Plataicus

Since we Plataeans know, Athenians, that it is your custom not only zealously to come to the rescue of victims of injustice, but also to requite your benefactors with the utmost gratitude, we have come as suppliants to beg you not to remain indifferent to our having been driven from our homes in time of peace by the Thebans. And since many peoples in the past have fled to you for protection and have obtained all they craved, we think it beseems you more than others to show solicitude for our city;

for victims of a greater injustice than ourselves, or any who have been plunged into calamities so great, you could not find anywhere, nor any people who for a longer time have maintained toward your city a more loyal friendship.[*](Cf. Herodotus vi. 108. Athens and Platea were allied as early as 510 B.C.) Furthermore, we have come here to ask you for assistance of such a kind that your granting it will involve you in no danger whatever and yet will cause all the world to regard you as the most scrupulous and most just of all the Greeks.

If we did not observe that the Thebans have schemed to win you over, by fair means or foul, to their contention that they have done us no wrong, we could have finished our plea in a few words. But since we have reached such a state of misfortune that we must struggle, not only against them, but also against the ablest of your orators, men whom they have hired with our resources to be their advocates[*](Athenian venal advocates are meant.) we must explain our cause at greater length.

It is difficult indeed not to speak inadequately on the subject of our wrongs. For what eloquence could match our misfortunes, or what orator could adequately denounce the wrongs the Thebans have done? Nevertheless, we must try to the best of our ability to make their transgressions known.

And the chief cause of our indignation is that we are so far from being judged worthy of equality with the rest of the Greeks that, although we are at peace[*](This seems to be a reference to the peace of 374 B.C., made between Athens and Sparta (see Jebb, Attic Orators ii. p. 177).) and although treaties exist, we not only have no share in the liberty which all the rest enjoy, but that we are not considered worthy of even a moderate condition of servitude.

We therefore beg of you, citizens of Athens, that you listen to our plea in a friendly spirit, reflecting that for us the most preposterous outcome of all would be, if those who have always been hostile to your city shall have regained their freedom through your efforts, but we, even when we supplicate you, should fail to obtain the same treatment as is accorded to your greatest enemies.

As for the events which have occurred in the past, I see no reason why I should speak of them at length. For who does not know that the Thebans have portioned out our land for pasturage and have razed our city to the ground? But it is with respect to their argument, by which they hope to deceive you, that we shall try to inform you.

At times, you know, they attempt to maintain that they have subjected us to this treatment because we were unwilling to be members of their federation.[*](That is, to join the Boeotian Confederation, of which Thebes held the hegemony, and thus to be tributary ( SUNTELEI=N) to the Thebans.) But I ask you to consider, first, if on such grounds it is just to inflict penalties so contrary to justice and so cruel; next, if it seems to you consistent with the dignity of the city of the Plataeans, without their consent but under compulsion, to accept such dependence under the Thebans. For my part, I consider that there exists no people more overbearing than those who blot out the cities of each of us and compel us, when we have no use for it, to participate in their form of polity.

Besides this, they are clearly inconsistent in their dealings with others and with us. For when they were unable to gain our consent, they should have gone no farther than to compel us to submit to the hegemony of Thebes as they compelled Thespiae and Tanagra; for in that case we should not have suffered irremediable misfortunes. But as it is, they have made it clear that it was not their intention to give us that status; on the contrary, it was our territory they coveted.

I wonder to what precedent in the past they will appeal, and what conceivable interpretation of justice they will give, when they admit that they dictate to us in such matters. For if it is to our ancestral customs they look, they ought not to be ruling over our other cities, but far rather to be paying tribute to the Orchomenians[*](Orchomenus, stronghold of the Minyans in prehistoric times, joined the Boeotian Confederacy after the battle of Leuctra, 371 B.C.); for such was the case in ancient times. And if they hold that the treaties are valid, which indeed in justice they should be, how can they avoid admitting that they are guilty of wrong and are violating them? For these treaties direct that our cities, the small as well as the large, shall all alike be autonomous.

But I imagine that on the subject of the treaties they will not venture to show their impudence, but will resort to the argument that we were taking the side of the Lacedaemonians in the war and that by destroying us they have benefited the entire confederacy.[*](Evidently a reference to the Second Athenian Confederacy, organized in 377 B.C. and directed against Sparta. cf. p. 147.)

In my opinion, however, no complaint and no accusation should have greater validity than the oaths and the treaties. Nevertheless, if any people are to suffer because of their alliance with the Lacedaemonians, it was not the Plataeans who, of all the Greeks, if justice were done, would have been selected; for it was not of our own free will, but under compulsion, that we were subservient to the Lacedaemonians.

Why, who could believe that we had reached such a degree of folly as to have valued more highly a people who reduced our fatherland to slavery than the people who had given us a share in their own city?[*](That is, the Athenians; see Introduction.) No indeed, but it was difficult for us to attempt a revolt when we had so small a city ourselves and the Lacedaemonians possessed power so great, and when besides a Spartan governor occupied it with a garrison, and also a large army was stationed at Thespiae,[*](Cf. Xen. Hell. 5.4.13-22. Cleombrotus, king of Sparta, in the beginning of 378 B.C., occupied Plataea and Thespiae. Sphodrias was the governor or harmost.)

of such strength that we should have been destroyed by it not only more quickly than by the Thebans, but also with greater right. For it was not fitting that the Thebans in time of peace should harbor a grudge against us for what happened at that time, whereas the Lacedaemonians, if they had been betrayed by us during the war, with good reason would have punished us most severely.

And I think that you are not unaware that many other Greeks, although with their bodies they were compelled to follow the Lacedaemonians, yet in sympathy they were on your side. What conclusion must we suppose that these others will reach, if they hear that the Thebans have persuaded the Athenian people that none ought to be spared who have been subject to the Lacedaemonians?

For it will be clearly evident that the Thebans' argument has no other meaning; since it is no accusation against our city in particular that has led them to destroy it but, on the contrary, they will be able to bring that same charge also against those others. These are matters which demand your deliberation and concern, lest the overbearing ways of the Thebans shall reconcile those who formerly hated the rule of the Lacedaemonians and cause them to believe that the alliance with them is their own salvation.

Remember also that you undertook your most recent war,[*](378-374 B.C.) not to secure the freedom of either yourselves or your allies (for you all enjoyed that already), but in behalf of those who were being deprived of their autonomy in violation of the oaths and covenants. But surely it would be the most outrageous thing in the world, if you are going to permit these cities, which you thought ought not to be in servitude to the Lacedaemonians, now to be destroyed by the Thebans—men who are so far from emulating your clemency that it would have been better for us to suffer at the hands of this city that fate which is regarded as the most dreadful of all misfortunes,

to be taken prisoners of war, than to have got them as neighbors; for those whose cities were taken by you by storm were straightway freed of a Spartan governor and of slavery, and now they have share in a Council and in freedom, whereas, of those who live anywhere near the Thebans, some are no less slaves than those who have been bought with money, and as for the rest, the Thebans will not stop until they have brought them to the condition in which we now are.

They accuse the Lacedaemonians because they occupied the Cadmea and established garrisons in their cities, yet they themselves, not sending garrisons, but razing the walls of some and entirely destroying others, think they have committed no atrocity; nay, they have come to such a pitch of shamelessness that while they demand that all their allies should be guardians of the safety of Thebes, yet they arrogate to themselves the right to impose slavery upon everybody else.

And yet what man would not detest the greedy spirit of these Thebans, who seek to rule the weaker, but think they must be on terms of equality with the stronger and who begrudge your city the territory ceded by the Oropians,[*](Oropus, a town on the frontier between Attica and Boeotia, was long a bone of contention. In 412 B.C. it was treacherously taken by Thebes (Thucydides viii. 60); at some time after 402 B.C. it was under Athenian protection; in 366 B.C. Oropus was again seized by Thebes, but in 338 B.C. Philip gave the town to Athens.) yet themselves forcibly seize and portion out territory not their own?