History of the Peloponnesian War

"And yet we adjure you, for the sake of the gods who of old sanctioned our alliance and for our good service in the cause of the Hellenes, to relent and change your minds, if you have been in any way won over by the Thebans,[*](The Thebans had demanded that the Plataeans be put to death.) and in your turn to ask of them the boon not to put to death those whom it ill becomes you to slay, that you may thus receive an honest instead of a shameful gratitude, and may not in giving pleasure to others get in return ignominy for yourselves.

It is a simple matter to take our lives, but a grievous task to blot out the infamy of it;

for we are not enemies whom you would have a right to punish, but good friends who were forced into war with you. You would, therefore, render a righteous judgment if you guaranteed us security of life and if you bore in mind, before it is too late, that it was in voluntary surrender and with outstretched hands that you received us (and the usage of the Hellenes forbids the slaying of suppliants);

and, moreover, that we have always been your benefactors. Turn your eyes upon the sepulchres of your fathers, slain by the Persians and buried in our land, whom we have honoured year by year with a public offering of raiment[*](For garments as offerings to the dead, cf. Soph. El. 452; Eur. Or. 123, 1436; Tac. A. iii. 2. But some understand ἐσθήμασι to refer to mourning garments. See also Plut. Aristides, xxi.) and other customary gifts; the first fruits, too, of all that the earth each year has produced have been brought them, the tribute of kindly hands from a friendly land and of allies to those who were once their companions in arms.

All this you would reverse by an unjust verdict. Reflect: when Pausanias buried them he thought he was laying them in a friendly land and among friends; but you, if you put us to death and make the territory of Plataea a Theban province, will you not be leaving them in a hostile land and among their murderers[*](The Thebans are called their murderers because they had sided with the Persians against the Hellenic allies.)—these your fathers and kinsmen—and dispossessed of the honours they now enjoy? Nay more, you will be enslaving the very land in which the Hellenes gained their liberty; you will be bringing desolation upon the temples of the gods to whom they prayed when they conquered the Persians; and you will be robbing of their hereditary sacrifices the people who founded and established them.