Page:History of Greece Vol VI.djvu/415

 DEBATE ABOUT BURIAL OF THE SLAIN 393 their present territory, expelling the prior occupants and appro- priating the temples : it was upon the same maxim that the Athenians would act in retaining so much of Bosotia as they had now conquered, and in conquering more of it, if they could Necessity compelled them to use the consecrated watei a necessity not originating in the ambition of Athens, but in prior Boeotian aggressions upon Attica, a necessity which they trusted that the gods would pardon, since their altars were allowed as a protection to the involuntary offender, and none but he who sinned without constraint experienced their displeasure. The Boeotians were guilty of far greater impiety in refusing to give back the dead, except upon certain conditions connected with the holy ground, than the Athenians, who merely refused to turn the duty of sepulture into an unseemly bargain. Tell us unconditionally (concluded the Athenian herald) that we may bury our dead under truce, pursuant to the maxims of our forefathers. Do not tell us that we may do so on condi- tion of going out of Boeotia, for we are no longer in Boeotia ; we are in our own territory, won by the sword." The Bo3otian generals dismissed the herald with a reply short and decisive : " If you are in Boeotia, you may take away all that belongs to you, but only on condition of going out of it. If on the other hand you are in your own terntory, you can take your own resolution without asking us." l In this debate, curious as an illustration of Grecian manners and feelings, there seems to have been special pleading and eva- sion on both sides. The final sentence of the Boeotians was good as a reply to the incidental argument raised by the Athenian herald, who had rested the defence of Athens in regard to the temple of Delium on the allegation that the territory was Athenian, not Boeotian, Athenian by conquest and by the right of the strong- est, and had concluded by affirming the same thing about Oropia, the district to which the battle-field belonged. It was only this same argument, of actual superior force, which the Boeotians retorted, when they said : " If the territory to which your appli- cation refers is yours by right of conquest (i. e. if you are d facto masters of it, and are strongest within it), you can of course 1 See the two difficult chapters, iv, 98, 99, in Thucydides. 17*