The Historians' History of the World 03

But unhappily for the Platæans they had nothing to rely upon but the mercy or the honour of Sparta: two principles which never appear to have had the weight of a feather in any of her public transactions; and though the Spartan commissioners bore the title of judges, they came in fact only to pronounce a sentence which had been previously dictated by Thebes. Yet the appeal of the Platæans was so affecting, that the Thebans distrusted the firmness of their allies, and obtained leave to reply. They very judiciously and honestly treated the question as one which lay entirely between the Platæans and themselves. They attributed the conduct of their ancestors in the Persian War, to the compulsion of a small, dominant faction, and pleaded the services which they had themselves since rendered to Sparta. They depreciated the patriotic deeds of the Platæans, as the result of their attachment to Athens, whom they had not scrupled to abet in all her undertakings against the liberties of Greece. They defended the attempt which they had made upon Platæa during the peace, on the ground that they had been invited by a number of its wealthiest and noblest citizens, and they charged the Platæans with a breach of faith in the execution of their Theban prisoners, whose blood called for vengeance as loudly as they for mercy.

These were indeed reasons which fully explained and perhaps justified their own enmity to Platæa, and did not need to be aided by so glaring a falsehood, as the assertion that their enemies were enjoying the benefit of a fair trial. But the only part of their argument, that bore upon the real question, was that in which they reminded the Spartans that Thebes was their most powerful and useful ally. This the Spartans felt; and they had long determined that no scruples of justice or humanity should endanger so valuable a connection. But it seems that they still could not devise any more ingenious mode of reconciling their secret motive with outward decency, than the original question, which implied that if the prisoners were their enemies, they might rightfully put them to death; and in this sophistical abstraction all the claims which arose out of the capitulation, when construed according to the plainest rules of equity, were overlooked. The question was again proposed to each separately, and when the ceremony was finished by his answer or his silence, he was immediately consigned to the executioner. The Platæans who suffered amounted to two hundred; their fate was shared by twenty-five Athenians, who could not have expected or claimed milder treatment, as they might have been fairly excepted from the benefit of the surrender. The women were all made slaves. If there had been nothing but inhumanity in the proceeding of the Spartans, it would have been so much slighter than that which they had exhibited towards their most unoffending prisoners from the beginning of the war, as scarcely to deserve notice. All that is very signal in this transaction is the baseness of their cunning, and perhaps the dullness of their invention.

The town and its territory were, with better right, ceded to the Thebans. For a year they permitted the town to be occupied by a body of exiles from Megara, and by the remnant of the Platæans belonging to the Theban party. But afterwards—fearing perhaps that it might be wrested from them—they razed it to the ground, leaving only the temples standing. But on the site, and with the materials of the demolished buildings, they erected an edifice 200 feet square, with an upper story, the whole divided into apartments, for the reception of the pilgrims who might come to the quinquennial festival, or on other sacred occasions. They also built a new temple, which together with the brass and the iron found in the town, which were made into couches, they dedicated to Hera, the goddess to whom Pausanias was thought to have owed his victory. The territory was annexed to the Theban state lands, and let for a term of ten years. So, in the ninety-third year after Platæa had entered into alliance with Athens, this alliance became the cause of its ruin.b

NAVAL AND OTHER COMBATS

[429 B.C.]

While Archidamus was holding Platæa by the throat, other enterprises were meeting with varied success. Athens sent 2000 hoplites and 200 horse to Chalcidian Thrace under the Xenophon to whom Potidæa had surrendered. He made an assault on the town of Spartolus, only to lose a desperate battle, and to be crushed on his retreat; Xenophon and two associated generals were killed, and with them 430 hoplites, a loss of about 25 per cent.

In Thrace, Sitalces, king of an immense realm, came to the aid of Athens against the double-dealing Macedonian king, Perdiccas. He invaded Macedonia and the Chalcidian territory, and voyaged far and wide until the severity of winter and the failure of Athenian aid led him to retire.