Polymnia   

This conduct on the part of the Spartans caused the anger of
Talthybius to cease for a while, notwithstanding that Sperthias and
Bulis returned home alive. But many years afterwards it awoke once
more, as the Lacedaemonians themselves declare, during the war between
the Peloponnesians and the Athenians.
In my judgment this was a case wherein the hand of Heaven was most
plainly manifest. That the wrath of Talthybius should have fallen upon
ambassadors and not slacked till it had full vent, so much justice
required; but that it should have come upon the sons of the very men
who were sent up to the Persian king on its account- upon Nicolaus,
the son of Bulis, and Aneristus, the son of Sperthias (the same who
carried off fishermen from Tiryns, when cruising in a well-manned
merchant-ship)- this does seem to me to be plainly a supernatural
circumstance. Yet certain it is that these two men, having been sent
to Asia as ambassadors by the Lacedaemonians, were betrayed by
Sitalces, the son of Teres, king of Thrace, and Nymphodorus, the son
of Pythes, a native of Abdera, and being made prisoners at Bisanthe,
upon the Hellespont, were conveyed to Attica, and there put to death
by the Athenians, at the same time as Aristeas, the son of Adeimantus,
the Corinthian. All this happened, however, very many years after
the expedition of Xerxes.
To return, however, to my main subject- the expedition of the
Persian king, though it was in name directed against Athens,
threatened really the whole of Greece. And of this the Greeks were
aware some time before; but they did not all view the matter in the
same light. Some of them had given the Persian earth and water, and
were bold on this account, deeming themselves thereby secured
against suffering hurt from the barbarian army; while others, who
had refused compliance, were thrown into extreme alarm. For whereas
they considered all the ships in Greece too few to engage the enemy,
it was plain that the greater number of states would take no part in
the war, but warmly favoured the Medes.
And here I feel constrained to deliver an opinion, which most men,
I know, will mis-like, but which, as it seems to me to be true, I am
determined not to withhold. Had the Athenians, from fear of the
approaching danger, quitted their country, or had they without
quitting it submitted to the power of Xerxes, there would certainly
have been no attempt to resist the Persians by sea; in which case
the course of events by land would have been the following. Though the
Peloponnesians might have carried ever so many breastworks across
the Isthmus, yet their allies would have fallen off from the
Lacedaemonians, not by voluntary desertion, but because town after
town must have been taken by the fleet of the barbarians; and so the
Lacedaemonians would at last have stood alone, and, standing alone,
would have displayed prodigies of valour and died nobly. Either they
would have done thus, or else, before it came to that extremity,
seeing one Greek state after another embrace the cause of the Medes,
they would have come to terms with King Xerxes- and thus, either way
Greece would have been brought under Persia. For I cannot understand
of what possible use the walls across the Isthmus could have been,
if the king had had the mastery of the sea. If then a man should now
say that the Athenians were the saviours of Greece, he would not
exceed the truth. For they truly held the scales; and whichever side
they espoused must have carried the day. They too it was who, when
they had determined to maintain the freedom of Greece, roused up
that portion of the Greek nation which had not gone over to the Medes;
and so, next to the gods, they repulsed the invader. Even the terrible
oracles which reached them from Delphi, and struck fear into their
hearts, failed to persuade them to fly from Greece. They had the
courage to remain faithful to their land, and await the coming of
the foe.
When the Athenians, anxious to consult the oracle, sent their
messengers to Delphi, hardly had the envoys completed the customary
rites about the sacred precinct, and taken their seats inside the