History of the Peloponnesian War

But you would do the contrary of this, should you decide unjustly. For consider: Pausanias buried them with a conviction that he was laying them in a friendly land, and amongst men of that character; but you, if you kill us, and make the Plataean territory a part of the Theban, what else will you do but leave your fathers and kinsmen in a hostile country, and amongst their murderers, unhonoured with the gifts which they now receive? And further, you will condemn to slavery the land in which the Greeks won their freedom; will desolate the temples of the gods to whom they prayed, before conquering the Medes; and will take away our ancestral sacrifices from those who founded and instituted them.

This were not to your credit, Lacedaemonians, nor to offend against the general principles of the Greeks and your own forefathers, nor to destroy us, your benefactors, for other men's hatred of us, without having been wronged yourselves; but rather, to spare us, and relent in your hearts, having taken a rational pity on us; reflecting not only on the dreadful nature of the things we should suffer, but also on the character of the sufferers, and how misfortune admits not of calculating on whom it may one day fall, even without his deserving it.