h respect
to the invasion. To these few we belonged, and highly were we honoured
for it; and yet we now fear to perish by having again acted on the same
principles, and chosen to act well with Athens sooner than wisely with
Sparta. Yet in justice the same cases should be decided in the same way,
and policy should not mean anything else than lasting gratitude for
the service of good ally combined with a proper attention to one's own
immediate interest.

"Consider also that at present the Hellenes generally regard you as a
pattern of worth and honour; and if you pass an unjust sentence upon us
in this which is no obscure cause, but one in which you, the judges,
are as illustrious as we, the prisoners, are blameless, take care
that displeasure be not felt at an unworthy decision in the matter of
honourable men made by men yet more honourable than they, and at the
consecration in the national temples of spoils taken from the
Plataeans, the benefactors of Hellas. Shocking indeed will it seem for
Lacedaemonians to destroy Plataea, and for the city whose name your
fathers inscribed upon the tripod at Delphi for its good service, to
be by you blotted out from the map of Hellas, to please the Thebans. To
such a depth of misfortune have we fallen that, while the Medes' success
had been our ruin, Thebans now supplant us in your once fond regards;
and we have been subjected to two dangers, the greatest of any--that of
dying of starvation then, if we had not surrendered our town, and now of
being tried for our lives. So that we Plataeans, after exertions beyond
our power in the cause of the Hellenes, are rejected by all, forsaken
and unassisted; helped by none of our allies, and reduced to doubt the
stability of our only hope, yourselves.

"Still, in the name of the gods who once presided over our confederacy,
and of our own good service in the Hellenic cause, we adjure you to
relent; to recall the decision which we fear that the Thebans may have
obtained from you; to ask back the gift that you have given them, that
they disgrace not you by slaying us; to gain a pure instead of a guilty
gratitude, and not to gratify others to be yourselves rewarded with
shame. Our lives may be quickly taken, but it will be a heavy task to
wipe away the infamy of the deed; as we are no enemies whom you might
justly punish, but friends forced into taking arms against you. To grant
us our lives would be, therefore, a righteous judgment; if you conside