with their assailants, while in darkness
it would fall upon panic-stricken troops, who would also be at a
disadvantage from their enemy's knowledge of the locality. So they made
their assault at once, and came to close quarters as quickly as they
could.

The Thebans, finding themselves outwitted, immediately closed up to
repel all attacks made upon them. Twice or thrice they beat back their
assailants. But the men shouted and charged them, the women and slaves
screamed and yelled from the houses and pelted them with stones and
tiles; besides, it had been raining hard all night; and so at last their
courage gave way, and they turned and fled through the town. Most of the
fugitives were quite ignorant of the right ways out, and this, with the
mud, and the darkness caused by the moon being in her last quarter, and
the fact that their pursuers knew their way about and could easily stop
their escape, proved fatal to many. The only gate open was the one
by which they had entered, and this was shut by one of the Plataeans
driving the spike of a javelin into the bar instead of the bolt; so that
even here there was no longer any means of exit. They were now chased
all over the town. Some got on the wall and threw themselves over, in
most cases with a fatal result. One party managed to find a deserted
gate, and obtaining an axe from a woman, cut through the bar; but as
they were soon observed only a few succeeded in getting out. Others were
cut off in detail in different parts of the city. The most numerous and
compact body rushed into a large building next to the city wall: the
doors on the side of the street happened to be open, and the Thebans
fancied that they were the gates of the town, and that there was a
passage right through to the outside. The Plataeans, seeing their
enemies in a trap, now consulted whether they should set fire to the
building and burn them just as they were, or whether there was anything
else that they could do with them; until at length these and the rest
of the Theban survivors found wandering about the town agreed to an
unconditional surrender of themselves and their arms to the Plataeans.

While such was the fate of the party in Plataea, the rest of the Thebans
who were to have joined them with all their forces before daybreak, in
case of anything miscarrying with the body that had entered, received
the news of the affair on the road, and pressed forward to their
succour. Now Plataea is nearly ei