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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;
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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.
