History of the Peloponnesian War

who accepted them, seeing the distress of their army in so exposed a position, and the state having already expended 2000 talents on the siege. On these terms therefore they came to an agreement;

that themselves, their children, wives, and auxiliaries, should go out of the place with one dress each-but the women with two-and with a fixed sum of money for their journey.

According to this treaty, they went out to Chalcidice, or where each could: but the Athenians blamed the generals for having come to an agreement without consulting them; for they thought they might have got possession of the place on their own terms; and afterwards they sent settlers of their own to Potidaea and colonized it. These were the transactions of the winter; and so ended the second year of this war of which Thucydides wrote the history.

The following summer the Peloponnesians and their allies did not make an incursion into Attica, but marched against Plataea, being led by Archidamus, the son of Zeuxidamus, king of the Lacedaemonians. Having encamped his army, he was going to ravage the land; but the Plataeans immediately sent ambassadors to him, and spoke as follows:

Archidamus and Lacedaemonians, you are not doing what is right, or worthy either of yourselves or of the fathers from whom you are sprung, in marching against the territory of the Plataeans. For Pausanias son of Cleombrotus, the Lacedaemonian, when he had liberated Greece from the Medes, in conjunction with those Greeks who had been willing to incur with him the peril of the battle that was fought near our city, after sacrificing in the market-place of Plataea to Jupiter the Deliverer, and assembling all the allies, proceeded to grant to the Plataeans to live in independent possession of their land and city, and that no one should ever make war upon them unjustly, or to enslave them else that the allies then present should assist them to their utmost.

These rewards your fathers gave us for our valour and zeal, shown in those scenes of danger; but you are doing the very contrary; for in conjunction with the Thebans, our bitterest enemies, you are come to enslave us.

Calling the gods then to witness, both those who at that time received the oaths, and those of your own fathers, and those of our country, we charge you not to injure the Plataean territory, nor break the oaths, but to let us live independent, as Pausanias thought right to grant us.