History of the Peloponnesian War

When the herald had spoken, the Athenians sent a herald of their own to the Boeotians, saying that they had done no injury to the temple, and would not damage it wilfully in the future; for they had not entered it at the outset with any such intent, but rather that from it they might defend themselves against those who were wronging them.

And the law of the Hellenes was, they said, that whosoever had dominion over any country, be it larger or smaller, to them tile sanctuaries also always belonged, to be tended, so far as might be possible, with whatsoever rites had hitherto been customary.[*](Or, reading πρὸς τοῖς εἰωθόσι with the MSS., “to be tended, besides the usual rites, with such others as they might be able to use.”)

Indeed the Boeotians, and most others who had driven out any people and taken forcible possession of their country, had at first attacked the temples as alien but now possessed them as their own.

And they themselves, if they had been able to conquer more of the Boeotian territory, would have held it; but as it was, they would not depart from that portion in which they were, at least of their free will, considering it their own.

The water, moreover, they had disturbed in their sore need, which they had not wantonly brought upon themselves; they had been forced to use the water while defending themselves against the Boeotians who had first invaded their land.

And anything done under the constraint of war and danger might reasonably meet with some indulgence, even from the god. For altars were a refuge in cases of involuntary misdeeds, and transgression was a term applied to those who do evil without compulsion and not to those who are driven by misfortunes to some act of daring.

Moreover, the Boeotians in presuming to give up the bodies of the dead in return for temples were impious in a much higher degree than they who refused by the exchange of temples to procure that which they had a right to recover.

And they bade the Boeotians plainly tell them they might take up their dead, not “on condition of quitting Boeotia”—for they were no longer in Boeotian territory, but in land which they had won by the spear,—but “on making a truce according to ancestral custom.”