History of the Peloponnesian War

So a capitulation was made on the following terms, that the Potidaeans, with their children and wives and the mercenary troops,[*](Thuc. 1.60.1.) were to leave the city with one garment apiece—the women, however, with two—retaining a fixed sum of money for the journey.

So they left Potidaea under a truce and went into Chalcidice or wherever each was able to go. The Athenians, however, blamed the generals for granting terms without consulting them—for they thought they could have become masters of the place on their own terms; and afterwards sent settlers of their own into Potidaea and colonized it. These things happened in the winter, and so ended the second[*](430 B.C.) year of this war of which Thucydides wrote the history.

In the ensuing summer the Peloponnesians and their allies did not invade Attica, but made an expedition against Plataea. Their leader was Archidamus son of Zeuxidamus, king of the Lacedaemonians, and when he had encamped his army he was about to ravage the land; but the Plataeans straightway sent envoys to him, who spoke as follows: "

Archidamus and Lacedaemonians, you are acting unjustly, and in a manner unworthy either of yourselves or of the fathers from whom you are sprung, when you invade the territory of the Plataeans. For Pausanias son of Cleombrotus, the Lacedaemonian, when he had freed Hellas from the Persians, together with such of the Hellenes as chose to share the danger of the battle that took place in our territory, offered sacrifice in the market-place of the Plataeans to Zeus Eleutherius, and calling together all the allies restored to the Plataeans their land and city to hold and inhabit in independence, and no one was ever to march against them unjustly or for their enslavement; but in that case the allies then present were to defend them with all their might.