History of the Peloponnesian War

And this will satisfy us.

receiving both parties,

To encourage them on these points he said,

Do you then give up your city and houses to us Lacedaemonians, and point out the boundaries of your territory, and your trees in number, and whatever else can be reduced to number; and yourselves remove wherever you please for as long as the war may last. When it is over, we will restore to you whatever we may have received. Till then we will hold it in trust, cultivating it, and bringing to you such of the produce as will be sufficient for you.

When they had heard his proposal, they went again into the city, and after consulting with the people, said that they wished first to communicate to the Athenians what he proposed, and should they gain their consent, then to do so; but till that time they begged him to grant them a truce, and not to lay waste the land. So he granted them a truce for the number of days within which it was likely they would return home, and in the mean time did not begin to ravage the land.

The Plataean ambassadors having come to the Athenians and consulted with them, returned with the following message to those in the city:

Men of Plataea, the Athenians say, that never in time past, since we became their allies, have they on any occasion deserted us when injured; nor will they neglect us now, but will succour us to the best of their power. And they charge you by the oaths which your fathers swore, to make no innovation in the terms of the alliance.

The ambassadors having delivered this message, they resolved not to prove false to the Athenians, but to endure, it necessary, both to see their land ravaged, and to suffer whatever else might befall them. They resolved also that no one should go out again, but that they should reply from the walls, that it was impossible for them to do as the Lacedaemonians proposed.

When they had given this answer, king Archidamus proceeded in the first place to call to witness the gods and heroes of the country, in these words:

Ye gods and heroes that dwell in the land of Plataea, bear witness that it was neither unjustly in the first instance, but when these men had first broken the agreement they had sworn to, that we came against this land, in which our fathers prayed to you before they conquered the Medes, and which you rendered an auspicious one for the Greeks to contend in; nor shall we act unjustly now, whatever we may do; for though we have made many fair proposals, we have not succeeded in gaining their assent. Grant then that those may be punished for the wrong who were the first to begin it, and that those may obtain their revenge who are lawfully trying to inflict it.

Having thus appealed to the gods, he set his army to the war. In the first place he enclosed them with a palisade, made of the trees which they cut down, that no one might go out of the town any longer.

Next they began to throw up a mound against the city, hoping that the reduction of it would be very speedily effected with so large an army at work. Cutting down timber therefore from Cithaeron, they built it up on each side, laying it like lattice-work, to serve as walls, that the mound might not spread over a wide space;

and they carried to it brush-wood, and stone, and soil, and whatever else would help to complete it when thrown on. Seventy days and nights continuously they were throwing it up, being divided into relief-parties, so that some should be carrying, while others were taking sleep and refreshment; the Lacedaemonian officers who shared the command over the contingents of each state urging them to the work.

But the Plataeans, seeing the mound rising, put together a wooden wall, and placed it on the wall of their city, where the mound was being made, and built bricks inside it, which they took from the neighbouring houses.

The timbers served as a frame for them, to prevent the building from being weak as it became high; and for curtains it had skins and hides, so that the workmen and the timbers were not exposed to fiery missiles, but were in safety.

So the wall was raised to a great height, and the mound rose opposite to it no less quickly. The Plataeans also adopted some such device as follows: they took down a part of the wall, where the mound lay against it, and carried the earth into the city.