action of ours: hate, not justice, inspired their
decision; and even now the satisfaction which they afford us is not
adequate; they will suffer by a legal sentence, not as they pretend
as suppliants asking for quarter in battle, but as prisoners who have
surrendered upon agreement to take their trial. Vindicate, therefore,
Lacedaemonians, the Hellenic law which they have broken; and to us, the
victims of its violation, grant the reward merited by our zeal. Nor let
us be supplanted in your favour by their harangues, but offer an example
to the Hellenes, that the contests to which you invite them are of
deeds, not words: good deeds can be shortly stated, but where wrong is
done a wealth of language is needed to veil its deformity. However, if
leading powers were to do what you are now doing, and putting one short
question to all alike were to decide accordingly, men would be less
tempted to seek fine phrases to cover bad actions."

Such were the words of the Thebans. The Lacedaemonian judges decided
that the question whether they had received any service from the
Plataeans in the war, was a fair one for them to put; as they had
always invited them to be neutral, agreeably to the original covenant of
Pausanias after the defeat of the Mede, and had again definitely offered
them the same conditions before the blockade. This offer having
been refused, they were now, they conceived, by the loyalty of their
intention released from their covenant; and having, as they considered,
suffered evil at the hands of the Plataeans, they brought them in again
one by one and asked each of them the same question, that is to say,
whether they had done the Lacedaemonians and allies any service in the
war; and upon their saying that they had not, took them out and slew
them, all without exception. The number of Plataeans thus massacred was
not less than two hundred, with twenty-five Athenians who had shared in
the siege. The women were taken as slaves. The city the Thebans gave
for about a year to some political emigrants from Megara and to the
surviving Plataeans of their own party to inhabit, and afterwards razed
it to the ground from the very foundations, and built on to the precinct
of Hera an inn two hundred feet square, with rooms all round above
and below, making use for this purpose of the roofs and doors of the
Plataeans: of the rest of the materials in the wall, the brass and the
iron, they made couches which they dedicated to Hera,