Page:History of Greece Vol VI.djvu/285

 FOURTH YEAR OF THE WAR -FATE OF THE PLAT^EANS. 263 that they had abstained from anything like injurious treatment of the inhabitants, until constrained to use force in their own defence. They then reproached the Plataeans, in their turn, with that breach of faith whereby ultimately the Theban prison- ers in the town had been put to death. And while they excused their alliance with Xerxes, at the time of the Persian invasion, by affirming that Thebes was then under a dishonest party- oligarchy, who took this side for their own factious purposes, and carried the people with them by force, they at the same time charged the Plataeans with permanent treason against the Boso- tian customs and brotherhood. 1 All this was farther enforced by setting forth the claims of Thebes to the gratitude of Lacedasmon, both for having brought Boeotia into the Lacedaemonian alli- ance, at the time of the battle of Koroneia, and for having furnished so large a portion of the common force in the war then going on. 2 The discourse of the Thebans, inspired by bitter, and as yet unsatisfied hatred against Plataea, proved effectual : or rather it was superfluous, the minds of the Lacedaemonians having be- fore been made up. After the proposition twice made by Archi- damus to the Plataeans, inviting them to remain neutral, and even offering to guarantee their neutrality, after the solemn apologetic protest tendered by him upon their refusal, to the gods, before he began the siege, the Lacedaemonians conceived themselves exonerated from all obligation to respect the sanctity of the place ; 3 looking upon the inhabitants as having voluntarily renounced their inviolability and sealed their own ruin. Hence 1 Thucyd. iii, 66. TU TTUVTUV EOIUTUV nurpia iii, 62. efw TUV uA/loj. BOIUTUV irapaftaivovTee TU rcurpia. 9 Thucyd. iii, 61-68. It is probable that the slaughter of the Theban prisoners taken in the town of Platsea was committed by the Platoeans in breach of a convention concluded with the Thebans : and on this point, therefore, the Thebans had really ground to complain. Eespecting this convention, however, there were two conflicting stories, between which Thucydides does not decide : see Thucyd. ii, 3, 4, and this History, above, chr.p. xlviii. 3 Thucyd. iii, 68 ; ii, 74. To construe the former of these passages (iii, 68) as it now stands, is very difficult, if not impossible ; we can onlv pretend to give what seems to be its substantial meaning.