History of the Peloponnesian War

A further difficulty in our position is the task of convincing you. For if we were strangers to each other, we might find it to our advantage to introduce evidence on matters with which you were unacquainted; but as it is, anything that we shall say is already known to you, and what we fear is, not that you have already judged our virtues[*](Referring to the achievement of the Plataeans in the Persian wars.) to be inferior to your own and now make that a charge against us, but that in order to gratify others[*](ie. the Thebans. With bitter irony the Plataeans ascribe to themselves the evident purpose of the Lacedaemonians—by standing trial before a prejudiced court they will “do a favour to the Thebans.”) we are to appear before a court that has already decided against us.

"Nevertheless, we shall present whatever just claims we have, both as regards our quarrel with the Thebans and as touching you and the rest of the Hellenes, and thus, by reminding you of our public services, shall try to persuade you.

In reply to the curt inquiry of yours, whether we have rendered any good service to the Lacedaemonians and their allies in this war, if you ask us as enemies, we say that you are not wronged if you did not receive benefit at our hands; but if in asking it you regard us as friends, we reply that you yourselves rather than we are at fault, in that you made war upon us.

But in the war against the Persians and during the peace which followed we have proved ourselves good and true men; we have not now been the first to break the peace, and then we were the only Boeotians[*](Rhetorical inaccuracy, for the Thespians did the same (Hdt. 7.132; Hdt. 7.202).) who rallied to defend the freedom of Hellas.

For though we are an inland people, we took part in the sea-fight at Artemisium; in the battle that was fought here in our own land[*](The battle of Plataea, 479 B.C. See Hdt. IX. lxii. ff.) we stood side by side with you and Pausanias; and whatever perils arose to threaten the Hellenes in those days, we bore our part in them all beyond our strength.

And to you in particular, Lacedaemonians, at that critical moment when after the earthquake Sparta was encompassed by a mighty terror owing to the revolt of the Helots and their occupation of Ithome, we sent a third part of our citizens to bring aid. These are things you ought not to forget.