Page:Thucydides, translated into English Vol 1.djvu/349

 67,68] FATE OF THE PLATAEANS 233 they wilfully renounced it. They sinned against us though we had never injured them ; the spirit of hatred and not of justice possessed them, and even now they are not punished half enough. For they are going to suffer by a lawful sentence, not, as they pretend, stretching out their suppliant hands on the field of battle, but delivering them- selves up to justice under the terms of a capitulation. Maintain then, Lacedaemonians, the common Plellenic law which they have outraged, and give to us, who have suffered contrary to law, the just recompense of our zeal in your cause. Do not be moved by their words to spurn and reject us % but show Hellas by example that, when a cause is tried at your tribunal, deeds and not words will prevail. If the deeds be good, a brief statement of them is enough ; if they be evil, speeches full of fine sentiments do but veil them. If all persons in authority were like you, and would sum up a case in a short question, and pass sentence upon all the offenders at once, men would be less tempted to seek out fair words in order to excuse foul deeds.' Thus spoke the Thebans. The Lacedaemonian judges 68 thought that no objection could be j-,,^ Plataeans are made to their question, whether the put to death, and their Plataeans had done them any service city razed to the ground in the war. ^' For they pretended to have expected neutrality from them in the times before the war, on the strength of the original treaty concluded with Pausanias after the defeat of the Persians, And just before the siege they had made to them a proposal^ of neutrality in accordance with the terms of the same treaty; but the Plataeans had refused. Considering that they had been wronged by them, after their own fair proposals " Cp. iii. 57 fin. ^ Or, taking riilovv in a different sense, and repeat- ing it before koX ore vartpov : ' For they had been constantly requesting them, as they said, to remain neutral in the times before the war, . . . and they had repeated the request when just before the siege they had made to them a proposal,' &c.