History of the Peloponnesian War

Such was the speech of the Thebans. And the Lacedaemonian judges decided that their question, whether they had received any benefit from the Plataeans in the war, would be a fair one for them to put; for they had at all other times urged them, they claimed, to maintain neutrality in accordance with the old covenant which they had made with Pausanias after the Persian defeat; and when afterwards, before the investment of Plataea was undertaken, their proposal to the Plataeans that they remain neutral in accordance with the earlier agreement had not been accepted,[*](The text is certainly corrupt. Badham's slight change, adopted by Hude, seems to be the simplest solution of the difficulty.) they thought themselves thenceforth released from all obligations of the treaty because their own intentions had been honourable, and considered that they had been wronged by the Plataeans. So they caused them to come forward again, one at a time, and asked them the same question, whether they had rendered any good service to the Lacedaemonians and their allies in the war, and when they said “no” they led them off and slew them, exempting no one.

The number of the Plataeans that perished was not less than two hundred, and of the Athenians who had taken part in the siege twenty-five;

and the women were sold as slaves. As for the city itself, they gave occupation of it for about a year to some men of Megara who had been driven out in consequence of a sedition, and also to such of the surviving Plataeans as favoured the Lacedaemonian cause. Afterwards, however, they razed it entirely[*](Or, taking ἐκ τῶν θεμελίων with ψ)|κοδόμησαν, as Steup and others do, “they built on the old foundations.”) to the ground, and built, in the neighbourhood of the sanctuary of Hera, an inn two hundred feet square, with rooms all around, above and below, using for this purpose the roofs and doors of the Plataeans; and with the rest of the material inside the walls, articles of copper and iron, they fashioned couches, which they dedicated to Hera; and they also built for her a stone temple one hundred feet long.

But the land they confiscated and leased for ten years, and the Thebans occupied it. Indeed it was almost wholly for the sake of the Thebans that the Lacedaemonians in all their dealings with the Plataeans showed themselves so thoroughly hostile to them, thinking that the Thebans would be serviceable in the war then just beginning.

Such was the fate of Plataea, in the ninety-third year after they became allies of Athens.[*](519 B.C.)