History of the Peloponnesian War

“These things are not consistent with your honour, Lacedaemonians, nor can it be so to offend against the common usage of the Hellenes and against your ancestors, or to put us, your benefactors, to death because of the enmity of others, when you have not been wronged yourselves. Nay, your good name demands that you should spare us and be softened in heart, regarding us with a dispassionate pity and bearing in mind, not only how terrible will be our fate, but who we are that must suffer, and how uncertain is fortune, whose strokes sometimes fall even upon the innocent.

And we, as befits our condition and as our sore need demands, entreat you in the name of the common gods of the Hellenic race whom we invoke, gods worshipped by us all at the same altars, to listen to our prayers; and at the same time, appealing to the oaths wherein your fathers swore that they would never forget us, we become suppliants before your ancestral tombs and call upon the departed not to suffer us to come into the power of Thebans or permit us, who were their dearest friends, to be delivered into the hands of their bitterest foes. We also remind you of that day on which we shared with them in the most brilliant deeds, we who now on this day are on the brink of the most awful fate.

And now, bringing our plea to an end—and this must be, howbeit for men in our condition it is the hardest thing of all, seeing that with its ending our mortal peril also draws near—we say that we did not surrender our city to the Thebans—in preference to that our choice would have been to die of starvation, the most horrible of deaths—but capitulated to you because we trusted you. And it is but right, if we fail in our plea, that you should restore us to our former position and let us choose for ourselves the danger that shall confront us.

And we likewise adjure you, Plataeans that we are, people who were most zealous for the cause of Hellas, and are now your suppliants, O Lacedaemonians, not to deliver us out of your hands and your good faith to the Thebans, our bitterest foes, but to become our saviours, and not, while liberating the rest of the Hellenes, to bring utter destruction upon us.”