United States or Armenia ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
There, every fifth year, should be celebrated games in honour of Liberty; while the Plataeans themselves, exempted from military service, should be deemed, so long as they fulfilled the task thus imposed upon them, a sacred and inviolable people. Thus Plataea nominally became a second Elis its battle-field another Altis.
The Plataeans, being wakened out of their first sleep, and thinking that the Thebans were in much greater force than was really the case, at first attempted no resistance, but were disposed to accept the terms offered them. But perceiving by degrees that their enemies were far weaker in numbers than themselves, they changed their minds, and resolved to attack them.
And they promised further, under an oath, that if the Thebans would withdraw their forces, the captives should be restored at least this was the account which was afterwards current at Thebes, though the Plataeans denied that they had made any such promise unconditionally, and declared that they had sworn no oath.
It was a cruel alternative which was offered to the hapless Plataeans: either they must leave their wives and children to the vengeance of Athens, or face the whole power of the confederates, led by Sparta. True to their character, they chose the nobler part, and determined to stand by the Athenian alliance.
Three thousand Megarians and six hundred Plataeans were ranged contiguous to the Athenians, whose force of eight thousand men, under the command of Aristides, closed the left wing. Thus the total of the heavy-armed soldiery was thirty-eight thousand seven hundred.
The Plataeans, after hearing what he had to say, went into the city and acquainted the people with what had passed, and presently returned for answer that it was impossible for them to do what he proposed without consulting the Athenians, with whom their children and wives now were; besides which they had their fears for the town.
Fire-signals of an attack were also raised towards Thebes; but the Plataeans in the town at once displayed a number of others, prepared beforehand for this very purpose, in order to render the enemy's signals unintelligible, and to prevent his friends getting a true idea of what was passing and coming to his aid before their comrades who had gone out should have made good their escape and be in safety.
The Plataeans also thought of another expedient; they pulled out part of the wall upon which the mound abutted, and carried the earth into the city. Discovering this the Peloponnesians twisted up clay in wattles of reed and threw it into the breach formed in the mound, in order to give it consistency and prevent its being carried away like the soil.
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, for whom they also built a stone chapel of a hundred feet square.
With these the Lesbians agreed to pay a rent of two minae a year for each allotment, and cultivated the land themselves. The Athenians also took possession of the towns on the continent belonging to the Mitylenians, which thus became for the future subject to Athens. Such were the events that took place at Lesbos. Fifth Year of the War Trial and Execution of the Plataeans Corcyraean Revolution
Word Of The Day