataeans gave up their prisoners to the Thebans, I cannot tell (Diodor.xii, 41,42). The passage in this oration against Neasra is also curious, both as it agrees with Thucydides on many points, and as it differs from him on sev- eral others : in some sentences, even the words agree with Thucydide's (b yap 'Aauirdf iroraftdf fieya^ fyfivy, Kal diapjjvai ov {>p6iov T/V, etc. : compare Thucyd. ii, 2) ; while on other points there is discrepancy. Demosthcres or the Pseudo-Demosthenes states that Archidamus, king of Sparta, planned the surprise of Platsea, that die Plataeans only discovered, when morning dawned, the small real number of the Thebans in the town, that the larger body of Thebans, when they at last did arrive near Platsea after the great delay in their march, were forced to retire by the