Theomnestus and Apollodorus Against Neaera

Pausanias, the king of the Lacedaemonians, puffed up by this, inscribed a distich upon the tripod at Delphi, which the Greeks who had jointly fought in the battle at Plataea and in the sea-fight at Salamis had made in common from the spoils taken from the barbarians, and had set up in honor of Apollo as a memorial of their valor. The distich[*](This distich, said by Paus. 3.8.1, to be the work of Simonides, is quoted also in Thuc. 1.132. According to Hdt. 9.81.4 the monument in question was a golden tripod, set upon a three-headed serpent of bronze. The gold tripod was carried off by the Phocians in the Sacred War (Paus. 10.13.6), and the supporting pillar, three intertwined serpents of bronze, was taken away by Constantine and set up in the Hippodrome of his new capital at Byzantium (Gibbon, Decline and Fall, Chap. 17, note 48), where it was rediscovered in 1856. The names of the Greek states which took part in the war are inscribed on the coils of the serpents (see Hicks, Greek Historical Inscriptions, pp. 11-13 and Dittenberger, Syllogê, 1 p. 31).) was as follows:

1. Pausanias, supreme commander of the Greeks, when he had destroyed the host of the Medes,
2. dedicated to Phoebus this memorial.

He wrote thus, as if the achievement and the offering had been his own and not the common work of the allies;

and the Greeks were incensed at this, and the Plataeans brought suit on behalf of the allies against the Lacedaemonians before the Amphictyons[*](These were the members of the council of Greek states meeting at Delphi.) for one thousand talents, and compelled them to erase the distich and to inscribe the names of all the states which had had a part in the work. This act more than any other drew upon the Plataeans the hatred of the Lacedaemonians and their royal house.

For the moment the Lacedaemonians had no means of dealing with them, but about fifty years later Archidamus, son of Zeuxidamus, king of the Lacedaemonians, undertook in time of peace to seize their city.

He did this from Thebes, through the agency of Eurymachus, the son of Leontiadas, the Boeotarch,[*](This title was given to the high officials at Thebes. The story of the attack on Plataea is told in detail in Thuc. 2.2 ff. The date was 428 B.C.) and the gates were opened at night by Naucleides and some accomplices of his, who had been won over by bribes. The Plataeans, discovering that the Thebans had got within the gates in the night and that their city had been suddenly seized in time of peace, ran to bear aid and arrayed themselves for battle. When day dawned, and they saw that the Thebans were few in number, and that only their first ranks had entered—a heavy rain which had fallen in the night prevented them from all getting in; for the river Asopus was flowing full and was not easy to cross especially in the night;—

so, when the Plataeans saw the Thebans in the city and learned that their whole body was not there, they made an attack, overwhelmed them in battle, and destroyed them before the rest arrived to bear them further aid; and they at once sent a messenger to you, telling of what had been done and of their victory in the battle, and to ask for your help in case the Thebans should ravage their country. The Athenians, when they heard what had taken place, hastened to the aid of the Plataeans; and the Thebans, seeing that the Athenians had come to the Plataeans’ aid, returned home.

So, when the Thebans had failed in their attempt and the Plataeans had put to death those of their number whom they had taken alive in the battle, the Lacedaemonians, without waiting now for any pretext, marched against Plataea. They ordered all the Peloponnesians with the exception of the Argives to send two-thirds of their armies from their several cities, and they sent word to all the rest of the Boeotians and the Locrians and Phocians and Malians and Oetaeans and Aenians to take the field with their entire forces.[*](All the states mentioned were in central Greece, and belonged to the Peloponnesian confederacy.)

Then they invested the walls of Plataea with a large force, and made overtures to the Plataeans on terms that, if they would surrender their city to the Lacedaemonians, they should retain their land and enjoy their property, but that they should break off their alliance with the Athenians. The Plataeans refused this offer and made answer that they would do nothing without the Athenians, whereupon the Lacedaemonians besieged them for two years, built a double wall about their city, and made repeated assaults of every conceivable sort.