Book 3
And they immediately despatched another trireme with all speed, that they might not find the city destroyed through the previous arrival of The common reading δευτέρας is abandoned by all the best editors; and therefore it is not without great diffidence that I confess my inability to understand why it need be so. The sense of the passage would be equally good if it were translated, that by the previous arrival of the second, they might avoid finding the city ruined : and I cannot but think such a method borne out by many other passages of our author; e. g. II. 3. 3, ξυνελέγοντο ... ὅπως μὴ διὰ τῶν ὁδῶν φανεροὶ ὦσιν ἰόντες. And again in the next section, ἐχώρουν ἐκ τῶν οἰκιῶν ἐπ᾽ αὐτοὺς, ὅπως μὴ κατὰ φῶς φαρσαλεωτέροις οὖσι προσφέρωνται, κ. τ. λ. the first; which had the start by a day and a night.
The Mytilenaean ambassadors having provided for the vessel wine and barley-cakes, and promising great rewards if they should arrive first, there was such haste in their course, that at the same time as they rowed they ate cakes kneaded with oil and wine; and some slept in turns, while others rowed.
And as there happened to be no wind against them, and the former vessel did not sail in any haste on so Literally, monstrous. horrible a business, while this hurried on in the manner described; though the other arrived so much first that Paches had read the decree, and was on the point of executing the sentence, the second came to land after it, and prevented the butchery. Into such imminent peril did Mytilene come.
The other party, whom Paches had sent off as the chief authors of the revolt, the Athenians put to death, according to the advice of Cleon, amounting to rather more than one thousand. They also dismantled the walls of the Mytilenaeans, and seized their ships.
After this they did not impose any tribute on the Lesbians, but having divided the land, excepting that of the Methymnaeans, into three thousand portions, they set apart three hundred of them as consecrated to the gods, and to the rest sent out as shareholders those of their own citizens to whose lot they had fallen; with whom the Lesbians having agreed to pay in money two mince a year for each portion, farmed the land themselves.
The Athenians also took possession of the towns on the continent of which the Mytilenaeans were masters, and they were afterwards subject to Athens. Such then was the issue of affairs as regarded Lesbos.
In the course of the same summer, after the reduction of Lesbos, the Athenians made an expedition under the command of Nicias, son of Niceratus, against the island of Minoa, which lies off Megara, and which the Megareans used as a fortress, having built a tower on it.
From this spot, being more close at hand, Nicias wished the Athenians to keep their guard [over Nisaea], instead of from Budorum and Salamis, and to prevent the Peloponnesians from sailing out thence unobserved, as was formerly the case, with triremes and privateers; and at the same time to see that nothing was imported by the Megareans.
Having therefore in the first instance taken by engines from the sea two towers which projected on the side of Nisaea, and having cleared the entrance to Göller translates this expression by viam in portum aperuit: but the strict meaning of the μετάξυ must be, I think, that which I have given to it, and which it has IV. 25. 1, ἐν τούτῳ οὖν τῷ μεταξὺ οἱ συρακόσιοι, κ. τ. λ. the strait between the island [and the continent], he proceeded to cut off all communication on the side of the mainland also, where there was a passage by a bridge over a morass for succouring the island, which lay not far off from the continent.
This having been accomplished by them in a few days, he afterwards left works on the island also, with a garrison, and retired with his forces.
It was also about the same period of this summer that the Plataeans, having no longer any provisions and being unable to endure the blockade, surrendered to the Peloponnesians in the following manner.
The enemy assaulted their wall and they were incapable of defending it. So when the Lacedaemonian commander was aware of their powerless condition, lie did not wish to take it by storm, (for such were his instructions from Lacedaemon, in order that if a treaty should ever be made with the Athenians, and they should agree to restore such places as they had respectively taken in the war, Plataea might not be given up, on the strength of its inhabitants having voluntarily gone over to them,) but he sent to them a herald with this question, Were they disposed voluntarily to surrender their city to the Lacedaemonians, and submit to them as their judges;
and that they should punish the guilty, but no one contrary to justice? Such were the words of the herald; and they, being now in a state of extreme weakness, surrendered the city. The Peloponnesians then fed the Plataeans for nine days, till the judges from Lacedaemon, five in number, arrived.
When they were come, no charge was preferred against them; but they called them forward, and merely asked them this question, Had they in any particular done the Lacedaemonians and the allies any service during the present war?
They made a speech [in reply], for they had requested permission to speak at greater length, and had deputed to plead their cause Astymachus the son of Asopolaus, and Lacon the son of Aeimnestus, who came forward and said as follows:
"The surrender of our city, Lacedaemonians, we made with full confidence in you, not supposing that we should be subjected to such a trial as this, but that it would be one more consistent with law; and with an agreement that we should not, as we now are, be at the mercy of any other judges but yourselves; thinking that so we should best obtain what was fair.
But as things are, we fear that we have failed at once in both expectations. For with reason we suspect that our contest is Literally, for the most fearful things. for life or death, and that you will not prove impartial; inferring this from the fact of there having been made against us no previous charge for us to reply to, (but it was ourselves who requested permission to speak,) and from the question put to us being so concise; a true answer to which tells against us, while a false one is open to refutation.
Being involved, however, in perplexity on all sides, we are compelled, and it seems the safer course, to say something at all risks; for the words that had been left unspoken might occasion to men in our situation the self-accusing thought, that if they had been spoken, they might have saved us.
But in addition to our other disadvantages, the work of convincing you is also surrounded with difficulties. Were we unacquainted with each other, we might derive assistance from bringing forward fresh proofs of what you did not know: but as it is, every thing will be said to men who know it already; and our fear is, not that you have before considered our services as inferior to your own, and now make that fact a ground of accusation against us; but that, through your determination to gratify another party, we are brought to a trial which is already decided against us.
" Nevertheless, while we urge what claims of justice we have, both against the Thebans, and with respect to you, and the rest of the Greeks, we will remind you of our good deeds, and endeavour to persuade you [to have mercy on us].
With regard then to your brief question, 'whether we have done any service to the Lacedaemonians and the allies in this war,' we say, that if you ask us as enemies, you are not wronged by us, though you should have received no good at our hands; and that if you consider us as friends, you are yourselves more in the wrong, for having marched against us.
With respect, however, to what happened during the peace, and in opposition to the Mede, we proved ourselves good and true men; for we have not now been the first to break the peace, and we were then the only part of the Boeotians who joined in attacking the Mede for the liberty of Greece.
Even though we are an inland people, we were present in the sea-fight at Artemisium, and in the battle fought in our territory we stood by you and Pausanias; and whatever other perilous achievement was performed by the Greeks, we took part in every thing beyond our strength.
And to you, Lacedaemonians, in particular, at the very time when, after the earthquake, the greatest alarm surrounded Sparta, because of the Helots who had established themselves in revolt at Ithome, we sent the third part of our own people to your assistance: and you ought not to forget this.
"With regard to events of early date, and of the greatest importance, such was the part we thought right to act; though afterwards we became your enemies. But it is you that are to blame for that; for on our requesting an alliance with you, when the Thebans had used violence towards us, you rejected our suit, and told us to apply to the Athenians, since they were near to us, whereas you lived far away from us.
In the war, however, you neither suffered, nor would have suffered, any improper treatment from us.
But if we would not revolt from the Athenians at your bidding, we did no wrong in that; for it was they who assisted us against the Thebans, when you refused; and to give them up would not then have been honourable—especially as we had taken them for allies after receiving good from them, and at our own request, and had shared the rights of citizenship with them—but it was only reasonable that we should heartily obey their commands.
And as to the measures in which either of you take the lead of your allies, it is not those who follow that are to blame, if you have ever done any thing wrong, but those who lead them on to what is not right.
"With respect to the Thebans, they had on many other occasions wronged us; and as for the last occasion, you know yourselves on what account we are in our present condition.
For as they were seizing our city in time of peace, and, moreover, at a holy time of the month, we did right in avenging ourselves on them, according to the principle recognised by all, that it is allowable to defend oneself against the attack of an enemy;
and it would not now be fair that we should suffer on their account. For if you take your views of justice from your own immediate advantage and their animosity, you will show yourselves no true judges of what is right, but rather attentive to what is expedient.
And yet if they appear to be serviceable to you now, much more did we and the rest of the Greeks then, when you were in greater danger. For now you are yourselves attacking others, and the objects of their fear; but at that crisis, when the barbarian was bringing slavery on all, these Thebans were on his side And it is but just, that against our present misdeed—if we have really done amiss—you should set the zeal we showed then;
and you will find it greater Literally, the greater opposed to the less. than the fault to which it is opposed, and exhibited at those critical times when it was a rare thing for any of the Greeks to oppose his courage to the power of Xerxes; and therefore those were the more commended who did not in safety act for their own interest with regard to his invasion, but were willing to dare with dangers the better part.
But though we were of that number, and honoured by you in the highest degree, we are now afraid that we have been ruined by acting on the same principles, because we chose the side of the Athenians from regard to right, rather than yours from regard to interest.
And yet men should consistently take the same view of the same case, and account expediency to be nothing else than this—when good allies receive everlasting gratitude for their services, while our own immediate interest in any case is secured.
"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:
if the Medes had been victorious, we should have been ruined; and now we are supplanted by Thebans in your good opinion, who were before our best friends; and we have been subjected to two dangers, the greatest that can be imagined—then, to that of being Bloomfield, in his last edition, rightly explains αἰσχίστῳ (as Göller had already done) by comparing the words of Ammianus Marcellinus, fame, ignavissimo mortis genere, tabescentes; and observes that to be pined to death was, according to the idea of the ancients, a death, as compared with that of dying with arms in one's hands, especially ignominious, as suggesting the idea of a snared brute beast. Yet he inconsistently retains the part of his original note, in which he objected to Hobbes rendering the word by base, a term to which Hobbes himself doubtless attached the same meaning. Gottleber and Poppo refer ἐσαμένων as well as κτισάντων to θυσίας; and the collocation of the words certainly makes this the most natural mode of explaining them. Bloomfield, however, denies that ἕω is ever used in such a figurative sense, and maintains that it can only refer here to ἱερά. starved to death, if we had not surrendered our city; and now, to that of being tried for our lives.
And thus we Plataeans, who were zealous beyond our power in the cause of the Greeks, are rejected by all, deserted and unassisted; for of those who were then our allies, no one helps us; and as for you, Lacedaemonians, our only hope, we fear that you are not to be depended upon.
"And yet, for the sake of the gods who once presided over our confederacy, and of our valour in the cause of the Greeks, we call on you to relent and change your mind, if you have been persuaded to any thing by the Thebans; and to ask as a boon from them in return, that they would not kill those whose death is not honourable to you; and to receive an honest gratitude [from us], instead of a disgraceful one [from them];