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Updated: June 19, 2025
Pausanias, son of Cleombrotus, your countryman, after freeing Hellas from the Medes with the help of those Hellenes who were willing to undertake the risk of the battle fought near our city, offered sacrifice to Zeus the Liberator in the marketplace of Plataea, and calling all the allies together restored to the Plataeans their city and territory, and declared it independent and inviolate against aggression or conquest.
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.
But the Plataeans, observing the progress of the mound, constructed a wall of wood and fixed it upon that part of the city wall against which the mound was being erected, and built up bricks inside it which they took from the neighbouring houses.
That this is the truth, I will bring in as witnesses Euthycritus; whom I asked first, and the rest of the Plataeans whom I approached, and the man who claims to be his master. Now shut off the water. Not many days after this, I saw this Pancleon seized by Nicomedes, who had testified he was his master, and I went up to him, wishing to know what was to be done with him.
They fought this battle on the fourth day of the month Boedromion, according to the Athenians, but according to the Boeotians, on the twenty-seventh of Panemus; on which day there is still a convention of the Greeks at Plataea, and the Plataeans still offer sacrifice for the victory to Jupiter of freedom.
These things begin ratified, the Plataeans undertook the performance of annual sacrifice to such as were slain and buried in that place; which they still perform in the following manner.
Fire-signals were now kindled by the Peloponnesians, to summon help from Thebes; but the Plataeans were prepared for this also, and they kindled other beacons which had been raised for the purpose on their wall, so as to obscure the meaning of the enemy's signals, and delay the march of the Thebans, until their own comrades had had time to escape.
Having pitched their camp before the walls they prepared to lay waste the territory; but before the work of havoc began, the Plataeans sent envoys to remonstrate. "Unrighteous are your deeds," said the spokesman of the embassy, "ye men of Sparta, and unworthy of the men whose sons ye are.
In this juncture, Arimnestus, who commanded the Plataeans, dreamed that Jupiter, the Saviour, asked him what the Greeks had resolved upon; and that he answered, "Tomorrow, my Lord, we march our army to Eleusis, and there give the barbarians battle according to the directions of the oracle of Apollo."
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.
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