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This act of mercy stands in sinister contrast with the treatment the unhappy Plataeans received from the liberators of Greece. The citizens were captured, Athens having strangely abandoned them in spite of her promise to help. They were allowed to commemorate their services to Greece, appealing in a most moving speech to the sacred ground of their city, the scene of the immortal battle.
On hearing the report of those who had turned back, the Plataeans applied for a truce to bury their dead; and when their herald came back from his useless errand, they learned to their delight that this gallant enterprise, so ably planned, and so boldly executed, had been crowned with complete success.
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.
But they were greatly inferior in numbers, wearied by their long vigil, and soaked with the heavy rain which had fallen in the night; the Plataeans returned again and again to the attack, assailing them with furious cries; and the women and slaves who crowded the roofs added to their discomfiture, pelting them with tiles and stones, and stunning their ears with a frightful uproar of yells and shrieks; so that at last their hearts failed them, and breaking their ranks they fled wildly through the streets.
Accordingly he sent a herald, and summoned the Plataeans to surrender, promising that they should have a fair trial by Spartan judges; and they, being actually on the point of starvation, accepted the terms offered, and laid down their arms. They were kept in custody and supplied with food until the judges, five in number, arrived from Sparta.
Such being the structure of the wall by which the Plataeans were blockaded, when their preparations were completed, they waited for a stormy night of wind and rain and without any moon, and then set out, guided by the authors of the enterprise.
The allies of Athens, with the exception of the Thessalians, Acarnanians, Messenians at Naupactus, and Plataeans, were all insular, and consisted of the Chians, Lesbians, Corcyraeans, and Zacynthians, and shortly afterwards of the Cephallenians, To these must be added her tributary towns on the coast of Thrace and Asia Minor, together with all the islands north of Crete, except Melos and Thera.
The general levy of the Plataeans only amounted to a thousand men: and this little column, marching from their city along the southern ridge of Mount Cithaeron, and thence across the Attic territory, joined the Athenian forces above Marathon almost immediately before the battle.
Then arose a great sheet of flame, such as had never been raised by human hands, though not, of course, to be compared to the vast forest-fires, produced by natural means; yet it was sufficient to cause a panic among the Plataeans, and bring their town to the verge of destruction.
The alarm was instantly given, and the troops rushed to the wall, not knowing the nature of the danger, owing to the dark night and stormy weather; the Plataeans in the town having also chosen that moment to make a sortie against the wall of the Peloponnesians upon the side opposite to that on which their men were getting over, in order to divert the attention of the besiegers.