Page:History of Greece Vol VI.djvu/417

 ATHENIAN WRONG. 395 and live at Delium, both exasperated their feelings, and furnished them with a collateral issue as a means of evading the main demand. 1 To judge this curious debate with perfect impartiality, we ought to add, in reference to the conduct of the Athenians in occupying Delium, that for an enemy to make special choice of a temple, as a post to be fortified and occupied, was a proceeding certainly rare, perhaps hardly admissible, in Grecian welfare. Nor does the vindication offered by the Athenian herald meet the real charge preferred. It is one thing for an enemy of superior force to overrun a country, and to appropriate everything within it, sacred as well as profane : it is another thing for a border enemy, not yet in sufficient force for conquering the whole, to convert a temple of convenient site into a regular garrisoned for- tress, and make it a base of operations against the neighboring population. On this ground, the Boeotians might reasonably complain of the seizure of Delium : though I apprehend that no impartial interpreter of Grecian international custom would have thought them warranted in attaching it as a condition to their grant of the burial-truce when solicited. All negotiation being thus broken off, the Breotian generals prepared to lay siege to Delium, aided by two thousand Corin- thian hoplites, together with some Megarians and the late Pelo- ponnesian garrison of Nissea, who joined after the news of the battle. Though they sent for darters and slingers, probably CEtseans and JEtoilians, from the Maliac gulf, yet their direct attacks were at first all repelled by the garrison, aided by an Athenian squadron off the coast, in spite of the hasty and awk- ward defences by which alone the fort was protected. At length 1 Thucydides, in describing the state of mind of the Boeotians, does not seem to imply that they thought this a good and valid ground, upon which they could directly take their stand ; but merely that they considered it a fair diplomatic way of meeting the alternative raised by the Athenian herald ; for evirpEKEf means nothing more than this. OW av kanevSovTO Sfj&ev inep rj?f kKeivuv (* k-&T)vaiuv)' TO <5e EK TTJ tavruv (Botwruv) einrps Tef elvat uiroicpivaadai, umovTac ical U7rc/la/?eii a uvairovoiv. The adverb dljdev also marks the reference to the special question, as laid eut by the Athenian herald.