History of the Peloponnesian War

But you should ever have the same opinion in the same case and think this only to be profitable that doing what is useful for the present occasion, you reserve withal a constant acknowledgment of the virtue of your good confederates.

"Consider also that you are an example of honest dealing to the most of the Grecians. Now if you shall decree otherwise than is just (for this judgment of yours is conspicuous, you that be praised against us that be not blamed), take heed that they do not dislike that good men should undergo an unjust sentence, though at the hands of better men, or that the spoil of us that have done the Grecians service should be dedicated in their temples.

For it will be thought a horrible matter that Plataea should be destroyed by Lacedaemonians and that you, whereas your fathers in honour of our valour inscribed the name of our city on the tripod at Delphi, should now blot it out of all Greece to gratify the Thebans.

For we have proceeded to such a degree of calamity that if the Medes had prevailed, we must have perished then; and now the Thebans have overcome us again in you, who were before our greatest friends, and have put us to two great hazards, one before of famishing if we yielded not, and another now of a capital sentence.

And we Plataeans, who even beyond our strength have been zealous in the defence of the Grecians, are now abandoned and left unrelieved by them all.