t island harbor,
and the cheers of exultation of its rowers met the ears of the
imperilled populace.

So near was Mitylene to destruction that the breaking of an oar would
have been enough to doom six thousand men to death. So near as this was
Athens to winning the execration of mankind, by the perpetration of an
enormity which barbarians might safely have performed, but for which
Athens could never have been forgiven. The thousand prisoners sent to
Athens--the leading spirits of the revolt--were, it is true, put to
death, but this merciless cruelty, as it would be deemed to-day, has
been condoned in view of the far greater slaughter of the innocent from
which Athens so narrowly escaped.

_THE DEFENCE OF PLATAEA._

At the foot of Mount Cithaeron, one of the most beautiful of the
mountains of Greece, winds the small river Asopus, and between, on a
slope of the mountain, may to-day be seen the ruins of Plataea, one of
the most memorable of the cities of ancient Greece. This city had its
day of glory and its day of woe. Here, in the year 479 B.C., was fought
that famous battle which drove the Persians forever from Greece. And
here Pausanias declared that the territory on which the battle was
fought should forever be sacred ground to all of Grecian birth. Forever
is seldom a very long period in human history. In this case it lasted
just fifty years.

War had broken out between Sparta and its allies and Athens and its
dominion, and all Greece was in turmoil. Of the two leading cities of
Boeotia, Thebes was an ally of the Lacedaemonians, Plataea of the
Athenians. The war broke out by an attack of the Thebans upon Plataea.
Two years afterwards, in the year 429 B.C., Archidamus, the Spartan
king, led his whole force against this ally of Athens. In his army
marched the Thebans, men of a city but two hours' journey from Plataea,
and citizens of the same state, yet its bitterest foes. The Plataeans
were summoned to surrender, to consent to remain neutral, or to leave
their city and go where they would; all of which alternatives they
declined. Thereupon the Spartan force invested the city, and prepared to
take it by dint of arms. And thus Sparta kept the pledge of Plataean
sacredness made by her king Pausanias half a century before.

Plataea was a small place, probably not very strongly fortified, and
contained a garrison of only four hundred and eighty men, of whom eighty
were Athenians. Fortunately, all the women an