History of the Peloponnesian War

Also we require you, men of Lacedaemon, not only not to deliver us Plataeans, who have been most zealous in the service of the Grecians especially being sanctuary men, out of your own hands and your own trust into the hands of our most mortal enemies the Thebans but also to be our saviours and not to destroy us utterly, you that set at liberty all other Grecians.

Thus spake the Plataeans. But the Thebans, fearing lest the Lacedaemonians might relent at their oration, stood forth and said that since the Plataeans had had the liberty of a longer speech (which they thought they should not) than for answer to the question was necessary, they also desired to speak, and being commanded to say on, spake to this effect: