History of the Peloponnesian War

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.”

The Boeotians made answer, if they were in Boeotia, they might carry off their dead on quitting their land; but if they were in their own territory, they could determine themselves what to do. For they thought that though Oropia, in which the bodies happened to be lying—for the battle occurred on the boundaries—belonged to the Athenians by right of its subjection, yet that they could not get possession of the bodies without their leave (nor indeed were they going to make a truce, forsooth, about territory belonging to the Athenians); but they thought it was fair to answer, “when they had quitted Boeotian territory they could get back what they asked for.” And the herald of the Athenians, on hearing this, went away without accomplishing his object.