History of the Peloponnesian War

"Consider, too, that at present you are esteemed by the Greeks in general a pattern of honour and virtue: but if you pass an unjust sentence on us, (for this is no obscure cause that you will decide, but as men of high repute yourselves, you will pass sentence on us who are also not contemptible,) beware lest they may not approve of your coming to any improper decision respecting men of good character, though you are yourselves of still better; nor of spoils which were taken from us, the benefactors of Greece, being devoted in the national temples.

For it will seem a shocking thing that Lacedaemonians should have destroyed Plataea; and that your fathers should have inscribed the name of that city on the tripod at Delphi for its good services, whereas you utterly obliterated it from the whole Grecian name for the sake of Thebans. For to such a degree of misfortune have we been brought: