History of The Peloponnesian War - Book III   

proper to your character; the real bent of your nature has been at
length damningly proved: when the Athenians took the path of injustice
you followed them.
"Of our unwilling Medism and your wilful Atticizing this then is our
explanation. The last wrong wrong of which you complain consists in
our having, as you say, lawlessly invaded your town in time of peace
and festival. Here again we cannot think that we were more in fault
than yourselves. If of our own proper motion we made an armed attack
upon your city and ravaged your territory, we are guilty; but if the
first men among you in estate and family, wishing to put an end to the
foreign connection and to restore you to the common Boeotian
country, of their own free will invited us, wherein is our crime?
Where wrong is done, those who lead, as you say, are more to blame
than those who follow. Not that, in our judgment, wrong was done
either by them or by us. Citizens like yourselves, and with more at
stake than you, they opened their own walls and introduced us into
their own city, not as foes but as friends, to prevent the bad among
you from becoming worse; to give honest men their due; to reform
principles without attacking persons, since you were not to be
banished from your city, but brought home to your kindred, nor to be
made enemies to any, but friends alike to all.
"That our intention was not hostile is proved by our behaviour. We
did no harm to any one, but publicly invited those who wished to
live under a national, Boeotian government to come over to us; which
as first you gladly did, and made an agreement with us and remained
tranquil, until you became aware of the smallness of our numbers.
Now it is possible that there may have been something not quite fair
in our entering without the consent of your commons. At any rate you
did not repay us in kind. Instead of refraining, as we had done,
from violence, and inducing us to retire by negotiation, you fell upon
us in violation of your agreement, and slew some of us in fight, of
which we do not so much complain, for in that there was a certain
justice; but others who held out their hands and received quarter, and
whose lives you subsequently promised us, you lawlessly butchered.
If this was not abominable, what is? And after these three crimes
committed one after the other- the violation of your agreement, the
murder of the men afterwards, and the lying breach of your promise not
to kill them, if we refrained from injuring your property in the
country- you still affirm that we are the criminals and yourselves
pretend to escape justice. Not so, if these your judges decide aright,
but you will be punished for all together.
"Such, Lacedaemonians, are the facts. We have gone into them at some
length both on your account and on our own, that you may fed that
you will justly condemn the prisoners, and we, that we have given an
additional sanction to our vengeance. We would also prevent you from
being melted by hearing of their past virtues, if any such they had:
these may be fairly appealed to by the victims of injustice, but
only aggravate the guilt of criminals, since they offend against their
better nature. Nor let them gain anything by crying and wailing, by
calling upon your fathers' tombs and their own desolate condition.
Against this we point to the far more dreadful fate of our youth,
butchered at their hands; the fathers of whom either fell at
Coronea, bringing Boeotia over to you, or seated, forlorn old men by
desolate hearths, with far more reason implore your justice upon the
prisoners. The pity which they appeal to is rather due to men who
suffer unworthily; those who suffer justly as they do are on the
contrary subjects for triumph. For their present desolate condition
they have themselves to blame, since they wilfully rejected the better
alliance. Their lawless act was not provoked by any 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