History of the Peloponnesian War

All this you would reverse by an unjust verdict. Reflect: when Pausanias buried them he thought he was laying them in a friendly land and among friends; but you, if you put us to death and make the territory of Plataea a Theban province, will you not be leaving them in a hostile land and among their murderers[*](The Thebans are called their murderers because they had sided with the Persians against the Hellenic allies.)—these your fathers and kinsmen—and dispossessed of the honours they now enjoy? Nay more, you will be enslaving the very land in which the Hellenes gained their liberty; you will be bringing desolation upon the temples of the gods to whom they prayed when they conquered the Persians; and you will be robbing of their hereditary sacrifices the people who founded and established them.

“These things are not consistent with your honour, Lacedaemonians, nor can it be so to offend against the common usage of the Hellenes and against your ancestors, or to put us, your benefactors, to death because of the enmity of others, when you have not been wronged yourselves. Nay, your good name demands that you should spare us and be softened in heart, regarding us with a dispassionate pity and bearing in mind, not only how terrible will be our fate, but who we are that must suffer, and how uncertain is fortune, whose strokes sometimes fall even upon the innocent.