Page:History of Greece Vol VI.djvu/284

 262 HISTORY OF QEEECE. nor did they omit to remind the judges of an obligation per- sonal to Sparta, the aid which they had rendered, along with the Athenians, to Sparta, when pressed by the revolt of the Helots at Ithome. This speech is as touching as any which we find in Thucydides, and the skill of it consists in the frequency with which the hearers are brought back, time after time, and by well-managed transitions, to these same topics. 1 And such was the impression which it seemed to make on the five Lacedaemo- nian judges, that the Thebans near at hand found themselves under the necessity of making a reply to it: although we see plainly that the whole scheme of proceeding the formal and insulting question, as well as the sentence destined to follow upon answer given had been settled beforehand between them and the Lacedaemonians. The Theban speakers contended that the Plat&ans had de- served, and brought upon themselves by their own fault, the enmity of Thebes, that they had stood forward earnestly against the Persians, only because Athens had done so too, and that all the merit, whatever it might be, which they had thereby acquired, was counterbalanced and cancelled by their having allied themselves with Athens afterwards for the oppression and enslavement of the .^Eginetans, and of other Greeks equally con- spicuous for zeal against Xerxes, and equally entitled to protec- tion under the promises of Pausanias. The Thebans went on to vindicate their nocturnal surprise of Plataea, by maintaining that they had been invited by the most respectable citizens of the town, 2 who were anxious only to bring back Plataea from its alliance with a stranger to its natural Breotian home, and 1 Thacyd. iii, 54-59. Dionysius of Halikarnassus bestows especial com- mendation on the speech of the Platsean orator (De Thucyd. Hist. Judic. p. 921 ). Concurring with him as to its merits, I do not concur in the opinion which he expresses that it is less artistically put together than those other harangues which he considers inferior. Mr. Mitford doubts whether these two orations are to be taken as ap- proximating to anything really delivered on the occasion. But it seems to me that the means possessed by Thucydides for informing himself of what was actually said at this scene before the captured Platsea must have been considerable and satisfactory : I therefore place full confidence in them, as I do in most of the other harangues in his work, so far as the substance goes
 * Thucyd. iii, 65.